#binderary 2024

[chubsonthemoon]

It is done! This is The Death of Translation, originally written in English by @landwriter, translated into Mandarin by @thirrith. Binding is dos-à-dos, with English version on one side and Mandarin on the other. Bookcloth was handwoven by me, on my rigid heddle loom :3

More under the cut!

Typeset: Fanbinders are Liars

Full stop, this typeset would not have been possible without Eth and all their patience, enthusiasm, and willingness to do even more translating! I reached out to them *checks watch* nearly a year ago in July 2023 (lololol), asking if I could use their translation of TDOT in a surprise bind I wanted to send along with Gloam's author copy of Flower King. They were kind enough to say yes, and even kinder to answer my questions when I reached out six months later in January, when I was finally able to start work on the typeset.

We talked about the many delicious things that are bound to come up when discussing translating not just from English to Mandarin, but also from digital space to meatspace. Some topics I had anticipated, like font questions, translating the colophon, etc. But even with the topics I thought I'd prepared for, there were still things that came up that both surprised and delighted: for example, while AO3's website allows for italics in Mandarin--

--my publishing program doesn't (or at least, it doesn't without needing to manually tilt every character by about 10 degrees). So as a workaround, Eth suggested changing these cases of italics to the font 华文楷体:

Through no one's fault but my own, this ended up being only slightly less work than manually tilting every instance of italics--I wanted to be sure that I got all of them, so I ended up doing a lot of double-checking manually anyway, instead of relying solely on the Search function. There was a lot of cross-referencing with the Word document that Eth was kind enough to provide, as well as squinting and general swearing. I also did the same for the uses of Latin script, manually styling each instance as Garamond to keep it consistent with the English edition:

The only other time I've had to do font surgery this intensive is probably for my typeset for Tell Me About the Big Bang, which I had to port over from a PDF. Folks, hell on earth. Do not recommend XD I remember squinting at my monitor as I had to visually confirm every instance of italics, thinking I will never do this again. Welp, four years later, here were are: fanbinders are liars, LMAO. At the very least, using Eth's Word document at least allowed me to search by styles, so it was a little easier on my eyes. 🙏

Is there a script that I might've been able to use if I was more code-savvy? Probably. But I figured going at it sledgehammer style would be the least hair-pulling way to get the job done, weirdly enough. Still, despite my best efforts, there are a few instances of PMingLiU to Garamond and PMingLiU to 华文楷体 that I know I missed, and I know I missed them because I caught them after I'd printed/cut/folded/sewn/glued (cue more swearing), so Gloam and Eth, my apologies >.< please consider them artifacts of a uniquely handmade object ajslkdjfs

In addition to the fonts, there were also some other fun things Eth and I discussed, like how to translate the notes I usually provide on the colophons! In addition to information on fonts, I also usually include some variation of:

This private, limited edition published by chubsthehamster (Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing) in 2024. This is chubsthehamster's personal copy. Out of three existing copies, this is the first.

The thing that came up with this, which still tickles my brain to this day, was how Eth chose how to translate "Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing." To get a better sense of what word to use for "imprint," they asked what the relationship was between Moonham Press and Renegade Publishing, which got me thinking about the relationship between my lil imprint and the wonderful @renegadeguild:

What's all very funny about all of this is that we are now, in fact, going by the name "Renegade Bookbinding Guild," per our most recently updated Code of Conduct. While this renders the wording I asked for out of date (and thus, the wording that made it into the book out of date :'D), I think it's also a testament to how cool the work @renegadeguild is doing--like any artform, fanbinding is alive, with its own evolving language, communities, and ideas about the craft. And I love it, I love it so much. (Was this also a plug for our new-ish website? Perhaps).

There's more I could say here, but this post is already going to be long enough, so I'll move on for now! If you get anything from this section, it's that @thirrith is amazing and very patient and kind, and I'm so grateful that we got to talk shop together. Thank you so much for all your invaluable help with this, Eth! I hope the typeset, though undoubtedly flawed, does your hard work justice!

Binding: Or, SO Much Math. Like, So Much, Guys. (It was worth it, though!)

Whoo, boy! So math was never my strong suit in school, but when I set out to do this bind last year, that wasn't an issue. At first. The dos-à-dos binding, if anything, just requires a little bit of finagling on the usual case-bound format--a bit more math if you want to do an all-cloth cover, like I planned on doing, but nothing I couldn't work out with some trial and error. (My prototype below!)

Then came February, when I took a weaving class with my friend, and then everything kinda exploded.

My original idea was to use some green Duo bookcloth I had on hand (this color, actually)--for those of you not initiated into the Duo cult, Duo is a Rayon bookcloth with a very devoted fan following in Renegade. It's very pretty; the Rayon weave is one color, and the paper backing is usually complementary color, so it has this cool two-toned effect. Duo is in high demand in Renegade circles because sadly, the company that manufactures it went out of business last year. (Although I've heard rumors recently that there's another company making something similar, but the cloth has a really high purchase requirement and is, like, for businesses only I think).

Anyway, I also wanted to have a gold line around the whole book as a kind of bellyband/obi to further connect the two versions of the story (another reason why I chose the dos-à-dos format to begin with heh), as you can see from my scribbled notes here--

But alas! I knew going in that adhering things to Duo is often Problematic, thanks to one very painful experience trying to get some iron-on foil on another bind (the textured surface of Duo just makes it kinda hard to stick or paint stuff on it). So if I wanted a clean, continuous line, the remaining options were to either paint it on a strip of paper that I'd somehow...adhere to the cloth? Or maybe cut different slices of bookcloth and glue them on. I wasn't satisfied with either of those options, though.

Then--the weaving class. I made a scarf, and I love it and I loved making it. But the whole time, I'll not lie, my thoughts were elsewhere.

In short, my decision to weave my own bookcloth kinda came from a few different factors:

The desire to attempt to recreate Duo, that elusive beauty, the one that got away, etc. (I have several yards in my stash, but still). Others have also attempted to recreate it, and I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.

My current spiral into the deep hole that is fiber arts (it started with crochet, then knitting, then sewing, then weaving, then spinning, and now I'm eyeing quilting! Please help me).

The gold line. It kept bugging me. And when I found weaving, I just thought there was something very neat about the process of actually making the cloth for a dos-à-dos binding from scratch, and especially for this binding. I wanted to bind a story about translation (or rather, the death of it, and yet still the necessity of it--how we must try to communicate, despite of, or perhaps precisely because of, everything that gets lost in the spaces between people, and the tragedy of that loss, and the beauty of what makes it through, and the love always present in the effort regardless), and also, the translation of that story. Weaving is a very meditative process, and with every pass of the shuttle, back and forth, building slowly but surely the fabric that would hold the story that Gloam had written and that Eth had translated, I thought a lot about translation, and the gaps between people, and how we choose our words not just when translating, but when we speak at all. From a design perspective, I used the same colors I would've used had I chosen the Duo bookcloth--green and gold--so the design wasn't too altered in terms of color scheme. But I think the choice to weave the bookcloth--the thing that bound it all together--made the project take on a completely new meaning for me, both in process and in scope, one that hadn't been there when I started. I saw the warp, perhaps, as the original story, laying the groundwork for the weft, the translation; or maybe it was the other way around, with the translation providing the scaffolding for its own, new meaning, choices that Eth had to make with this word or phrase or another building something new, something translated, and the original a live, moving thing that wove over and under each word turned phrase turned story; or maybe it was both. Maybe it didn't matter which was which, in the end. And as I wove, the thing that connected them, that gold line that had started all of this, slowly formed.

All that to say: Good God, was there a lot of math. So much math. That prototype pictured above was actually made specifically so I could calculate exactly how much I needed to weave, lol, because while I certainly had enough thread, I didn't want to have to warp more than once. I'd learned the basics in my class, but the training wheels came off here. I wanted to make my own custom fabric, which meant calculating things like ends per inch, picks per inch, loom waste, shrinkage after washing, the width of that damn gold line, how much I'd need for the hinge, the turn-ins, the boards--the whole nine yards (I didn't actually weave nine yards tho heh). It was all absolutely worth it in the end--so challenging and so, so rewarding!

(And my final reason for weaving the bookcloth? Not gonna lie, It was because I just wanted to see if I could do it LOL. I love trying at least one new thing with each of my binds, and this was it for this project. While I've been bookbinding for a few years now, I'm still very much a beginner weaver, and I'm so excited to continue to learn and experiment! Also, here's a video of me unwinding the cloth from the loom, heh. I used 10/2 Perle cotton in gold and green colors :3)

Also, turns out, you can back handmade cloth the same way you can any other cloth! I backed it using my usual heat-n-bond method, and with some Unryu Tissue in the color Forest. Since the cloth itself is a bit transparent, there are a bunch of really fun fibers you can see when it's held up to the light, but which aren't visible when the cloth is glued down to the boards. Still, knowing they're there still makes me happy :D

Finally, capping all this off, is one final, small detail I really liked: ginkgo leaf endpapers :3 this one's for me and Eth and Gloam specifically <3

Aaaand that's all from me for today, folks! Thus ends (several months late XD) my last Binderary project for the year. This was probably my most ambitious bind to date, and gosh it was so, so much fun.

And, of course, thank you so much to Gloam for sharing your story, and Eth for translating it. I can't wait for y'all to receive your copies soon!

All my love! <3

[sayornispress]

Two author copies delivered! Both for @bropunzeling (AO3 here).

More photos and info under the cut!

I actually did my copies of these a while ago--both in February, one in 2024 and the other in 2023. collide the spaces that divide us was one of my earliest attempts at social media formatting, and one of the last books I ever made with my inkjet printer. I did end up fixing a few things on that one's typeset, but it's nearly identical to my first copy. You may also notice in the photos that I chopped off a bit too much off the edge--I didn't yet know how to use my guillotine, and in all the time that's passed since then, it's become defunct (sharp enough to cut off a hand, but not sharp enough to cut through a stack of paper lol)

It's neat to see such a clear example of how much I've improved as a bookbinder in a year and a half--my copy on the left, author's on the right:

Also, a comparison of color ink (left) vs color laser (right):

Like this, it's easy to see how much more vibrant color toner is than ink. Ink works much better for complex images, but since I don't print a lot of photos, but do make a lot of social media typesets, this works much much better for my purposes.

Soon after that, I bought a black-only laser printer and had a whole new set of challenges. It was in this era of printing that I made only fools rush in. It has one of my most complex title pages to date, as they're not really my forte.

Below are my copy, the title page, and an example of how I did texts in this particular typeset.

My copy has a cloth spine and a different cloth as the cover, with a strip from the endpapers to hide my sins act as a bridge between them. This is one of the binds from last Binderary that I'm most proud of.

The title page is in several different pieces--sort of jigsaw-puzzled together from vectors, Google Drawings, and a few different fonts.

Black-toner-only printing meant adjusting how I did social media formatting, and this is one of my favorite ways I solved that problem. I like the simple, almost minimalist formatting that sets the texts apart but doesn't steal the show.

I'd been meaning to offer author copies for these books for as long as I'd had them, but it's hard to understate how little I wanted to use my inkjet once I got a laser XD It's both slower and more expensive to use an inkjet, so as soon as I got my color laser printer set up, I sent the DM!

I organize my handbound fics by ship--that is, every ship has a set spine cloth and title color--so one of my favorite things about author copies is that I get to be a little more creative about covers!

[swordsmans]

excellent news from usps--i can now talk about this beauty!! i had the pleasure of typesetting and binding @the-furthest-city-light's wonderful zolu fic spill your wine and it was a ride from start to finish (repurposed prototypes and injuries included). overall, i'm extremely pleased with how it turned out!!

this was a full fabric, square-backed case binding with a peek through cover showcasing a heat transfer foiled title on the (red, burgundy, gold) endsheet (and a hidden katana design to match the charm). things got a bit weird near the spine because i didnt anticipate my glue acting funky under the heat, but live and learn! the outside covers turned out plenty clean.

the edges are painted with matte black acrylic and sealed with beeswax, and the bookmark is a little 4mm burgundy silk number tipped with a gold clasp and katana charm (of course). the silk is very thin/fragile, so in the future i think ill double the length i use.

i also had a great time typesetting this! when i first read this i knew i wanted to do something that was both angular/modern and ornately victorian (with a red, black, gold scheme). this had to be decadent and beautifully clash-y, because nothing less would suffice for the kind of author who'd use a verse from the canticle of canticles as the summary for a fic series like this. truly iconic. nerds will notice that this is a little visually reversed from the way books are traditionally typeset, which is also intentional. i think it fits the vibe of the bind and the fic. i hope the vision came through.

this was actually the second case i built; i wasnt happy with the first one so i ripped it up and made a notebook (with the front and back covers) and bookmark (from the spine) for dani, which was a fun little experiment. i just... didnt take any pictures, apparently?

overall this was a really fun and challenging project, and i cant believe its done!!!! wow!!!

[geminibookbinding]

Heehee it arrived so I can post about it

The last book for Binderary was Mon Horrible Chéri by @mrghostrat, a Good Omens Aziraphale/Crowley fic! I made two copies for this, one for a friend and an author copy:

(Since my friend came to visit she got to pick her cover and also give me insight into what would be good for the author copy!) For the author copy, we went with a blue/red combo (which comes up in the end bands later too) with some buildings on it, and while not necessarily Parisian buildings, it fit the vibe. Then to top it all off I did a silver toner-reactive foil for the title.

I really played into the coffee/tea theme with chapter titles and the chapter list being styled like café signs, printed end pages with coffee/tea/Eiffel Tower, and more~

I even got to include some of Bilvy’s art from the fic (my printer may or may not have crapped on a couple of them oops)

Stylistically I got to mess around with my headers/footers and did something I don’t normally do with page numbers on top. And then for the end bands I went with a white/blue and black/red combo for the main duo!

I’m VERY pleased with how they turned out 💖

(Completed: 2/29/2024)

[cmdonovann]

aaaaaaaaaaaaa im so happy with how this book turned out!! it's one of the fics i received for 2023 yuletide: "all of your colonies and continental divides" by magpieCastiel!!! (it's a national treasure fic, hence the theming of the book.) can't wait to send a copy to the author, hehe :3c

[ohmightydevviepuu]

fanbinding: a bookbinding archive, of sorts

i'm learning a new style of bookbinding and struggling with it and decided to play with an obsession of mine, which is finding pulled-to-publish fics. my goal is eventually to re-bind the trade paperback versions to match.

here are my first three:

decided to start with some big names in publishing--the office eventually became Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren; head over feet became The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood; knives & seasoning was recently published as Knives, Seasoning & A Dash of Love by Katrina Kwan.

these books were completed as part of BINDERARY 2024 hosted by the renegade publishing guild. these are flat-back casebindings covered in homemade bookcloth. the covers are printed vinyl and are taken from the original fanart(s) that accompanied the fics in their heyday(s). you can see that in the case of TLH and KS&D that the authors stayed with their favored fanartists in the published works:

i'm not sure if the office reflects the published cover version or vice versa, since i am not 100% sure who created the cover art that was part of the copy i found.

[bluevelvetbindery]

Catching up on Binderary workshops today and this is what I accomplished! So pleased with this lil’ fella! I see many more tiny books in my future!

[imp-printed]

@delazeur 's Questions Answered features a prickly 'red' Hawke and the most organic emergence of a throuple I've ever seen (plus, there's never enough Alistair/Anders in my book).

Caralyn's thorn motif ended up on the cover (very fun to paint, I'll have to do more painted covers) and title page(s); & red and gold honestly work for all three of them.

...lookit my endbands boy

[ashmouthbooks]

binderary 2024: 2/2

stretch goal reached! a good thing too because next weekend I'm travelling and the weekend after that it's March, so this is it for me and binderary 2024.

my stretch goal was to make a matching set of hardbacks and I decided to stay on theme and do Dig og Mig and the sequel Dig og Mig For Altid by @beanhappiness - two Afdeling Q fics. I love these fics a lot, and from a fandom history perspective I can reveal that Dig og Mig is the first ever fic written for this fandom! (At least on AO3 it is, I don't know if there are others out there - if there are, please link me, I want to read them!).

I wanted to make a matching set, and for this I decided that meant the books are identical except for the cover paper - the cover paper is the same pattern, in different colours but with one colour in common: blue. so these are very blue books.

(let's ignore for a moment that I completely fucked up the positioning of the titles on the spines. I didn't center align them correctly before printing, and on the second book I majorly fucked up the measurements and didn't notice until after I took the book out of the press that the title was too close to the top of the spine, at which point it was too late to just print a new one...)

(the sun was wreaking havoc on this photo session, can you tell?)

case: squareback hardback bound in sky blue bookcloth of unknown make, boards covered in decorative paper from Søstrene Grene (weights 70gsm and 140gsm respectively), over 2mm boards

insides: endpapers are 150gsm Daler-Rowney Canford Electric Blue, and the text is printed on 90gsm Munken Pure Smooth Cream

previous posts afdeling q men det handler om mad i stedet for mord et Afdeling Q Julemysterie noget jeg ikk’ tør sig’ i mørket / bryllupsplaner / morgenkys

binderary 2024 goal: 3/3 stretch goal: 2/2

bonus: process video of making the case + casing in Dig og Mig, on tiktok

[nocturnus33]

A bound fic is always a ficrec: You can read By the Grace a great story from Lettered in AO3. It is a very well-written Drarry, with excellent character development and a good plot.

My first fanbind with a rounded spine. Overall, I like the way it turned out. For those who have read the story, you will see that both the book cloth and the endpapers are a nod to the Thimoty tree. The typeset revolves around the coffee cup, a theme that runs through the story.

What did I like?

I'm in love with the handmade book cloth. I made it out of quilting cotton. What did I learn?

Glossy paper is a no-no. I used glossy photo paper for my endpapers. It cracked immediately. What could I have done better?

I had difficulty with the title, first I went for a black colour, but got little contrast; then I went for a red, and it was too much contrast. I need some colour theory to illustrate my eye.

@letteredlettered

[fansplaining]

We just released our newest episode—a conversation about fanbinding with a member of @renegadepublishing—for patrons at $2 a month and up! 📚 To get early access to this and all future episodes, pledge today! 

[chubsonthemoon]

Happy Binderary 2024!! Kicking things off with the fantastic Never understood a single word he said by dear friend @aboxthecolourofheartache. I had the best time beta'ing this for Box and just had to have it on my shelf! More pics and process info under the cut:

had an absolute blast packing as many easter eggs as I could into this one! it's a roadtrip gone wrong fic heh, so I went for a scrapbook/collage cover made of the same kraft paper I usually use for paperbacks, but left the hinge + spine exposed. I tore each piece from a different sheet of scrapbook paper, so the resulting texture is really fun:

I also went to town with references to some of the events in the story, particularly on the back of the cover. the postcard is probably my favorite element; here are my few first practice runs on scratch paper (along with some of my colored pencil testings for the markings on the map) before I went for it on the real cover!

I repurposed the ribbon graphics I originally drew for another bind (@feralrookie's right where I should be ❤️). the music notes on the first page notate the rhythm of the opening lines of the song the fic is based on, Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World," which I had on loop while I was typesetting this! ("Jeremiah was a bullfrog/Was a good friend of mine.") Box's taste in trigun-themed country and blues is impeccable, and I have a whole spotify playlist made almost entirely of her recs ehe :3

the blank/empty ribbon appears between chapter 1 and the epilogue for story reasons ehe; really wanted to convey the feeling of "where did the music go?", because I also listened to American Pie a lot while making this lolol.

also added little camera graphic at the end, which reminded me of meryl's occupation as a journalist, but the hands/lack of a face holding the camera also gives me the uncanny feeling of being watched/photographed (also plot relevant heh). camera graphic and the house graphic at the beginning are both sourced from Heritage Type's free vintage illustrations, from a series of packs called "Hands Holding Stuff."

the hand holding the house on the title page gave me wolfwood's confessional-on-the-go vibes, BUT it was originally held straight like this:

so I decided to tilt it to give it more of that feeling of instability and "oh shit my entire world is being turned upside down rn god the exits WHERE ARE THE EXITS (there are no exits)" feeling present in the fic :D so I guess it's more of a knives reference?? still, the kind of "what is even going on here?" reaction I had when I first saw it fits well with the title, so I went with it!

and that's it for now!! I'll be out of town for the next week or so, but I have a bunch more projects I'm really excited to share this month, along with some long-overdue author copies that I'm excited to get mailed to their rightful homes!

finally, thank you SO much for letting me bind your work, Box!!! it's always such a pleasure <333

[chubsthehamster]

- more supplies on the way! 📨

- finished a typeset! 💻

- cleaned my circut mats YEEHAW 🤠

[swordsmans]

the eagle has landed, and now i can talk about it >;3c

i had the pleasure of typesetting and binding @starshipcaptainjojo's zolu series conquering, and this was a delightful project from start to finish.

the bind is a three-piece bradel with covers made from individual pieces of marbled, splattered, or stamped lokta paper and gold heat transfer foil. on the back cover, i've also foiled the series's tagline. i wanted to mirror the typeset, which includes images of historical rugs, tapestries, and paper at the beginning of each story in the anthology--and i think it succeeded! (even if i ended up unintentionally making a mardi gras bind. that i finished on mardi gras. incredible.)

the endsheets are a thicker black silver/gold marble, and the bookmark is a looped 4mm silk ribbon tipped with an 18k gold clasp and a sun charm. i'm particularly proud of this bind's edges, which i painted with two layers of diluted acrylic: dark green and metallic light green shimmer. like the gold foiling, it doesn't come through well in pictures... but i promise this book is very shiny :3c

last but certainly not least, i also got permission from @/veryqueerdraws to include a comic they drew for jojo's fic stamina, which i won't include photos of lest tumblr obliterate me on sight for... obvious reasons. i believe its posted on their twitter, though!

[geminibookbinding]

I have been patiently waiting to share this Binderary project!

Only Temporary by Luckybug on AO3 (luckybug.writes over on insta), a Stardew Valley Sebastian x Reader fic that lives in my head rent free.

Armed with the advice of various Renegade Bindery members and a WHOLE lotta luck, I pieced together a sorta three piece Bradel bind on a whim. Shoutout to @rat-juicee, my hype person who got to watch me in real time say 'hey I have a Big Brain™ idea' and then cycle through 'will this work?' -> 'fuck it we ball' -> 'oh noooo did I fuck it up??' CONSTANTLY.

The cover is inspired by kintsugi and the idea that even if something is broken, it can be fixed with enough time, effort, and care - which is relevant to the fic. It's a combination of foil quill - which I am slowly getting better at - and gold sharpie (again, part of the Will This Work? Fuck It We Ball mentality). Without intending to, the cover paper and fabric match which was just the icing on top for me.

Inside, I used a typewriter font for the flashbacks that pop up as well as the title, and I kept to a blue/floral theme that (imo) tied the chapter headers and cover together nicely.

Overall I'm VERY please with how this turned out and I definitely want to look into three piece bradel binds more!

(Completed: 2/7/2024)

[cmdonovann]

another binderary book!!! this might be one of my favorites ive done so far ✨

it's "we rise in the dying" by kolyarostov, which grabbed me by the throat when i read it and i could not get it outta my head. no author copy for this one, alas, bc i dont know the author personally and wasnt sure i could afford to send one. but i do recommend the fic if you like youtuber rpf, lol, go give them a kudos :3

bonus pics to show off my homemade paste paper covers!!!