Books, the Making Of: Part One

As I hope you know, we are putting out a book (you remember that whole contest thing, right?), and are planning another (open submission this time, more information at the website). If you don't know, either we've been remiss in our duty, or, well, probably we've been remiss in our duty. So to fix that: we're putting out a book!

That's only sort of what I want to talk about though. Since we're hand binding these books (they're quite attractive), I thought it might be fun to talk about the process by which a book is built. So many of us who love writing dream of, some day, being in a book. To have our writing transformed in that magical process from manuscript to book. The very idea thrills us. But, do you know how they're made? Did you know there are names for the different parts of the book?

A paperback, of course, is boring; perfect bound (the pages are just glued together at the back) and wrapped in a cover. Yawn. No artistry to it at all. A hard bound book though has more parts and pieces than you can shake a stick at, but there are two main parts to it, the casing, and the signature(s).

Now watch as I try to explain in an entertaining way what a casing is, and how it's made! Actually, it's just that, it's a case that wraps around the signature. What, that didn't make things clear? Okay, let's try this. The part of a hard bound book that's hard? That's the casing. Actually, the hard part are the boards.

Let's try again. The cover? The hard part? The spine? Those are all parts of the casing. Confusing? Alright, let's start from the cover. I'm going to use a copy of Ulysses S. Grant from 1868 that I happen to have in my hands (because it's pretty, closer to my desk, and the process is virtually identical), and explain in detail, very briefly, what goes into the making of the casing.

So, we start with a lovely piece of dark, chocolate brown leather (beautifully debossed in this case), and we lay it out on our workstation. On top of that, we glue the boards (the actual hard part, its sort of a really heavy card stock) There are two of these, well, sometimes there's a third making up the spine, but this book is a bit different.

Have I bored you yet? Thought so. I'll just keep going anyway. In the case of this book, the spine is stiffened not with board, but with six lengths of cord, measured roughly equally distant from each other (actually, these are possibly part of the signature, not taking the book apart, more in part two). We take all this, and fold (and glue) the excess leather over the top of the boards, so that now it's all a nice, neat little package.

We're done now, right? Not yet. Let's pretend we did use board for the spine. There's one more thing we need to do. We have to round the spine! Yup, pretty boring. It's accomplished with, lacking the proper name, a wooden jig with a round wells, and a nicely rounded stick (highly technical terms here) which gently, rounds the board that makes up the spine (more on this in part 3).

Did I forget anything? Probably. But that's all for now.