armoredsuperheavy: Hamilton, Gavin (atribuido a) - Portrait of John Henderson of Fordell, c 1777. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Default)
2021-01-02 10:37 am
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Rationale for the Case Binding method

repost from Renegadepublishing Tumblr

bellowingwhack said:
Hello! I just found your bookbinding posts and I love them, I've been wanting to do a project like this for a long time and your resources are so helpful! But I am wondering if you have thoughts on techniques that use less glue such as coptic binding/why you chose the particular style of binding that you do, is it more long-lasting etc?
 
While you submitted this to Renegade Publishing generally, and members do create books in various styles, I’ll assume you’re referring to the case-bound books that I make, half bound in cloth and paper. This is the type of book that I describe in my tutorial that a number of folks have followed.
 
This decision on my part to go with case binding was just sort of instinctive. I knew I wanted them to look like a “serious book” and this was also the sort of binding described in the first instructional guide I found. I don’t say this to malign other forms of bookbinding, but I wanted my result to appear very traditional. I like the juxtaposition of radical content in an austere, “proper” wrapper. It subverts assumptions about what’s worthy to be bound in such a way. It makes the strongest statement that the writing inside is valuable and real literature. Typically my typesetting and other design choices are also pretty conservative and I make those decisions with this goal in mind.
 
Other forms of binding such as Coptic stitch and glueless bindings are perfectly fine, but didn’t seem to make such a strong subversive statement as the stodgy old case binding.  Other Renegade members have experimented far outside the bounds of the case binding method and achieved great results, so if that’s a method that appeals to you, by all means go for it! The most important thing is that you bind that book!
 
-ArmoredSuperHeavy 
armoredsuperheavy: Hamilton, Gavin (atribuido a) - Portrait of John Henderson of Fordell, c 1777. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Default)
2020-10-07 08:23 am
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Canonical Imperfection Breeds Much Fic

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about the relationship between corporate near-monopoly ownership of our shared stories/modern mythologies, how the for-profit model drives creative decisions in that realm, and how the shortcomings or missing elements in the resulting canon media drives fic writing and fandom participation.

Two things I read got me thinking: 

First, @sbooksbowm on Tumblr is doing her dissertation on the place of fanfic in book history and the social mechanics of fandom, I'm doing a terrible job explaining. Here browse the dissertation masterpost! You can also read her in her own words about it  It's fascinating! But this observation from the introduction jumped out at me:

 
Fic ‘rewrites and transforms other stories currently owned by others’. Coppa elaborates: ‘it is only in such a system—where storytelling has been industrialized to the point that our shared culture is owned by others—that a category like “fanfiction” makes sense’ [1]. That is to say, in a system where stories can be bought or sold, the transformative, for-pleasure work of fanfiction is defined in contradistinction to for-profit story production and distribution; in a system without purchase and ownership of stories, the work of fanfiction would be called ‘folklore’.[2]
 
[1] Francesca Coppa, The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), p.7.
[2] @sbooksbowm, Dissertation, Draft - Introduction Part 1 (2020)
 

Secondly, @Nymphomachy on Twitter put out a great tweet discussion about the Harry Potter series, its canonical shortcomings, and how that breeds a huge amount of fic. They also criticize the way in which not-for-profit fandom, bred by inadequacies of original text, end up creating a feedback loop that makes the creators of the original canon even richer. ( Part 1, Part 2 and a great reply thread by @arthur_affect ) Warning it’s got some vitriolic criticism of the HP canon and JKR.
 
To me this echoes the firestorm of criticism that’s been leveled at other huge television and film franchises. Most notably on my radar, the widespread panning of Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. But other properties see this stuff too, such as the Supernatural series' later seasons.
 
The right environment to breed a lot of fic seems to be a canon with engaging qualities that draw you in, numerous characters with inconsistent or incomplete character development, handwavey worldbuilding, and niggling details of the plot (not to say holes) that fans want to see addressed. These kind of issues with big properties, along with the nature of IP laws today and how we as a culture have permitted certain entities to own our shared mythologies, is why I think fanfic has exploded over the last 20 years. Fanfic has an entire subclass called “fix-it” and this is clearly one of the fundamental drivers behind writing a lot of fic.  Fic spackles in the cracks, makes the pearl around the grain of sand.
 
Fanfic exists as an underclass of storytelling, in counterpoint to canon, corporate, officially recognized storytelling. Fanfic has no gatekeeper and no editorial green light. Fanfic is telling all the leftover and left-out stories that aren’t globally marketable or palatable to a mass audience. Fanfic is full of heartbreak, trauma, sweet domesticity, profound emotional connections, and demons exorcised. Its value isn’t measured in dollars, and frankly I don’t think it can be. As with other forms of emotional labor, its value will never be calculated or fully appreciated if you are thinking in terms of money. The tales told in the democratized world of fic are by their nature niche and personal. If they weren’t, then they’d be the tales that we see on the big screen to begin with!
 
I think fanfic will continue to boom as long as our mass media continues to deliver huge, shiny, beautiful, incomplete and emotionally shallow adventure tales.  On one level I'm so happy to see fanfiction boom the way it is now - hell, canon + fanon is our modern-day shared mythology!  On another level I'd like to see storytelling democratized more fundamentally. But in our capitalist society, the only way we can have that self-deterministic, open-to-all-comers creation without editorial vetos etc, is in a liminal noncommercial or not-for-profit space. (Donate to OTW/AO3!)
 
A side note though. I do think mainstream publishing has started to take note to some degree. Notably, TOR has been picking up some books in what I consider to be the “original fic” side of the broader “fic” genre. (e.g. K.M. Szpara's Docile and Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit aka The Course of Honour by Avoliot) These books tell the type of tales and tropes we often seek in fanfic but aren’t composed on the framework of an existing canon. I’m excited by this development, and looking forward to see what’s next. 
armoredsuperheavy: Hamilton, Gavin (atribuido a) - Portrait of John Henderson of Fordell, c 1777. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Default)
2020-08-18 11:04 am
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Creation of Renegade Publishing Group

Last night in the bookbinding Discord, things really popped off. There are almost 70(!) people in the Discord now. 
A discussion started up about everyone's imprints. Several of us created logos and names for ourselves as publishing entities; mine is Dead Dove Publishing. Last night, though the idea arose of a single name to tie together the group of guerrilla publishers as a whole. 

After much back and forth, we came up with the name Renegade Publishing.  The Discord server is the "Renegade Bindery". 

There's now a Tumblr account which will feature reblogs of members' binding, and a Fanlore page. 


The text of the intro post is quoted below.

Renegade Publishing is a not-for-profit guild of artists engaged in fanbinding—publishing in extremely limited edition fannish works, including fanfiction, meta, original fic, zines and other works. Most works are made in handmade editions of one or two copies.
 
Members work self-directed, selecting works to bind individually, and may or may not offer commissions for binding services. We consider publishing to be a political act of resistance and self-determination, that makes an unequivocal statement about the value we see in these endangered, underground works. We refer to our work as fanbinding.
 
@armoredsuperheavy started fanbinding independently in 2018. After their guerrilla bookbinding manifestos went viral in 2020, they created the fanbinding Discord server. The community grew and so began Renegade Binding.
 
Our Bindery is on Discord. Send an off-anon ask for an invitation if you are interested in joining the movement.
 
Our site is maintained by members of the Renegade Binding group. Our site and Renegade Publishing formally established August 17th, 2020.
armoredsuperheavy: Hamilton, Gavin (atribuido a) - Portrait of John Henderson of Fordell, c 1777. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Default)
2020-05-31 12:28 pm
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The Daily Outrage: Social Media

In the US, we've seen ever more radical ideas take hold at ever accelerating rates through the last decade. Really you could see the roots of this far back in the history of the net, but when social media platforms began using algorithms to optimize what you see, who you hear from, the most popular post, that's when it really started to happen.

After the 2016 election, if you were as loudly upset about Trump's victory as most of us were, you were probably finally unfollowed by everybody you know who disagreed or decided to vote for him. At that point, you can pretty much conclude that there's nobody seeing your posts who doesn't broadly agree with you on politics.

We've been progressively more divided in our society because social media breeds this environment where "If you don't agree exactly with what I am saying or have questions about it, you are completely wrong and a horrible moral failure of a human being"  I've really seen this mindset taking hold in fandom because that's where I hang out, but it's not just fandom. It's everywhere.

Now with COVID-19, a lot of people have been stuck home for months doing their entire social interactions via social media platforms. All of these effects of socmed and its fucked up rules of engagement has snowballed and now it's an avalanche.

Every day there is a fresh outrage and situation that people feel compelled to instantly, aggressively comment on. All people need is a headline to go off. I'm not talking about any one incident in particular, either. This is just the normal pattern of social media interaction. See the trending post. Feel the righteous indignation. Click Retweet or reblog. Dogpile on. It feels good, like you're doing something to fight... whatever danger or injustice you have in mind. We've all done it.

But at the same time, it feels safe to do it. You're at home. You don't have to worry about getting arrested for this form of protest. You don't have to get in anyone's face. Nobody will deck you. You can say hurtful, harmful, libelous shit with what seems like virtually no repercussions. But the repercussions are society-wide when everyone conducts themselves like this. 

What are you really doing? You're not thinking critically. You're not looking to understand a situation in any depth before having your piece to say. You're probably engaging in mob vigilantism, and it may be based on absolutely nothing true. Who wrote your talking points? Whose narrative are you advancing? On social media, we are gerbils tapping the lever for another feel-good hit, over and over and over.

All drugs have side effects, even Soma.

Conspiracy theories are everywhere right now, and the idea that there are sinister motives lurking behind every person's actions has really taken hold.  

If you dislike the attitude of Bernie Sanders' followers,you're a right wing shill.

If you're willing to consider voting for Joe Biden, you secretly think rape is totally fine. 

For that matter, if you voted for Trump, you secretly think rape is fine.

If you voted for HIllary, though, you think torture is fine.

If you watch Edward Scissorhands, you're secretly totally fine with alcohol- and spousal abuse.
(p.s. is Depp still canceled? Uncanceled? Who knows - mob justice doesn't issue errata in the next issue of The Daily Outrage)

If you write a novel, you're secretly a child molester.

If you draw a pic of soldiers or cops fucking, you're secretly a fascist.

If you elect not to go into the street and face the national guard in a violent protest w/ major Covid risk, you secretly wish for the rise of a dictatorship.


Just... God Damn. Do people hear themselves?

I hope we snap the fuck out of it soon. The world is a scary place but the degree to which we have leveled suspicion against each other as individuals is at the breaking point. We are entirely too easy to steer by the wrong people. We're at their mercy as a society and the level of mistrust sown between individuals means it's virtually impossible to organize in any forward-thinking, constructive way, much less have honest and meaningful conversations with people we disagree with. We are truly divided and conquered in a way never seen before. Not just divided: we've been atomized.

At the rate we're going, we'll be manipulated into discrediting ourselves again and again through events like that are going on this weekend. The situation is fucked up, and no, I"m not going to go out there in the middle of the street to spit on cops in riot gear. Does this mean I secretly hate black people, support police brutality, and think there's nothing wrong with our criminal justice system?  Well you tell me, oh valiant paladin of the internet: What does socmed outrage conditioning make you conclude about me? What does a sanity check tell you?

armoredsuperheavy: Hamilton, Gavin (atribuido a) - Portrait of John Henderson of Fordell, c 1777. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Default)
2020-05-24 09:47 am

Resources for Bookbinding

Here’s a big list of resources. If anyone has further suggestions please send me a message and I can add it to the list (and enhance my own knowledge!)

EDIT: This list is greatly expanded and moved here  : Bookbinding Resources Master List
 
Bibliography

ArmoredSuperHeavy - Self-Published - 2019
This is document is still in development but you can read the entire thing for free. This is a service I am offering to fandom and part of the fandom gift culture.
 
Physical book construction
 
Introduction To Bookbinding & Custom Cases: a Project Approach For Learning Traditional Methods
Tom Hollander-Cindy Hollander - Schiffer Publishing - 2019
ISBN 9780764357350
 
Bookbinding & Conservation By Hand
Laura S. Young - Oak Knoll Press - 1995
ISBN 1884718116
 
Fonts, Typography, & Layout
 
Better Type: Learn to see subtle distinctions in the faces and the spaces of text type. Achieve legible, beautiful, and expressive type every time.
Betty Binns - Watson Guptill - 1989
ISBN 0823004848
 
The Complete Guide to Typography: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type
James Felici - Adobe Press - 2003
ISBN 9780321127303
 
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts
Simon Garfield - Gotham Books - 2010
ISBN 9781592406524
 
Contemporary Book Design
 
Bookmaking: Design/Edit/Production
Marshall Lee - W. W. Norton & Company - 2004
ISBN 0393732967
 
Notes on Book Design
Derek Birdsall - Yale University Press - 2004
ISBN 0300103476
 
Historical Book Design
 
The Book: The Story of Printing and Bookmaking
Douglas C. McMurtie - Dorset Press - 1943
ISBN 0880293489
 
Modern Book Design: From William Morris to the Present Day
Ruari McLean - Essential Books - 1959
(no ISBN)
 
Book Typography 1815-1965 in Europe and the United STates of America
ed. Kenneth Day - University of Chicago Press - 1965
(no ISBN)
 
Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing
Ruari McLean - Faber & Faber - 1963
(no ISBN)
 
Art of the Printed Book 1455-1955: Masterpieces of Typography Through Five Cecnturies from the Collections of the Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York
Joseph Blumenthal - Pierpoint Morgan Library - 1973
(no ISBN)
 
Illustrierte Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst: mit Besonderer Beruecksichtigung Ihrer Technischen Entwicklung bis zur Gegenwart
Karl Faulman - A. Hartlebens Verlag - 1882
 
Supplies

Talas Online
Talasonline.com - huge selection of archival, library, bookbinding, includes heavy equipment and things like real vellum.
 
Hollander’s
Hollanders.com - Everything you need. Best selection of decorative paper; also different bookcloths, offers Davy board custom cutting service which is worth it
 
Etsy
Etsy.com - search Bookbinding Supply, you can get deals on things, also decorative papers.
 
Blick Art Supply
DickBlick.com - Stocks some essentials; if you have a brick and mortar near you it’s great for emergencies like if you run out of glue in the middle of winter.

Panduro Hobby (https://panduro.com) has glue and decorative papers, they're a chain (with physical locations) delivering to parts of Scandinavia+parts of Germany.
 
Affordable Binding Equipment by Jim Poelstra
https://affordablebindingequipment.com/
His “simple sewing frame” and “simple book press” are very similar to my homemade ones. They do the job. 

(Tumblr xpost)
armoredsuperheavy: Hamilton, Gavin (atribuido a) - Portrait of John Henderson of Fordell, c 1777. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Default)
2020-05-24 12:23 am
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A Thousand Cakes, and Yours Among Them

I’m flattered by recent attention on Tumblr for my bookbinding posts, and I’m glad the practice of binding fic has resonated with folks!

I periodically get questions about being able to buy these books. I thought I’d address that publicly.

The Gift Economy of Fandom

The vast majority of my bookbinding projects (over 90 and counting so far) have been strictly volunteer - that is, I’ve read the fic, or been recommended it by a trusted friend, and chosen to bind it, based on my own arbitrary evaluations.

Binding means two copies. One goes to the author, as a gift. The other I keep in a slowly growing archive. They are not for sale at any price. Nobody is paid for their labor, and I am not running a business. I am spending out of my own pocket for every piece of paper, every tool, all shipping costs. I accept small tips from authors if they wish, but they are under no pressure to send me money, and a tip doesn’t come remotely close to the value of my labor hours. But why should they pay me? They wrote the entire goddamn book for free. 

I approach fandom in the old-school way, as a community-focused practice and a “gift economy” - something a lot of newer participants of fan culture are drifting away from as the incentive to monetize fan works grows. The reasons for it are understandable. But I think this shift in fundamental approach is going to cost us a lot, as a subculture and as a community, in the long run. 

Do we really just wanna be customers/consumers and “content producers” in fandom? Fuck that, I want an actual community. I’m not a content producer. I’m a person making connections to other people and slowly growing a modern day online queer found family.

Because I seek community in fandom, and see fanwork as contributions to the “potluck”, I see this as just bringing my dish to the party here. I brought a cake - and it seems popular. If anyone else brought another cake, we’d have MORE of it and nobody would complain. Two cakes, and so forth.

What I’m getting at is, these are not PRODUCTS for you to BUY. These are artifacts of a community and a demonstration of community activism.  In order to GET one, you must get involved. You must either write a brilliant longform fic that I’m into,OR you can become a Guerrilla publisher in your own right!

Commissions

I’m uncomfortable with taking commissions and have only done it I think three times. Every time, I had to be convinced to do it. And I spent every penny of it on supplies and shipping and whatnot.

There are two main reasons I’m not open for commissions:

1 It immediately shifts the calculus of whose work gets printed. People with spending money get to see their chosen work in print. People without, not so much.

2. I’m less able to self-direct which work gets printed. I like the power to choose what to bind. I say what gets printed at my house. No outside money is steering that decision. The decision is not driven by money whatsoever. 

Without the money, I don’t have to give a fuck about the optics of which book I chose. I don’t have to worry about follower count. I print a lot of work that got “canceled”, authors beset by purity police for being “problematic”, etc. If I were trying to run a profitable business, these works are the last ones I’d choose to print. And that’s exactly why I’m printing them here.

OK but I want a Book, Sell Me One

Well, don’t wave money in my face. I’m sorry, that’s not why I’m here. See above.

If you’d like to actually take up bookbinding similar to what I am doing, I can provide you with information to get started. There are no secrets about my process, just trial and error and a shit ton of work. Just drop me a line. 

I realize that not everybody has the resource of time, money, or patience to figure out how to make books like mine from scratch. But that doesn’t mean you’re completely out of options.

Preservation of fic doesn’t have to look like a completely bespoke handmade book with sewn signatures and hand marbled papers.

It also doesn’t have to be a professional-grade 200 page glossy hardcover kickstarted mega-project with 100 contributors.

I’d really like to see the practice of print zines come back. Print your fic in a booklet and sew it up with a piece of thread. Mail it to your fandom friends. Go guerrilla publisher yourself. And if you didn’t write it, don’t forget to give a copy to the author: it’s the only ethical way to make use of their work.

I don’t want to be the only bookbinder to ever touch a fanfic. I want lots of people binding. Two cakes - nay, a thousand cakes, and the feast of cake was legendary and not soon forgotten, and slices of the cake were passed down to our children and grandchildren, and the cake survives even after we are gone. Let’s get baking.



armoredsuperheavy: Hamilton, Gavin (atribuido a) - Portrait of John Henderson of Fordell, c 1777. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes (Default)
2020-05-22 05:40 pm
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Why I am a Guerrilla publisher.

I bind fanfic and other underground writing into real books. I am a Guerrilla publisher.

Why are you doing this?
  • To make a demonstrative statement on the validity of “fic” in general (and fanfic within that specifically) as a newborn genre of literature that has really only come into its own in the last 15-20 years.
  • To disrupt preconceptions about what is valuable and worthy of being memorialized in print, much less published in a fine edition.
  • An act of anti-capitalist resistance. Participation in the traditional gift economy of fandom. Most of my projects are volunteer and gifts.
  • Preservation of fandom history and works for future generations. These books won't blip out of existence by politically-motivated, puritanical updates to a corporate terms of service. These books are acid-free, archive ready, made to survive for another century.
  • Demonstration against censorship of fiction. Most of the books contain subject matter some people may find objectionable on various grounds. I have begun to deliberately seek out works that authors and artists were persecuted online for creating.
  • In summary, it’s a big Fuck You to power structures that silence people. On a positive note, it encourages people to keep creating and I hope reassures them that their work has enduring value. It makes my friends so happy that they cry, so that’s nice too.

Stylistic Choices

My book design is deliberately conservative because I am challenging ideas of what should be inside the book. The more a book looks like something a “real” publishing house would put out, the stronger and more subversive the statement it makes.

I've settled onto a bit of an equilibrium point with regards to my setup, production speed, the amount of labor I put into each book. My goal is not to make the most exquisitely fine objet ever bound. My long-term goal is to capture and preserve in print a broad array of fic and outlaw writing. Therefore, I haven't leveled up my equipme
nt to "fine binding" levels, I economize as much as possible the decorative paper, and don't lavish hours on technical perfection. To me it is a race against time to bind as many works as I can. I am racing against repressive bans of adult content, the chilling force of contemporary purity policing, and my own mortality.

Future Plans

Starting out two years ago I'd set a goal of 100 works, and I'm now on project 90. I am on track to meet that goal by the end of the summer, but have no plans to stop.

In the future I would like to somehow propagate this practice to others, and create a movement of decentralized, anarchistic, hardcopy fic distribution. I believe in the community-building power of fandom as a gift economy, a bit of an oasis from capitalism, and want to perpetuate this practice as much as possible. It may not be possible for many people to get into full-blown bookbinding, but I would like to see old-school zines and other paper goods circulate more.

I have deep concerns about the future of these fragile online communities we continually build, only to lose. Every couple of years, a major purge event causes many people in fandom spaces to precipitously fall out of touch. One way I see to combat this is to "get real", and distribute physical things to your circle of friends.

If we are serious about being connected, if we would like to have each other as a modern-day "found family" in the queer tradition, rather than a bunch of randoms unified only by
commercially unsavory thirst-consumerism, then we have to do the work to stay connected in an environment where nobody but us gives a fuck about our community, and none of the monetized structures we exist within online are going to go out of their way to support or enable that.

We have to do it; it's up to us.

And that's why I'm a Guerrilla publisher.

(Pseudo x-post on Tumblr)

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