Postage stamp book

Students at Zagreb School of Design were invited to design postage stamps based upon this environmental brief: “Plastic waste in the seas is one of the most serious environmental problems of today’s society. Plastic waste, including bottles, bags, packaging and micro­plastics, pollutes seas around the world, threatening the marine ecosystem and human health. According to data from the European Parliament, by 2050, plastic waste could exceed the number of fish in the seas. The key is to reduce the amount of plastic waste entering the environment, encourage recycling and replace single-use plastic products with sustainable alternatives.”

The Daily Heller brings us this video, made by Todd Carroll, showing the result, a tiny book showing the stamp designs:

If you find the designs flashing by too quickly in the video, you can find still images by clicking on The Daily Heller link above.

The book is 35.5 x 42.6mm, 1.40″ x 1.68″, about the size of a largish postage stamp. The winning design, shown at the top, was printed for Earth Day in an edition of 30,000 copies, 10 stamps to a sheet, each with a face value of EUR 1.14.

Digital distribution

I found this a confusing term when Publishing Perspectives used it in the headline for Richard Chaikin’s latest post. Mr Charkin’s post claims to describe the transitioning of his Mensch Publishing to a “wholly digitally-driven model”. I assumed, as I started to read, that that this meant that all Mensch’s books would henceforth be available only as ebooks. It doesn’t mean that at all. It focusses on the print side of the operation, telling us that from now on their physical books will only be available as print-on-demand books, stored digitally at the printers, and printed out only when a customer orders a copy.

To me this is the way any small publisher should handle manufacturing. Don’t print lots of copies and then have to figure out where you’re going to store them. Don’t print any: just set the digital files up and after you’ve received an order print the number of copies called for. Sure your unit cost will be higher, and thus your margin less — but you won’t have to pay any bills for warehousing, or the cost of capital tied up in inventory, or face the need to waste books that don’t sell. It may not balance out precisely, but together these moves should make for a viable small company.

Mr Charkin informs us that bookstores are reluctant to stock print-on-demand books. If this is true, (and I find it hard to know how the book buyer would know which books were POD and which were not) it’s the result of overly apologetic marketing by the publishers. In the early days of print on demand, old books had not been created from electronic files: they had (mostly) been typeset at a composition house, and one clean pull of the type would have been photographed and used as an original for offset printing. Print on demand technology was first used in reprinting books which didn’t sell many copies and this meant that when we came to do a print on demand version a digital original had to be created. This was done by scanning a printed copy of the book. Scanning isn’t a faultless technology, but worse, nor is offset printing, and many of the printed copies used for scanning were embarrassingly poor reproductions. Result: the POD version was a poor reproduction too; and people noticed. Years ago Oxford University Press used to print a cringe-making line on all their POD books — something to the effect that they apologized for the lousy printing, but did it so that valuable material in low demand could nevertheless be supplied to scholars. Now, if you are a bookstore owner and are confronted by such an apology, I think it absolutely reasonable that you would refuse to “represent” the book — let any devoted scholar get it from the publisher direct.

But of course all the old books have pretty much been taken care of now — and none of Mensch’s would have been in this category anyway, as the company didn’t exist in the bad old days of analog production! Yet apparently we are allowing booksellers to maintain the false idea that POD = substandard. Exactly the contrary, as Mr Charkin admits — POD’s digital printing, from a proper file, will probably actually yield a superior image to that which we could have gotten from offset — even, be it noted, when it comes to a halftone or a color image. In fact, refusing nowadays to countenance a book printed by POD makes precisely the same amount of sense as refusing to countenance a book because it was not typeset by an old-fashioned typesetting house.

So, don’t shout from the rooftops that you are changing to digital printing (most of the industry is too anyway) as if it were something in need of explanation or worse justification. Just treat the books as books, and when a bookstore orders six copies, print them six copies — when they get them they’ll be none the wiser. Actually, what’s wiser would be their appreciating that print quality has nothing to do with content quality — and even if it did would now be impossible to distinguish.

Library binding

Enjoy this video almost as a piece of historical evidence. Library binding does still exist, but less flourishingly that it once did. It’s all subject to National Standards.

Once upon a time a paperback would have been prebound before being put on the library shelves. Nowadays librarians have apparently figured out that they might as well just offer the paperback edition for loan. If it falls apart it’ll probably be cheaper to buy another paperback (if it’s still needed) than it would have been to bind it up as a sturdy hardback in the first place! And of course binding a beautiful book which is only borrowed a couple of times represents a sad charge against your ever-challenged budget. Perhaps the library section which will end up keeping library binders going is the reference section — as long as we retain readers who want to look stuff up by turning pages rather than googling it.

If you don’t see a video here, please click on the title of this post in order to view it in your browser.

Link via David Crotty’s post at The Scholarly Kitchen.

No need to despair; it’s never all about economy. This sort of binding work will no doubt survive, just as hand setting of metal type, letterpress printing, laced on wooden boards, and even handwriting a book or two have managed to survive: as a specialized service carried on by devoted craftsmen and craftswomen.

See also Library repair.

Stone Bible

In 2021 I wrote about Hunter Bliss’ work promoting stone paper — a paper made from calcium carbonate without wood fibre. Last December Printing Impressions followed up with a description of a bible to be published by Mr Bliss in association with First Baptist of Lexington, South Carolina. This ends up being almost an edition of the stone tablets Moses lugged down from Mount Sinai — the book ended up 8½” x 11″ and weighing 7lbs. True salesman that he is, Mr Bliss manages to convince himself that this is an advantage. They were forced into printing the 1056-page book sheet-fed on 108gsm paper because the 80gsm stock they first tested would stretch and melt on the web press it was first tested on! The press run was projected to take place in China in January.

Stone paper may or may not turn out to be a great benefit to mankind — but as of now it hasn’t quite come to pass. Nobody is making calcium carbonate paper in America yet, so the savings Mr Bliss hoped for from volume manufacturing have not yet been realized. He is reduced to prayer as a mechanism to bring about this development.

In my previous post I worried about binding methods — you could have checked it out on a copy of The Word in Stone by subscribing $100 at their Kickstarter site, though it looks like the appeal is now over, having failed to reach its target. There is a video interview there with Mr Bliss which can still be viewed though. Not sure what happens next.

Printing realignment

The book manufacturing plant Sheridan Madison, once upon a time Webcrafters, is closing, and 116 people will be losing their jobs between now and the end of July. Printing Impressions bears the tale. The ostensible reason for the closing hardly assorts with the bouncily cheerful assessments (also here) I gave recently of prospects for the year ahead.

“CJK Group and Sheridan indicated ‘the decision comes as a result of the current conditions of the print industry, which is seeing an overall decline in orders, due in part to publishers overstocking during the pandemic along with the continued shift to digital publishing in the education market’.”

Webcrafters was more than 155 years old when it was acquired by CJK in 2017. Then they employed 270 workers at two facilities, serving educational publishers as a manufacturer of textbooks, workbooks, teacher and student guides, and educational support materials. Obviously the education market has changed radically over the past decade with ever greater emphasis on digital learning — just last week New York schools didn’t declare a snow day; they made it a remote learning day which of course they can now do they have provided tablets for all during the pandemic. With less stuff being printed, the machines which were built specifically for this material are in less and less demand.

Converting Sheridan Madison to do other kinds of work would have required a huge investment. Much more efficient to buy something else, as CJK/Sheridan have done, somewhat tactlessly announcing on the very same day the acquisition from LSC Communications of five publication and catalog offset printing plants and three digital printing facilities.

Making a book

Gordon Johnson, a reader of this blog (thank you), has been engaged for several years in the massive undertaking by The Royal Asiatic Society to mark its bicentennial in 2023 by reissuing the original text of founding member James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajast’han or the Central and Western Rajpoot States, first published in 1829 and 1832. The accepted version of this book has been an edition published by Oxford University Press in 1920, heavily edited 

(and somewhat distorted by political preconceptions) by William Crooke, an Indian Colonial Service Officer. The new edition is newly edited by Dr. Norbert Peabody, and is co-published by the Society and Yale University Press, who offer it for sale at $1,000. This is a lot of book! Gordon has written a thorough account of the editing and production of this three-volume set at the RAS blog.

James Tod (1782-1835) went to India in 1799 as a surveyor tasked with making maps. He produced the first British map of Rajasthan. In 1818 he was appointed the first Political Agent to the Western Rajput States making his headquarters in Udaipur. He returned to London in 1823, just in time to join the newly formed Royal Asiatic Society, and indeed to become its first librarian. His book was originally published in two volumes which were printed by J. L. Cox, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and sold in London by Smith, Elder, & Co., 65 Corn-hill, and Calkin & Budd, Booksellers to his Majesty, Pall-Mall. Unusually for British administrators, Tod has remained popular (or at least not unpopular) in India: a town named after him has not had a name change. Here is a street painting seen in a small southeastern Rajasthan town in 2020, showing Tod apparently meeting with Gyanchandra, a local politician (?).

The RAS blog post describes the production of the new edition in fascinating detail. The slipcase contains four units; Volume I, 564 pages, and Volume II, 602 pages, contain Tod’s text and illustrations. The third volume, a Companion Volume, is 532 pages long and contains notes, essays and 177 drawings and paintings relevant to the period and subjects Tod covered. Dr Peabody sets out his editorial principles in one of these essays, and may be seen here introducing the book to the Society in December 2023.* The slipcase also contains the map and four other fold-out plates from the original volumes. Tod’s text and illustrations were scanned at Cambridge University Library and the books were reset in 10/13 Sabon, and Tiro Devanagari Hindi and Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit are used for Indian language quotations. The books were printed, bound and boxed in Italy by Conti Tipocolor SpA, Florence. The first two volumes, printed in black with a spot red call-out, are printed on Magana Naural paper, and volume 3, which contains many color illustrations is printed on a coated stock, Perigord Matt.

Click on the image of this sample spread to enlarge it.

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* One might wish that Dr Peabody had refrained from relating the embarrassing account of the assistant at Yale University Press who sent him an email asking that he forward it to Mr Tod, as they didn’t have his email address on hand. Everyone in publishing has to deal with too many books — there’s just not enough money in the game for it to be any how else. But still . . .

Paparozzi’s printing prospect

Chief economist at PRINTING United Alliance, Andy Paparozzi recently shared some “really good news” about the economy. “Productivity is finally increasing; supporting healthy gains in hourly compensation; and moderating increases in unit labor costs.” He forecast a healthy year for the printing industry — just as we expect a good year in books. “2024 expectations mirror 2023 results, however, ‘expectations vary dramatically from company to company,’ he said. The top 20% of participants in the State of the Industry survey reported an expected 2024 fiscal year average change in sales of 12.6%, versus a 3.7% increase for all survey respondents.”

AI was, unsurprisingly an item on the agenda at the Alliance’s Leadership Summit. Paparozzi suggested printers should embrace the potential of AI, but that they should approach with caution, implementing one system at a time, in order not to be overwhelmed. The biggest errors with AI implementation he identified as:

• Failure to align AI initiatives with business objectives
• Not considering the TCO (total cost of ownership)
• Poor data
• Not preparing for disruption
• Impatience

Re-backing

The Folger Shakespeare Library blog, The Collation, brings us this account of a repair to the spine of an old volume, Ioannis Barclaii Argenis, by John Barclay, published in 1622. (You can click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Modern books are less and less frequently sewn, but even when they are sewn the attachment of the book block to the cover is much less secure than it was in old-style hand binding. In those days the sewing joining one signature to the next featured raised bands, around which the sewing was wrapped, increasing the stability of the whole. But even more, those bands were themselves secured to the boards through holes in the board where the bands would be secured. The second Folger photo shows evidence of this, as the book was missing its back endpaper.

In a modern volume, the only thing holding the book block into the case would be this endpaper, and obviously its loss would also have lead to the loss of the back board too in this instance where the spine had torn away. (For a diagram showing the structure of a modern hardback please see Boards. In many instances we’ll now omit the slight extra reinforcement represented by the fabric strip labelled “Liner”.)

In the interest of showing future students the sewing structure of the book the conservator didn’t replace the entire leather spine. As there was a portion of the spine remaining at the foot, she created a corresponding abbreviated section for the top of the spine, leaving the sewing exposed yet restoring the strength of the binding.

For our modern usage of the term “rounding and backing” see Forwarding & Building in.

Making books is fun*

When people think of publishing, they tend to see no further than the editorial department. All those humanities graduates come to New York with the idea that they are going to be able to set taste, direct the course of literature, and get to deal with fascinating authors. Now of course one or two of them may manage to do just this — through the average author is likely to seem more of a demanding curmudgeon that an inspiring mentor, and shaping the course of literature is almost certainly going to come way behind making a profit, making your numbers, and chivvying dilatory authors to finish their books so they can help make this year’s budget.

Those who manage to think beyond the editorial surface will probably acknowledge that someone has to sell the books and promote them to customers. Some may even find a little glamour in that.

But few tyros come to it saying to themselves “I’ve got to get a job in a production department” — and in this they are missing out on what is really the single most distinctive part of book publishing. Any business needs people to market and sell the product, and has to have skilled folks out there buying raw materials: it’s the shaping of the raw material into the salable product that makes this business radically different from that one. Because even with computers and e-books, authors’ manuscripts do not automatically turn into books.

Once the editor has persuaded the company to take on the book, and has managed to get the author to write it in something approaching its ideal form, their editorial assistant will fill out a lot of paperwork briefing other departments on what the book is all about. Part of this paperwork, along with the manuscript, goes to the production department. (Because systems change and computers permit several efficiencies, the process today is a little different from what it was 20 years ago — but exploding the procedure into its old form makes things clearer I think. All the things that have to get done still have to be attended to in one way or another.)

The first thing the production department will do is to copyedit. Copyediting involves reading through the manuscript correcting any grammatical or spelling errors, realigning parts where the argument is overly tangled, maybe making stylistic adjustments to the writing, checking references (probably only spot-checking nowadays) and making sure their format is consistent in the bibliography, deciding on and marking up the structure of headings: Part title, Chapter title, A head, B head, C head etc., ensuring that tables are clearly marked up. The copyeditor’s aim is to get the manuscript into a condition where the ultimate reader will not be confused and the typesetter will be able to process the job without any problems of ambiguity or inconsistency, so that when type is output it will be as near as possible to the final version.

A book designer will determine how the book will look. What trim size will it be? What typeface will be used? Will the design be centered or will all the headings, page numbers, illustrations etc. align flush left? What paper should we use when we print the book? Having thought this through the designer will write up a comprehensive set of type specifications which the typesetter will follow. If the text is 11/13 Garamond, how wide is the text line going to be? How much smaller will the quoted material be? And the footnotes? How many lines are we going to have on the page, or to look at it the other way round, what are the blank margins on the page going to be?

Once the book has been typeset a proof is made and sent to the author along with the original marked-up manuscript. The author is responsible for ensuring that all is as it should be. The production department will however hire a proof reader who will read for sense and spellings, and may also hire an indexer if the author isn’t going to do this task. The production editor will collate all corrections and send the master proof back to the typesetter for correction and final output, whether as a digital file or hard copy as in the old days.

While all this is going on the jacket or cover will be being designed. The author or editor may well have made suggestions or requests, but the designer basically starts off with nothing beyond a format and a number of colors allowed for by the book’s budget. Using the final page count, and knowing what paper is going to be used, the designer figures out how thick the book will be and ensures that the jacket will fit around a book which as of yet still doesn’t exist. The designer will also decide what binding material will be used; what grade, what color, and will design a die for stamping the spine of the hardback book. After much consultation a design will be finalized and prepared for the printer.

Well before this stage the production manager will have prepared estimates including all the costs for the production of the book, giving pricing for two or three different print runs. Based on these estimates a decision will have been made on how many copies to print. Balancing page size, paper to be used, binding style called for, schedule needed, the production manager will decide which printer to use and send the copy off with a purchase order. Good relations are almost always the norm for production staff and the printers they deal with, and discussion of capacity will be frank and honest. Nowadays once the book has gone off that tends to be that, but in the past one often saw a further stage of proof — blues, produced by the printer prior to plate-making as a final, final check. It is unusual for a production manager to visit the plant while the book is being printed, but with certain important and perhaps difficult projects this may be required. Otherwise the next the production department sees is when a carton of advance copies turns up in the office. Opening that carton is aways a thrill: we’ve all visualized the book, and have seen bits of it in proof now and then, but here it is at last. Does it really match up to your vision? Is it even better? Perfect? To see a production manager check advance copies is an education in itself. Open the book, flip the jacket off the front cover, are the squares even, examine the case cover and the stamping on the spine, put the jacket back and riffle the pages of the book, then flip though every page quickly: are they all aligned correctly, are they all in the correct sequence, is the printing even throughout, are the halftones crisp and clear? You’d invested time and effort in getting it right, and here was the proof that it had actually turned out well. This was your reward. If the author and the editor liked it too then you were doubly enriched.

One attraction of the production process is the immediacy of that reward: if you are an editor you may have to wait years after the first notion of the book before it becomes a reality. The author spends years writing, then the production department will never do the book as quickly as you’d wish them too, and then of course it takes a while to be sure the book has been a success in the marketplace. For the production manager the reward comes within a few months. The book is beautiful and is fit for purpose. Whether it sells or not, there it is handsome, on time and within budget. On to the next triumph.

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* I wrote this in 2015 for publication at Literary Manhattan.

Cromwelliana

In its quiet way I think this is actually a pretty extraordinary story.

Maybe you can identify the grumpy-looking chap in this Holbein portrait, but have you any idea about that book almost jumping out of the picture at us?

Turns out it’s the Hardouyn Hours, a fifteenth-century prayer book — and this very copy now resides in Trinity College Library in Cambridge! The book belonged to Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, — he’s the man in the picture of course, as no doubt everyone recognizes since Hilary Mantel immortalized him in Wolf Hall. As The Trinity College Library blog tells us “Hever Castle curator, Alison Palmer, recognised the bejewelled, silver gilt binding of Trinity’s Book of Hours from the famous portrait of Thomas Cromwell painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1532-3, which hangs in the Frick Collection in New York. Palmer then worked with colleagues Kate McCaffrey and Dr Owen Emmerson to uncover the mystery of the book’s ownership.”

Hever Castle in Kent was the home of the Boleyn family. “The castle possesses a copy of the same edition of this book which was owned by Anne Boleyn, and a third copy of this edition, now in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, was owned by Catherine of Aragon.” Sounds to me that Mr Cromwell and the others probably got the book as a gift from King Henry, and that’d explain why he’d have it set in such a prominent position for his portrait — to indicate the favor in which he was held.

Hore beate Marie Virginis (Paris: Germain Hardouyn, [about 1528]). Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1906; PML 1034, fol. A1r. Catherine of Aragon’s copy.

The book was printed in Paris by Germain Hardouyn, and the copy pictured by Holbein was presented to Trinity College in 1660 by Anne Sadleir, who was married to the grandson of Cromwell’s secretary, Ralph Sadleir. Analysis of the silver in the book’s binding “suggests that the book was probably printed between Easter 1527 and Easter 1528. It was then illuminated by hand in Hardouyn’s workshop, before being bound in 1530 and shipped to England sometime before 1532-33, when the portrait was painted. It seems likely that Thomas Cromwell gave this book to his secretary Ralph Sadleir, along with the Holbein portrait.” The binding is in velvet, either black or blue, over wooden boards and surmounted with silver gilt, jewel encrusted frames nailed to the front and back boards. The velvet has worn away leaving a black silk lining showing. The blog post also describes spectrographic analysis at the Cavendish Lab of the gemstones used in the binding.

The Book of Hours will be on public display in the Wren Library in Trinity until 12 April 2024.