Breaking Down the Backlog
Why the backlog exists and why it is a good thing
We’ve heard from a few subscribers who have been wondering why we have such a backlog of books that has built up over the last 18 months. The answer is very simple: after the last set of books were produced and delivered by Bindtech, we had to make a decision about whether to send the next books to them or to hold them and wait until our own bindery was fully operational.
Because we have been dealing with quality issues ever since the spine hubs of POLITICS and ETHICS were not correctly lined-up with the spine hubs of RHETORIC, and because the number and nature of those quality issues was continuing to grow, we were already concerned about the quality of the books we were having bound there. After Vol. I of A SEA OF SKULLS turned up 2mm higher than any of the other four volumes, and the gold foil on the spine of Vol. II was a slightly different color than the previous four volumes, we decided not to have any more books bound there; these were not the only problems we’d observed over the years and the frequency of them was steadily increasing.
We decided to pull the books in the full knowledge that our own bindery was not quite ready yet, since we were still sorting out the optimal way to produce the hubs and to cut out the leathers. And it was absolutely, definitely, and 100 percent the right decision to delay the production of the books in light of three subsequent events.
We learned that Bindtech destroyed all of the printed signatures for the Junior Classics 1-8 without our permission and without our knowledge. We are in the process of arranging to have these replaced so that we can produce another 256 copies of each volume for the Chateau subscription.
As of May 1, Bindtech now holds an effective monopoly position in the USA, one that it has painstakingly acquired over the last 10 years. And it’s no secret that as a general rule, companies with effective monopolies do not tend to be excessively concerned with quality, customer service, or competitive pricing.
BindTech has been growing its national footprint through targeted acquisitions. Today BindTech is the national leader in bookbinding and book finishing services.
While it’s the 7th acquisition in the last 10 years for BindTech, “this one feels different,” COO Chad Dillon admitted. “For 20 years we have battled the likes of Dekker, Kingsport Press, Roswell Bookbinding, Steffen Bookbinders, and Eckhart & Co. To think that they all now sit together under the BindTech umbrella is a testament to the amazing team that we have assembled.”
Dragonsteel recently reported a number of serious quality issues with their EYE OF THE WORLD book which was bound at Bindtech, some of which still do not appear to have not been fully disclosed to the public. We know what they are and how they were caused, but we have not to date seen any acknowledgement of the two most serious problems.
These three reasons are why we not only harbor no regrets about our decision to accept a backlog rather than run the risk of delivering defective books, we are very relieved to have done so. And we think you should be relieved too, despite the obvious annoyance of having to wait longer than expected for the books.
The good news is that we are almost finished binding the third set of DRACULA books, which are the pigskin Library editions. We’re even going a little further with these, as the higher quality of the leather permits us to add an attractive French groove to the spine side of the cover, as you can see in the pigskin leather books we produced for our friends at Tamburn below.
Even though we’re transitioning away from the cowhide we’ve used since the beginning, you can see that the quality of the cowhide books, particularly with the stamping and the hubs, is already superior to what we’ve been delivering up until now.
We currently have five more sets of book blocks already at the bindery ready for binding, and we’ll start on the next print run, DE BELLO GALLICO, as soon as we finish DRACULA and the small number of HYPERGAMOUSE leather editions required for the backers. Other books are being printed and sewn already. We’re planning to complete and ship two print runs per month initially, increasing that to four as soon as we’re confident in the stability of our processes and the level of the quality being delivered.
