I need to pirate this book thats over 1000 pages. I already have the pdf but I really want a physical copy and the book costs too much for me. Even if I have to buy a bunch of ink (the book has no pictures) and even if I wear out the printhead before the job is done, it’s still going to be cheaper to do this. My printer has been blocked from the internet since before the pandemic so I can install all the 3rd party ink and replacement parts I want. I’m not worried about my printer situation.
It seems the biggest challenge I need to overcome is the paper. Cheap printer paper is going to otherwise work it’s just that it’s too thick. The same amount of cheap printer paper it takes to make the book is going to be more than twice as thick as the book I’m trying to “pirate”.
The 8.5x11in size just happens to be the exact size I need for this. Whats the cheapest paper I can get that’s still thinner than cheapo office printer paper?
So a ream of paper is 500 sheets. You’ll be able to search better by looking for the weight of the paper per ream, rather than the thickness.
https://thomasgroupprinting.com/how-is-paper-weight-measured/
Copier paper is likely to be a bit thinner than letter paper.
Careful about going too thin, or your printer will just shred it and jam up. Tissue paper for example is unlikely to work. Newsprint paper might be okay, but you’ll need to look at the numbers.
Consulting the manual for one’s printer will usually reveal the minimum paperweight it is capable of handling.
So, I’ve never pirated a book but I do have some printing and binding knowledge, so some of this might be off base.
If the original book isn’t fully chungus it’s probably printed on a low weight newsprint, a low weight coated paper, or something weird like vellum or scritta. Problem is most of that is going to be specialty and only really available in rolls or large sheets through a distributor.
Most of the thinner stuff you’ll be able to find in sheets has become a thing with fountain pen lovers. Look for Tomoe River or Bank paper. They are in the 50gsm range and should be a bit thinner than normal 75ish gsm copy paper. It’s going to be way more expensive than normal printer paper but it should be thinner. The other issue is actually getting your printer to reliably print on thinner paper. Home printers, especially inkjets, really don’t deal with thin paper particularly well. Lasers usually do better since they tend to use a different paper pickup and path, but they can still have issues.
Your printer should have a thin paper setting to reduce the amount of ink that it uses so you don’t get as much bleed. The other thing you’ll have to look out for is that those papers will take longer to dry than normal paper, so if your printer has a drying time you’ll probably need to set it as high as it will go. You might even want to wait a day before flipping it over for the duplex print. Which you definitely should some that will literally halve the size of the book. It will probably be fine anyway since this is likely a multi day project just given how long it will take to spit 1000 pages out of an inkjet.
Unless you absolutely need to have the whole thing with you all the time, I would consider printing it in volumes. Even if you duplicate sections like an index or glossary or reference section or whatever, you’re still probably going to have a lot less trouble and maybe spend less.
Thanks for the write up.
After weighing my options, I think I’m going to just go with normal printer paper. When I said using normal printer paper would be more than twice as thick, I wasn’t accounting for the fact that I’d be using both sides. So a 500 page ream should equal 1000 double sided pages. So that means the final size using normal printer paper would only be a little thicker instead of more than twice as thick.
I found some newsprint paper on Amazon that might work but I have an ink jet and I’m thinking it’s not going to be worth the hassle considering normal paper isn’t as bad of a choice as previously thought.
I’m going to do a few trial runs before deciding how I’ll actually bind them together and not print all 1000+ pages before learning somethings not going to work. I want to avoid 3 ring binder. Splitting it into sections sounds like the way to go. I’ll experiment with spiral bound. Regular hard cover looks enticing but I’d say that route has a high likelihood of not working out especially with the paper size and quantity I’m dealing with. Maybe I’ll dissect a college textbook and see what’s inside the spine.
Yeah newsprint would be a pain in an inkjet depending on exactly what it’s like. It might not even be much thinner, it’s often a little “fluffy” so it can be printed fast.
If you take it in somewhere and get it spiral / coil bound that’s probably your best bet if you don’t want to do a binder. You can do it yourself but you basically need a little desktop machine to do the punching which is annoying unless you’re doing it regularly.
Traditional hardcover probably won’t work for you. That involves printing a bunch of booklets called signatures then sewing them together and it’s a whole thing. Basically there’s a reason well made hardcover books are expensive.
You could do perfect or tape binding pretty easy though. Essentially you glue all the edges to a backing and then wrap a cover around it. It works ok for low usage, but if you want it to lay flat or hold up to abuse you’ll have problems. You can kind of mitigate that by using a gpod spine backing but it’s not a perfect solution. If the copy you have isn’t already laid out for printing it may be worth it to edit it a bit so the contents are farther from the spine if you do that, but it makes printing a bit more complicated.
Single ply TP. Will look cool as a scroll.
Good idea. I can use the failed attempts to wipe my ass with so this method has practically zero waste.
Everyone else has given you good suggestions already, I was just wondering what the book was, out of interest?
And how expensive. Printing it yourself can be quite expensive as costs get more the less copies you make.
Maybe find an online print shop that does professional book printing? I’ve just clicked the first result from a quick Google search and https://mixam.co.uk/paperbackbooks can do 944 pages, A4, Silk, 115gsm for about £50. Or 800 pages on Uncoated, 100gsm paper for £45. For thinner paper they need to use a Lithography machine instead of their normal printer, it seems. That’s why the price jumps to £3k+ for those. I don’t think they care much about WHAT you want to have printed.
Getting an e-reader that allows for sideloading is probably the easiest and cheapest workaround for this problem. You can often get them used for quite cheap. It doesn’t give the physical copy, but is more than likely a better reading experience than trying to print out volumes yourself.
Then you can also “borrow” digital books from libraries, among other things.
Or, for that matter, you could just go to a library in person.
if you go to a library, DONT STEAL THE BOOKS. Please. Libraries are the one of the few good, free, services we have left
i think they were saying create a drm-free copy of the ebook, your point still stands
I have no problem with creating drm-free copies of ebooks, and absolutely hard no on stealing from libraries.
But I wasn’t even saying that. I’m just saying borrow and read the books as per the usual method from libraries. Libraries are awesome and there to be used. I love that public and private funding still gets directed toward the free sharing of media in libraries, reducing (not erasing) the actual need for piracy through their existence, especially for books.
Now what I’m betting is that this is for an overpriced textbook, in which case by all means create copies and sideload them onto an ereader that allows this.
If this is a textbook that you need to have in class. I would say go to the print shop and order couple of copies for you and your classmates (They also want cheaper textbooks). I think the biggest problem will be to have usable binding as loose or stapled paper won’t cut it. A print shop will have the machines and expertise to do it relatively cheaply.
I saw once pirated textbook in class and it was done like that. I think half the class had a pirated copy.
Keep in mind that thinner paper is more likely to jam whatever printer you have, so you may want to consider workarounds such as smaller text, wider margins, and thinner line breaks.
And multiple volumes
You may be able to find a cheaper service from india to print a book on demand, even one offs when providing just a pdf. Doing this on your own printer has too much risk for complications based on the number of pages involved, paper compatibility, and other items of notes here. A dedicated shop will have significantly lower costs for materials and execution so may offer you a reasonable price.
Is there any portal or similar for that kind of services?
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See if there’s a way you can print “booklet” style, it’ll make it where you can fit two pages on a sheet in landscape format, then cut each page or bond it. Just a thought.
Yeah, and if they’re up for experimenting they could do that double-sided, so four pages on a sheet. It would probabaly be a hassle to set up, though, no idea how I’d do that …
If you have Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, they should have an option to print in this way. You can set signature sizes (or small booklet sections). You fold the signatures in half and stitch it together to create a book. It will layout everything for you but always do a print preview or print to pdf if you are a beginner.
Probably have to do customer sheet selection and flip them over, but for 1000 pages that could be a pita
That will cut down on the amount of paper involved but not the thickness of the book. I do plan on printing a bunch of even pages, flipping them around then printing all the odd pages to make it fully double sided. I’ve had success doing that before.
I also have successfully printed booklet style pages before it’s just that I actually want this to have 8.5 x 11 sized pages.
What?
Cutting down on the amount of paper will DIRECTLY impact the thickness of the book. Less pages = less thick.
Edit: nevermind, I missed the part about cutting up the pages…
Try printing two pages per side and double sided printing so you end up with 4 pages on each piece of paper. The only downside is that the book will be in ‘landscape mode’.
Another note from experience: print the back sides in small batches. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to manually double-side print a job to have a double feed stick two pages together then everything thereafter is garbage (on both sides).
