Chance Press

The covers for the Larding book are done – now all that remains is adding the text, since supposedly books are supposed to have some of that inside.

My guess is that the final books will be ready about 6 weeks after the text is ready, which should take another month or two in itself. So, I’m still clinging to the hope that these will be ready by the end of April, but in reality, it will probably be later.

Here’s a pic (deluxe on the left, presentation copy on the right):

I think, as someone who is putting even a few books out into the world, it is useful to have a position on print books versus ebooks. The topic will continue to be debated, but it is inevitable that the terms of the debate will change over time, as technology advances, and the voice that defends print books will get more and more shrill in the face of the “embrace the future”-ists whose side is very clearly winning the battle.

This is not to say that I think that print books will cease to exist –only that the debate will become unwinnable for people who defend print books to the exclusion of ebooks and other electronic media. I think the writing was on the liquid ink screen a few years ago when liquid ink screens hit the market, and “printies” could no longer cite the eye strain that comes from looking at a computer monitor for hours at a time as the smoking gun argument as to why books would always be superior. I think a lot of printies haven’t seen a liquid ink screen up-close before, because it is difficult to acknowledge that they don’t look great – especially compared to your average mass-market paperback.

The main thrust behind ebooks is that they make large amounts of information portable on a small device. This device will continue to develop to the point that a Kindle takes on the comical proportions of a 1980’s cell phone when viewed from a similar future vantage point, but that core drive will never change. As portability and access to incomprehensible amounts of data entrench themselves as the inalienable rights of contemporary culture, it makes less and less sense to decry the rise of ebooks or to adorn them with accusations that they are killing off print books, putting bookstores out of business, and so on.

I hear the position often stated that books are the key gateway to our culture, near-sacred objects that preserve our history and document our existence for future generations. To me, this misses the point – the books merely carry that data. And it’s all data. Now, the emotional engagement with that data in itself is a key aspect of our culture as well. It’s necessary to split the two apart, because it isolates the materiality of the book itself from what the book contains. Not one of the printies’ emotional screeds that I’ve read defends an empty book – every time, the books are the keys to passing on what they contain from generation to generation, but there’s never a reason why this can’t be done electronically, especially when electronically transmitting information becomes the standard method to do exactly this in every other aspect of society.

What do you get from a Kindle when it is turned off? It is a functionless machine whose existence does not justify itself until it is displaying text on the screen. A closed book is more than that – the materiality of the book has the ability to communicate more than just that there is content inside. This is a tenuous distinction, but the cultural history of books (their “place in our culture” trumpeted by the printies) makes it a necessary one – the Kindle has come along as part of a cultural movement based on the potential to do different things with data, more advanced things than anything humanity has conceived of before. When you receive a Kindle in a box, you are receiving the potential to homogenize incredible amounts of print in a single device.

On the other hand, a book will always be tied to the specific data that is contained within. This unbreakable marriage between the exterior device and the interior content creates the emotional attachment to books-as-objects. The specific book becomes the signifier of one text – a favorite story, perhaps – whereas the Kindle is the signifier of all texts. So, can an electronic device that promises totality ever compete on an emotional level with the multitude of cherished specificities contained on a bookshelf?

Probably not, but I am realistic enough to know that emotional reservations are never strong enough en masse to trump the march of technological innovation. Instead of throwing up my hands and running to the printy camp, however, I have come up with my own personal four-word manifesto that sums up how I feel print books can eke out a foothold in a world that is drifting inexorably toward a land of ebooks: make print justify itself. Because it needs to, and quite often, it doesn’t.

The end of the printed wor(l)d isn’t at hand right now. Printies are citing laundry lists of bookstore closures, but pinning this on ebooks is tough. Look at the state of the book industry, the drop-in-the-bucket sales of ebooks versus print books, and the fact that most people don’t spend $250 on books in an entire year, meaning that they aren’t very likely to buy a device for that much that enables them to do something they can do for free by visiting a library, for ten dollars by visiting a Borders & Noble. Instead, I’d look to look at the business decisions of some of the closed bookstores, to see how they managed inventory, engaged with the community, and promoted themselves – since yes, a lot of bookstores are closing, but so are a lot of other businesses, and moreover, a good number of bookstores are thriving as well.

So really, what are printies doing to save the printed word, other than coughing up sky-is-falling scenarios and putting the guilt on anyone who owns a Kindle for the downfall of our shared cultural history? We – lovers of print books (and if this essay suggests I’m not one, the fact that I co-run a small press should be sufficient evidence to the contrary) – need to change the way books are printed and how they are perceived. The corollary to the all-data-in-existence-on-a-thumb-drive world we now live in is the resistant upsurge in crafting and handwork that is visible everywhere. People are turning forgotten hobbies into semi-commercial enterprises selling needlepoint felted animals on Etsy that are even more popular than – gasp – Sony’s robot dog! Letterpress printing is making a huge comeback, with book arts workshops springing up all over the country. And idiots like me are leaving their deskjobs at 5:00 PM to go home and work on small press publishing. The resistance is active and needs to be fed, but it isn’t going to eat garbage.

One printy I read recently talked about the legitimization of his written work manifesting itself in the pile of books he had published – a satisfying material signifier that couldn’t exist in electronic form. I completely understand this, but I think the dark side of book publishing needs to be factored into this too… the remaindered copies on sale for a few bucks, or the creased, worn copies that people didn’t want any more sitting in the dollar bin on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore because the store already had so many that they wouldn’t give it a proper space on the shelf. Books get exalted in the fearmongering that goes on when people start to feel that books as a whole might not exist anymore. But maybe it’s time to admit that not all books are all so great, and that some of them are downright useless as material objects and are only a way to transport some data from one place to another.

I don’t own an e-reader, but I’m certainly not against it, because I see their value. I don’t love every book on my shelf, and I wouldn’t mind if some of them existed on a flash drive instead. If publishers weren’t so difficult to steer, if they could actually recognize new technology as an opportunity rather than a threat, then the publishing business wouldn’t be weaving stories about its own demise at the hands of these awful, awful ebooks. One of the more common bugaboos is the $9.99 maximum retail price for an ebook – a publisher will naturally make less money if $9.99 is the retail ceiling for a hot new book, versus $25.00 for a hardcover. But who does this really hurt? Amazon is going to sell the hardcover for $13.00 anyway, because they have the publisher by the balls and are enforcing a ridiculously low price. Add in the cost of producing the hardcover, warehousing pallets of them, and shipping them, and selling the hardcover through Amazon becomes a loss-leader, with the real profits to be made from a) selling the ebook, which has almost no production costs beyond initial formatting, and b) selling the book at standard wholesale to bookstores, who then have to try to find a way to sell it for full retail when it’s going for half that on the web.

The death of the independent bookstore, then, is not going to come at the hands of the ebook, but at the hands of predatory pricing that has been driving all sorts of independent businesses into the ground for decades now. So how to cope with this and survive as a bookstore that deals exclusively in print books? Make print justify itself. Stock the shelves with books that have to be seen to be appreciated. If a customer’s attitude about a book is, “I don’t care what it looks like, I only care what’s insde,” then print isn’t justifying itself, and the bookstore is fighting a losing fight. But, if the book looks great, feels great, AND has great content, chances are someone is going to buy it straight away, rather than marking it down to buy later from an online retailer. (A quick case study: in the fall of 2008, a comics anthology called Kramer’s Ergot 7 came out – an unspeakably gorgeous 16” x 21” hardcover book that had to be hand bound because of its enormous size. Also enormous was its price tag – $125, although it was much cheaper on Amazon.com. This is a book that could never have the same impact as an ebook, because the size is integral to the experience of reading the comics (sized to mimic the original Sunday page comics of the early 20th century). Additionally, those that bought it from Amazon found that shipping was delayed so that they didn’t get it in time for the holidays, and when it did arrive, it was packaged poorly and thus damaged. People posted on message boards about returning their copies and buying copies for full retail from comics shops, because Amazon wasn’t doing a good job fulfilling their orders. And so, the end result is a book that makes print justify itself, while also bolstering the independent bookstore over the gigantic online retailer.)

It’s a process of separating the wheat from the chaff so that books that have no reason to be physical books eventually get converted into ebooks, and books that justify the print format become the main commodity sold in bookstores, alongside ATM-like terminals that offer the texts to people who would prefer to read it on their ereaders. Obviously this is merely my imaginary future, but anyone reading this article is free to steal my idea and set up a bookstore that sells both print books and ebooks – I promise I’ll patronize your business.

What I think it would benefit print culture to move past is the arrogant assumption that any form of print is superior to any form of electronic publishing. I have seen blogs with amazing, artistic designs that publish groundbreaking works of literature, yet for many authors, a small press that prints something on copy paper, Xeroxes it at a copy shop, and slaps some staples on it is a superior publisher to the web counterpart. And I just don’t understand why some presses dutifully churn out book after book on cheap paper, with ugly design, uneven stapled covers, etc. when the same presses could be publishing the work online in a much more attractive format. This isn’t the 1960’s, where self publishing was limited to typewriters and mimeograph machines. The idea of internet as a second-class citizen of the publishing world helps keep printies lazy by suggesting that no matter what they print out, as long as it is on paper, it is more worthy than what’s online. And with that attitude, why wouldn’t ebooks eventually put print books out to pasture?

My goal is to put out books that justify their existence as books. I don’t want to take for granted the idea that printing something is more worthwhile than just hosting content on chancepress.com. I want to sweat over every last detail of the books – even if it means we can only come out with three or four books a year – because I want the materiality of the books to live up to the cultural importance ascribed to books. Ebooks have a place and aren’t going anywhere, but they can never enable a reader’s emotional connection to the content the way a well designed print book can. And my mission as a small press publisher is to get the absolute most I possibly can out of the print medium in order to do that, in order to create something that just can’t be uploaded and converted to computer code without losing the essence of the original book.

It was unofficially sold out a few months ago, but then we rescued some copies that were on consignment at a book store… and now those, too, are sold out.  We may do a second edition of this book, because it has proven to be way more popular than we thought it would be when we printed it.  (Plus, it looks like I’m going to have some lag time in the production schedule while finishing up the text for the Larding book.)

So, if you would like to be notified when the second edition comes out, please let us know by sending an email to books (at) chancepress (dot) com.

Click on the BUY BOOKS! link above or to the right (or right here, you lazy bastard) to check out our new ordering page.  We want to make it as easy as possible for us to get your money, so now you can pay us straight from this site.

Why not order a book just to test it out?

Part of running a small press is working with tools, and that is unquestionably fun.  Most small pressioners could go on at length about tools they would love to possess if they had the money and space (board shear, Vandercook, UV lightbox, awesome homemade silkscreen press, etc.), and as the preceding parenthetical attests, I am no exception.  Here at Chance Press, we use a bunch of manual tools, despite the fact that our books are actually printed with high-tech lasers (and hopefully high-tech droplets of ink in the near future).

While most of our tools are your garden variety craft tools (X-acto knife, bone folder, needle/thread, beeswax lump, pliers, glue brush, etc.), we have amassed some neat tools that this blog post will introduce to the world.  My favorite tools get imaginative names, which I will list here:
-Slicey
-Roundy
-Squeezy
-Printy
and
-Stabby

Slicey is the first tool we owned – a Martin Yale 7000e paper cutter that was a wedding gift from my parents.  It makes trimming the edges of books a breeze, and it can cut through a ream of paper like a hot knife through vegan butter substitute.  The reason the Oulipo book uses illustration board instead of bookboard is that I didn’t want to ruin Slicey’s blade by cutting bookboard, which has bits of abrasive crap insde.  Illustration board (as long as it is acid-free) is okay for thin boards (like the ones I’m using on this book), and it is constructed like thick card stock, making it more blade-friendly.

Roundy is a new tool – a heavy-duty corner rounding press.  For our previous books with rounded corners (the special edition of the Serafini book and the McSweeney’s book), we used a small corner rounding punch, which was a real pain, and very difficult to get even as well.  This has been on our radar for a while, so we’re happy to finally get it in stock.  Now, if you order a book from us that doesn’t have rounded corners, Roundy will provide a snazzy upgrade over the production model for only $15!  (Enough suckers and Roundy will pay for itself!)

Squeezy is another new tool, a book press handmade by me.  While I could have accomplished the same thing with two pieces of wood and some clamps, I wanted a self-contained unit that would be easier to operate and store.  So, I bought two pieces of wood, sanded them down, and covered the inside surface of each piece with spare book cloth (so the wood surface doesn’t mar the book being squeezed), drilled four holes, and glued in four gigantic bolts.  Extra touches include recessed washers (so the nuts don’t dig into the wood over time (TMI)), and a handy handle, which I added because the already-made one that Talas sells has a handle.

Printy is our Gocco printer, which isn’t even ours.  I borrowed it from a coworker and am scared she’s going to need it back, since they aren’t very easy to find in the US anymore.

Finally, Stabby is my triangular straightedge that I bought from an art supply store.  They gave it to me for less than half price, because it had been there for years.  It works when I need a straightedge, and best of all, the point is so sharp that it could stab someone in the brain.  You’ve seen pictures of it in the post about covering boards with bookcloth.  It’s pretty intimidating.

Someone found our site today by googling “What is the opposite of lipogrammatic?”  Hopefully this person was intrigued enough about our Oulipo project to bookmark the site and come back when it’s done to buy a copy.  Thinking about it, though, it occurred to me that very few Oulipian techniques actually *add* something to the text.  They either change something that’s already there (often picking what words to change based on a mathematical formula) or the construction of the text itself is based on some sort of combinatorial principle.  But Larding is one of the only techniques I know of (although I’m sure others are out there) that requires the author to augment a text that already exists in order to create a new, longer text.  So, in a way, finding the Chance Press site may have answered this person’s question.  Hooray!

Since I wasn’t able to find an adequate step-by-step for this process online, I thought I would describe our steps for covering the boards we’re using for our next project.  Also, this will satisfy my need to document even the most banal and uninteresting aspects of our small press.

Tools required:
-X-acto or similar knife
-PVA glue, plus a mixing container
-Straight edge
-Heavy book

1. Cut bookcloth to size – each piece should be 1″ bigger than the board on all sides.

2. Cut the corners off at a 45-degree angle, 1″ on each side.

3. Cut 7/8″ in from each edge of the cut corner.

4. Mix PVA glue and water in a container so the glue is thin enough to spread easily, but not so thin that it runs or drips off the board.  Coat one side of the board in the glue mixture, making sure that the board is entirely covered (including the edges and corners).

5. Place the glued side down in the center of the bookcloth, and put a dot of pure PVA glue on each corner.

6. Fold the triangles you cut into the bookcloth over the board and hold them for 10-20 seconds until they bond.

7. Put a thin strip of glue around the edge of the board (including over the triangles).

8. Fold the edges of the bookcloth over the board one by one – hold them in place until the glue forms a temporary bond.

9. Place a heavy book over the board and put pressure on it for a minute or two.

10. Use a scissors to cut the loose corners, and place the board under weight overnight.

The finished product then looks something like this:

So – there you have it.  If you’re an amateur bookbinder, now you know how to cover an individual board in cloth.  If you’re a devoted Chance Press follower, now you know what the boards on our next project will look like (don’t you think it’s about time you emailed us to request a copy, regardless of how expensive it will be?).  And finally, if you’re a more accomplished bookbinder, now you know how far superior your well-guarded methods are compared to how we do it over in Oakland.

We took the next step forward with the Larding project tonight, choosing the bookcloth we will use for the edition.  The deluxe edition (20 copies) will have charcoal gray paper and very pale green (almost gray) textured cloth-covered boards.  The presentation copies (3 copies) will have grass-green paper and natural cloth-covered boards.  (The green cloth is Japanese Asahi, and the natural cloth is 50% cotton/50% linen Cotlin.)

The cloth should be here in about a week, and then we can get to work covering the boards, which will be the last of the pre-work that we can do before we have to start working on the text.

Bookcloth samples (from swatch books)