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 were continuing to grow, we were already concerned about the quality of the books we were having bound there. And longtime subscribers will surely not forget the incident where none of our finished books were shipped from Bindtech’s warehouse for months. After Vol. I of A SEA OF SKULLS turned up 2mm taller than any of the other four volumes, and the gold foil on the spine of Vol. II was a slightly different color than the gold foil on the spine of the previous four volumes, we decided not to have any more books bound there because these were not the only quality issues we’d observed over the years and their frequency was steadily increasing.

How? Why? This was an early sign that not all was well in the production process.

We finally decided to pull the books from Bindtech 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, among other things. While it would have been easier to simply continue as before, especially since the leathers for four of the books had already been purchased and were in stock there, it would not have been in harmony with our book-binding philosophy. And in hindsight, it was absolutely, definitely, and 100-percent the right decision to delay the production of those books in light of three subsequent events.

1. 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.

2. 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.

   1. BindTech has been growing its national footprint through targeted acquisitions. Today BindTech is the national leader in bookbinding and book finishing services.

   2. 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.”

3. 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 been explained or fully disclosed to the public. We know what they are and we have a pretty good idea of how they were caused, but to date, we have not seen any acknowledgement of the two most serious problems.

Endpapers that are too thin can’t bear the weight of a heavy book block.

The sewing of the book blocks does not appear to have been tight enough.

These three reasons are why we not only harbor no regrets about our decision to accept building up a backlog rather than run the risk of delivering defective books to our supporters, 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 to ship.

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 to go a little further with those, 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 recently 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 from our bindery, particularly as concerns the stamping and the hubs, is already superior to what we’ve been delivering up until now.

An actual, unretouched photo of the new Library edition of DRACULA

A close-up of the Library edition (cowhide)

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 initially planning to complete and ship two print runs per month, increasing that to four as soon as we’re confident in the reliability of the processes we’ve established and the level of the quality being delivered.

DE BELLO GALLICO is next. This is a mockup showing the front cover design.