We know many of you like to print your copy of the Summer Reading Guide and mark it up. That’s why we authorize readers to print one copy of the guide for personal use only: we’ve included a permission to that effect on the copyright page of the guide. If you choose to have the guide professionally printed, be sure to show them that permission.
But: it pains us to say this but we do not recommend ordering a professionally printed copy this year. Prices at our local print shop have increased 250% in the last two years which makes the price ridiculously high; we’re embarrassed to tell you how much it cost to print our sample copy. And because the Guide is so large, the printed booklet does not lay as flat as we would like. If you really want a professionally printed guide ask a lot of questions about paper weight and binding and perhaps get yourself a couple of quotes. (We’ve also heard good things from you about the online service Blurb and their more reasonable prices, but we haven’t yet tried it ourselves.)
Our team has also been told WILDLY differing file requirements for booklet printing (which is how we’ve always recommended you print the Guide), and we know you’ve been told contradictory things from your nationwide printers as well. Because of these differing requirements/preferences from the printers, we are not in a position to provide customer support for printing.
I personally like the results I got with home printing: we printed at home on letter paper and stapled it together. It’s easy to use, looks great, and was inexpensive to create. If you print at home, be sure to use a PDF viewer (like Acrobat Reader, as opposed to Preview) or some of the pictures may not print clearly. Please be aware that this is a full color design and will use a lot of ink. You can easily print the file labeled “2024 MMD Summer Reading Guide” on 8.5 x 11 paper. The font will be on the small side, but we thought it looked pretty darn good when we tested it!
If you consider our warning and still choose to go the professional route, we’ve created a separate “print file” for you, which breaks the layout of the Guide into 52 single pages. This file is not a booklet layout; it can be stapled, three-hole punched, or spiral-bound. This file is accessible on the Book Club event page, the Patreon post, and in your MMD My Shop Account, depending on how you accessed the Guide. It is clearly labeled as the “print file.”