Another journal

Really, when it comes to fanbinding I clearly love a gimmick. My last go was making a mock Samuel French script and this time I decided to go for my beloved classic mass market paperback, soft paper and all.

I think I did okay for a first try? I was at the end of my glue bottle and pushing beyond my skills for the cover illustration (which is based on Gay Vets Ross Hossannah), but I am pleased with the end result. I’m already re-laying out the text block to incorporate what I’ve learned. I think the next try I am going to break the collection up so I can have two slim volumes that better fit the look of the mid-century era I was trying to evoke. See how thick this is next to the real thing!

Anyway here are the deets!

• Story: Take Your Shot (series, unfinished) by Inbox.
• Paper: Pacon Standard Weight Drawing Paper in Manila for the body, 60lb double-sided Polar Matte from Red River.
• Types: Overseer and Body Grotesque (Cover), Bahnschrift SemiBold and Constantia (Interior).
• Binding style: Perfect binding.

Okay, pics!

I think I did okay for the cover!! This is not my style and I straight up did a version to completion, hated it and tried again. On the rebind I’m going to have to make another cover illustration and I’m D: about it. That sprayed edge though–airbrush bb, thank you Createx Airbrush Colors in Opaque Aqua.

Now have some interiors.

See, the whole build. All of this madness that consumed me for like two weeks-plus as I hunted paper etc.–this was all for this final thing.

My answer for “how do you bind an unfinished fic?” Like, how does one convey: this is complete but not done? I don’t know how much truly beat to shit paperbacks you’ve handled in your life (or if you’re part of the elite who have several with no covers), but there is a flavour to the texture of pages ripped out of this kind of book. Which is part of why the paper type was so important. I needed the effect to feel right and “nice” book paper isn’t it. Anyway:

I feel like this story ends on an emotional fade-to-black. Like YES I would like to read more, but the last update was in 2016? We’re almost a decade from that. And part of me is like, “these guys need their privacy for how they ended this,” in a way. So this felt right. And, I have kind of a thing around Books As Objects and that the wear on an object, how it degrades and is used over time, is a huge part of what actually informs the experience of a book. So: I added a bunch of blank pages to the end of the text block, bound this whole thing and then ripped them out.

I love to make problems for myself. So, when I fell in love with a FNV fic and decided to fanbind it, decided it needed to evoke the pulpy mid-century mass market paperbacks that I myself read and collect. The thing is!! To really get the right tactile umami of these books you have to have the right paper. But who wants to buy the kind of paper mass market paperbacks were made with in bulk? It’s not acid free, it’s toothy but squishy, off-white in a way that is delicious only to the real freaks out there.

Now, at one time the illustrious French Paper company had Dur-O-Tone which was based on “everyday utilitarian newsprint paper” and came in a lovely “Aged Newsprint.” But it is no longer available in text weight! So I set out on a mostly-free sampling (good paper places will at most ask you to pay shipping for a couple slips of paper as you test finishes and colours) of possibles.

First up, a couple colours of Royal Sundancefrom The Paper Mill, because I thought maybe “speckle” would hit something evocative. It did not.

Not the right vibes at all.

Well, that’s fine. How about a selection from the folks who’d made the good stuff? French Paper has white text weight, all of which were 70lb, which I felt would be too “real” and stiff but we’re trying here.

Like?! I guess the top one here (Kraft Tone in Index Off-White) could do okay (it looked better in person)? I ordered some more samples from French, focusing on their Kraft Tone and Construction lines. Still, I felt like there had to be something better our there. I poked around looking for 50lb text weight and found something that absolutely is not meant for bookbinding: Pacon Standard Weight Drawing Paper in Manila.

I know it’s not acid free, or whatever whatever. But neither are the literal hundreds of my much-loved and read mass markets. And a ream of 500 sheets, delivered to pick up at my local Staples, cost half what a ream of not-quite-it from French would be. I figured, if it sucked for this particular need, I would enjoy having a bunch of drawing paper.

Because I have no chill, I opened the box in the parking lot. Having read many a book in the glaring Southern California sunshine, tiny black letters dancing in afterimage, I could tell right off that this was it.

Once home I ran a test print and under the warm house lights the vibes were even more spot on.

That second round of samples from French Paper are still wending their way toward me and I won’t be sad to have a more full understanding of The Nice Paper. However, every step of this latest fanbinding project has more and more solidly proved that this drawing paper is exactly what I’d been searching for.