Booktober: Fannish Bookbinding
As booktober is coming to a close, we’re taking a moment to celebrate the creative art of fannish bookbinding! Fannish bookbinding and bookmaking is a type of fancraft where fans aim to replicate books or create original books inspired from their canons or bind fanfic, and can also overlap with the creation of custom zines.
Fanbinding can be done through commercial services, such as Print on Demand companies, or can be done non-commercial by printing and binding the works by hand. This involves methods such as old-school spiral bindings, using desktop thermal binding machines, traditional hand-sewn bindings for hardcovers or pamphlets, or glueless bindings such as coptic or sewn board binding.
Though author feedback is positive for the most part, fannish bookbinding faces the criticism that some people might do it to make a monetary profit and there is also the controversy of copyright blanket permission and plagiarism to consider.
Are you interested in learning more about fannish bookbinding? Check out our Fanlore page!
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