About Interested in bookbinding, drawing, illumination, marbling, watercolor. Self-taught bookbinder. OPEN for new commissions as the last projects are almost complete. Do bear in mind that between a full time job and binding my own favorites, it usually takes several weeks for me to complete your projects. Bookbinding materials - bookcloth for the spine, paper for the boards. Fanbinding commission form Original work commission form
Bookbinding materials - bookcloth for the spine, paper for the covers
Application forms
Fanbinding commission form ⁂ Original work commission form
The post below is from a reblog I did as @valiha on a post by veliseraptor; I’m reposting it here as a reference on fanbinding, commissions and personal practice. Other binders will have different practices. I will put it after a cut as it got rather long!
When it comes to the costs associated with binding a book on your own, it can vary greatly depending on the length of the fic, the amount of paper, toner, cover & other materials, as well as time spent/cost of labor. I’d say the cost of the finished book might be anywhere between $50 - $200 and more, not including shipping. If one is to accept commissions, does one charge just for the materials, or for the labor as well? Or materials + shipping? Materials + shipping + a fraction of the cost of labor/full cost of labor?
Most of the books I did were personal copies, because I spend the whole day in front of the computer at work, and I read a lot of fic at home. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, so I wanted to read them in book form. If you have a hobby, then naturally you will cover all the costs yourself. Other books were gifts to authors, so I was happy to take on the associated costs. (I want to emphasize that authors are in no way obligated to send anything back, whether it’s money or materials. They have also spent countless hours of unpaid labor, producing something I enjoyed enough to want to repay them in some way.)
But even when fanbinders do take on commissions, they’re not for profit, and are often at cost, simply because charging realistic prices for materials and labor would result in amounts that would make your head spin. As an example, I’m currently working on personal copies of a series which is over a million words long, and is a WIP - how does one charge for that? In fact, let’s do an experiment using the numbers from https://www.damienelliott.com/1-million-words-ready-to-copy-and-paste-lorem-ipsum/:
Statistics generated by 1000000 words of text:
typesetting 1000000 words = 6830395 CWS = 1796 pages x $3.00 per page* = $5,388.00
Calculations based on that:
printing (ex. FedEx) = 1796 pages x $0.49** = $880.04 binding ~ 20 hours x $7.25*** = $174.00 materials (average) = $25.00 shipping (average) = $25.00 Total = $6,492.04
* typesetting prices range from $3-5 ** other places may offer cheaper or higher rates, or it might cost you more or less to print on your own personal printer *** US federal minimum wage, according to https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage
(materials and shipping are average; as with printing, the cost might be higher or lower depending on many factors)
So in the end, the books we make will either be personal copies, gifts, or will have a price that an individual binder has decided will be fair. To many others these prices might seem excessive, and they might accuse fanbinders of trying to make a profit, but… (points up). Like I said, we’re more than happy to share our knowledge; but if one doesn’t have the time or inclination to do this, then they should be aware of the associated costs and other issues (e.g. author permissions etc.) and communicate clearly with the fanbinder. These are handbound, bespoke items, not comparable to POD services. Those may indeed cost $30-50, and the services may impose restrictions on what they’re willing to print.
Sorry this got so long! It’s just that I’ve been seeing more and more people being surprised by these costs, and I wanted to clarify things. This has been my personal experience; those by other binders will vary.
I'm sewing headbands on a book tonight and then casing it in, and will do the same for the last one tomorrow.
In the meantime, I've started uploading my marbled papers on RedBubble and Ko-fi, so if you are interested in having an item of your own with one of my paper designs, or downloading a scanned sheet to use for your own binding, the links are: Ko-fi and RedBubble.
You may use the printable download to make your own item; do not re-sell the actual digital file on other websites.
Bookbinding materials - bookcloth for the spine, paper for the covers
Application forms
Fanbinding commission form ⁂ Original work commission form
The post below is from a reblog I did as @valiha on a post by veliseraptor; I’m reposting it here as a reference on fanbinding, commissions and personal practice. Other binders will have different practices. I will put it after a cut as it got rather long!
All the commissions have been fulfilled and my short vacation is nearly over, so I will be able to take on more bindings starting on Monday. I am also available for other products: sketchbooks, journals, illumination and marbling.
For the last binding update, the marbled papers are more dominated by the blue color, but they still have some traces of violet, black and orange.
Here you can see how larger amounts of blue were dropped on top of the other colors, which had been manipulated with a wooden tool, and pushed them away to create larger pools on the surface of the carrageenan bath.
This copy also sports violet and beige endbands, and a white ribbon.
These are all the projects I have for this update. There will be a couple more in the days to come, after which I'll be free to do more. Two are already in the completed textblock stage, and are only waiting for the choice of papers and cloth before they can be cased in.
The second update also uses my own marbled papers, this time in darker colors. This book was made in two copies, with slight differences in color choices for marbled papers.
For this copy, I used black, blue, violet and orange ink and did some slight manipulation with a wooden tool to get them to produce some interesting interaction effects. The bookcloth for these copies was Savanna black, and endbands were again sewn on single leather core with violet and beige crochet thread.
The paper is, as usual, Fabriano Ivory, and the ribbon is white.
This image is a nice closeup of how the endbands were sewn, and the variation of color in the crochet thread.
I’ve finally found some time to upload the photos of a couple of finished commissions, and since my vacation is coming up I’ll be able to take up more bindings of fics as well as journals - both for myself and for others. This first half of the year has been absolutely brutal when it came to work.
I also need to update all my info, so that it’s in order for the second half of the year. Here is the latest binding:
The papers I'm using are my original marbled papers, made with acrylic paints light blue, violet, and gold on a white paper. The first color dropped on the carrageenan bath was gold followed by blue and violet so that I would get gold veins on the surface of the white paper once it was pulled from the bath.
The bookcloth used was Savana powder blue, if I remember the name of the color correctly, and the endbands are handsewn using violet variegated crochet thread in combination with beige crochet thread I also use for sewing the textblock. They were sewn on single leather core.
The book also has a single white ribbon, and it's printed on A4 Fabriano Ivory paper. The size of the finished book is A6 or quarter letter. It's a great size for a shorter fic or a collection of shorter fics because it sits nicely in your hand and makes for an enjoyable read.
Recently I mentioned that a lot of the requests that have been coming in have been for several of the same fics (e.g. Manacled, Isolation, Breath Mints and Battle Scars) when I thought most of the requests would be unique requests.
This has made me rethink my approach to the whole process, which has so far included expenses for typesetting and labor. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t mind doing a fic more than once, but in that case I cannot spend time developing a unique typesetting for everyone who expresses interest.
What I’ll do instead is have a list of plain, pre-typeset works with a lower fee you can choose instead. I’ll still continue sending the full breakdown of the costs involved for both the labor and the materials, but the final total will be discounted. The payment will still be half upfront, half after mailing the work.
If you’d like something special to be done with the typesetting, we’ll discuss that before you commit. You can also request other bindings (sketchbooks, journals, your original writing, etc.), as well as digital downloads of marble papers, and Persian illumination.
During the next few days I’ll post a selection of the bindings completed so far - the last one was mailed this previous week, and I look forward to seeing it in their owner’s hands :)
To make it easier for me to collect the information I will need, I’ve created two Google forms, one for fanbindings and the other for original work. The links can also be found in the sidebar, in the about section. They’ll be adapted as needed.
It took me quite a while to photograph and crop all the marbled papers I made this year and the last, but that’s finally done and uploaded to the bookbinding materials folder. You can access them directly by going to the Marbled papers folder.
I am planning to edit them further and tag them according to their style, colors and type, but for now they’re all together in one location. Once you open it will probably be clear both what my favorite style was this year, as well as some favorite colors. :)
I’m also going to put up the links to fanfic and original work commissions; I’m doing some reorganization on how that’s gonna be done. Oh and I also need to post photos of the latest work I mailed last week.
Wow, so many new photos of marbled papers have been taken tonight during Eurovision! It's gonna take me a while to edit them, upload to the Google drive, and post here. At last count there were 150 photos
Things at work are winding down, and oh my god have they been a little crazy for a while! I’m now back on track with my schedule, several books have been mailed or will be mailed on Monday, but I will have to rework some things when it comes to what’s gonna be available. I’m looking into Google forms or switching to Ko-fi instead of DMs here on Tumblr as contact points.
I’m also streamlining my typesetting workflow so that I can go through a text more quickly and bind it into a book, since I never know when I’ll get a 200-page text from work that I’ll have to proofread at home. The average time for me to complete your request will be 3-4 weeks at minimum. I will do my best to have it ready before then, but cannot guarantee it. Work has to take precedence.
I’ve also been thinking about and talking to other binders about what to do with increasing requests for binding several popular fics. When I started this profile, the expectation was that most requests would be different fics, and I was fine with charging labor for them. A possibility for multiple prints is to offer a bare-bones, print-ready typesetting at a lower price vs. the usual process of sending proofs to commissioners at a regular price. Will need to mull that over...
Good news, good news! After plenty of setbacks which included sleeples nights worrying over workplace, a mutinous printer and a worldwide lack of paper, as well as a blood sacrifice, I am finally completing the big fic two separate folks requested within weeks of each other. The printer is delivering the final pages, I’m sitting here folding them with my trusty bonefolder, and setting each pile aside.
Last time I did this I ended up sewing several signatures of one volume out of order, so I’ll be reprinting those pages and re-sewing them. I am now keeping a close eye on the order of each signature.
I also had some time to give a short presentation on paper marbling, and in the process make a few more papers available for covers. The next order of business is this:
If you’ve contacted me before about binding some books for you, lets touch base again now that my work schedule is back to normal, just to confirm if you’re still interested or you’ve gone in another direction. Things should be running much more smoothly this time around. It’s a good opportunity to also discuss paper choices so I can enter them into my records (this is so I know what materials to prepare for whom).
The very next day after I wrote this, it was as if all hell broke loose at work. I should learn not to utter the words “xy project is about to be over!”, otherwise Murphy’s law will rear it’s ugly head and all hell would break loose.
It’s now past 4 a.m. and after I’ve answered all the neglected asks (with my sincerest apologies) I will go to bed, since Sunday is going to be a very busy day...
Hey folks, just a note to say I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth, I was swamped with things at work recently that should have been done by the IT dev team, so very suddenly I’ve had to start learning some new, complicated things. If we were in the middle of a conversation, and you haven’t heard from me in a while, that’s why. I will get back to each of you individually.
I can finally say that the bg fic I was binding for two different people is finally complete, and the last book is currently drying in the press. It has been an enormous undertaking, and involved the volumes being reprinted at least once for each person (not a small thing when the volumes are nearly a 1000 pages each), my printer drum being replaced, my toner being depleted twice, and a few sleepless nights as I was trying to maneuver the headbands into behaving.
Throughout it all the two people who commissioned the fic have been incredibly patient, and I really appreciate it. Unfortunately things have to take a setback when additional things get handed to me at work, but hopefully without jinxing it I think I can say the worst is over and I can get back to things that had been in various stages of preparation, including the ones I’m doing for myself. :fingers crossed:
Good news, good news! After plenty of setbacks which included sleeples nights worrying over workplace, a mutinous printer and a worldwide lack of paper, as well as a blood sacrifice, I am finally completing the big fic two separate folks requested within weeks of each other. The printer is delivering the final pages, I’m sitting here folding them with my trusty bonefolder, and setting each pile aside.
Last time I did this I ended up sewing several signatures of one volume out of order, so I’ll be reprinting those pages and re-sewing them. I am now keeping a close eye on the order of each signature.
I also had some time to give a short presentation on paper marbling, and in the process make a few more papers available for covers. The next order of business is this:
If you’ve contacted me before about binding some books for you, lets touch base again now that my work schedule is back to normal, just to confirm if you’re still interested or you’ve gone in another direction. Things should be running much more smoothly this time around. It’s a good opportunity to also discuss paper choices so I can enter them into my records (this is so I know what materials to prepare for whom).
Some news! The new laser toner cartridge has arrived, so I'll be reprinting the 2nd volume of the large book. I had gone through the pages to see if anything could be salvaged; unfortunately almost every page has unsightly streaks. This has cemented my decision to keep the laser printer for shorter FICS, but get an ink tank for - let's call them behemoths (affectionate).
On the other hand, I went for my third vaccine today, and my arm is sore and I have a slight fever, so I won't be able to reprint it all just yet. The important thing is I'm getting there.
Universe, pls no more throwing unexpected things at me ok? Gotta keep my word.
I tried shaking the toner to get more pages out of it but not working :( ugh come on, not more delays! What the hell is it with these past couple of months? I haven't been able to keep to any schedules. Am I jinxing myself by saying this thing will be done by this time? 😭
