I've been getting into hand-binding books, and the next natural thought was, "I should write something of my own to bind." And then it hit me that i had no idea how to get any of the software I've ever used in the past to organize pages into sections for binding.

The problem, sketched:

I'm presuming the easiest way to get what I want is to tell the word processing software to set up its WYSIWYG environment for 8.5x5.5" pages, then have a second pass that rearranges those pages for printing onto 8.5x11" sheets, depending on how many sheets I tell it are in each signature. But that's just it - I've never done this before. Presumably 10,000 people before me have solved this problem already, and it's a known solution. Perhaps one of them is reading this now...

(Crossposted in the design group)