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.
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