How to print your newsletters as a magazine

A magazine is more than printed pages. It has a cover, an order, a size you can hold in one hand, and pages that stay together. You can make one from the newsletters you read with a home printer, a stapler and some patience. This guide walks through it, from choosing the posts to stapling the spine.

Step 1: Pick the pieces

Choose five or six essays that sit well together. Mix the lengths: one long piece, a few medium ones, something short to end on. Use free posts, or posts you pay for, and keep the copy for yourself. Leave out posts built around video, audio or galleries of images. They do not survive the trip to paper.

Step 2: Get clean text

Open each post on the web and switch on reader mode: Reader in Safari, Reader View in Firefox, Immersive Reader in Edge. It drops the subscribe buttons, share bars and comments. Then select the essay, copy it, and paste it into one document as plain text. Pasting plain text leaves the buttons and images behind.

If you would rather not retype the formatting, print each post to PDF instead, with headers and footers off and margins at Default. You give up control of the type, but it is faster.

Step 3: Lay out the pages

Set up the document in your word processor for a booklet.

• Page size: half-letter, 5.5 by 8.5 inches, if you will fold letter paper in half. A5 if you print on A4.
• Margins: about 0.6 inches, with a little more on the inside edge, where the fold takes up space.
• Type: a serif at 10 to 11 points, with line spacing around 1.2. Two columns suit the small page.
• Each piece: start it on a new page, with the title, the writer's name, and the link to the original post.
• Front matter: a cover and a contents page.

Paste each essay in, then put back the italics, headings and block quotes by hand. Keep an image only if the piece needs it to make sense.

Step 4: Print it as a booklet

Booklet printing puts four of your pages on each sheet, two on the front and two on the back, in the order that reads correctly once folded.

1. Make the page count a multiple of four. Add a notes page or blank pages at the end to round it up.
2. Save the document as a PDF.
3. Open it in a PDF reader with a booklet option. Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is free, has one: in its print dialog, under Page Sizing and Handling, choose Booklet, with the binding on the left.
4. Print on both sides. If your printer asks, flip on the short edge.
5. Print one sheet first and check that the pages line up front to back.

If your printer cannot print on both sides, print the fronts, put the stack back in the tray, and print the backs. Test it with two sheets before you commit the whole issue.

Step 5: Paper and binding

• Paper: plain 20 lb copy paper works. 24 lb paper shows less of the other side through the page. A 65 lb cover stock makes a sturdier cover, if your printer takes it.
• Fold: fold the stack in half together, then press the crease flat with a ruler.
• Bind: two staples through the fold, about an inch in from each end. A long-reach stapler makes this easy.
• Trim: the inner sheets stick out a little at the open edge. Trim them with a paper cutter if it bothers you.

A copy shop can print, fold and staple it for you if you bring the PDF.

Where this falls short

• It takes an evening. Copying, fixing the formatting and laying out six essays is slow, and you start again for every issue.
• Booklet printing is fussy. Page order, two-sided settings and printer margins all have to agree.
• Formatting gets lost. Footnotes, captions and block quotes need putting back by hand.
• Not every home printer handles cover stock or two-sided printing well.

What Postpile does differently

Postpile does the first three steps for you. You list up to 10 newsletters you read, on Substack for now. We pick up to 6 essays from their recent free posts and lay them out as a designed magazine PDF: a cover with your name and that issue's writers, set type, and every piece credited to its writer with a link to subscribe. The pages are letter-size and made for a home printer, so you can print it as it is, or take the file anywhere that prints.

Your first two issues are free. Get your newsletters as a printable magazine. Steps 4 and 5 still apply if you want a folded booklet. A booklet print scales the letter pages down to half-letter.