creating a handheld book for pagination
It can be helpful, whether you're an illustrator or not, to input your text into a book you can hold and turn pages with, so you can figure out your pagination. Oftentimes you might start to notice things you don’t need, or realize you need to cut. Figuring out where your tension, inciting incident(s) fall, how your arc is working within a specific number of pages, etc. This is great during your drafting and revision stages.
First, let’s look at terminology.
Self-ended: The paper used when printing your book is the same paper used for your endpapers. These always have a pattern on them, and sometimes are used as additional space for author notes (check out Where Is Our Library by Josh Funk).
Colored Ends: The paper used for this type are, as the name states, a color, but also, it is a different paper. So there is no pattern or design. (check out Got to Get to Bear’s! by Brian Lies).
For making a hand-held version of your book, we will be going with a self-ended.
To create a 32 page self-ended picture book, you will need:
Pencil (so you can erase)
9 sheets of 8.5”x11” (letter) copy paper
Scissors
Printed manuscript
Tape
Stapler
Fold nine separate horizontal sheets in half. The ninth sheet is the center of the book, you can tell because when you get to that spread it is a full sheet (not two single sheets together). Staple down the middle of that spread at the fold.
This will give you a 5.5”x8.5” 32 page self-ended picture book.
•Mark the front of your book: FRONT COVER
•Mark the back of your book: BACK COVER
•Open your book and mark the left side: INSIDE FRONT COVER
•Mark the right side with a 1, put a big X through the page, and write: PASTES TO INSIDE
FRONT COVER. That’s right, nothing happens here, but it is how paginating is done when
making a self-ended book, You could go one step further and actually paste it down
with a gluestick
•Follow the downloadable book map below to number and mark the rest of your pages
•Important things to mark are END PAPERS, ©, and TITLE PAGE
Note: When you open the book, the immediate left side is your INSIDE FRONT COVER. The right side is PAGE 1 which PASTES DOWN TO THE INSIDE FRONT COVER. Page 32 PASTES DOWN onto the INSIDE BACK COVER.
Where your staples are should end up being pages 16 and 17.
Use this book map as a reference for making your handheld book. Also great as a standalone for for plotting your story. I use these when I’m ready to move from my manuscript to creating a book dummy. I do very loose and (probably unreadable to anyone else) illustrations to see where I want spots, full single page artwork and full spreads. Noting how all of those will flow together. But you can also use it for plotting your story while you write and revise.
To download a pdf of this book map to use for your own story, just click on the image.