The Pocket Guide to Debugging Is Now in Print
The print edition of The Pocket Guide to Debugging has finished production and is now stocked at the warehouse. The zine, which first appeared as a digital release back in December, is available for purchase in both print and PDF formats. Preorders have already begun shipping; anyone who hasn't received a confirmation email should reach out directly.
From PDF to Physical Product
Putting together the physical edition involved a longer process than the original digital release. The workflow stretched from the initial home-printable PDF—generated with a 360-line Python program—through final delivery of 1500 copies. The full sequence included testing on a home printer, commissioning a back cover from the illustrator, obtaining a printing quote, and securing both an ISBN from Libraries and Archives Canada and a barcode from bookow.
One of the more involved decisions was choosing between perfect bound and saddle stitched binding. Perfect bound ultimately won out, but not without consequences. When the print proof arrived from across the continent, the inner margins turned out to be too small for the chosen binding style. That discovery kicked off a round of measuring books around the house, printing sample pages, and manually adjusting page proportions to increase the margins before updating the Python script and regenerating the PDF.
The final files went back to the printer, production took about a week, and the finished copies arrived at the warehouse. Shipping out the roughly 700 preorders took another three business days.
A Note on Preorders
The preorder count played a direct role in deciding how many copies to print, and the author is grateful for the patience shown during the process. As with any mailing, an occasional package goes missing—if that happens, replacements are easy to send out. Anyone with a missing shipment or other issue should just get in touch.
