How to Resize PDF Files: A4 to Letter

I use Lulu Press in the same way I use Kinko’s: if I’d rather have a file printed and bound for easy reference, I send it to Lulu and for roughly the same cost of photocopying, I have a printed book. A problem came up in that Lulu will not print A4 files, they have to be resized.

Several of the solutions I came across were rather byzantine or expensive, but here’s one that works, at least on Windows machines. Install a pdf printing program such as Bullzip. Then, set the printing preferences to provide for letter-size paper. Print the A4 pdf file to the Bullzip printer—give the newly created file a different name—and now you have your letter-sized pdf file. You can also reverse the process and resize a letter-sized pdf file to A4. 

Even though the Mac OS has native pdf support, printing the file and re-saving it as a pdf wouldn’t work despite specifying a new page size.

In theory this technique would work to resize letter or A4 formatted files to 6 x 9 size, but such a great reduction will probably affect legibility.