Glue Binding
After showing you all the different ways to bind books you still want your book to look like a real paperback book do ya? Well, it's a pain in the ass, it's complicated and it takes time, some equipment (some you buy, some you build) and a fair bit of practice to make it look good, but you can hand bind paperback books at home that look just like real store bought ones. But you will need to practice this before you rush into binding your own books. I also recommend taking a good look at a few different books, looking at the binding, how the glue looks, the pages, etc. This is just to give you an idea how your books should look.
This process is a little hard to explain, so I decided to try and show you through plenty of pictures, rather than attempt to describe it to you. You will need a book press (blue prints and design specs at the bottom of the page), a glue gun and plenty of glue sticks, and a small hacksaw or a metal file. It is also recommended you get yourself a tabletop paper shear. You do a lot of trimming with this method and it comes in handy. You can pick up brand new ones on Ebay for quite cheap (under $500). The good thing about a paper shear is that it's a decent investment, they don't really depreciate that badly if you take good care of them, so you could probably turn around and sell it for around what you bought it for.
Before you bind your book, you will have to prepare the crease on the cover for the spine. To do this, take a ruler and a butter knife and score two lines down the inside of the cover where where the spine will be. The distance between the crease lines should be the thickness of the spine and should be figured out beforehand, during the design of the cover. You can figure it out by counting the taking the final number of pages and counting out that many sheets of paper (same type of paper you will print with), then measure the thickness with a ruler. Anyway, getting back to creasing the covers, be careful not to cut through the cover stock when you score, you just want to make an indent. Lightly fold the creases it so that the cover is ready, keep it nearby. You will also want to have the pages trimmed to the size you want. If you don't have access to a paper shear or don't want to buy one then my recommendation is to get them trimmed at a copy center, it only costs around a dollar or two per cut per 200 sheets.
First you will want to load the pages, without the cover, into the book press and tighten the screws. Make sure the pages are nice and even along the back of the press, the pages that are sticking out can be ragged, they are going to be the spine of the book. Next, you take a small hacksaw and cut small notches into the paper. This is to give the glue an anchor to grab onto. You can also take a file and 'roughen' up the paper. The idea is to take the glossiness of the paper away and give the glue something to grab onto. If you open a professionally printed book somewhere in the middle, and open it up all the way to see near the spine and glue you can actually see the glue notches from the manufacturing.
Next you want to loosen the nuts and slide the cover underneath the pages. Make sure the cover is all the way to the end of the guide and even with the pages. Once that is done, you start applying the glue with a glue gun. Put plenty of glue along the spine of the cover, it may take a few practice tries you will get a better idea of how much you need.
After you've laid enough glue down the spine, quickly bring the cover over and press the book closed. Be careful, the glue is hot and can even burn you through the card stock. Hold the cover closed for a few seconds to let it set, then loosen the nuts and pull the book out of the press, laying it down flat in front of you.
The glue is hot and you can burn yourself! So be carefully, and wear heat resistant gloves while doing this next step. I didn't wear gloves for the pictures, but that's only because I've done it plenty of times before and I know how to do it without burning myself. So here you want to press the cover down to make sure no glue has built up between the front and back cover and the pages. A little glue there is fine, but most of it should be in the spine. If you've used enough glue, then some will probably be leaking out the side, and that is fine. Pick up the book and press the spine down on the table to square it out.
It should only take a minute for the glue to dry enough that you can stop pressing on the cover. Then you're done! The book will probably need trimming, now. Once trimmed it will look a lot cleaner.
Now, I'm sure you're saying, I don't know what he was talking about, that looked easy! Well, once you try it you'll realize it's not as easy as it looks. The glue cools quickly and you can't make any mistakes. This is by no means a perfect procedure and I'm still working on improving it.
The blueprints and specs to build your own book press should be online soon. Unless I design something better, which I am still working on. This section is sort of a work in progress, and if you have some comments or different/improved ways of DIY glue binding please let me know!