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2025 Bookbinding in Review
Nearly two months late, but here we go! My goal at the beginning of 2025 was to make at least one book a month. I'd only bound a handful of books the previous year and I didn't want to let inertia to set in. I enjoy binding books but it's also very easy to just... not.
My final count for 2025 was 45 individual books, so I think I succeeded in my goal!
Fanbinding: Echolocation by Darksknight
Bind #(my numbering system is off) Echolocation by Darksknight Date Completed: 12/31/2025 Size: Octavo. 93 pages, 8,535 words Summary: Kirk and Spock don’t realize that they’ve bonded right away. The rest of the crew is a different story.
I was looking at my 2025 stats and realized the number of books I made during the year was going to end at an awkward number. Clearly that meant I should try to cram another book in before the end, right? It would have to be a small one because I had three days for both typesetting and binding. And since I had a friend visiting soon I should make two copies because why not. And I did actually pull it off!
Octavos are such a great way to use up scraps, in this case some paste paper I made over the summer and some cardstock I mis-measured for an earlier project. It’s double sided paper and I used different sides for each copy for extra variation.
The typeset itself is very rough and ready, but a lot of fun to knock out quickly. I didn’t even run it through spellcheck (partly because Chekov’s accent is written out and I didn’t feel like hitting ignore for every word in his dialogue). I went a little overboard with the Astronomy dingbat font for the title page and scene dividers but stars were the logical choice. Federation Classic for the titles and Bell MT as the body font, just because I hadn’t used it yet this year .
Fanbinding: Old Gods, New Tricks by BootsnBlossoms & Kryptaria
Bind #43 Old Gods, New Tricks by @bootsnblossoms & @kryptaria Date Completed: 12/27/2025 Size: Quarto. 217 pages, 34,631 words
Summary: As MI6's senior quartermaster, Q is accustomed to dealing with all manner of oddities. But an agent who won't stay dead, a bomb in his office, and bad tea all combine to make for a stressful day. The muggers on the way home only make matters worse. And that's before the owl shows up.
I typeset this fic towards the end of summer and didn’t get around to binding it until now, which actually worked well since the story has a winter setting. Centaur for the bodyfont, WoodGods for the titles, and an owl dingbat for some minimal decoration.
Pretty standard bind overall. Cover papers are some paste paper I made this summer and I had to cut the endpapers twice because apparently I can’t measure.
Fanbinding: Death is a Sailing Ship by Maleann
Bind #39
Death is a Sailing Ship by Maleann Date Completed: October 12, 2025 Size: Quarto. 27,818 words, 196 pages
Another excellent afterlife fic for The Terror. When members of the expedition die they return to a version of their ship, where they have to work out the dynamics with those who died before them and those who keep joining them after conditions get more and more dire. It’s hard to explain but I highly recommend the story.
Fairly plain binding, using some bookcloth scraps and a piece of scrapbook paper I’ve had in my stash for at least 15 years waiting for the perfect time to use it (and here it is). Quartos make such nice chunky books, and this feature was enhanced by printing on some mystery paper I picked up from my local creative reuse store that is on the thicker side with a marvelous color and some flecks that give it a kind of weathered, textured look.
I kind of leaned into the patina for the formatted text. The main title is Chenier, with IM Fell Double Pica for the subheadings and Century for the body font. I had to print using an EcoTank for Reasons, which also unintentionally fed into the rustic look. Those are amazing machines but not quite as crisp as my usual laser printer.
I always lose the dots on the “i”s when doing HTV letters on a small scale and this time was no exception. Someday I’ll remember to do smallcaps instead but I was worried about the full title fitting on the spine.
Fanbinding: Searching Ceremonies Series by KouriArashi
Binds #26-30
The Searching Ceremonies by KouriArashi ( @gingersnapwolves )
Date Completed: 06/08/2025
Size: 5 Folios. 589,985 words.
There are several series on my to-bind list and I had no idea how to approach a project like that. So in my time-honored tradition I just decided to dive in and see what happened along the way. The Searching Ceremonies were a nice middle ground in the number of stories/volumes so it became my guinea pig.
I ended up with five flatback volumes bound with mystery Amazon bookcloth, some scrapbook paper I’ve had in my stash for about 15 years, and shiny blue HTV from the Dollar Tree, and I’m pleased as punch with the results.
Typesetting was the most challenging part of the process but also the most visually uninteresting. I went with a very no-frills look with Times New Roman as the body text and Bodoni for the titles and headers. If you ever try something like this in a word processor like LibreOffice Writer I would recommend getting all your settings exactly right with the first story, then save a copy and use that to copy/paste the second story in for volume two. At that point it should just need a few tweaks to get both typesets looking alike. Do not decide in the middle of formatting the fourth story that you actually don’t like the border you put around the titles and chapter headings, and then have to go back and remove them and fix the spacing on four books. Ask me how I found this out…
(The borders weren’t too bad, but they gave the whole thing a 1950s academic journal vibe, which wasn’t the look I was going for.)
Fanbinding: Jeeves & the Uncommon Senses by Mice
Bind #35
Jeeves and the Uncommon Senses by Mice (@justusmice on tumblr)
Date Completed: August 18, 2025
Size: Folio. 83,211 words, 257 pages
This is a really fun Jeeves & Wooster Sentinel AU with great world building and an impeccable voice for Bertie. It cannot be easy to write something that manages the proper amount of blithering while also maintaining a coherent narrative.
This was my first encounter with the idea of Sentinels when I read it originally, and I was so confused at the beginning. And now it’s one of my favorite types of AUs. Not a bad introduction to the genre.
If you’re a fan of the Jeeves & Wooster tv show with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry it’s always tempting to go very art deco to match the show’s title animation, even if so many of the stories themselves seem to take place in the countryside. I think the cover paper manages to thread the needle between these two extremes (and as a bonus, it coordinates with my first fanbind, also a Jeeves & Wooster fic). I didn’t have enough matching cardstock for both books to have matching endpapers, but the vibes are similar. I especially like the compass motif, since the two can always find one another.
I still fall on the more basic end of the scale for formatting books but I tried to spice things up a bit here with an asymmetrical title, decorative dividers, and the occasional sparkle thrown in for a bit of extra pizazz. Bertie would probably approve. Jeeves maybe not so much.
Formatted in LibreOffice Writer with Garamond as the body font, Lotus Eater for the main titles, with some AR Blanca thrown in for variety. Decorative bits include the Astronomy dingbat font and Vintage Decorative Signs 4 for dividers.
And as usual, I've taken too many pictures.
Bookbinding - Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Binds # 31 & 32
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Date Completed: July 2025
Size: Octavo. 520 pages, 58,428 words
I participated in @renegadeguild Tiny Books Bang this year, where some people formatted books octavo size or smaller and then another group of people made books using those typesets, two copies - one to keep and the other to send to the original typesetter. I was lucky enough to get to bind Wind in the Willows, typeset by the lovely Wren. This book was such a big part of my childhood so it was great to spend some time with it again.
I dithered for ages on what the book should look like and eventually settled on some blue hand-marbled paper to tie in with the river theme, with brown and blue accents to pick up some of the colors in the veins. The gold vines got added at the very end when the spine cloth was just looking a little large for how small the book was. I’m especially fond of the endpapers, which I made using an image from my collection of Art Nouveau Dover Pictorial Archives books.
Fanbinding: Old Friend, Come Home Series by annecoulmanross
Binds #37 & 38
Old Friend Come Back Home (Series) by annecoulmanross Date Completed: September 21, 2025 Size: Legal Quarto. 44,674 words, 197 pages
This is a delightful series of afterlife fics in The Terror fandom, and does a great job of combining the show’s canon with historical details. Since there were Victorian Ladies present (Ann Coulman Ross and Sir Franklin’s 1st wife) it was also a good excuse to use some of my more frilly supplies and fonts.
This was a series of 7 works, all with slightly different formats, so setting up the text was a good challenge to get consistency across stories with chapters, with subheadings, and one shots. I must have looked through a million handwriting fonts for titles before settling on the basic Edwardian Script that comes standard with most word processors. You can’t beat a classic! And it paired well with Garamond for the body font.
Couldn’t find any instructions for doing a half binding for the cover (that’s the little corner bits out of cloth as well as the spine) so I just winged it. I can’t say it’s a technique I’m going to use over and over again, but the flourish seemed appropriate for these volumes. Endpapers are two coordinating scrapbook papers that look like a mix between calico print and embroidery.
I tried to get artsy and take photos in the rundown cemetery at the end of my street, but the tombstones in the background came out a little odd.
