Chance Press

Dig some photos. And take stock of the fact that, by my estimation, each one of these books involves around 18 hours of labor. Dang I’m proud of these. Hope you like ‘em!

Here it is, in full hardcover glory, sporting boards covered with custom-printed museum canvas.

And here, standing on its hind legs like a little Rory Calhoun.

A pop-up! Skinman be poppin' up! I will detail the painstaking process of making these in a future post - including the delicate part when I cut around the crotch area.

All images are printed on heavy cardstock and individually tipped into the book.

Just like the trade edition, this book is two-sided. Open the other side and a fold-out archival giclee print greets you.

More tipped-in images.

And let's not forget the ORIGINAL PAINTING in each book!

And finally - the slipcase that lovingly clothes these dapper bastards.

Price is $300. There is a waiting list, and the edition of 10 is almost sold out, so email us if you want one!

At this point, I had made the covers and covered the inside boards with black cloth, but the outside boards were still exposed. Rather than covering them with plain bookcloth, I decided to use inkjet canvas (basically, it’s heavyweight canvas with a special coating you can print on, so the final product has the look and texture of a canvas painted with oil paints). The heavy weight of the canvas presented some problems, though – most irritatingly, it kept jamming in the printer, which meant that I had to secure each piece to a carrier sheet that would stiffen it and help it travel all the way through the printer without bunching up or messing up the movement of the print head. After the canvas was done printing, I took all the pieces into the garage and gave each one a healthy coat of spray varnish so that the ink wouldn’t rub off or smudge during the binding process (which can be pretty rough on cloth).

The second problem with the canvas is that it is much heavier than normal bookcloth, and the toothy inner side (as opposed to the paper-backed cloth I normally use) doesn’t play well with adhesive films. Both the weight and texture mean that the only way to attach it to the boards is with a wet glue, rather than a pressure sensitive film. Again, I use BEVA Gel as a bookbinding glue, since it is more forgiving than traditional glues (PVA or wheat paste), and the low water content keeps warping to a minimum. I don’t use glue unless I have to, though, since it takes much longer to work with. (All you conservators out there are probably aghast that I use pressure sensitive films at all, but the stuff I normally use – Gudy O – is REALLY GOOD, just trust me, okay?)

So now, the entire outer cover is done. Oh right – I forgot to mention – that includes an ORIGINAL PAINTING by Skinner in each book. That’s right. I think the $300 price tag on these is starting to seem downright cheap!

Here are some pictures:

Taping each sheet of canvas to carrier sheets in order to run them through the printer

Printing printing printing (with some Carol Es product placement)

Varnishing the canvas out in the varnishing studio/garage

The final cover

ORIGINAL PAINTING!

ORIGINAL PAINTINGS!

In this installment, we cover the incredibly interesting process of putting black cloth on books. You might remember from the previous installment that this hardcover has an M shape, which creates the problem of the book being kind of floppy. This is why I made stiff spines for the two sections that will face out when the book is on the shelf. Still, though, the fact that this is basically two books held together in the center with a piece of cloth means that the two spine sections will not sit neatly together all of the time. In an effort to address this, I found some 1/32″ thick magnets that I could use to hold these two sections together, and I put them underneath the black cloth as I assembled the binding.

The next step was to drive these babies up to Sacramento so Skinner could do his thing. What’s “his thing?” I’ll wait to unveil the results until I get the books back from him. In the meantime, I need to get printing so that I can finish covering the hardcover boards once I get the books back. Yes, rather than just using some bookcloth, I’m printing Skinner’s heart/skull pattern on specially treated canvas. It’s gonna be cool.

Maaaaagnets!

the books, covered in evil black cloth

the man himself, ready to have his evil way with the books

After planning this book for what seems like ever, taking some time off to recharge after burning myself out this fall, and ordering a bunch of supplies, it’s time to get down to business and make the 12 copies of the deluxe edition of Some are Young and Some are Free by Skinner.

In this post, you can feast your eyes on the shell of the book – and, as if by magic, future posts will depict the evolution of this thing into an actual book that you can buy! I’ll say off the bat that this is the most ambitious project that we have tried, and that I absolutely cannot wait to see how these come out when they’re all done.

So – unlike the trade edition, which is a Z-binding, the deluxe edition is more like an M-binding – this way, the two sections of the book will sit opposite each other, with a special surprise to be revealed in future posts sitting in the middle. After I made the first mockup, Justine convinced me that these books needed firm spines in order to keep them from becoming all floppy. Most of the hardcovers we do have no spine, but with a larger, heavier book, the spine is necessary to keep everything tight. So, as you can see in the pictures below, I assembled the books by gluing Fabriano Murillo paper (the thickest cardstock available) to the boards to create the spines. I made 24 “standard” books and then joined each pair with a piece of bookcloth to create the M shape.

Just a note – the boards here are Davey Red Label, which is extra dense and heavy, and I’m using the heaviest grade available. I want this book to be HEAVY.

The nice thing about the name “Chance Press” is that it’s easy to remember, and it is simple. The not-so-nice thing about it is that other people may end up using the same (or a similar) name. Bill at Bottle of Smoke Press probably doesn’t need to worry about this.

Recently, an anthology of comics by women (“Womanthology”) raked in an unprecedented $109,000 on Kickstarter. There is a minor controversy brewing right now because the publisher doesn’t plan to pay the contributors (who, it should be noted, all agreed to donate their work to the anthology in advance). Instead, she wants to use the money to start a comics imprint called “Chance Comics.” With 100K in startup funds, I have no doubt that this imprint will bury us in the search results under scores of Amazon.com listings for the books, as well as her own website, and the general chatter about the new imprint – which should be helped by the controversy currently being stirred up by Womanthology.

I’ll just go on record that no one who publishes with Chance Press will ever hear a pitch about donating work to us for the exposure. We generally pay in contributor’s copies (currently that means around 20% of the print run, depending on the specifics of the individual edition), because we can’t afford to pay in real money – we’ve sunk at least a few thousand dollars of our savings into the press, and while we break even or make a little profit on each book, that inevitably gets invested back into equipment and other material needs not specific to one project.

We’ll keep plugging along as “Chance Press,” since we’re in it for the long haul. If other people end up using the name too, there isn’t much we can do about it (besides sue them, I suppose), and hopefully the diversity and quality of our publications will keep intact the identity of “Chance Press” books that we’ve worked so hard to build. And speaking of Chance Press books, tomorrow I will finally drop the details of our three fall releases, all of which comprise the most exciting book launch in our short history.

Who wants a drink?

Normally, we don’t accept submissions, since we like to spend our time working on books rather than reading and responding to things. However, there are a couple openings in our schedule for early 2012 that we’re trying to fill.

The first project we want to do is the next installment in our widely respected Chance Press Research series. What we’re looking for: well-written, extensively researched, and above-all READABLE essays about literary or cultural topics. Something that sheds new light on a well-known author or makes a persuasive case for a lesser-known writer/artist/musician/etc. We don’t want another essay about gender relations in Joyce’s Ulysses. Or anything that uses the word “diagesis.” Check out our past Chance Press Research titles for examples of what we have published in this series.

The second project is a good, old-fashioned fiction book. No novels! Max page count is 60, less is better. Short stories or one longer story. We’re pretty wide-open on this one – if you think it’s good, we just might as well.

Notes:
- Send submissions in an email attachment using Microsoft Word to books (at) chancepress (dot) com.
- Previously unpublished work only.
- Include a cover letter! At least tell us who you are and a little bit about yourself.
- Be clear about anywhere else you have submitted work that you’re sending to us.
- We will answer yes or no ONLY. We publish what we like, and our taste should have no bearing on your own opinion of your writing.
- We will answer every submission – if you haven’t heard from us yet, we haven’t read your submission yet.
- When you see an update at the top of this post that says submissions are closed, then submissions are closed. Otherwise, fire away.

Also – keep in mind that we’re swamped right now with the slate of publications we have coming out this fall/winter. We may not get to your submission for a few months, during which time you may feel free to submit it elsewhere AS LONG AS YOU TELL US YOU’RE DOING IT. And thanks in advance for submitting!

Last you heard, we were working on a hardcover, deluxe edition of the Inkpoems book by MJP. Because the paper MJP uses for these works of art is so distinctive, I wanted to use it to cover the boards of the hardcover, making it the dominant component of the binding. Originally I thought I would use it more as an accent, since my idea was to include an original ink poem with each copy as well. However, one of my pet peeves in art vs book collecting is how individual pieces of art are valued so much more highly than art that is attached to a book… that the uncouth book drags the spiritually pure artwork down to the level of a commercial object. (For evidence of this, refer to the results of a recent auction of work by Charles Bukowski in which a painting that literally looks like it was finger painted in diarrhea sold for over $10,000, while a drop-dead mint copy of his most collectible book (Post Office) with a much more attractive painting tipped in sold for $6,600.) So, rather than using the 300-year old paper as a design accent, I decided to make it the centerpiece of the book and then ask the artist to paint an original ink poem on each cover. This way, the art isn’t a bonus or an add-on (or something you can carefully separate, frame, and later sell at auction) – it IS the cover. Take that. This book is for book collectors, not art collectors.

The problem, however, is that the paper is fragile. Normally, to bind a book like this, I would use Gudy adhesive film, since, as I’ve previously noted, I’m not particularly worried about Gudy breaking down chemically and staining the cloth over time, since it is very stable (and the bookcloth we use has an acid-free paper lining, providing an extra layer of material between the adhesive and the cloth). In this case, though, I don’t want a pressure-sensitive adhesive anywhere near the old paper. It would probably be fine, but I’m not taking any chances with it – it is remarkable that it has survived 300 years in the first place, and so I only want it to come into contact with materials that meet the highest conservation standards.

That being said, I didn’t really want to start slathering it with glue, either. My glue of choice for this (and really for anything that requires glue from now on) is Beva Gel. I like Beva Gel for a few reasons. First, unlike most PVA formulations, Beva Gel (which is an EVA formulation) has a very low water content, meaning it forms an adhesive layer that sits on top of the material without really being absorbed into it. This can make it difficult to work with, since it dries very quickly, but this property has some advantages as well. It is less messy to work with, since it performs best if left to dry momentarily before being applied and then being brayed heavily after application. Because it is partially dry before application, it can be repositioned without making a mess – and if it dries too much, it can be reactivated (although not fully removed) with heat. But, like I said, given the fragility and thickness of the paper, I didn’t want to start spreading thick glue all over it, fearing that some of the adhesive would be absorbed inevitably, and imagining some detrimental effects that this would have on the appearance of the paper. Also, covering boards with paper is rough on the paper – this is less of an issue with strong paper purpose-made for art applications than it is when you’re using paper made for commercial books in the 1700s. Although this paper is nice stuff – fairly thick rag paper with a really nice feel to it – I was still worried about the paper splitting and cracking where it is folded over the edges of the boards.

So, to add an absorptive layer to the paper and to provide tensile strength, I selected a tissue-weight Japanese Tengujo paper as a lining. I didn’t want something that would be too thick, since that would make the end result too thick and potentially difficult to work with, and I like Japanese papers for their strength – they are often much stronger and much lower weights than Western paper. To join the two layers, I used a heat activated Beva 371 film with a 1ml thickness. This way, there is a permanent, flexible bond between the paper and the lining that further boosts the tensile strength, since it is an actual EVA film and not an adhesive substrate like many films. (In other words, when Beva 371 film is hot, it acts like glue, but when it cools, it feels like very thin SaranWrap.) After letting the adhesive cool, I trimmed the paper to size and applied the glue in order to bind the books.

For the spine, I used Genji bookcloth, which is a Japanese handmade cotton/rayon cloth that is one of the most high-quality bookcloths available. It has a sheen that isn’t really visible in the photos below, but rest assured it looks very cool.

Here are some photos:

Placing the page under the adhesive film

Ironing the adhesive onto the paper

Multiple sheets with the adhesive layer applied

The Tengujo before it is applied to the paper

Ironing the Tengujo onto the paper

The lined sheets, ready to be trimmed and used to cover boards

Final binding, ready to be sent to the artist to be adorned with an original ink poem on the cover

So, what have your fine friends at Chance Press been up to the past couple months? Well, with the restoration of Carol Es’s books completed, we’ve been focusing on our next two projects, which we’re excited to announce:

Coming (hopefully) in June of this year is Ink Poems by Michael Phillips (MJP to you and me). MJP has been cranking these out for the better part of a decade using 100+ year-old paper (sometimes as old as 400 year-old paper) and hand-ground inks to create genre-bending works of cartoon/poetic art. Examples litter the eponymous website: www.inkpoems.com. MJP was warm to the idea of collecting some of our (meaning Justine and my) favorites into a book, so that’s just what we’re doing – 30 ink poems (digitally printed in full color), plus a new introduction for the book, inked by hand by the man himself. 50 or so copies will have Gocco-printed covers – the “trade” edition, if you will. Another 20 will have handmade covers with scraps of 100 year old paper applied in a decorative configuration, plus hand-lettered titles by the author. Finally, we’re doing 8 hardcover copies covered in 300 year-old paper, each of which will have an original ink poem on the cover. These will be ridiculously deluxe, as you’ve come to expect. (Check back  for a post with process photos…)

The second book we’re releasing – hopefully sometime in July – is the first published work of an author we both feel eminently confident is going to move on to a fabulous career as a cartoonist and illustrator (not to mention that elusive, nebulous title of “fine artist”). Brett Harder is his name, and his skill is, not to put too fine a point on it, jaw-dropping. Here’s the thing about Brett – I didn’t expect him to be any good. He got in touch with me over my blog after reading my Serafini article, saying that he began researching Serafini because some people had seen his work and asked him if Serafini was an influence. Now, I’ve become pretty jaded to this line, since I’ve been contacted by more than one person who claims to ‘channel’ Serafini, but instead only channels something that looks like the bottom of the sink after I do the dishes. I was bored, though, and so I clicked over to his website to see what he had. And. I. Was. Blown. Away. The Serafini influence is definitely there, although calling it an ‘influence’ is unfair to Brett, since he was unaware of Serafini at the time he was working on the book we are going to publish, titled Furlqump. Even more remarkable is that Brett is a young fellow – an exciting prospect considering where his talent will be with 10, 20, 30 more years of experience. I don’t really think of the books we publish as investment pieces (although I would be very happy for our collectors if our books did appreciate in value), but this one is an exception, since I can all but guarantee that Brett is going to move onto larger publishers and wider audiences, leaving this as the “lost” first edition of his first book that people are buzzing about on message boards years in the future.

So what about it? We’re printing it digitally, in full color in an edition of 100 copies, although we will do another printing of 100 if the initial run sells out. We’ll do a run of 26 hardcovers printed entirely using archival inks for the best possible image quality (take THAT, commercial publishers!) that will be signed (hopefully with a little sketch), and for the die-hards, an amazing, heretofore unseen (except in my own head) binding concept I’m calling a “triple hardcover” that includes an archival print on museum-quality paper. This edition will be printed as close to actual-size as possible, meaning that it will measure around 11″ tall by 9″ wide, printed entirely using archival inks. Obviously it will be limited, so like I always say, let us know if you’re interested so I can mark you down for one. Without diminishing any of our other books, this is really one that you shouldn’t pass up.

What else is going on? Well, we’re doing a little fundraising drive to raise some money to fund the above books, but it isn’t really taking off. If you’re on our email list, you’ll get an email about it shortly – and if the idea of buying stuff from us that isn’t advertised on this site, not available in our store, and only going to be made to fill orders we get through our fundraising promotion (a la Kickstarter), is interesting to you, shoot us an email and we’ll fill you in on the details.

Finally, here is something that Chance Press enthusiasts will like: Justine and my Mother’s Day gift to my mom. One of the benefits of birthing a small press publisher is the possibility that, 30 years down the line, you get a hand-bound hardcover portfolio with archival prints of your son’s wedding printed on museum-quality rag paper. This little number is covered in Asahi book cloth with 300-year old paper for the spine (lined with starched bookcloth so it won’t rip in half), and the interior paper is Fabriano Tiziano. The prints are on Moab Entra Rag Bright 310gsm paper. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

As a follow-up to my post about archival materials, I thought I’d write about fixing up Scribbles in a Sandstorm. Avid readers may recall that the problem we faced was that a particular kind of tape we used had some undesirable effects on paper – namely, that it turned paper yellow. I’m glad we caught this after a few months, since for the most part, we have been able to remove the tape wherever it was used on paper and replace it with a true archival adhesive (something called “Beva Gel”, which is most commonly used by professional art conservators). Thankfully, the tape hasn’t been in place long enough to ruin either the book itself or the individual prints, although it has left its very pale yellow mark nonetheless. We have been careful to remove all trace of the adhesive residue from the paper so that chemicals in the tape won’t continue the degradation process, and luckily due to the design of the book, these yellow marks get covered up when we re-adhere the prints into the book with Beva Gel.

One note: in my last post on the subject, I described the process of separating pages that have been stuck together: using a spatula or flat knife, you carefully separate the pages and then use an eraser to remove the adhesive residue. Unfortunately, in this case that process didn’t work so well. First, I am not a professional conservator, and so there is the problem of my skill level – it is really difficult not to pierce one of the pages you are trying to separate… and even if you are able to avoid doing that, it is next to impossible to separate the two pieces without some pretty significant handling marks. (There’s a reason why being a conservator is something that takes years upon years of study and practice.) Second, we’re not dealing with tape that has become brittle or lost its strength over the years – the tape we used for this book is still incredibly strong, and it’s also very gummy (and around 0.5mm thick) – so the spatula or conservator’s knife gets gummed up in the adhesive, which makes separating the two pages even more difficult.

For this reason, we made the choice to use a solvent to help release the paper from the adhesive. After some extensive testing, I decided that heptane (sold commercially as “Un-Du” sticker remover) would work well. I researched heptane for many hours as well and found that it is fairly commonly used in the conservation community, unlike other commercial adhesive removers like Goo Gone or similar products. Heptane is a very low-polarity solvent, which means that it doesn’t change the structure of the paper (water, on the other hand, is very high-polarity, which is why it causes paper to warp and buckle). It also evaporates very quickly and is relatively safe (compared to other solvents). Most research I did recommending starting with a low polarity solvent, and if that doesn’t work, slowly increasing the polarity of the solvent (acetone, naphtha, toluene, xylene, etc.) until you get something that does work. Thankfully heptane has worked extremely well, since solvents like toluene are very toxic and also have their own problems – namely “overcleaning,” which means that the solvent cleans the paper beyond its original state, leaving “tide lines” as it evaporates.

The one unknown here is what the heptane-treated paper will look like in 20 years. Looking at the yellow marks the tape has left in a few short months gives me confidence that removing it was necessary, and I can say honestly that I probably would have ruined most of the books if I tried to remove it without the aid of a solvent. For what it’s worth, Un-Du is acid free and photo safe, although those claims are worth almost nothing, as I have learned. Again, the fact that heptane is discussed in conservation literature as a viable product to use in archival applications gives me hope that it won’t turn the paper yellow in 20 years.

So here you go: a photo gallery of restoring Carol’s masterpiece:

This is what the tape looks like before it is adhered to another sheet. For this test, I adhered it to the back of a rejected copy of one of the prints we used in the book.

Now that the paper is down, there is a sandwich (paper on top, tape in the middle, and paper on the bottom). The heptane will need to be applied to both sides in order to remove the tape completely. I apply the heptane sparingly - just enough to get it to soak into the paper where I need it. If it starts to pool, I use the spatula to spread it around.

Carefully, I use the spatula to separate the top layer of the sandwich from the tape. I need to make sure that I am not causing the tape to pull up from the bottom layer of paper, since no heptane has yet been applied there, and trying to lift the tape off would damage the paper.

Now, the top layer has been removed and set aside to dry. A layer of tape remains and will need to be removed from the bottom layer.

I apply heptane to the outside of the paper (opposite the tape). Using a spatula, I coax the edges up and then proceed to very carefully separate the tape from the paper.

For really stubborn sections, I use a conservator's knife. This can be dangerous, though, since it is easy to inadvertently slice right through the paper.

The tape is gone, but now there is an oily stain.

Here is a close-up around 30 minutes later.

And then 24 hours later - no more stain.

We published Dave Donovan as part of our first publication, the poetry anthology A Common Thread. Since then, however, we’ve been wanting to put out a book giving Dave center stage. I am the Circus is that book – a quick burst of four poems pulled from Dave’s past couple years of writing. He’s the kind of writer who doesn’t have a theme or a gimmick – just an unmistakable way of describing the everyday. This is poetry distilled to its essence, with no unnecessary fluff… just bare emotion, the way it should be.

Ordering:

The first edition is limited to 62 copies.
Trade Edition (5o copies): $3.00
Deluxe Edition (12 copies): $12.00

To order, please visit our online store.

Edition Details:

I am the Circus is a hand-sewn single-signature chapbook. The trade edition has a Canson Infinity Mi-Teintes wraparound band printed with Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks. The deluxe edition is sewn in handmade paper wrappers made by Papeterie St-Armand from recycled pulp, adorned by a cover label printed using the same Epson inks, and is signed by the author.

Not to get too sales pitch-y, but the paper for the deluxe edition needs to be seen and felt to be believed – the artist doesn’t use wood-pulp, but instead makes her own pulp using recycled fibrous material, so each sheet is a little different. It is much stronger and heavier than normal paper, almost like a cross between watercolor paper and a flannel shirt.

Pictures: