Fast and Easy Hot Glue Book Binding

In this Instructable I will be sharing my experiences on using hot glue as the primary adhesive in making books. I must give much credit to DIY Bookbinding 's website for their initial inspiration in binding books.

Background (skip ahead if you just want to learn the steps!)

I became interested in bookbinding because I tend to read a lot of technical manuals in .pdf format.  They tend to be several hundred pages long and are hard on the eyes to read on the computer.  I purchased a Kindle DX to read them on, which was a real pleasure, but it was still very difficult to use the books as reference books.  I finally realized I had to get the darn things in print!  However, these books are not published anywhere and getting Kinkos to make them into books would cost 30-50 dollars a pop!!  Ouch!  

After looking into several different methods of printing and binding my own books, I recognized that most easy methods of book binding have several disadvantages.

1.  They take FOREVER!  I hate waiting for glue to dry.
2.  The fumes make me want to pass out!!
3.  They don't really work for large books (400+ pages).

So I finally started playing around with hot glue.  The advantages of hot glue:

1.  Fast drying
2.  No fumes
3.  Surprisingly strong if applied as outlined below 

After ruining several good books, I finally have the technique down and I'm excited to share it with you!  I hope it helps, and happy bookbinding!