PDF Booklet Maker

About the PDF Booklet Maker

Turn a PDF into a booklet you can print at home or at the office: the pages are arranged two to each side of a sheet — 8 and 1 on the front of the outer sheet, 2 and 7 on its back, and so on — so that once the stack is printed double-sided, folded in half and stapled on the fold, the pages read 1, 2, 3 … in order. Blank pages are added to reach a multiple of four (at the end, or before the back cover), and the page-order table shows exactly what goes on every sheet.

Print an A4 document as an A5 booklet on A4 paper, a Letter document as a 5.5 × 8.5 in booklet, or keep the pages at full size on paper twice as wide. For thick books, split the sheets into signatures that are folded separately and sewn or glued; creep compensation moves the pages of inner sheets towards the fold; right-to-left binding is there for Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu and manga. The step-by-step printing instructions match your settings, including printers that print on one side only. Pages are placed as they are — text stays sharp — and the file is never uploaded.

Common uses

• Printing a programme, order of service, menu or event schedule as a folded A5 booklet.
• Making zines, comics and manga (right-to-left) at home.
• Turning a manual, guide or recipe collection into a stapled booklet.
• Preparing signatures for hand-bound notebooks, journals and books.
• Printing a Letter-size document as a half-letter booklet.

How the booklet page order works

A booklet of P pages (a multiple of four) has P ÷ 4 sheets. Counting sheets from the outside (sheet 1 is the outer one), sheet n holds pages P − 2n + 2 and 2n − 1 on its front (left | right), and 2n and P − 2n + 1 on its back. For 8 pages: 8 | 1 and 2 | 7, then 6 | 3 and 4 | 5. With the binding on the right the two halves swap: 1 | 8 and 7 | 2.

The sheets are landscape with the fold down the middle, so the back of each sheet must be turned over sideways — the Flip on short edge setting of double-sided printing. If your printer only flips on the long edge, choose Long edge only and the back sides are turned upside down to match.

Paper and page size

• A4 sheets → A5 booklet (148.5 × 210 mm pages), A3 → A4, US Letter → 5.5 × 8.5 in, Tabloid → Letter-size, US Legal → 7 × 8.5 in.
• Each page is scaled to fit its half of the sheet and centred in it: an A4 page on half an A4 sheet prints at 1/√2 ≈ 70.7%, because each A size is half the one before it (ISO 216).
• Pages at 100%, two side by side makes the sheet twice as wide as the pages, so nothing is scaled — choose matching paper (A5 pages on A4, A4 pages on A3).

Signatures for thick books

A thick booklet folded as one stack doesn’t lie flat and its middle sheets stick out. Bookbinders fold the sheets in small groups instead — signatures — and stack the folded groups. Choose how many sheets go in each signature (4 sheets = 16 pages is common); each signature is arranged on its own, so after folding, stacking them in order gives pages 1 to P. The last signature may have fewer sheets.

Creep

When a stack of sheets is folded, each sheet wraps around the ones inside it, so the inner sheets stick out further at the open edge and, once trimmed, their outer margins are narrower. Creep compensation moves the pages of inner sheets towards the fold: the outer sheet not at all, the innermost by the amount you enter, the sheets in between in proportion. To find the amount, fold a printed test copy and measure how far the innermost sheet sticks out past the outer one. Each page is clipped at the fold, so nothing slides onto the facing page.

Sources

• ISO 216 — A series paper sizes (A4 = 210 × 297 mm, A5 = 148 × 210 mm; checked against Markus Kuhn’s ISO paper size reference, University of Cambridge).
• ANSI/ASME Y14.1 — US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) and Tabloid (11 × 17 in).
• The page order follows from folding: it is checked in this tool’s tests on real PDFs, which read back 8 | 1, 2 | 7, 6 | 3, 4 | 5.

Limitations

• Links, bookmarks and fillable form fields don’t carry over (form values, and comments set to print, are printed as they look).
• Encrypted or password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first with Unlock PDF.
• Pages are never rotated: a landscape page is scaled down to fit its portrait half.
• Printers can’t print right up to the edge of the paper, so content that runs to a page’s edge may be cut off slightly; print a test sheet first.
• The first use downloads the PDF engine once, so it needs an internet connection.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.