#Publishers' Bindings

[uwmspeccoll]

Publishers' Binding Thursday

This week we're sharing a book with a beautiful cover and beautiful illustrations. This is The Bells and Other Poems by American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) with illustrations by French-British illustrator Edmund Dulac (1882-1953). It was published by Hodder and Stoughton internationally circa 1912. Poe is best known for his Gothic short fiction and poetry while Dulac was known mainly for his illustrations for books like Jane Eyre, The Tempest, various fairy tales and more—many through an association with Hodder and Stoughton.

The cover features a pattern featuring bells and flourishes stamped in gold that matches the endpapers. The illustrations are dark and ethereal, sometimes to the point of creepiness, and really bring out the gothic elements of Poe's poems.

I wanted to post something I really like for my last post here at UWM Special Collections and this book fits the bill! I love a gothic vibe and some beautiful decoration! I am also sad that I won't get to work with materials like these as often and that I will be leaving all the wonderful folks here. But I have very much enjoyed my 8 and a half years here and sharing all of the amazing things in our collections with our friends on social media!

Signing off,

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

View more Publishers' Binding Thursday posts.

[that-butch-archivist]

"The New York Femmes, 1991" by Morgan Gwenwald

source: The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, edited by Joan Nestle

[robins-egg-bindery]

Windows by @drgrlfriend

Derek has a new neighbor who won't stop looking.

fic by @drgrlfriend

art by @maichan808 & @andavs-main

368 pages / 83,266 words

Title Font: PP Hatton

Body Fonts: Cardo, Geo

HAPPY FFWAD!!! Thank you @renegadepublishing for putting on this event in celebration!

More on the process below the cut!

I'm so excited to be posting this book! Super grateful @drgrlfriend was so down to let me bind Windows for Fan Fiction Writer Appreciation Day. This is one of my all-time favs, and I was thrilled to give it the treatment it deserves! @maichan808 & @andavs-main were also incredibly kind to allow me to include their stunning art pieces in the book <3 And thank you @renegadepublishing for putting this event together!

I wanted the typeset to be visually interesting and move around the page, without making it difficult to read. I created unique headers for each of the 28 chapters with royalty free art, and varied placement on the page in six different configurations. I also played with the text warp to make the text work as part of the image - one of my favorites is chapter 26, "Banshee", pictured above!

I used Brick duo for this bind, as part of the vision for the front cover, which was done in silver permanent vinyl. I think the rich rust color is perfect for how I would imagine Stiles & Derek's apartment building, and the silver is incredibly reflective - my favorite part is how the vinyl catches the light on the spine, and can reflect "Windows" on whatever surface it's on (pictured above). That's not an added effect, it's just doing that!

I did @tankbredgrunt's faux double-core headband with some Sulky Gutermann I bought at a secondhand store for $0.25, and it's so pretty! A bit thin to work with, but totally worth it for the multi-color effect it gives off.

And I finally got a proper crisp hinge! I think it really brings the whole book together, thank you knitting needles (even though you were a pain in the ass).

This project also marks my 100th book! I'm rapidly approaching the two year mark of my fanbinding career with no sign of stopping; thank you to this entire community, and all of the fandoms I've been able to bring this hobby to. I love how cross-fandom it is; and for an old floater like me, it's wonderful to bring all of my interests together and have something that transcends those lines.

HAPPY FAN FICTION WRITER APPRECIATION DAY!

[fahye]

@lieutenantkim replied to your post “hi freya! your work with the TLB series is...”:

I'm a little confused, what do you mean by "start as late as possible in the story" and then "have the main inciting incident take place within the first scene"? Did you mean the other way around or?

​nope, I mean exactly that!

the TLB books are slightly unusual in that the real inciting incidents for all three involve the murder (even if obliquely, in book 3) of a third party, so they all begin with a kind of BBC-crime-drama pre-credits-scene chapter in which the murder occurs.

but the first chapter from a protagonist's perspective begins as close to the thing that Starts Their Story as possible. even after it. I could have showed you robin's daily home life, his parents' death, and then his receiving the notification of his new job at the home office. instead I started it RIGHT where he is introduced to the existence of magic, and then only introduced his home life & maud once he was already embroiled with worrying about magic and the curse.

I could have started ART with maud and mrs navenby getting on the ship, or even with maud on her initial voyage out to america. I started the moment AFTER her discovering the dead body: the plot is off! immediately! at once!

there is a tendency for first drafts to start with a character on their way to the plot: waking up on the day in question, or on a train to somewhere new, so the author can get comfy and wriggle around with some narration telling you who they are at the start of the story.

nope. start when they get off the train. or later. by the end of the very first scene, something new should have happened to them which gives the reader the story's first (or even central) unanswered question or point of conflict. you can fill in their backstory and personality and pre-story-status-quo in the narration as you go.

finding the right starting point is often a second-draft thing. and that's fine! but it gets easier with practice.

[hdslibrary]

National Book Lovers Day 2024!

From our stacks to your eyeballs: A small selection of gorgeous 19th century publisher's bindings.

[towns-end-bindery]

The Night Circus

By Erin Morgenstern

🎪

A rebind that I will be gifting to a friend as a Christmas present.

I read this book when I first started college, I think. The thing that stuck with me since reading it has always been the beauty and magic of the circus itself. Normally, I’d get lost or bored of extensive detail or descriptions about the setting, but the Circus of Dreams was an ✨aesthetic✨ that stirred my imagination. I was surprised at how much I loved it.

🎡

Regarding process:

So I recently rewatched the DAS video about paper labels, and creating a “well” for the label to sit in. And I thought to myself, what if I made the entire cover design the “label” and centered it on the cover?

The design was printed on vinyl adhesive paper, and it’s pasted right in the center of a large recess on the cover. Spine and back was hand foiled.

🎠

Well, it’s seems I’m on a roll. There will be many more rebinds to come before the end of the year, if I don’t lose momentum. I’m excited to see my projects take flight, but it’s also honestly quite daunting as well. 😮‍💨

As a side note…

When I first started this hobby, I was ambitious to achieve a level of quality comparable to many IG and tiktok bookbinders I’d been seeing out there. Many of them were binding fanfiction or doing rebinds of popular fiction, fantasies and romance.

And a LOT of them (or at least the popular accounts) were using special cutting machines like cricut, and heat transfer vinyl to create clean, professional looking designs. Shiny and metallic seems to be a highly sought after look, and admittedly it is attention grabbing for many casual viewers who stumble upon these videos. The same can also be said of the more traditional binders who make leather books and use special techniques for embossing and foiling.

While those beautiful machines and materials and tools like htv or leather-working aren’t NECESSARY for the hobby, it’s clear that any simple amateur bookbinders trying to build their accounts and show people their work really won’t be getting as much reach without making books that are as shiny and attention grabbing in the same ways.

And trying to achieve those looks of metallic vinyl, or beautifully embossed leather, felt pretty inaccessible to me. I’m sure many other amateur binders feel same the way.

That’s why I’m glad I can demonstrate how to achieve beautiful, high quality looking books in alternative ways. Feel free to reach out and ask me about my techniques! I’m no expert, but I’d be happy to help you find solutions and new methods.

12/15/2023

[duran-binding]

I had a lot of fun participating in @renegadepublishing Fanfiction Writer Appreciation Day (FFWAD) this year!

The Witchhiker's Guide to Beltane by Teddy Radiator. This story has a lot of Spring (Beltane) vibes and I wanted to bring that to life in the binding of it.

This is an in-boards bradel bind. (My first) The paper is a lokta that's beautifully textured. The spine is made of green & purple color shifting duo "Skarabaus". The edges have been sprinkled with ink and the headbands are soie perlee thread. (That handles beautifully, I understand why it's a favorite now)

[nocturnus33]

During the weekend, I bound Pride or what goeth before a fall by Toodleoo. Tood's pen is witty, smart and funny, with a good use of irony and humour. I miss her, we were friends for long, and we have the opportunity to meet each other when she travelled. We lost contact during the pandemic. That's why I want to have one of her stories on my bookshelf as a way to honour her.

Toodleoo has always been a lot of fun to read, and this story is no exception. In this one, Hermione Granger, considers herself an excellent evaluator of the character of others. Guided by a series of stereotypes, she decides that Snape is gay and wants to support him. Thus begins this amusing comedy of errors.

Summary:

When it came to reading people, Hermione Granger was almost always right. How did she miss the fact that Snape was gay?

The binding process: It took some time to bind, as I was rusty from being away from my tools for so long. I had to re made the cover a few times, but I'm happy with the result. The fic is very tongue in cheek and I wish to show that in the design. I didn't have any rainbow like stuff, so I chose a cheerful yellow book cloth. The title had a complicated an imbricated font (the one I for chapter titles), and screwed I up badly while weeding it, so I humbly restarted with a conservative and safer cover design.

Fonts:

Chapter titles: GluckMixer Font.

Text: Palatino Linotype family.

As always, this fic was bound for personal use and fandom heritage preservation in mind. You can read Toodleoo's fics for free at AO3 and Live Journal.

[stephtuckerauthor]

PAPERBACK VERSION AVAILABLE!!

Exciting news! Both the paperback and ebook versions of The Binds That Break Us are now available on Amazon here!

And, for everyone who hasn't yet read the first book, here's the link for The Bonds That Bind Us!

[celestial-sphere-press]

Original Work Binding: When You Are Old

an anthology of works by me, my siblings, and my parents, created for my mom for mother's day!

I really wanted to use this pretty fall chiyogami paper for the cover, so I leaned hard into that motif for the design. In searching for a title, I found the William Yeats poem by the same name, and decided to use that (and included it as a preface).

I continued the maple leaf pattern throughout, and I did gold acrylic splattered edges, which I felt came out very nicely! They look a bit like sunlight dappled through leaves.

The cloth for this project is black colibri, which I think came out very well and foiled fairly nicely.

I do think one of the really cool things about this hobby is being able to go: yes, I *can* choose to elevate whatever writing I want to the level of Published Book.

[wingsofhcpe]

anyway if yall want something greek-mythology inspired to read, please pick up Threads that Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou. It's a post-apocalyptic fantasy romance (soulmates!) with lots of queerness in it, inspired by various mythologies but centered around greek mythology, with a greek-coded protag & cultural elements strewn across, and written by an actual greek woman who lives in Greece. It's also the first book I see by a greek author to be written & published in English/abroad first, and to go semi-popular on western reading circles.

we need more like this. please support her.

[uwmspeccoll]

Publishers' Binding Thursday

This week's choice from the stacks is a 1928 edition of French novelist Gustave Flaubert's (1821-1880) Madame Bovary, published in London by John Lane The Bodley Head, Ltd. and in New York by Dodd, Mead and Company. Flaubert's work strives for a sense of realism and of perfection, always seeking "le mot juste"—"the right word." He famously said that "an author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

Madame Bovary was originally serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856 and as a book in two volumes in 1857. There was an obscenity trial about the contents of the novel, which gained the novel notoriety. This edition features an English translation by British critic and translator J. Lewis May and illustrations by British illustrator John Austen (1886-1948). I believe that Austen did all of the illustrations for the book, including the charming wood-engraved tulip endpapers and the head and tailpieces at the beginning and end of each chapter. It is also likely that he designed the figure on the cover, which also appears on the dust jacket of the book (not pictured).

View more Publishers' Binding Thursday posts.

View more posts with work by John Austen.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

[abutterflyobsession]

*breathing hard* I just wrote 800 wordsd I . . . I'm so sleepy. Kidnapping AU, attempted excerpt, love me a symbolic dream yessir

There were always leaves here in the shadow of the forest’s border, whatever the season may be. The distinction of spring were the soft slips of pink resting gently on the cracking, ragged leaves. Her fingers ran along the edge of a petal, soft, rounded, moist from the damp sheltered in the shade. A chill of fear seeped into her fingertips, sweeping up her arm and over her heart, making it ache with each beat. This was wrong. Touching the fresh smoothness was wrong. Dangerous. No good could come of touching the petals.

She couldn’t pull herself away.

Where the outline of the petal met and dipped down to form twin arches, a tiny tear appeared. Her heart beat faster and she was certain that if the tear grew to reach her fingers it would rip her hand apart too. Already her hand throbbed with the anticipation of pain, as if she had felt the pain before, made the same mistake of touching the tempting sweetness of the petal before and learned nothing from it.

The tear grew, the petal curling into two halves. From the raw wound welled up red drops of blood that stained the pink, racing the tear to reach her fingers.

She couldn’t let go.

Except for the painfully quick breath that rasped in her throat her body wouldn’t move. The flower had been so beautiful she had taken it in without a thought. In the desolation of the forest it had been the promise of softness. How it was a pink heart ripped in two and sodden with warm blood.

The fresh red was frighteningly beautiful.

She couldn’t let go.

It hurt so much and she wanted it so much. A split formed between her finger and thumb and she gasped then sobbed but she couldn’t let go. Her fingers clenched it more tightly. She didn’t want to let go. It was beautiful and it hurt and it was hers and she wanted it.

A shadow from the leaves, jagged and unbeautiful, slipped over the dripping mess of the petal and her hand. She gasped again, even the illusion of losing the petal causing as much, maybe more, pain than the tear in her skin.

The shadow settled over her hand, washing away the throbbing pain in soft darkness. It should have been cool, but it was warm. Not the ugly heat of the bleeding petal, it was a firm handclasp where before she had grasped only dissolving pink. The pink was white now, the blood almost completely consuming it as it wrapped around her hand and the comforting shadow. Between her hand and the shadow beat what felt like a small heart and the blood no longer feel senselessly on the ground but circulated, sustaining some tiny little life.

“May what has been bound never again be parted.”

Fire smoldered in her hand, consuming petal, blood, fingers, and shadow. It ate away at her skin, leaving burnt nothing and she became indistinguishable from everything else in the heart of the flame.

It hurt so much.

It was so beautiful.

-----------------

Marianne wheezed out a small gasp that set off a spasm of coughing. Once that was finished she was awake enough to be uncomfortable and to feel her fingers unconsciously tracing the scar of her marriage oath on her right hand. It was still deep winter and the bloom of flowers, primrose or otherwise, was a long, long way off.

A rumbling snore raised prickles on Marianne’s skin. Nobody she knew that might possibly me that close to her at night snored like that. Not even with Dawn’s worst cold produced that deep a sound. A flash of hot-cold panic coincided almost immediately with confusing realization and she froze while she tried to process it.

She was wrapped up in about twenty layers of blankets, typical of her life recently, with even a nightcap pulled snugly over her ears. Yes, that was to be expected. It was the rigid frame underneath all this over-protective padding that was unexpected. The large fingers that petted the top of her nightcap when she had stirred were completely and totally unexpected.

After a brief internal struggle Marianne expelled a wheezy breath and let herself relax. This was fine. This was good. This was normal. Or had been for the past two whole days and nights. Every since they had fallen asleep talking and she’d woken up hours later with her head on Bog’s lap—albeit separated by multiple pillows. Pillows and blankets seemed to be breeding among themselves lately and producing offspring more quickly than rabbits.

Bog had succumbed to the illness going around the castle—because everyone was getting it, there was no connection between kissing and catching it. There wasn’t.

[robins-egg-bindery]

Bookbinding Register by @robins-egg-bindery, adapted from @chocolatepot's "Bookbinder's Journal" & Starlight Press' "Book of Bindings"

228 pages

Title Font: Sughayer Separates

Body Fonts: 1782 Thurneysen

More on the process below the cut!

I never posted about my bookbinding register! I adapted it from two free-to-use templates provided generously by @chocolatepot and Starlight Press (I apologize, I could not find Starlight's Tumblr!)

I added enough space for 200 books, but I'm about 60 deep already; probably going to need a new register by 2025, I'm betting? I like the cover paper and book cloth sample areas; it's nice to have a physical record of the books, something tactile!

I also have space in the back for any additional fandom texts in my collection (that's where I write down my zines and exchange books!), or anything else that I create under my imprint (sketchbooks, journals, etc). When I'm gone, there will be a complete record of every book I made, and everything in my personal collection.

I also write in this with an archival ink pen; everything I make is built to last, and this register is no exception! What we're doing as fanbinders is important, it's both a profound act of love as part of the gift economy of fandom, and also an archival endeavor (as if archival endeavors aren't inherently profound acts of love <3 )

[thefollow-spot]

A Leap of Faith by Misery_C_Epicaricacy & Ynnéalay

Merlin confesses his magic, upending the trust between him and Arthur; when he goes missing from Camelot, a conflicted Arthur must reckon with his fears and prejudices as Merlin’s life is put at stake.

Fandom: Merlin (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Category: Gen Relationship: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon, Minor Gwaine & Arthur Pendragon, Minor Gwaine & Merlin Words: 40,475

Fanbinding of A Leap of Faith. Process, commentary, and additional pictures under the cut ♥

First of all, thank you to all the lovely folks from the @renegadepublishing discord for enthusiastically encouraging me to fanbind my own work, though this is not entirely just-mine. This fic was co-written with the awe-inspiring @whoawhataconcept (Misery_C_Epicaricacy on AO3) and this binding is as much a love letter to her writing, her mind, and our creative collaboration as it is to my own contributions.

On: Textblock & Typesetting

I've bound a couple fics at this point, but was saving Garamond for this one because I fell in love with how these particular words look set in Garamond. The headings are done in a simplistic all-caps Calibri with expanded spacing to pay homage to how many hours editing this damn thing were spent looking at the font in question. I've also used font 'Merlin' for the front title page—which I got linked out of the @merlinbingo discord server—and Felix Titling for the interior title page.

The body is printed on EarthChoice colour cream paper, and stitched with red crochet thread.

On: Endpapers

The endpapers were a tricky one for me! They are prints of my own fanart which was not the correct aspect ratio to use as endpapers for a book printed on letter paper. This was also the first large map I created, and if I could go back, there are things I would do differently. But in the end, I decided to use it as-is because I'm proud of it. To fix the sizing issue, I up-sized the map so the width was correct for a letter-sized print, which left a border on the top and bottom of the image—this I filled in with black and red checkerboard pattern to match the banners and standards of Camelot.

Originally, I wanted it printed on this textured, pearl-finish linen paper, but then the print shop I use didn't have it in a large enough size to do endpapers on and I was heartbroken. I ended up using topkote gloss paper by Oji.

On: Endbands

Hand-sewn in red and gold crochet thread. I redid these like three times to find a core I liked, and ended up doing them over tightly rolled paper.

The Dust Jacket

I'm not a graphic designer, so the jacket design is simplistic. It includes a cover, back cover (with a 'praise for' section), and two inside flaps (which contain the fic summary and author bios). I took some cues from this dust jacket post. It's printed on a thicker weight of topkote paper by Oji, this time with a dull finish.

Closing Thoughts

I'm so proud of how this turned out! It's my best work yet in terms of straight-ness of the spine/cover paper, and I learned a lot about printing. Lots of firsts for me here, and I feel that every time I make a book, I improve. I've gifted this copy to my co-author, Misery. Seeing her flip through it, and seeing it on our shelf, is giving me a lot of joy today!

[overlyenthusiasticfictionreader]

Tiny Book Bang 2023!

So this year is Renegade Bindery's first Tiny Book Bang. Typesetters formatted typesets to be any size smaller than a quarto, and binders later bound up those books!

I made two typesets for the Bang this year: the Kaer Morhan Bookclub by Jack Ironsides, and Gilded Chain by Sroloc_Elbisivni. I am delighted by both books I received from other binders! I learned so much from seeing the bindings that other folks completed! I felt very connected to our fan community, crafting across fandoms and international borders!

But this post is mostly about the book I bound for the Bang: Toy Soldiers by Copperbadge!

@mourningmountainsbindery made a delightful octavo-sized typeset of this story, "lightly comic-book themed" as described by the typesetter. There are three books because I bound for myself, my typesetter, and I always like to tempt the author with a book if I can. Both mourningmountainsbindery and @copperbadge have received their books, so I am free to share!

I tried to sneak in as many fun things as I could. Here we have some shiny foil on the title page.

The endbands are red/white/blue for Steve and red/gold for Tony.

I was incredibly fortunate that 4th of July was right around the corner when I shopped for materials. I found very appropriate cloth for the bookcloth cover ;) And the endpapers I have had for a very long time (a decade?!), so I was definitely glad to find them a home!

Thank you mourningmountainsbindery for the lovely typeset, thank you copperbadge for a lovely story! And thank you mods for all the hard work you do in the background.