Iāve been wanting to try bookbinding for a while, and I finally (after years of on and off working on it) finished my first project! So heads up for a long post. I have a lot to say about the process, so feel free to skim for pictures!
Itās for the fanfiction āBlind, But Nowā by aperplexingpuzzle on ao3, @ghirahimbo here. Itās my absolute favorite fanfiction, and one of my favorite books in general. It is a Legend of Zelda fic, based around Skyward Sword and the struggles that come once the battle is won and the journey is complete. Itās Link/Ghirahim, which is a pairing I hadnāt really considered/enjoyed before this, with a blind Link. It's a great pairing, because they work as unexpected mirrors for each other, highlighting the similarities of their roles towards Hylia and Demise.
The writing is absolutely gorgeous. It deals with great symbolism, and the question of whatās left when youāve completed your destiny. How do you live with yourself, and how do you live with others, when everything and nothing has changed?
And, by the way, it fixes plot holes and time travel paradoxes from the game! That is so rare! Time travel is so hard to do right!
For the bookbinding, I.. kind of jumped into the deep end for this by ignoring so much advice. āDonāt start with a big bookā āDonāt start with an important-to-you projectā āDonāt make a black cover, itās easy to have smudges show upā Nope! Iām going to start with my favorite fanfiction, which came out to 643 pages, with black covers!
It took so long, and a large part of that was struggling with my ability to even touch the project. I think I took an unintentional year-long break from it because my brain just said nope. Even with that, it was so much fun. I really enjoyed getting so immersed in the story again, learning about the construction of books, figuring out artwork for it.
I struggled a lot with how to do things. With the increasing popularity of bookbinding thereās a lot of resources, but those resources are on a spectrum of āglue pages together, thatās a bookā to āfollow the precise procedure thatās endured for thousands of years for a reason, you canāt really learn from a tutorial you need to get a feel for the processā. I really wanted to make a good book, both from my love of books growing up and my love of this particular fic, but I also didnāt have access to the ārightā equipment for a lot of parts. So I was stuck trying to interpret what a middle ground looked like, and I ended up bouncing between so many different tutorials. I really lucked out with very few major mistakes that were fairly fixable.
I went with a (I hope Iām remembering the right terminology) sewn binding on short grain paper, with sewn on endpapers that were laminated/made pages. For some reason wheat paste was tripping up my brain, so I stuck to PVA glue.
I also struggled with rounding and backing. I was really determined to make the book as sturdy as I could, so I decided to not stick to my preference for a flat spine/pages. But rounding and backing it felt.. off in ways. I think I kind of half way rounded it, got a little bit of a backing effect, then un-rounded it a bit when it wasnāt feeling right? It was hard to know what to do with it, and it didnāt help that a lot of sources online said that this was a really hard step without the correct equipment.
The biggest issue I had, that luckily was something I could fix, was when a tutorial I was following suggested adding too many layers to the spine. My first book had a spine with the sturdiness, and unfortunately the flexibility, of a rock. It.. would have worked, but I was very disappointed that it wouldnāt open flat. I managed to get the paper layer scraped off, as well as the excess end bands. I really wanted 3 for a red-blue-green theme :( But, Iām happy enough with it as is! The first one has green on the top and bottom, the other has one red and one grey.
Iād intended to use book cloth for the covers, but I got some and discovered that it had a Bad Texture for me. Iād also gotten some paper samples that Iād really liked, so I eventually gave in and went with paper. As much as I want durability, I also need to be able to comfortably touch the book. And some of the paper samples were really cool.
The first cover I did was on a ālinen textureā paper. It has a fairly plain front, with the title and author and a small embellishment, but that was very much what was needed to get myself to start. Plus it fit my silver-on-black theme.
I am not much of an artist, so most of the art is bits and pieces from the games so I could not feel too bad about tracing. I hoped that tracing wasnāt too bad if it was from official game art.
The first bit of that on the cover was Ghirahimās sword for the spine instead of a title. Even with tracing it came out a bit more squat than Iād hoped for, but I was still thrilled with the end result.
For the back, I used Canva to try out some designs, and thatās where I found the mountains. I really hesitated on using them, I wasnāt sure how well the snow would come out, and then I had a really good day for a āfuck it, lets tryā mentality, and it came out great! But wow is lettering hard with a brush.
The second cover threw me a bit. It was a glossy paper that I picked because I wanted to try something a little different for the second book. That was a big part of why I was doing two books, after all! But it turned out, once it was glued to the boards, that pencil wouldnāt show up at all. So I thought I was stuck completely free-handing it.
Somehow that led to me going back to my favorite cover design, that Iād thought I wouldnāt be able to do well enough, because the lack of the ability to outline it first led to more creativity and I used stencils made out of paining tape for the cover. I really liked how that came out, too. I was excited about the dual symbolism of the red string of fate meeting the image of blood on the strings from the Lost Woods scene.
The stencil method made for a lot thicker paint, which gave it a little bit of a tactile effect that I enjoyed. The spacing out of the letters was pretty intimidating, though. I couldnāt get those to work with stencils, and my normal handwriting is.. a bit rough.
The spine was harder than expected, I couldnāt quite get a stencil to work for that fine detail, so I figured out that I could etch fine cuts into it to give a rough outline. The paint lines came out chunkier than Iād like, but the shape is better than the first, and Iām happy with the red gem. I debated adding the gem color to the first book, but it has such an emphasis on the silver and white that I decided not to.
The back is something I had debated even harder than the front of this copy. I had desperately wanted to do something to represent one of the ending scenes from the story, but a combination of my confidence in my art and the nature of the scene (gorgeously written but something that canāt truly be represented by something physical) made me decide to avoid it. At least until I hit one of those āfuck it, Iām doing itā mentalities.
I am very happy with it. It does not and cannot encompass the fullness of the scene, but it represents it well enough, and itās interesting and fun. I had a brief run-in with the fact that paint isnāt as dry as it seems, and a lot of the back peeled off when I had it in a press overnight, but it was easy enough to fix!
For the endpapers, the first one has some paper from a local shop, I think it was imported from Italy? But it felt like a good fit for the story and characters and overall vibes. I liked the texture and the shininess, and it covers for the fact that I did not in fact fit a tree in on the covers! I was worried that the cords around the spine would show through because it seemed a little thin, but it actually worked better than what I used in the second book.
The second book, I used a fun, shiny, Triforce-gold paper. It is super soft and lightly textured. Itās a lot thicker, so I was surprised at the cords showing through.
My most embarrassing problem is the table of contents. I edited the text before printing it so many times, just little adjustments that shifted the page count a fair amount, and, uh, apparently forgot to adjust the table of contents for the last adjustment? I donāt think there was a good solution. I did not have it in me to rip it apart at this stage. I didnāt want to cut it out, between the then lack of a table of contents and the potential for structural issues for the signature. So. I attempted to make it look somewhat purposeful and matching the black cover. It is.. accurate. (oh please be accurate)
I had a lot of fun early on with the art for the chapters. Looking back, I wish Iād done a bit more, but once again, Iām happy with it!
This is going back to a lot of the tracing, but like I said, I made sure it wasnāt fan art or anything, and itās mostly items and symbols and whatnot from the game. The swords were a lot of fun, figuring out how much detail to use for a black & white line art.
I kept the colors to a minimum to make them stand out. Chapter 17 with the Triforce (contrasting with chapter 16 with the uncolored Triforce) and chapter 18 with the green line are the only colors in the book. I used a foil pen on the green line, and I worried a little that it was too subtle, but I did want it to be subtle. And the Triforce color was an interesting debate on whether to go with a gold color or something more true to the game, which would be yellow. I went with a shimmery gold because the yellow didn't feel like it had the right weight for the symbol.
And last, I put all of the chapters author notes in an Appendix. I'd debated putting the at the end of each chapter, and I can't remember what made me choose this over that.
As someone who grew up reading books, I am thrilled that I got to physically make one, and I'm especially thrilled that I got to make this one. I found all of the (admittedly at times frustrating) details fascinating, and I think I have a whole new appreciation for book structure. Whenever I'm at a Barnes and Noble now, I always grab this super nice book of Arthurian Legends just to open it, because I've never seen a book open so smoothly and never had the proper appreciation for it before.
It was a while ago now, but I also had a lot of fun reading and skimming Blind, But Now so much while I was formatting it. I love this story, and I feel like I picked up on a lot of nuance and themes that I might have missed on a more casual read through.
Someday I might try another project, and hopefully my note taking on my process is enough to give me a little bit of a head start from where I started this time.
And @ghirahimbo, thank you so much for writing. I really, truly love Blind, But Now. ā„ļø
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