Two author copies delivered! Both for @bropunzeling (AO3 here).
More photos and info under the cut!
I actually did my copies of these a while ago--both in February, one in 2024 and the other in 2023. collide the spaces that divide us was one of my earliest attempts at social media formatting, and one of the last books I ever made with my inkjet printer. I did end up fixing a few things on that one's typeset, but it's nearly identical to my first copy. You may also notice in the photos that I chopped off a bit too much off the edge--I didn't yet know how to use my guillotine, and in all the time that's passed since then, it's become defunct (sharp enough to cut off a hand, but not sharp enough to cut through a stack of paper lol)
It's neat to see such a clear example of how much I've improved as a bookbinder in a year and a half--my copy on the left, author's on the right:
Also, a comparison of color ink (left) vs color laser (right):
Like this, it's easy to see how much more vibrant color toner is than ink. Ink works much better for complex images, but since I don't print a lot of photos, but do make a lot of social media typesets, this works much much better for my purposes.
Soon after that, I bought a black-only laser printer and had a whole new set of challenges. It was in this era of printing that I made only fools rush in. It has one of my most complex title pages to date, as they're not really my forte.
Below are my copy, the title page, and an example of how I did texts in this particular typeset.
My copy has a cloth spine and a different cloth as the cover, with a strip from the endpapers to hide my sins act as a bridge between them. This is one of the binds from last Binderary that I'm most proud of.
The title page is in several different pieces--sort of jigsaw-puzzled together from vectors, Google Drawings, and a few different fonts.
Black-toner-only printing meant adjusting how I did social media formatting, and this is one of my favorite ways I solved that problem. I like the simple, almost minimalist formatting that sets the texts apart but doesn't steal the show.
I'd been meaning to offer author copies for these books for as long as I'd had them, but it's hard to understate how little I wanted to use my inkjet once I got a laser XD It's both slower and more expensive to use an inkjet, so as soon as I got my color laser printer set up, I sent the DM!
I organize my handbound fics by ship--that is, every ship has a set spine cloth and title color--so one of my favorite things about author copies is that I get to be a little more creative about covers!
