Sawing is not something you readily associate with book-making – sewing, certainly, but taking a saw to a book has a suggestion of destructive violence about it; yet if you are dealing in volume production, sawing is an essential step before sewing can take place. It is also, I have to confess, one of … Continue reading Ch. 20 – Wise saws and modern instances
Category: ESP
Extreme Self Publishing – where the author writes, typesets, prints, sews, binds & sells his work
Ch. 18 – Keeping in trim
There are certain things about a book that catch your eye; there are others you only really notice in their absence. Endpapers are an instance of the first kind: an attractive endpaper can lift a book out of the ordinary. The second kind are small details of finish: the curve of the spine, for example, … Continue reading Ch. 18 – Keeping in trim
Ch. 9: Costing a book – estimating quantities
Though there is an attraction in doing things from scratch - like making your own paper from recycled trimmings - you also need to be practical, especially if your aim is not a single one-off, on which you can lavish time and attention, but volume production, where you wish to maintain a standard of quality … Continue reading Ch. 9: Costing a book – estimating quantities
Ch. 6: The Joy of Numbers
Mathematics has always been a bit beyond me, but I take a simple pleasure in arithmetic. I remember, in the course of a long solo cycle from Fort William to Mallaig in the pouring rain, amusing myself by ringing my bell at intervals and betweentimes calculating how far a single turn of the pedals in … Continue reading Ch. 6: The Joy of Numbers
Ch. 5: A visit to another printer’s – making it real
Some time towards the end of July it occurred to me that it might be a merry jape to turn up at my friend Shaun Bythell's magnificent emporium, The Bookshop , in the course of the Wigtown Book Festival, clutching a number of handbound editions of The McAvinchey Codex and purporting to be either the … Continue reading Ch. 5: A visit to another printer’s – making it real
Ch. 4: WYSINWYG: the great Adobe Acrobat booklet-printing mystery
What you see is not what you get... Adobe Acrobat will print booklets, putting two A5 portrait pages on each side of an A4 landscape sheet, with appropriate pagination (i.e. if you print an eight page booklet - which will require two sheets of paper - then one sheet will have pages 8 and 1 … Continue reading Ch. 4: WYSINWYG: the great Adobe Acrobat booklet-printing mystery
Ch. 3: A visit to the printer’s
Robert Smail's Printing Works is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Innerleithen. It is now a living museum, run by the National Trust for Scotland, where you can try your hand at letterpress printing From 1866 to 1986 it was a typical family-run printing business of the sort … Continue reading Ch. 3: A visit to the printer’s
Ch. 2: We happy few – a dedicated band
a dedicated band There is a world of difference between telling a story and telling a story to someone. It can be likened to shouting at the sky and having a conversation: you might well manage to remain coherent and intelligible while doing the former, but you're more likely to manage it in the latter. … Continue reading Ch. 2: We happy few – a dedicated band
Chapter 1: How did it happen?
photo: Shaun Bythell Well, here I am in the Bookshop, Wigtown, at the height of the Wigtown Book Festival, Scotland's Literary event of the year (and I say that as one who has appeared more than once at the Edinburgh Book Festival). Those red books on the table, in the case and in the basket, … Continue reading Chapter 1: How did it happen?
COMPLEAT TROWZER 