BINDERY: De Bello Gallico

The Castalia History book is in the process of being bound

A few days ago, we mentioned that we would soon be able to provide more accurate images of Julius Caesar’s DE BELLO GALLICO, the Castalia History work that is being bound at the Castalia Bindery this week. Next week both it and DRACULA will be shipped over to the US warehouse for global distribution, so there is a very good chance that History and Library subscribers will have their next book the first two weeks of July.

These things take time. We are not producing Amazon ebooks here. Unfortunately, due to the impatience of some of the non-subscribers who clearly didn’t understand that our putting a book on sale for non-subscribers is not synonymous with the book actually being available for shipping, we will no longer be offering sales to non-subscribers before the books have reached the warehouse. We’re working on a system that will permit subscribers to do so, but until that is available, we cannot put the additional 50 or so books that remain in the print run on sale.

UPDATE: We are working on a solution with NDM Express. Details to follow in a future post.

Once the cases were complete, we were able to begin the foil stamping. The design of DE BELLO GALLICO is a little complicated due to all of the intricate leaves that make up the perimeter frame, but the stamping on the pigskin was very clean, with no visible pinholing.

The bookbinders have become increasingly adept at stamping an entire print run without significant errors. Each case is examined for visual defects before it is passed for the hubbing process.

The spine hubs on the pigskin are both clean and prominent. We haven’t quite reached the Franklin Library standard yet, but we are observably making progress in that direction. This is a thinner volume than DRACULA, so you can see that it required a different spine tool. We have a complete set that ranges from fairly thin to wide enough to accommodate an 800-page monster. The image below is just the case, not the complete book; you can tell even without being able to see the gilded pages because it lacks the French groove that we now incorporate into most of the books we bind.

Below is an updated mockup made with the actual front stamp design, the actual spine design, the correct spine hub positioning, the correct color of the leather, and the bindery’s signature 10mm French groove. We should have photographs of the real books available early next week.

As you have probably noticed, we are now fully operational and are actively reducing the backlog at a rate of 2-3 books per month. While we are very eager to eliminate the backlog and even get ahead of our subscription schedule, we absolutely will not risk sacrificing any quality in order to do so. And for those who might question why we elected to stop manufacturing at the previous bindery before ours was operational, I encourage you to review the pictures at this link. Keep in mind that happened one year after we made our decision.

The book blocks for THE HISTORY OF THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, LOSING MILITARY SUPREMACY, and THE HISTORY OF FLORENCE are already in the bindery and will be the next books bound.