How do you print your book in booklet format?

[Thomas_Calvin]

The File menu offers "Print booklet," but this refers to the currently-focused document only. How do you print your whole book that way?

[Zealous_work5E55]

Export the book to .pdf and print from Acrobat's slightly more robust print dialog.

[Thomas_Calvin]

Thanks. It's ridiculous to have "publishing" software that purports to put together a book but can't print one.

[davecourtemanche]

It will make files for printing. Imposition for the way in which a job will be run has always been the responsibility of pre-press software. You can File / Print Booklet which will give you a .ps (postscript) file that you can then create a booklet PDF from Acrobat Distiller. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

The glaring problem is that "Print Booklet" is not available for books. Regardless of whose responsibility the task is according to tradition or opinion, InDesign purports to provide it... but inexplicably denies access to it for the most logical unit of work: a book.

[Willi Adelberger]

Layout software is for creating pages. Imposing is the task of the printer, not of the designer. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

Not in this case. Plus, "print booklet" is right there in InDesign.

[davecourtemanche]

What are you printing on? If your copier has a saddle stitch unit, all of that can be done post-RIP. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

We have to print to PDF. Customers will be printing the documents.

[Willi Adelberger]

Export to PDF according the printer's requirement as single pages. 
The printer does the imposing. 
Don't make a PDF via printing as it uses postscript and this is ancient technology which is to avoid. 

Your client has to inform you how and  where it is printed. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

That scenario is impractical. We have thousands of customers around the world using unknown printing equipment. They also can't be expected to have an Acrobat subscription, or understand how to create saddle-stitch book layouts.

The only solution to have emerged at this point is a three-PDF process:

1. Print the InDesign book to PDF.
2. From Acrobat, print that PDF to another PDF in saddle-stitch, two-page-per-sheet format.
3. To that PDF (in Acrobat), apply a watermark file that superimposes a cutting and hole-punching guide between the two pages, and print that to a final PDF.

[Joel Cherney]

We have thousands of customers around the world using unknown printing equipment. They also can't be expected to have an Acrobat subscription, or understand how to create saddle-stitch book layouts.

Do you... not find the above scenario impractical as well? A PDF that can be emailed to clients who are going to whack Control-P and, what? Deliberately not look at the trim marks or the hole punch guides, not think about hardware, just whack the Print button and send the PDF to any printing equipment, and get a perfectly imposed document out the other side? 

It's not hard to place an InDesign file into another InDesign file. I have a client to whom I provide an InDesign file in reading order, in lettersize, and then I place that InDesign file into a second InDesign file with full tabloid pages in imposed order. So if they e.g. want to edit a phone number and reprint, they can edit the readers'-order INDD, save that, open the imposed-order INDD, update links, and print new booklets from there. Or you could use that technique yourself, if your intention was to deliver only preimposed PDFs not in reading order. The math to estimate creep is easy & I found the script to automatically reposition frames according to the creep values of my clients' paper weight very easy to write. (It will be impossible for you to estimate creep, I'd imagine, since the recipients of your preimposed PDF might print to literally any weight of paper.)

You could put your trim marks and your hole punch guides onto a non-printing layer in InDesign.  You can also set up layers in InDesign that are preserved in the exported PDF (that's the "Create Acrobat Layers" checkbox in the PDF Export dialog). And yes, the free Acrobat Reader can turn those layers on and off. 

Lastly, and with the smallest amount of snark possible: "Print Booklet" isn't for books. It's for booklets. I find it unsurprising that you can't use it in conjunction with the Book panel. These two terms have mutually exclusive definitions in the print world.

[Thomas_Calvin]

Thanks for the reply. The provision of preformatted PDFs with cutting guides is far more practical than any other scenario proposed thus far.

We provide manuals in both one-page-per-sheet and two-page-per-sheet layouts. We also provide "revision" files, that include only the pages of the manuals that have changed, so customers can print the new pages and replace the outdated ones in their binders.

The maintenance of two InDesign files, one embedding the other in an alternate layout, is way beyond practical for us. I don't see any scenario in which that's better than what I laid out above. We maintain one InDesign document collection as the source of content truth, and do the format shenanigans as post-production.

InDesign's so-called "book" isn't specifically for books either. It's merely the mechanism InDesign provides to compile multiple files into a single volume. You can print this "book," and therefore it makes no sense to omit "print booklet" from its menu.

[rob day]

Customers will be printing the documents.

Acobat Reader also has the simple to use Booklet tab. Your customer can choose whether to print 2-up impositions, or reader spreads

[Thomas_Calvin]

Thanks for taking the time to illustrate that. However, this doesn't provide cutting or hole-punching guides. We also don't know what software they'll be printing from.

And we might as well save them the step by setting up the pages in advance.

[rob day]

However, this doesn't provide cutting or hole-punching guides

You’re providing a PDF right? Doesn’t sound like your clients are printing from InDesign—aren’t the guides included in the PDF?

[Thomas_Calvin]

The guides can only be provided in the PDF, and only in one that has the double-page layout baked in. I tried putting a guide on the edge of a single-page layout, but Acrobat won't let you get right on the edge. So the result wouldn't be in the middle of the two-page spread on a single sheet.

[rob day]

So the result wouldn't be in the middle of the two-page spread on a single sheet.

A document setup as facing pages assumes the inside edge will be folded not trimmed (saddle stitch, perfect binding) so you can’t pull the spread apart and add an inside bleed.

A document can be setup as single pages with spreads—in that case the pages can be pulled apart with drawn printer marks on the inside bleeds. Something like this:

More here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/gutter-bleed-still-the-same/m-p/11365822#M198506

[Thomas_Calvin]

Good info, thanks! At this point we can't reformat the thousands of pages in our documents, though.

[Mike Witherell]

I would like more imposition built into InDesign and Acrobat, too.

That being said, even by the OP's own description, the creation and distribution of updated pages for loose-leaf catalogs is an endlessly complex thing to do. People receiving the adjustment PDFs will also have to be carefully-trained people in order to accomplish such a difficult and detailed task. No one can print anything without knowing a lot of practical, physical-craft things. Trying to publish to an endlessly updating publication catalog seems to argue for a website solution where the users consult your web pages for the latest updated info.

[rob day]

I would like more imposition built into InDesign and Acrobat, too.

There have been imposition plugins in the past. I used to use ImposerPro with the early versions of ID—it could handle 8-up impositions. Not sure if there are any now, but it could be done via scripting or a plugin.

Given that it can be done via scripting or a plugin I doubt it gets very far as a feature request, but you could try.

[Thomas_Calvin]

Actually, our customers have been doing it for years. It really isn't a big deal. We don't (and, for regulatory reasons, can't) change page numbers. If new material requires new pages, we start adding A, B, C, etc. pages.

The manuals are in three-ring binders, so... no problem.

[rob day]

The File menu offers "Print booklet,"

Also, does Print Booklet’s imposition really help? If there is an error on the 4-5 spread, don’t you need to output the new 4-5 spread and a 6-3 spread which backs up to 4-5?

[Thomas_Calvin]

This is a logical question, but the answer is yes; it does help. The reason it works is that the users will cut the pages in half. I wrestled with this initially too!

The correct material still ends up on the front and back of each half-page.