Filed under: Art, Connections, General Musings, Wales | Tags: Archaeology, art, blogging, book art, bookbinding, Glowforge, Helen Geake, Ireland, Jeremy England, jim downey, laser, Patreon, Phil Harding, Scotland, St. Cybi's Well, Tim Taylor, Time Team, Wales
My wife and I have been big fans of the UK TV show “Time Team” for a long time, and a couple of years ago when producer Tim Taylor decided to try and revive the series using a Patreon model, we were happy to sign on and tell a number of our friends about it. Unsurprisingly, we discovered that the series was also popular in our friends group, especially those who share our interest in English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish history.
Well, about a year ago, one of our friends entered a competition hosted by Time Team about the series, and, well, I’ll let her tell the rest:
Maybe you remember back in October, Time Team asked people to tell them “What are you most excited about Time Team returning, and why?” Like many people I fangirled a bit to show my appreciation, then forgot about it.
So I was very surprised when Time Team contacted me around Thanksgiving to tell me they liked my comment so much they are sending a gift. I asked if they would send it to the friends who had introduced me to Time Team, and given Customs and all they thought it would be less confusing if it came to me.
And she sent it to us: Custom Time Team Trowel #400.
Well, we were thrilled. It’s really cool to hold that thing in your hand, feel a connection to the show we loved.
But we decided that after we’d kept it for a time, that it would be best to share it. To pass it on to someone else who shared our love for the show. For it to become a ‘traveling trophy’.
I spent some time thinking about it over this past busy (and eventful) year, and finally decided to make a simple journal for recipients of the “Traveling Trowel” to record some thoughts and dreams inspired by the show. And of course, there needed to be a box to hold the trowel and journal. I wanted everything to feel informal, yet professional. Sorta like Time Team.
This was the result:
In order to set the stage for the journal, I asked my wife to write the following introduction:
This trowel is magical.
Take it in your hand. Feel the weight of it. The balance. How it fits into your palm. How your thumb and fingers curl around it.
Then close your eyes. Let your mind roam. To somewhere you love, even if you’ve never been there in person. Picture the place. Then channel your inner Phil Harding. Or Helen Geake. Or whichever member of the Time Team, past or present, comes to mind. See yourself exploring the past of the site you’ve chosen, trowel in hand.
Then, if you’re willing, share here where you’ve been. Where the Traveling Trowel has taken you.
And, as a record documenting the history of the Trowel, I mounted my friend’s letter next, followed by my own entry. For that entry I naturally pictured St Cybi’s Well …
Ffynnon Gybi
There, in the valley below the hamlet of Llangybi on the Llŷn Peninsula, the old stone structures beckon. But behind them, the Holy Well itself springs forth.
It is here that the trowel leads me. Without disturbing the ground, I can visualize scraping away the upper layers of dirt. Removing the modern soil. Down past the traces of the 18th and 19th century structures that now dominate the site. Deeper, to the remaining imprint of the medieval surface where pilgrims knelt beside the water, seeking healing for body and soul.
Then deeper still, seeking the foundations of myth of the man who would become Saint Cybi. Perhaps his simple hovel where he meditated, seeking a connection with his God. Perhaps some small artifact which has survived the centuries, uncovered, pristine in my mind’s eye, a holy relic …
The Traveling Trowel will move on. I hope that each recipient will add their own bit to the lore of it. But I also hope that each recipient will give the next person some small memento related to their time with it. Here’s what I made for my friend, us, and the person that I have passed it on to:
Thanks for visiting. And if you haven’t yet, check out the Time Team Patreon page.
Jim Downey
Just a note: none of this is for sale. And yes, I took some minor liberties with the official Time Team design to better fit my personal aesthetic and the capabilities of my laser. No criticism of the original design is intended.
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Health, Machado-Joseph | Tags: art, arthritis, ataxia, blogging, book art, book conservation, bookbinding, bookbinding techniques, fasciculation, health, Japanese, jim downey, leather, Legacy Bookbindery, Machado-Joseph Disease, MJD, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, SCA3, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, St. Cybi's Well, wabi-sabi, Wikipedia, Zen
“Jim Downey was a noted book artist, conservator, and author who, at the height of his skills, was betrayed by his body with the onset of Machado-Joseph Disease in his early 60s …”
That could be the opening line of my obituary some (hopefully many!) years hence. Or perhaps a change to my Wikipedia entry.
But the thing is, I don’t feel betrayed by my body. Not in the least.
Yes, I likely have MJD. And yes, it has started to cause me physical difficulties in accomplishing things, as well as additional pain, as I have been outlining here on the blog.
But we all live with limitations. Of strength. Of endurance. Of skill. Of intellect.
I can’t fly like a bird. Should I say that I am therefore ‘betrayed’ by my body? Of course not.
I can’t think as rapidly or as clearly as I could when I was, say, 40. Again, that’s not a betrayal. That’s just change that comes with being a normal human. Of living a normal life.
There’s a Japanese concept of wabi-sabi that informs a traditional aesthetic common in the culture. It has roots in Zen Buddhism, which I studied and tried to embrace as a young man. It can be a difficult concept to explain, but concerns an appreciation for that which is imperfect and/or impermanent in nature and beauty, as all life is imperfect and impermanent. A classic example of wabi-sabi is an elegant teacup which has a flaw (perhaps broken accidentally), but made more beautiful by the application of a gold filling to repair the cup and make it functional again. It is an understanding that all things can only be fully appreciated by respecting their limitations, and that experiencing the thing in the moment, as it is, with all the flaws it has.
As I noted a couple of months ago, I’ve been working to finish the leather-bound edition of St Cybi’s Well. Though this has been complicated by the onset of MJD, I’m almost finished with the edition of 14 books. As I was working to “turn in” (the process of folding the leather around the edges of the bookboard for the cover) the covering leather on one of the first of these books, I made a mistake. My hand slipped. And the tool I was using, my favorite thin bone folder, marred the cover.
Dammit.
I took a deep breath, finished what I was doing, and set the cover aside to think about it later. When these things happen, the >worst< thing you can do is panic and over-react. A lot of times if you just leave it be and revisit it later, you can usually mitigate the damage with a little careful pressure, or extra moisture, or one of several other techniques.
I turned my attention to the next cover.
And as I was finishing that one, almost the exact same thing happened. Not in the same place, but a similar, though worse, tool mark. Like this:
Gawddammit.
We all make mistakes. “It’s inherent in hand process”, as is commonly said by artisans. But making two very similar such errors?
That was likely thanks to MJD symptoms. Which I had been working through.
I quit for the day.
And as I thought about what it meant, I had to consider how I thought about myself, and my art. I am now an artist/artisan who has this additional limitation, this new part of who and what I am. Allowing that to be reflected in my art — indeed, embracing it — was the only honest thing I could do.
It was time for a little wabi-sabi.
So I did this:
A little gold leaf, to embrace the imperfection.
In fact, I added a wabi-sabi element to each of the 14 books. Because I made more mistakes as I finished the edition. Not all of them had tool marring, but many did (and, curiously, all along the top edge of the covers). I decided that for the edition to be complete, for it to reflect this particular moment in time, each needed to have a similar flaw/enhancement, though each one is unique.
Here they all are:
As a conservator, I can’t afford to celebrate my mistakes. There will of necessity come a time when I need to stop doing conservation work, out of respect for the items entrusted to my care. That time is rapidly approaching; indeed, it may already be here. I’ll know more after my neurological assessment tomorrow.
As an artist, I’d be a fool deny my mistakes. Because denying them would be to deny myself, and what has brought me to this point in time. This particular, wonderful, moment.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: Amazon, book art, book conservation, book design, bookbinding, bookbinding techniques, Communion of Dreams, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, Science Fiction, St Cybi's Well, writing
Last May, I wrote about the process of designing and executing the artistic leather bindings of Communion of Dreams. Now that all of my Kickstarter backers have made their choices, I thought I’d give a preview of the process of designing and executing the artistic leather bindings of St Cybi’s Well.
I had a piece of Preseli Bluestone from the quarry at Craig Rhosyfelin (which is the source for the Stonehenge Bluestones in the inner ring). This site appears in a scene in chapter 8. Well, I had the stone cut into 14 slices (two times the magical number 7). Which I then used to construct a “well” as the cover design. The center of the well has thin blue leather to represent the water in the well. Like this:
Each of the 14 leather-bound copies will have one actual slice of the stone mounted on top of the leather, and thirteen ‘stones’ of bookboard under the leather for bas relief. In this way, all fourteen copies of the leather-bound edition will be connected into one “well”. Here are two examples:
As with the titling for Communion of Dreams, the letterforms are etched using my Glowforge laser, then infilled with real gold leaf.
The other major design decision was what to do for the endpapers. Communion of Dreams had marbled endpapers. For St Cybi’s Well I wanted something different. Thinking through the various visuals in the book, one recurrent image I used was of a Celtic spiral. A symbol of whirlpools and infinity, but also of the transition between realms of reality. Combine that with the ‘healing energy’ in the novel characterized as being a luminous blue. So this is what I came up with: a thin sparkly blue spiral, cut with the laser from commercial glitterpaper stock. It will be mounted onto black endpapers, one each on the paste-down sheets front and rear. Here’s an example:
I do have all the text blocks sewn up and ready to use. I’ve ordered the leather, and soon will be completing these bindings. There are five text blocks and five stones (numbers 1, 4, 5, 6, and 11) still available. If you’re interested in one, you can still choose your color of leather. Details here. Once I finish the nine books for my Kickstarter backers, I’ll just finish the remaining five in leather of my choosing (and raise the price).
I’ll post pics when I have the first batch finished.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Uncategorized | Tags: Anglo-Saxon, art, Beowulf, blogging, book art, book conservation, book design, bookbinding, bookbinding techniques, calligraphy, chained bindings, Cheryl Jacobsen, Dragon, Early Medieval England, Glowforge, goatskin, Grendel, jim downey, laser, leather, Legacy Bookbindery, Longship, vellum, Viking, Wikipedia
For many years, whenever I’ve given lectures, or taught classes about the history of the book, I would discuss the incredible value of books before the advent of the printing press (1454). I’d tell people that there was a reason such books were carefully guarded, even chained to a library shelf: they were about as valuable as a new car would be today, and you didn’t want them walking off.
Well, I was partially correct. Now, having done my part in creating a completely hand-made, hand-calligraphed edition of Beowulf, I can say that the value of such a book is AT LEAST that of a new car. An expensive one. Maybe two. I don’t actually know how much this book is worth. But I know that I put over 60 hours of labor into it. And I have a good idea of the cost of that much calligraphic-quality vellum. And I’m sure that Cheryl Jacobsen, who did the beautiful calligraphic work, must have hundreds or even thousands of hours of labor in the project.
What follows is documentation and explanation of my contribution to this incredible work of art. It’s photograph-heavy, so I’m going to put the bulk of it after a break, but here’s a glimpse of the finished product, to entice you:
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: Amazon, book art, book conservation, book design, bookbinding, bookbinding techniques, Communion of Dreams, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, Science Fiction, St Cybi's Well, writing
It’s been five years since I last wrote about my efforts to come up with a satisfactory cover design for the premium leather edition of Communion of Dreams. Well, needless to say, a lot has happened since then. Not the least of which was getting, and learning to use, my Glowforge laser.
And now I’ve finally resolved the many different design and execution issues to my satisfaction, to the point where I’m completing the promised leather-backed copies for my Kickstarter supporters. Here it is:
This is going to be a bit about this binding, and how it differs from the hardcover cloth binding.
First thing, the sewing is different. Rather than just being sewn onto linen tapes, the books are sewn onto heavy linen cords:
Why the weird arrangement? So that those cords provide additional texture to the spine of the finished book, along the location of where the tree branches are (see the first pic above). Once the sewing was done, the text blocks were glued up and rounded slightly. All of that was very straight-forward.
However, as noted in that blog post in 2016, the problem I had was trying to achieve the raised texture of the tree for the rest of the cover. I played around with a bunch of different solutions, until I settled on using the laser to cut out a slightly abstracted version of the Burr Oak image:
That’s in the bed of the laser. The material is archival 50pt board. Trying to cut out such an image by hand would take me hours, probably. The laser does it in about four minutes. (Though I did spend some considerable amount of time coding the design so the laser would do it.)
Here’s the image free of the surrounding board:
That is then pasted onto a sheet of paper, and the book cover boards are mounted on the back in the appropriate location. Then it is time to mount the leather, and impress it such that the tree is in relief, with this result:
(Actually, that was a practice piece, not the final version pictured above. But I forgot to take an image of the final version at this stage.)
The edges of the leather are then turned-in, and the corners formed. This gives you a finished case (what bookbinders call the cover).
Next, need to do the titling. And this is where the laser once again comes in very handy, though it took me a while to get just the right technique worked out. After the design for the title is done, the leather is masked and then engraved with the laser to an appropriate depth:
Once that is done, the engraved areas are cleaned of residual charred leather, and gilding size applied:
Once that cures, then it’s time to apply the gold leaf:
Now, that’s real gold, in multiple layers, about $25 worth. This process is different than traditional gilding done by bookbinders, so I had to work up a whole different process to do it (based on my experience with traditional gilding). The result is very satisfactory, though, since I have a much greater range of options for the final design.
Once the titling work was done, it was time to prepare to mount the text block to the case. First, I tear the outer page of the outer signature, and trim the cords to the appropriate length:
This combination, with the two liner tabs, will make for a *very* secure mounting to insure the cover and text block stay together. Then, you fray out the linen cords, so that they will not present excess bulk inside the cover:
Then the whole thing is pasted out and mounted inside the case, similar to how the hardcover cloth bindings were done. Once everything is dry and secure, I added endpapers of hand-marbled paper I made:
Giving the finished product:
I tried a lot of different color combinations, and have decided that this is the one I think works the best (and echoes the original cover nicely). My Kickstarter backers have the option of choosing a different color, but henceforth this will be the only color option available for other collectors.
Next, after finishing these bindings: designing the premium leather binding for St Cybi’s Well.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Failure, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, book art, book conservation, book design, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
Last week I went through the mechanics of turning words into books. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about the economics of that, as well as being an author.
When I set up the Kickstarter for St Cybi’s Well lo these many years ago, a lot of my estimates in deciding on what goals to shoot for were based on … blind faith, to be perfectly honest.
I’d published Communion of Dreams, and had some sense of the possible income that could generate, as well as the amount of work that went into writing/editing/formatting it. But I really had no idea what the costs would be for printing and hand-binding copies of that book or the yet unwritten St Cybi’s Well. I had a pretty good handle on how much time it would take me to do the hand binding, based on my book conservation work. And likewise, what the cost of materials would be, other than the printing. Now that I’ve gone through all of that with both books, I have a much better idea of how costs break down, so I thought I would share all of that.
Based on 55 copies (edition of 53, plus two author/artist proof copies), the actual out-of-pocket expense runs about $50 per copy for the two different books. That covers the cost of the oversize archival paper (so the grain/drape of the pages is correct for hand binding), the printing, and going to collect the printed pages. It also covers the cost of archival bookboard and cover cloth. (The leather copies are two or three times as much, depending on the actual leather used.) Were I to bind a single copy, it would take me about 2 hours of labor. If I bind multiple copies at a time, that drops to about 1.5 hours of labor. (Leather is about 2x the labor.)
My Kickstarter goal was $17,000. Which succeeded. After deducting the fees paid to Kickstarter, and the costs of the different “rewards/premiums” for the backers, I wound up with about $12,000. Which, truthfully, isn’t a bad advance for a relatively unknown author.
It took me seven years of writing work to finish St Cybi’s Well, rather than the one or two years I originally expected. That was both embarrassing and stressful, since I made promises to people I didn’t fulfill. But it’s over, and everyone seems happy with the end product, so let’s just talk about the amount of labor that went into it. I’d conservatively guesstimate that I have something on the order of 2,000 hours of labor in writing, rewriting, editing, and then composing (the last is mostly thanks to my Good Lady Wife) the book. That *might* be as much as twice as long as it took me to do the same with Communion of Dreams, though spread out over a longer period of time. So, do the math, and I earned about $6 per hour.
That’s just the Kickstarter, of course. Now that the book is done, I’ll continue to earn money on purchases of the downloads, printed paperbacks, and special order hand-bound copies. How much is hard to say. I have had about 40,000 downloads of Communion of Dreams, though a big chunk of those are free downloads. Still, with Amazon’s system, 2/3 of every sale goes to the author (as opposed to like 5-7% for conventional royalties with a publisher), and that adds up. To date, I’ve only had about a thousand downloads of St Cybi’s Well, and most of those have been free downloads. Which has been a little disappointing, but we’ll see how things go over time.
As for the printed paperback copies, there I earn a bit more from Amazon than I would for the downloads, but not a lot. And they don’t amount to very many sales. The signed copies I sell directly do a little better still, but again, that’s just a handful of books per year.
As for the hand–bound books, there I do make a lot more, about $150 per copy. But my conservation labor is billed at $200 per hour, so at 1.5 hours of labor, I’m making half of what I would professionally. The return on the leather bound copies is even worse.
So, why do it? Why even offer those books on the websites?
Because I enjoy it. I enjoy knowing that the books that I create will be enjoyed, perhaps cherished. Read, and passed down to children and grandchildren. Like most artists, I’m willing to trade some financial reward for that satisfaction, and I can afford to do so. Maybe it shouldn’t be the case, and it wouldn’t be the case ideally, but we do what we can under the circumstances.
Anyway, my books will be available for free download tomorrow (the First of the month, as always). Give ’em a try. If you like ’em, you’re always welcome to either purchase a download or one of the physical copies later, if you can afford to do so. But don’t feel guilty if you can’t; as noted I can afford to give them away, and take joy in knowing people read them.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, art, blogging, book art, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, predictions, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
So, yesterday’s promotion was a moderate success. Nothing stunning, but certainly not disappointing. We had a total of right at 700 downloads, all told, including 49 from Britain and one each in France & Germany. I’m still waiting for the first download in Japan …
Anyway. Those downloads pushed Communion of Dreams to #3 in the “High Tech SF” subcategory, to #13 in overall Science Fiction, and to #327 on the entire free Kindle store rankings. It may have even done a bit better, since there were another 100 downloads after I crashed last night.
Not bad. Not bad, at all. Thanks everyone!
Last month also saw a decent uptick in overall visits to the Communion of Dreams site, to some 1,200. That’s about a 30% increase over what is typical.
This afternoon I’m mailing off the bulk of the signed paperback copies of CoD from the Kickstarter rewards, and we’re waiting to hear back from the printer about the final tally on the Limited Edition copies. I haven’t made too big a deal out of that special edition here yet, because right now we’ve just got generic examples of my book arts work on the page — but once we have the actual pages, I’ll make up some examples of what the finished book will look like, so people will have a better idea of what they’ll be getting. However, it is not too early if you want to reserve your copy — there are at present only 44 copies remaining available.
And yes, I am now shifting the bulk of my creative energy over to thinking about St. Cybi’s Well, to exactly how I want to lay out the plot and all the characters/scenes/themes. As I noted last week, this is all really exciting.
Cheers!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, art, blogging, book art, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, predictions, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
So, I’ve been fairly quiet for a few days, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy.
After recovering from the shock of the Kickstarter succeeding, I had to re-think some of the plans I had been putting into place in order to insure that I fully live up to the terms of the Kickstarter. Mostly this is no big deal, but I am still finalizing some of the details with the backers.
Still, I thought I would offer a heads-up on what is in store. As I noted the other day:
And ways you can reserve one of a very limited edition run of both Communion of Dreams and St. Cybi’s Well and have those books bound the way you want — even reserving your edition number on a first come, first served basis. With payment plan options. Some of the higher-end premium ‘rewards’ will still be available, as well.
When I say “very limited edition” I mean on the order of about 50 hand-bound copies of Communion of Dreams, and about 100 of St. Cybi’s Well (please note that both of these edition numbers are smaller than what was offered on the Kickstarter). These are going to be a special print-run of each book, printed traditionally on sheets of high-quality paper which will be gathered into sections, then trimmed and folded, then sewn into a strong, long-lasting binding. Then you will have a choice of cover material: premium bookcloth, calfskin leather, or goatskin leather. You can see images of such bindings on the Kickstarter page.
The basic cost is $100 for one of these books in cloth. For calfskin leather the cost is $250, and for goatskin $350. With a $100 downpayment you can reserve your copy (and select your edition number from those available), and pay the balance due in installments. Each book will be inscribed as you wish and signed by the author/bookbinder (that’s me!) The cloth bindings will all be in basic black, but those who opt for leather will be able to choose the color of the leather (from those available from my suppliers — a pretty wide range). These books will be more like individual works of art than anything else you may have seen in a book.
I’m hoping that as soon as next week I’ll be able to place the order for the Communion of Dreams run, so that I can work on getting orders for those done over the coming winter. The St. Cybi’s Well run will have to wait until that book is finished, edited, proofed, and ready to publish.
So, something to think about and look forward to. I certainly am!
Cheers!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, General Musings, NYT, Society, tech | Tags: art, blogging, book art, book conservation, bookbinding, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, NYT, technology, tools, writing
A good friend shared this item from the NYT with me: A Tool’s Beauty Is in the Eye of Its Holder. It’s a good piece overall, but this particular passage resonated for me:
Why do such objects look so enticing, given that they were designed with very different objectives? One reason is their virtue (another old-fashioned term). It can be both refreshing and reassuring to see an object whose appearance is determined by such laudable qualities as economy, efficiency or reliability, rather than the hope of seducing us visually. Another factor is their honesty. It is easier to feel confident about admiring a utilitarian object, whose appearance is defined by its function, than it can be to enjoy one because of its styling.
Resonated? Yeah. Here’s an excerpt from a meditation about tools I wrote in 1995, and which has gained some recognition since:
This isn’t a respect borne of fear for their sharpness. It is something more . . . something that is almost spiritual. When you use a tool, it tends to take on the shaping of the use, and of the user. It will conform to your hand, wear in such a way that it actually becomes more suited to the task, until in some ways it is easier to use the tool correctly than to use it incorrectly.
I think that this is why old tools, well made and well loved tools, are so valuable. When you take them to hand, you can feel the right way to use them. Some of the time that went into shaping that tool, training it for use, can be shared from one craftsman to the next. So long as the tool is loved, cared for, and properly used, it continues to accumulate knowledge, storing the wisdom of the hands.
If you have a moment, I’d invite you to read both pieces. They make a nice pair.
Jim Downey
PS: Small milestone – this is blog post #1,400 for me here. Just thought I’d share that factoid.
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, U of Iowa Ctr for the Book, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, art, blogging, book art, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
As I’ve been discussing recently, work continues on setting up everything for my upcoming Kickstarter project.
If you’re not familiar with how Kickstarter works, it might be worth checking out sometime. But basically the idea is that it exists to crowd-fund creative projects, allowing for people to gauge support for a project and finance it. A Kickstarter project runs for a specific length of time, working towards a given funding goal. If the goal is achieved, then the financing goes through and everyone is committed to success. If it doesn’t, then no one is left at risk.
Part of this is establishing “rewards” for promised funding from backers. Usually this includes a copy of a book or album or artwork which is the reason for the Kickstarter project, but people also include all manner of other items which are more personal. I mentioned earlier that one of the things I was going to be offering would be hand-bound copies of my books, bringing into the mix my bookbinding skills.
The more I thought about this, the more I’ve decided to have some fun with it. Specifically, by offering some very limited special rewards. Like custom bindings in cloth, calfskin, and goatskin. Here’s one such “reward”:
Wow – Goatskin! Double Set: Get a personally handbound leather hardcover copy of *BOTH* “St. Cybi’s Well” and “Communion of Dreams”. The books will be numbered, also signed & inscribed to the recipient. Binding will be in full premium goat with a nice embossed label spine. Your choice of leather color and endpapers. Also includes download copy of both books. (For international shipping, please add $20.)
I’ve decided to get copies of the handbound books printed up in a different run than the usual paperbacks being offered through Createspace. These will be done using the exact same printing files, but will be printed on folded sheets so that they can be properly handsewn and then bound. Because if you’re going to do the thing, might as well do it right.
And after all, how many competent authors are also kick-ass book artists? I might as well play to my strengths.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 