First, we received a reminder of why having our own bindery is absolutely necessary when the fourth and fifth books of Arts of Dark and Light shipped from the US bindery.
We don’t know precisely why the fourth book is 2mm taller than the others, and the fifth book is 1mm taller and has a slightly darker gold foil on the spine, but we’re quite confident that it has something to do with the most experienced employee there retiring. It appears we are shifting our production at just the right time, because while these little mistakes can happen from time to time, they should not be randomly popping up after more than 30 books have been produced.
It indicates an element of production carelessness that is unacceptable to us, as we are actively seeking to improve our production quality, not simply maintain it at the present level.
These books are among the last books that will be produced with the Italian cowhide leather that we’ve been using from the start. DRACULA, LOSING MILITARY STRATEGY, and one other book will utilize it, as well as series books like METAPHYSICS, A GRAVE OF GODS, and THE JUNIOR CLASSICS Vols IX and X.
The reason is that we just took delivery of 1,970 pounds of high-quality pigskin leather that will finally allow us to approximate the old Franklin Library standard rather than that of Easton Press.
If you ever wanted to know what a near-ton of boxed leather looks like, well, there you are. We now have enough for 15 different print runs in ten different colors, and even better, the experiment we asked the supplier to run to provide us with five custom colors they didn’t previously carry passed muster as well.
We requested a royal purple, a navy blue, a white, a medium red, and a dark forest green, and they turned out even more accurately than we usually manage to achieve with our custom goatskin colors.
The move to pigskin necessitates us improving our leather-cutting game, so we’re building an ad hoc cutting system with a laser that will permit us to move the pigskin around underneath the laser’s working area. There is a better and more efficient system available, but it is considerably more expensive, so we’ll make do with our ad hoc system for the time being.
The upshot is that when the new machine arrives in mid-October, we could, in theory, be able to cut out all the necessary hides and make all the covers for a Library print run in a single day. This is why we’re not attempting to do anything except finish off the two volumes of the History of Byzantium until the new machine arrives.
If you are a Libraria Castalia subscriber and you don’t know the discount code, please contact subs@castalialibrary.com.
For those who prefer cowhide, there are also 16 copies left of the 696 print run of the Library edition.
For questions about subscription status and billings: subs@castalialibrary.com
For questions about shipping and missing books: castaliashipping@gmail.com
I shall cherish them all the more knowing the incompetent suffered. "First edition. Slight discoloration, blood of minions."
Thank you Vox. I SO enjoy the quick glimpses into how to build a book bindery and amazingly beautiful books. I'll likely never afford another 'bound' book -- "Pride and Prejudice" is stellar!
But 'watching' you and your army building a high-end production business is motivating and encourages me to keep going!