#renegade publishing

[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!

[waterlillypress]

This story is the reason I wanted to start book-binding as a hobby, and after a few years of just wanting and not doing and another few months of binding several books, I had enough practise to start these chunks. The story in question is Stuck on the puzzle by @not-poignant . I followed it chapter by chapter as it was written and it's been in my heart these last eight years since it was finished.

Both parts are around 500 pages and by far the largest I have bound.

As always big thanks to @renegadepublishing for being endlessly helpful.

In process pics behind the cut.

[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.

[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.

[celestial-sphere-press]

Work has been hectic so I am Very Late in posting this but! 28 February is my bookbinding anniversary date, so here's a belated post to celebrate the last two years of fanbinding!

I am so grateful for the amazing friends and community that u have found, many of whom I've had awesome opportunities to meet in person, all around the world! Thank you so much to all the authors I have bound for that inspire me, and to everyone at @renegadepublishing for all the enabling (no matter how much it hurts my wallet lol). It's truly been life changing so far, and I hope for many wonderful years to come.

[zhalfirin]

Hello there!

Every time i see one of your bound books, i just sit there with my jaw on the floor in awe. They look so stunning, everything is so cohesive, and your creativity amazes me every time 🥺💕

I'm about to fanbind my first work and I wanted to ask if you've got any tips or things you wish you'd have known earlier? Like, I know it's gonna be far from perfect and the process will probably be rather stressful for me (perpetually impatient perfectionist), but maybe you had a moment of "oh man this is so obvious, how could i go wrong there"?

I hope you're having a fantastic day, and I'm gonna admire your work a little more rn ✨😊

Hello and thank you so much. Reading your message definitely made my day <3

I'm very flattered you like my bindings and glad they feel cohesive. I'd love to say 'that's because I plan them so meticulously', but to be honest, I rarely know every detail of what I'll be doing for a bind when I start XD

Congratulations on the decision to jump down that rabbit hole!

Sadly, I can't really give hints on the purely self-taught approach, because I have indeed formal training and never had to find it all out by myself. There are great tutorials though and while some are really good and in depth from a professional perspective, they might be also difficult to follow for beginners when you still learn the terms for everything. Don't feel bad for starting with a tutorial you find easier to follow.

But still I can say, accept that you will make mistakes and there will be flaws. There will always be flaws or things you find you could improve on (at least in your eyes and even if no one else sees or cares for them). Don't be too hard on yourself when you make them. Take it as a lesson learned and a chance to improve.

Be as tidy and accurate in your work as you can. Your skill will improve and it will get easier to get the hinges right and corners neatly covered and all that.

Keep your work place clean (and a wet cloth and towel nearby to wipe your hands from glue frequently, that will help a lot with not getting stains on your book).

Don't be afraid to mark later covered parts of the book. Like, mark what side is front and what is up on the spine and on the case. Neither will be visible in the end and it really helps a lot. Still it happens that you case in upside down. So even with marking, double and triple check when you're about to do something that will be harder to correct later on. (Especially, make sure you gathered your sections correctly and all the pages are in the correct order and orientation before you sew!). Casing in upside down is annoying, but to be honest, it's not the end of the world and often an easier fix than the wrong order of pages or worse, a forgotten section!

I know its easy to want it all at once, high end materials, perfect typesets, immaculate bindings (I know I do), but give yourself the time to develop the skills needed, otherwise it can be very frustrating and might not give the joy one hoped for.

And finally, don't be afraid to ask questions! I find that most people (myself included) are open and willing to help if they can. I find the Renegade discord server to be a great community for that. A lot of people of all levels of skill and experience share their resources and knowledge and try to help each other there. (Be warned though, the server has grown intimidatingly huge, but still people try to help you from typesetting questions to fix printer issues to explain grain direction and how to build a case at pretty much every time of the day and night.)

They are also just generally nice and fun people and it's up to you if you prefer to lurk and learn or want to chat too.

I hope this helps a bit. Have a wonderful day yourself ^^

[butterfingersbookbinding]

Get keen for Binderary 2023 folks!! 👀👀

For any fanbinders or bookbinders on here feel free to join all us mad people @renegadepublishing for Binderary - a bookbinders version of Nanowrimo!

The goal is simple - set yourself your own challenge for the month of February and bind, experiment, or go as feral as you want in your bookbinding journey. We've put together some rough categories here for people if they'd like to follow ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ZAvDJc7HE3m896kIhD5MziEoIUXefOVxhlH5a4JJuQ) but really this is just our effort to create some awesome conversations pieces and art in the community.

Throughout feburary feel free to tag any of your creations or mishaps or cool ideas with #Binderary2023.

....also if you totally want to join the discord we'll be hosting a variety of awesome free classes from a bunch of amazing volunteers through Feb y'know just saying...

[queenofthearchipelago]

Heeeeeeeeeeey. You said in some tags that you want to learn how to bookbind. If you're serious about it, you should REALLY go follow @renegadepublishing asap!!!! They have a Discord server for community, a super strict non-selling policy and tons of detailed tutorials! And the results are *chef's kiss*

Hi, friend!!! Yes, I am serious about it. @brunheiffer directed me to Renegade Publishing a few months ago when I asked them if they had any tutorials, so I have heard of them! I haven't joined the discord yet or gotten started at all because my life is a bit all over the place, but I literally think about it all the time. I think it would be so cool to have books on my shelf that I bound myself. And I always admire the craftsmanship on the books I see others binding in the fandoms I'm in.

So, yeah! Thank you so much for popping into my inbox to let me know about them! Bookbinding is such a cool hobby and I'm so excited to join that discord and start learning, hopefully soon!

(And yes, I'm so glad for the strict non-selling policy. Selling fanfiction is not okay... for so many reasons.)

[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 )

[towns-end-bindery]

The Little Prince

Showing a little of my gold foiling process, which is all done by hand 🖐️!

I use a memory keeper’s foil quill, which came with a roll of gold foil when I bought it. It’s a wonderfully affordable option for those who don’t have the budget for machines like cricut or silhouette, and HTV.

[duran-binding]

This is my second @renegadepublishing FFWAD book, The Right Thing To Do by lovesbitca8 (each of my favorite ships got an author copy!)

The paper was hand marbled by myself, the cloth was given to me by @robins-egg-bindery some time ago and it perfectly matched my headbands so I had to use it! My first in this style which I believe is called a "half bind" to account to the corners.

[nocturnus33]

Binding of En Avant, a fic by BlueRoseBouquet. Why did I bind it? The novel is beautiful, with great character development. It's a muggle AU, in which James must deal with widowhood in what I think, it's a realistic approach. It's a story that touched my heart and I wanted to have it near me.

Read it at AO3

How did I bind it? Although the novel takes James' point of view, the figure of Regulus, who is a ballet dancer, is very important. Therefore, I organized the design with the idea of classical dance. I use dancers in the chapter titles and as scenes breakers.

Homemade book cloth. I used PVA-coated paper for the spine. For the shape and titles, I used HTV. Fonts: Ballet [For drop caps] and Garamond family.

It is not perfect, but it makes me proud.

@sortasirius

[armoredsuperheavy]

Renegade Bookbinding Guild members have bound My Immortal many times, individually and together!

Several members got together and collectively created a properly deranged typeset, with each chapter formatted in new and differently wrong or insane ways, and then we shared it and created binds using it as a base.

The viral, feather-boa legendary bind by @runawaymarbles was first out the gate

a beautiful goth mess by @three--rings

classy and vampiric by @chubsthehamster

In miniature form, we bound many copies as a round-robin souvenir book at the 2023 Renegade Retreat:

There's also a further transformed version bound by @whatapictureisworth-press

and I'm certain there are more!

There’s something cosmically beautiful about bookbinding fanfiction. Not the bookbinding of fanfiction for monetary gain (which is undoubtedly morally wrong) but rather bookbinding as a gift for someone you love. Or simply bookbinding for the sake of having the story in a tangible form. After all, doesn’t it deserve a place on your bookshelf, too?

But that isn’t the beautiful part. It is this: the melding of something new with something as old as language itself. Fanfiction (at least compared with bookbinding) is a strikingly new phenomenon. Modern fanfiction has only been around for a few generations. Bookbinding, on the other hand? It can be traced back to 2nd century India. It’s a dying art — one that’s been reborn in order to immortalize freely written words.

Even better: the scribes in India who first invented the process of bookbinding used it to create religious texts. In a way, aren’t we doing the same? Fanfiction isn’t a religion, of course, but if you love a story enough to bind it, isn’t that a form of reverence in itself? Isn’t it holy?

Yes. You make it so. The needle and the thread, the newly creased paper, the hardly dried ink … your fingers consecrate it. And as you slip the book onto the shelf, you make it a temple.

And isn’t that just lovely?