In c.p.printers and c.l.postscript, Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 2/12/2021 2:00 PM, Eli the Bearded wrote:
kinda surprised more people don't want to do this
I use www.lulu.com for printing and binding my five computer software
manuals. Each is approximately 300 pages and printed on 8.5 inch by
11.0 inch paper. www.lulu.com requires a PDF for the body, the front
cover, the spine, and the back cover. Four PDFs. The cost for each
manual is around $14.

That looks and sounds very similar to the blurb.com process. They used
two PDFs however, one for body, one for front/spine/back. That is tricky
to do precisely since size of spine changes with paper choice and page
count. In any event, the cover was my least concern. Generating the PDF
for the inside that was tricky.

Perhaps it's just my standards. A document to PDF process that doesn't
put page breaks in before new chapters is wrong. A process that doesn't
have different margins for front and back of page (left side is spine on
front, and right side is spine on back) is wrong. A process that doesn't
surpress page numbers on first page of chapter is wrong. A process that
doesn't start page numbers until after title page is wrong. If I'm
getting something bound in signatures rather than perfect bound, then
the process needs to know about page creep or it is wrong.

I know how, in a small number of GUI programs, to properly format a book
like that. It is not something I can do quickly or easily.

I am hoping to find some way to get from document formats quickly and
easily available to good layout (PDFs or other interim format) for
printing. It need not be a free process, but I don't want to break the
bank either.

Elijah
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had given up hope on any response