Economics of Fine Press

As a fairly recent entrant to the world of fine press, I’ve been wondering about the economics behind it all.

To be clear, this is not a grumble about pricing; I’m simply wondering how the price paid by customers compares with the costs to produce. It seems the pricing of so many products there days is completely dislocated from their intrinsic value so I’m interested in how this applies to nice books.

I appreciate there are several input costs that are difficult to quantify (vision, design, etc) but what about the more tangible aspects?

I know almost nothing about the technical aspects of bookmaking and whether things like paper choice materially affect cost at such small volumes.

But taking as an example a standard tier work from one of the modern fine presses (CTP, Curious King, Amaranthine, Lyra’s etc), what might be the input costs involved in a book that retails for £200 or so?

For arguments sake: 250 letterpress pages on decent paper; public domain work; printed cloth or half cloth and paper binding; original artwork from a reputable artist; maybe an original introduction; a decent slipcase?

And is it the case that presses rely on fewer sales of higher (more expensive) states to pay for the standard states to be made or the other way around?

Again, the question is purely for interest: no hidden agendas!

I'll let the press people speak for themselves, but one thing for sure that affects pricing to the consumer is cost of materials, especially paper. A nice hand made paper is much more expensive, as is a hand-marbled paper for sides or endsheets, etc.

I would say that the sale of a few copies of a high-end state does help subsidize the low-end ("standard") state.

Welcome to the world of fine press!

The community of fine presses is too small for anything to be standardized. You could actually have two presses produce the exact same book at very different costs. Different craftspeople and shops will give very different quotes for their work. One printer might quote $5,000 on a project while another quotes $50,000. Even materials can vary in cost by location. (For example, back before Zerkall shut down, a parent sheet of Zerkall routinely cost around €1 in the Europe but $4 or $5 in the North America. So, a U.S. or Canadian press might tout their use of Zerkall, whereas European presses might consider it quite plain.)

But with heaps and heaps of salt, we might be able to suss out the answer to your question:

For arguments sake: 250 letterpress pages on decent paper; public domain work; printed cloth or half cloth and paper binding; original artwork from a reputable artist; maybe an original introduction; a decent slipcase?

Your specifications don't include arguably the important cost factors – method of printing, method of typesetting, method of binding, format, and edition size – so I'll assume the most automated and therefore least expensive of each. Method of printing is a fully automatic high-peed cylinder press. Typesetting is digital on polymer plates. Method of binding is semi-hand machine-assisted (Smyth-sewing, stack cutters, folding machines, etc.). Format is standard trade (6'' by 9''). Edition size is relatively large (~300). And indeed these specifications more or less align with the books you're curious about for reference.

You'd might see costs look something like:

$100 per inking
$50 per lock-up (assuming 8-up printing)
$1 per square inch plates
$0.50 per impression
$1 per parent sheet (at this format, 32 pages to a parent)
$5 in materials per binding
$60 in labor per binding
$5,000 commission to your artist
$1,000 commission to your introducer
$30 or maybe a bit more for your slipcase, but only because that quantity allows for the use of die cutting

So, all told, your edition might cost (doing the math here) $200 (inking) + $3,200 (lock ups) + $6,000 (plates) + ~$10,000 (impressions) + $2,400 (paper) + $1,500 (binding materials) + $18,000 (binding labor) + $6,000 commissions + $9,000 (slipcases) = ~$60,000 to produce, or $200 per copy. Of course, you've also got to ship all this stuff around and there are a dozen other minor costs here and there. But, whaddaya know: your ~$275 retail price means that you've got a reasonable but not an extravagant profit margin on your $200 per copy production cost. In fact, I'd say your book is a really good deal at $275!

You'll notice that labor costs eclipse material costs on your book. So why don't you upgrade your paper and binding materials, if it's pennies on the dollar?? Because "higher end" paper and binding materials will not just increase your material costs, but will drive up your labor costs too. The cost of handmade paper is not actually just the cost of the paper itself – it's also the cost of using more expensive labor processes which can handle that paper. For example, only a hand press can preserve every deckle on a small parent sheet of handmade paper and allow the pressmen to apply consistent pressure to inconsistent sheet weights. (All handmade papers are inconsistent.) (There are actually also methods for proofing presses to preserve every deckle while maintaining registration, I recently learned from Chad. You can run tacks through your tympan and "hang" the paper on the cylinder through holes in what will eventually become the crease. But that's wild and would be enormously laborous.)

>3 grifgon: Okay Griffon, do the math of 250pp of hand set type, three colors, Northern European long stitch into flax papercase, done even in a modest edition of 100 copies. The price for a college student doing the work vs Victor Hammer. Would such a book be made today?

>5 SuttonHooPress: Speak of the Chad and he shall appear.

Ahem:

*runs the numbers, consults the abacus, licks finger and raises it to the wind...*

One million dollars!

The unspeakable cost to the buyer, the cost notwithstanding the materials, is made of time, vision, experience and editorial mission. We love No Reply books for many reasons, and pay the going price willingly, especially because of the last item on that list, and that, mainly because high quality in the other categories can be assumed to be top-notch.

I don’t understand the economics of fine presses. Many of the presses I buy from are mom and pop operations. If they make and sell 100 copies at $1000 and produce only one book a year the gross is $100k making it hard to understand how the business can be viable regardless of costs. Upping the quantity a bit and producing multiple books may help make it viable but a press really needs to move into high margin broadsheets and chapbooks or multiple states of many books each with higher volumes to do well.

>3 grifgon: fascinating, thank you! And indeed there are lots of component costs in what I naively grouped as ‘letterpress’ that I hadn’t even considered!

I agree it makes the standard editions from some of these presses seem something of a bargain at those kind of margins.

Perhaps I’m not looking hard enough but I rarely see price grumbles in this forum but I do see them quite frequently over on the Folio Society board (my gateway drug).

>9 cyber_naut: I think the rising cost and lowering features of FS have converted quite a few to other presses (me included). What initially feels like very high costs (and are, in absolute terms of course) start to seem like steals when comparing to lackluster LE offerings from FS, or even just their regular book offerings now swelled to be near entry level editions from some of the fine presses here.

Regarding costs I seem to recall Suntup talking about how the AEs weren't really "worth it" (and an outright danger if unsold) and the margins on the numbered and lettered editions were paying for them in part. Likewise the discussion about cases being expected perhaps needing to be questioned as a bigger part of the total cost than people expect is spent getting the book sleeved. I know Centipede Press has had optional slipcases for some of their more expensive books which seems ideal for the customer but is a risk for the press.

>8 kdweber: They may have other sources of income to help support their press. How much support might they be getting from grants, etc.?

Not all fine presses are businesses. Someone turning out 15 copies of an artist's book at $5k per isn't running a publishing business. They're selling art.

This is an interesting topic, all the more so because some of our printers ( >4 grifgon: and >5 SuttonHooPress:) are chiming in!

>5 SuttonHooPress: If Consensus Press contracts the ghost of Victor Hammer to design and print a book, they might as well fork over the cash for him to cut a new uncial for it too!

>11 Glacierman: I think you nailed it.

An anecdote: One of the things I especially like about the Perishable Press is that some of the books represent the artistic vision of one man, and this is especially true in the Gabberjabbs, which he self-financed and produced on his own, and which are very expensive. In my copy of one of the Gabberjabbs, Hamady noted the total expenditures he incurred in producing the edition, which was five digits in money and 1750 hours of his time. That book retailed for over $2,000 in the late 1990s. I did the math, and assuming that Hamady's numbers were accurate and he sold out the entire edition of 125, he was basically paying himself a skilled-craftsman's wage. (Hamady didn't scrimp, either: the book is completely handmade, but I guess you can save if you're the papermaker, compositor, illustrator, printer, and binder). I find it an interesting and compelling example of pricing one's work.

Morris Cox of the Gogmagog Press kept his prices very low, given the unmatched quality of his materials, the time his books took him to produce, etc. But his books were produced in such tiny editions that he could not have made much more than a living wage from sales.

I do like to wonder how much some of the Allens' books would cost to produce today. Imagine the sticker shock!

>10 A.Godhelm: Regarding costs I seem to recall Suntup talking about how the AEs weren't really "worth it" (and an outright danger if unsold).

This is an interesting point as I feel that for modern private presses to succeed, in the long term and at any scale, they need to provide the ‘on ramp’ of standard state editions.

Before I started buying Folio Society books, I doubt I’d spent more than £15 on a book in my life (other than academic texts at university). So jumping to £400+ fine press numbered editions is simply something that would never have happened.

Standard states provide the right balance of price reflecting cost of manufacture without being ‘mortgage payment’ level purchases needed, I think!

>13 cyber_naut:

That's very true. Moving from regular books to the cheaper entry level of Folio Society of old to more expensive limited editions took time and a lot of getting used to these very different prices. I also needed to see just what you could get for your money and how it might differ from the previous level I'd buy at to take those steps one by one.

At the risk of making the discussion slightly more partisan (!) what might be the equivalent costs to make the typical Folio Society book of the same type?

Are the claims of Folio being overpriced fair or not? Discuss!

Didn’t Amaranthine also say that their Essential Editions were financially unsustainable?

>16 Opinacus: Marko mentioned the margins being quite tight but not unsustainable. They do appear to be reducing the limitations on them though, and I think have said that they may only make enough to satisfy pre-orders in future. I don't know the pain at which a standard state limitation is too small to make it work financially, but I hope they can continue.

I'm curious about the expense, economics, and methodology of getting art into an illustrated book. I assume the various mediums and types of art drive costs in different ways? Etching seems obvious because the artist is handing over a woodblock or other etching that can then be printed from. But what about other artists? How do line drawings, paintings, etc., get from a piece of art to the pages of a book?

>18 jveezer: almost exclusively by offset lithography/photolithography. Occasionally I'll see a book that has line drawings that were transferred to an etching plate, for example, but those are the exceptions, at least in my experience.

>18 jveezer: There's also the related process of photogravure, which is complex to execute apparently. And I've seen a number of books use polymer plate for sketches and line illustration transfers.

>5 SuttonHooPress:

I likely missed some obvious components that would increase the price, but I thought I'd see how the math shakes out (and present to the world all of my naive assumptions).

> Okay Griffon, do the math of 250pp of hand set type

Assuming each page is 30 lines, 25pica each, that's 750 ems a page at 12pt. If an average trade comp during the pre-Monotype era did 7000 ems a day, let's assume a decent comp today can do 3500 ems in an 8hr working day. So at 4-up we're looking at 2 days of comp so that we can then do 2 days of printing without dissing. Then *handwaves* a day to diss.†

8 pages a week gives you 32 weeks of work just for printing. I understand that Rollin Milroy, as an example, generally does less than 50 impressions a day, but let's assume for argument's sake that even a single pressman will get 100 good handinked impressions a day).

> three colors

Let's assume 1 week for this and just generally bump up our total working time to 35 weeks.

> Northern European long stitch into flax papercase

I am not familiar with what to expect for this type of binding, but let's assume that it's the abovementioned ~$60 + $5 for the cover (half sheet of Hook Pottery coverweight flax paper) so round up to $75 per binding.

> done even in a modest edition of 100 copies

Shoehorning in the paper for the textblock here, we'll get the textweight paper from Hook Pottery too (cause you're printing damp, on an iron handpress, so of course it's gotta be handmade). 32 sheets per book * 100 books is 3200 sheets, or $32,000. Bump it up to $35,000 cause we have a student printing this and they're gonna make mistakes. (Maybe we can ask for a discount and get it down to $34,999)

> The price for a college student doing the work vs Victor Hammer. Would such a book be made today?

Since college students haven't learned to value their labor yet, let's pay them $20/hr. Victor Hammer, $50/hr (I would hate for anyone to think you could get wealthy off of being Victor Hammer).

This gives us:
- 35 forty-hour weeks = $28,000 OR $70,000
- Binding = 100 * $75 = $7,500
- Paper = $35,000

Thus: $70,500 OR $112,500, which comes out to either $705 or $1125 before profit – and that's 3/5ths of your year gone on one project too. AND doesn't include any illustrations that take both time and money to print. No wonder these types of books often have half the number of pages!

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†Or you buy it all from Swamp Press at ~$2 per 25 pica line, which comes out to ~$400 in metal a week, not counting discounts for returning the metal, or $1280 for our 32 weeks. If you value your time less than $25/hr ($200/8) then it's cheaper – at least in pure realized expenses – to set it yourself.

>21 yikou: This was awesome.

Only suggestion: get the college students to do unpaid summer internships.

>8 kdweber: I'd like to add another comment here. I don't know how common it might be today, but at one time at least, small presses often ran a job shop to provide income to support their fine press activities.

>21 yikou: Nicely done, but for one thing. If I were Victor Hammer, I wouldn't get out of bed for less than $150/hour. Think of it this way. You pay your lawyer and your doctor upwards of $150/hr. Would you really want someone printing your books who wasn't as experienced and qualified as those two? Sure, we can pay baby-sitting wages to those who we entrust to teach our children, but we wouldn't want our printer to ever be disgruntled. . . .

>22 grifgon:, >24 SuttonHooPress:

I'm sure ol' Vic would be amenable to teaching the summer interns. Teach 'em that with hard work and perseverance you too can be a letterpress printer paid like a lawyer.

>25 yikou: I'm a student of Chad's, and Chad was a student of Kim Merker's, and Kim Merker said to his students: "Monkeys can fold paper, but I have you."

Which makes me a monkey's monkey, however much or little I'm paid!

>25 yikou: Poets sometimes get similar questions that go: how long did it take you to write that poem? The summer intern might say "10 minutes" or "an hour," but the poet who has been writing 40 years will say "Well, I started in my 20s," even if the poem took 10 minutes to draft. That's were the money is--even great teachers can't teach that.

>26 grifgon: It's " Trained monkeys can fold paper"

>28 SuttonHooPress: So an infinite number of said monkeys, given an eternity, will eventually produce every form of origami ever made?

>29 Shadekeep: Now if we could fine a binder who could make a box that would fit on a shelf to hold them all. . . .

Very interesting thread! Great breakdowns from >3 grifgon: and >21 yikou: .

I find with our books that I can’t focus too much on the hours involved. One of the first questions I’m often asked is how much it costs per book (also factoring in time). I honestly don’t know the exact time involved in each copy, especially considering how multiple copies of an edition are completed in stages. Some steps of the process require waiting overnight after just an hour of work, etc.

All things considered, I figure the cost of supplies and have a rough idea of how many months each edition would take to make. If I think enough copies of the title will sell, we go for it.

For us it’s really about the enjoyment of making books and making enough to justify calling it our job. Here’s to staying in the middle class!

>31 CJR93: Like many other presses, and unlike No Reply Press, you outsource printing - so that cost should be pretty straightforward? Similarly, paper is purchased from paper suppliers, leather from tanneries, and artwork is paid for. Those seem pretty concrete. Standard model compared to all/most presses.

Admittedly it’s hard to value one’s own time, especially as experience and expertise grows. So the design and binding can be hard to put an hourly rate to. The rest should just be adding up invoices similar to earlier math.

>32 What_What: Yes, definitely. It’s not difficult to add up the cost of supplies.

One of our early editions as we were trying to figure out the business model breaks down this way:

Lady Susan by Jane Austen
Sale Price of $380 per copy.
Limited to 50 copies.
Total sales = $19,000

Just doing a quick mental tally:
Total Cost of Supplies and Offset Printing ≈ $4,500

(Sheepskin leather, white felt paper, amber brocade, bugra endpages, marbled paper headbands, ribbon marker, buckram covered slipcase, upgrade to thicker book board for cover and slipcase.)

Less 15% income tax = $2,175

Leaving a profit of $12,325. Splitting that among the 50 copies gives a profit of $246.50 per book.

While we aren’t doing the printing ourselves, we do start with raw text and format it into the edition. So there is a lot of time involved before sending the file to a printer. I believe it took us around 12 weeks to make the 50 copies. That works out to $1,027.00 income per week. With an average of 6 hrs per weekday, it comes out to around $35/hr.

So while the profit per book may seem high, the time involved evens things out. We’ve adjusted things since then as we’ve learned. But it was a great start.

>15 cyber_naut: I’m also curious what a typical standard Folio Society edition costs to produce. I would guess around $25-30? Especially if they’re selling single volume titles for only $85-120. Probably not much time involved in each one.

Very interesting thread! Can I add some more questions into the mix?

What are the kinds of ranges of costs (as I’m sure they vary a lot by artist) of paying an artist to do let’s say, 8 colour illustrations for a book?

Also, for those Presses that do multi-state editions of books that are in copyright/not public domain, what are the kinds of fees that need to be paid to the publisher to license the work for the Fine Press treatment?

I appreciate these may be hard to answer in any standardised way as things will be different depending on the product/publisher/book.

Interesting thread indeed. (other Chad here) I guess you have to define what "Fine Press" means to you.

Here at DWP everything is done in-house. The typesetting by hand or Linotype and occasionally polymer, presswork, most of the artwork and bindery. I too call in my bindery monkeys in when it's time to collate, fold and sew and keep a couple of them on during the casing stage. The bindery is definitely the bottle neck but my books are mostly ¼ leather and slipcased these days for the standard copies which takes a bit more effort. If an edition sells out, great - but it doesn't have to right away because the back catalog keeps trickling out, one or two books a year with side commissions can support a family. Not a lot of capital income to reinvest but stocks of various papers, board, cloth and leather need to be replenished and on hand.

Quality of materials is certainly a factor but equipment and process also plays a big role. Many smaller presses are cranking Vandercooks or other proof presses which is tedious to say the least but very little spoilage. Some of the bigger presses in the playing field are hiring metal composition from Swamp, Bixler or Pat Randall in the UK and hiring the printing as well on big Heidelberg cylinder presses which do great work. Big difference between small bindery production and what Ludlow or Campbell Logan can put out. Time and detail quality begins to be a dominating force.

Let me add to the excellent list above of occasional expenses: Translator

I don't think I'll release many more fine books with editions greater than 40 copies and keep them at the highest quality moving forward. That being said, I also want people to SEE and READ these books so last week I tuned up my ATF Little Giant 12x18" automated cylinder press to release the latest book on US domestic mill paper in a simple sewn limp binding. I will release 250 copies this summer for $70 instead of $600. I've never done this before but material costs are lower, the type is already set so why not give it a try?

Even though I have that nice automated cylinder, I haven't used it for a book I've released under one of my own imprints since Heart of Darkness. I like working with expensive paper and don't mind the Vandercook shuffle. Some of you may own books I printed on the Little Giant for other printers, uncredited.

Another big issue is the gamble - I'm guilty of putting out a few reprints of some classics and there's quicker money there for sure if you pick right. The bigger gamble is new work from authors that aren't famous. That's been the focus of my DWP imprint for 35 years but it's the reprints that pay for kitchen remodels.

The old quote: "If you want to make a small fortune in publishing - start with a large fortune."

Don't even get me started on inkjets in fine books, just no. 100% polymer 100% of the time just so you can put computer output relief instead of inkjet/litho? Also a solid No. Things get gimmicky pretty quick the larger you scale sometimes and I'm astounded at the lack of quality for some of the contemporary big author releases that command $$$$.

I was cleaning out my phone's photo reel and found that I had taken screenshots of The Economics of Printing Limited Editions by Richard-Gabriel Rummonds, from Fine Print 1987. I used my computer's built in OCR, so apologies if there are typos I missed. If you are familiar with this article, there is a page of calculations at the end, which I did not attempt to copy or transcribe. I personally found it useful – there is a lot of labor that one does as individual that can easily be taken for granted, both as the one doing the labor and the one observing the fruits of the labor. Until you have packed up 100 books, it is easy to misjudge how long it takes!

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To help me keep track of what I do at the press on a day-to-day basis, I keep a separate 8" * 5" record book for each title.
It is divided into several sections: general, manuscript, art, edition, paper, composition, printing, binding, miscellaneous, labor, projected budget, skeleton, and imposition schemes for each form. I record the costs as they are incurred under the proper headings. In addition to entering the out-of-pocket expenses, I keep track of the number of hours I work, or any helper works, noting as well what was done.
All presses, whether trade or small literary, must take into account the following six factors when pricing a book. Small literary presses often combine some of these factors, but they still exist as separate expenses.

I. Production costs
II. Overhead
Ill. Royalties and fees
IV. Advertising and promotion
V. Discounts
VI. Profit

The first thing we must do is determine the "real" costs of producing a limited edition. I think very few printers are aware of how much indirect time they actually spend on producing a book. This was dramatically brought home to me recently when I discovered that each sheet of paper at my press is handled at least twenty-five, often as many as thirty-five, times before it even gets to the binder. Since most small literary presses are operated by one or two persons, and maybe a part-time helper, it is often easy to overlook the proprietor's contribution in labor. (On the other hand, those printers who have a fixed hourly fee, usually printers involved in some sort of job printing, must realize that when they wear different hats-perform different tasks around the shop— their time should be charged according to the task. There is one price for typesetting, another for printing, and a third for wrapping up the books and carrying them to the post office or UPS. The latter activity should command only a minimum wage. The proprietor's $35 an hour charge for skilled typesetting should not apply to wrapping packages, with the customer expected to pick up the tab.)

Now let's examine a breakdown of the costs:

I. Production Costs

Expendable Materials:
1. Text paper. Includes shipping.
2. Paper preparation. Includes handling, weighing, folding, dampening, etc. I sometimes include dampening in the unit price per form (see II, below).
3. Ink. Includes special or colored inks.
4. Special type. Includes type ordered for a specific book.
5. Linecuts.
6. Plates for illustrations.

Non-expendable Materials:
7. Type for stock. I amortize the cost of Monotype for stock over two books; foundry type over four books.
8. The labor that "dares not speak its name" is the pro-prietor's. I calculate all labor, including my own, at $4.00 an hour, but I do not make a separate entry for such, preferring to subsume this cost under the activities that involve labor.

Other Expenses:
9. Binder. Since the binding is the single most costly item in producing a book at my press, I always enter it separately.
The binder usually supplies all of the materials although on occasion I have supplied colored endpapers and decorated papers.
10. Typesetting. I have a scale for hand composition, with different rates for poetry, prose, and display. The rate is based on how many lines can be set, corrected, justified, and distributed in one hour and this is figured at $4.00 an hour like all other labor at the press. Poetry costs less than prose, but no allowance is made for type size since most of my work is done in 14 and 16 point type.

11. Printing. Unit price per form. I determine a unit price per printed form which includes overhead (see Overhead below), the labor involved, imposing the form, making ready, printing, and final quality control of the printed sheets once the paper is dry. It also includes such materials as black ink, solvents, newsprint, proof papers, and Mylar. There are slight variations on the unit price per form; folio imposition is less than quarto, while blank and half pages are also taken into account.

Printing illustrations. If I pay someone else to print the illustrations, such as etchings, lithographs, or screenprints, I add this separately. If I assist the printer by handling the paper, etc., I add my hours at $4.00 an hour. Illustrations, usually woodcuts or linecuts, which can be printed in my studio on the handpress, are calculated as additional forms, but are entered separately.

II. Overhead

Even though some printers list overhead and operating expenses as separate entries, I do not. At the end of the year, after I have done my taxes, I reevaluate what the studio cost me to run during the past year and divide it by the number of forms I have printed. It usually comes out to be too high. (After all, I am not making full productive use of the studio I usually knock it down considerably, and the lower figure gets absorbed into the unit cost per form which is my base unit for calculating the printing costs of a book. It may wa reflect the actual overhead costs for the book in hand, butt does serve as an indication for calculating the overhead. I don't keep track of accounting costs other than the fees I pay my accountant. These also get absorbed into the unit cost per form. Nor do I calculate the amount of time I spend writing letters to current and prospective collectors, or keeping my mailing list up-to-date. Since I have few books in stock, warehousing is no problem. We all have an extra drawer somewhere in the house.

Shipping and Handling:

12. Shipping materials. I add in the cost of shipping materials separately. I use bubble wrap, nice fold up cartons, and plastic popcorn to mail out my books. It save packing time and lets the collector know you value your work.
13. Postage for books. I also include $2.50 per book for postage even though this does not cover all fit. Standing orders are sent post free; all others have an aditional $3.50 added to their invoices.

III. Royalties and Fees

I4. Authors' fees. I prefer to pay authors an outright fee rather than a royalty or in books. At the Plain Wrapper Press we sent prospective authors a set of guidelines. My relationship with an author – even though I am publishing books – is more akin to that between an author and a publisher of periodicals because in most cases all I am seeking is one-time rights. I have always paid my authors the same rates they would have received had The New Yorker, Esquire, or Raint accepted their manuscripts.
15. Artists' and collaborators' fees. I also pay flat fes to artists and other collaborators such as calligraphers, editors, translators, etc.

IV. Advertising and Promotion

16. Advertising. If I place an advertisement for a specific book, I add it into the cost as a separate item. If I place an advertisement for the press in general, I add it to the overhead which in turn is reflected in the basic unit price per fom (see II, above).
17. Prospectuses. My mailing list is too large to print prospectuses on the handpress. Another problem is that I don't like printing ephemera and never have. The cost of having someone else print the prospectus and the postage to send it out should be added as a separate item. I don't charge for the time I spend running labels, writing notes, and stuffing envelopes.
18. Promotion. Several years ago, when I offered to return one of the expensive books of Texas publisher W. Thomas Taylor, after having reviewed it in American Book Collecter, Tom said that I should keep it. He added that he always provided for two review copies in his budget. I realized that this is an expense that many printers of very limited or very expensive editions do not want to accept or acknowledge, but reviews are necessary for many reasons. One, they document they document the publication of the book. Two, they help reinforce the collectors' regard for the press, and three they sometimes even help sell books. I now set aside one review copy for Fine Print and another for American Book Collector. I usually send a few to friends at The New York Times and The New Yorker. Try to keep gratis copies at a minimum; remember that they get converted into expenses when you calculate the list price.

V. Discounts

19. Trade discount. I set aside fifteen copies of each edition for booksellers at 30 percent off. Once these fifteen copies have been exhausted, my discount drops down to 20 percent. Many booksellers have standing orders which assure them of receiving a copy of each edition even though there is no additional discount break for a bookseller who places a standing
20. Standing order discount. I offer standing order collectors a 20 percent discount. When figuring the price of the book, I calculate as a cost 20 percent across the board for the whole edition, even though the discount will not actually be applied to all the copies (see formula, below).

VI. Profit

21. Profit. The amount of profit you expect should not be "what is left over after the last bill has been paid," but a predetermined percentage built into the list price of the book. The amount will depend on how greedy you are. If you want to keep your books accessible to collectors, you will keep the profit as low as possible. If you calculate your "real" expenses carefully, I would say that 5 to 10 percent is fair. You may want to let potential collectors, not standing order collectors, know about a particular book during production so they can reserve a copy before the prospectus goes out to the general public. Naturally you must include the price. Collectors hate the word "about" when it refers to the unconfirmed price of a book. It is better to take a loss than raise the quoted price. If you need to price the book before all the costs are in, you should add 20 percent or more to your estimate to protect yourself against unforeseen contingencies.

>36 yikou:
Fascinating, but $4 an hour, that's slave wages.

>37 wcarter:: 1987 was under Ronnie Raygun's presidency, with all that fancy trickle-down economics and "just say no" stuff.

>37 wcarter: my read is that its labor estimates at $4 hourly (if that's USD ~11.27 if you trust BLS CPI metrics) plus a 5-10% profit margin.

>38 supercell: >39 ensuen:
Ahhh! Forgot that this was 40 years ago.

>36 yikou: Wow! I'd rather drink roller wash than think about any of these things at my press. Think of how many books one wouldn't print if one was busy filling out such records--definitely not a road to prosperity!

>41 SuttonHooPress: Agreed! Best to just love the work and forget the rest....

I might be wrong on this but I'd imagine there is a very strict ceiling on how much you can earn in fine press anyway. This seems built into its nature: slow inefficient processes, limitation numbers need to stay low so can't scale up to mass production, a small pool of buyers (around 1000) spreading their cash between presses and the second hand market, etc.

The last thing I'd do if I wanted to earn good money is work in fine press. Most people earn good money in jobs they hate. That's the trade off. But if you do end up making a good living that's a bonus.

>43 LT79-1: There's also a vast ocean of institutions that collect here in the US and many Europeans presses come here to sell to them as well. They are far less interested in editions of 100+ but tend to focus on book arts in the last decade. Those of us who do small fine press are dwindling fast but I still affirm that a proper book has lots of words and not just a conceptual statement.

>41 SuttonHooPress: Two roads to prosperity diverged in a yellow wood and I turned around and went back to my press. ;D

I liken RGR's write-up to reading some of the answers in Russell Maret's zine collections. It's interesting to know all the elaborate ways of doing things and then paring things back until they work for you (I recall to mind some of the answers on dampening paper, in particular). Of couse, don't let me discourage anyone from finding more elaborate ways of doing things, if time and space permit!

>44 DWPress: When I visited the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair I spoke to a press owner who told me he'd much rather sell all his books to institutions and avoid random collectors. It did make me chuckle as I'm one of those random collectors. I do wonder if that option was on the table for small presses whether they would avoid the private collectors altogether.

>36 yikou: >41 SuttonHooPress: Agreed Chad. I set my books' prices these days by looking at the first finished copy and going with what my gut tells me is fair. No spreadsheets or calculations or market hooha. No idea which editions make money and which lose money.

>46 LT79-1: I couldn't care less whether a book goes to a private collector or an institution, at least at first. The people who do books acquisitions at institutions are also just people. Furthermore, it seems to me that few institutions have acquisitions people who specialize specifically in private / fine / hand-made / whatever we do. Maybe Chad or Chad can correct me, but I don't know if the folks doing the acquisitions at most institutions know a whole lot more about these books than the typical private collector. "My books are held at Harvard" really means "Molly wanted this book — she works for Harvard." Molly is wonderful and Harvard is wonderful, but so are all you plebs ; - D

Of course in the long run its awesome to have books at institutions simply because they're usually preserved well and available to the public. It gives me great comfort that if my house burns down there are a few places I can go and see all my stuff.

>47 grifgon: I think it's great these books will be preserved at institutions but I always wonder the level of access someone outside of the institution will be allowed. For example, I'd like to visit V&A in London to view the Gogmagog Press collection. I've not contacted them yet as I'm not ready to visit London yet. But I doubt they would let me sit down and spend time going through the entire collection. If it's behind a glass case or an overly fussy attendant is lurking over my shoulder that would really kill it for me. But beggars can't be choosers and it's not as if I'd see these books at all if they were in the hands of private collectors. But I do have the opportunity to collect the odd book here and there if they are on sale in the private collectors' space.

I also think keeping these books cloistered solely in institutional settings would in some way harm the industry. I think opening up to private collectors creates a buzz and an energy. So personally I think a mix is good although I am biased in this respect!

>48 LT79-1: I think you'd be surprised about institutional access. A polite letter/email seeking an appointment to see particular books goes a long way. I've found rare book librarians to be quite gracious and more than pleased to share their knowledge.

>48 LT79-1: I'm only really aware of people getting told no when there's a scan of it available and the work is old enough to be worried about damage from careful reading.

>47 grifgon: It gives me great comfort that if my house burns down there are a few places I can go and see all my stuff.

And believe you me, he means ALL of his stuff, even some really scarce ephemera . . . .

>46 LT79-1: I'm in collections at most of the notable institutions around the world BUT in recent years my first email announcement goes out to private collectors only. Only last month did I finally offer Wind in the Willows to institutions. While I haven't had any problems making appointments to special collections to view work it bothers me that the collections are basically cloistered with a gateway. I agree with Griffin - private collectors enjoy their acquisitions and when they don't they sell them off and they re-enter the market which I think is a good thing.

I also agree that the people in charge of acquisitions at these places are only as capable to make decisions based on their knowledge and preference. I met several newly appointed special collections librarians at the recent Manhattan fair and some them couldn't possibly understand what they were even looking at for lack of life experience. At the same time we are losing many knowledgeable people that had incredible insight and understanding in both the private and institutional sphere to old age. The knowledge Bob Fleck or Jean-François Villain took with them is just gone and is a tremendous blow to small fine press.

>48 LT79-1: If you’d like to see a complete Gogmagog collection without requesting books one by one, and sitting in the V&A library, let me know when you’re in the UK and you’d be welcome to come and see my complete collection in comfort and with a cup of tea. James

Personally, most of the public institutions that I have visited to see books at are pretty easy to go into. E.g. walk in, talk to the librarian and they'll take you up to the reading room and pull out whatever books you want to see. This includes public libraries, universities (e.g. Harvard), and private libraries (like the Boston Athenaeum - why pay for a tour when they'll walk you through and show you books for free). Sometimes they want notification in advance but often not even that is required. I haven't tried the V&A, not living in London, but I imagine they'll pull out whatever you want to see. You just generally need to know what you are looking for before hand.

>53 JamesFreemantle:. Now this is clearly a far superior way of viewing a collection lol

>52 DWPress: Jean-François was the first collector I had who sent me his credit card number and said "One of everything"! And that was in my first year before I had made anything even approaching "fine". Very generous and indeed very knowledgeable guy. One thing that must be said for private collectors — which I don't think can be said for institutions — is that they often order to support the perpetuation of bookmaking as much as much as to aquire a book. Not only "I order this because I want this" but often "I order this because I want this to exist." Very generous.

I think my gripe with institutions is they can obliterate the market for books with a low enough limitation. To borrow a phrase from twitter, a lot of them seem to not really have an acquisition strategy - leading to what I would call acquisitionslop. Lots of places just buying because they have a budget. (A school beat me to a couple items I wanted in a catalog and I'm still getting over it).

Talking with a few people, seemingly having institutions being too high a percentage of your buyers can be troublesome if you have piece that more out there or political that might be a harder sell.

>56 ensuen: that is the American way. Our institutions are full of other cultures relics thanks to the Carnegies, Morgans, Rockefellers etc "acquiring" because they could - at least they spent some effort at philanthropy. Most of my peers coming from UK, EU and beyond to sell here are still capitalizing on their legacy and endowments. An American making it into European collections is far more significant, they are more apt to protect and support their own cultural identity.

I don't see institutions discriminating that way, they are shifting to artists books because of the challenging conceptual statements many of them promote and as a way to engage more with the students. It is another coffin nail in fine press though.

>55 grifgon: yes, we lost one of our angels and for me, a good friend. I only found out that Roger passed weeks later while in NY, very sad there was no-one left to send notice. At least Penn Libraries are now greatly enriched. I agree, my best collectors believe in the vision of my press - not the potential for earnings by flipping books in a few years. I hope that is why few of my books come up on the secondary market.

>53 JamesFreemantle: Thank you! That's an incredibly generous offer. It could be that V&A are more than accommodating, as >49 dpbbooks: noted above, but if I'm struggling to gain reasonable access I will definitely take you up on that very kind offer! It must be quite special to have the entire collection of one particular press, especially one as creative as Cox, to see that journey from start to end.

>52 DWPress: I recently started a bookbinding course taught by tutors from academic institutions. Speaking to the other students not one of them had really heard of fine press or really cared too much for it which I found a real shame. They see the book arts as a way to display their own art or ideas. They were more interested in ways to sequence their artwork with certain book constructions with a little bit (but not too much) interest in letterpress using words to support their images. Basically images, not words, are primary.

If some academic institutions have adhoc or incoherent strategies for acquiring books I'm not surprised. To me it makes more sense for them to collect everything by one press and be the go-to place for that press rather than random titles here and there.

>54 921Jack: As a special collection worker (archivist) I would say that the belief that institutions are less than welcoming is definitely based in reality, especially in the recent past. These repositories have often been dragon's hoards, jealously guarded by gentleman librarians who would demand to know why you needed to see their precious collections.

Happily that's changing. At my workplace, we go out of our way to assure visitors that they actually do not need a reason to be there at all beyond whatever interest motivated their visit.

>58 LT79-1: Academic book arts programs are aimed toward artists, not book people. They crank out livres d'artiste, not fine press books. If letterpress is used at all, it is subordinate to the art, which is why I have no interest in them.

My experiences with University Special Collections have been 100% grand. For most of my career as Sutton Hoo Press, I focused on traveling to Special Collections Libraries and doing all I could to place my books there. My goal was for anyone interested in my editorial mission and presswork to have access to the books even if they couldn't afford them, and I aimed at giving folks no less than a 200 mile drive; to that end I traveled the country with my young family during summer vacations. Some of the books I've made I felt would be important to scholars working on various authors in the future, like my William Matthews book. He was an important contemporary poet, but the prose I printed from a large archive was not available to scholars who might want to explore it. If they gain access to the book I printed, then they would have a taste of what could be found in his archive and prepare research plans and grants with that material.

I found the librarians I met to be various and wonderful personalties who knew a lot about their collections and how they were used, and they were interested in my ideas about how to fold my books into their programs and even expand the audience for their collections. None of them fit into a type--they were all quite different. I only met one truly foolish librarian in Western Massachusetts.

Many of these institutions immediately created standing orders. Some took us to baseball games. I remember at least one steak dinner. In fact, the fellow who took me to dinner was the librarian at Occidental College in LA. Very Interesting: he told me stories of his predecessor, who bought or otherwise acquired rare editions and intentionally did not catalogue them. He had seen the writing on the wall with the Catholic church and was afraid that if the diocese knew what he had in the collection those books would be sold to cover legal fees. My new friend spent his career exploring his own collection and getting blown away by what he had!

Also, did you know that Marquette has Tolkien's papers? In the 50s the president of the the university gave the special collections librarian a mandate to get something important and unique for the collection. He acquired Tolkien's papers for $5000. My son and I visited and saw the illustration that Tolkien himself drew for the first cover of The Hobbit--it is very cool.

So, I leaned on Libraries with a LOT of gratitude in my career. We need them. Posterity needs them. They have terrific knowledge, and they dictate what will be read and remembered in the future.

One of the most dynamic librarians I ever met was Max Yela at UW--Milwaukee. He worked tirelessly to get students and members of the public into his warren of books at the university. People were always in there. Max was pure energy and knowledge for printed books. Paul Gehl at The Newberry is knowledgable beyond the capacity of any collector and was always very helpful getting books in front of people. I also once met an enormous librarian who knew everything there was to know about miniature books, which he flipped through with his large fingertips while he pontificated--a very fun day.

I love the role institutions play in our field. My favorite sale ever as a fine press printer was to a VERY small college in upstate New York, 600 students. The library was about the size of a split level tract house. Their annual budget for acquisitions was $1000. I met with a small gathering of staff and showed them what I was doing at the time with my students, and listened to their goals for getting students involved in multidisciplinary arts. Of course, 'book art' was the perfect category, and model broadsides gave them ideas for how to pursue the form. They purchased materials that came to $150, so 15% of their budget. I was proud of that, and really delighted for the exchange of ideas and enthusiasm that I experienced there.

I could go on. Of course, many of the people I worked with in the past are retired or dead, but not everyone, and not newly minted librarians. I would not be quick to dismiss their expertise, nor their hunger to hear yours. In fact, I would encourage any bibliophile to make a tour of special collections libraries to any part of the country and visit the people and their books. Do what I have done: chart a vector from where you live to another part of the country and research the holdings of any college or university within 100 miles of that vector and get in the car and go--treasures await you.

>61 SuttonHooPress: Very interesting comment, thank you!

>60 Glacierman: In the UK genuine book people don't exist or are such a rare or dying breed. You have to take what you can. To be fair though, the teaching on the bindings has been excellent. These bindings are the same as used on fine press books. In fact we've worked through ones I've not seen on this forum. .They are very good courses for beginners. Also learning alongside artists has been very beneficial as they think in a different way. I agree though that the text should take the primary role or equal to image. It's exposed me to letterpress printing and I'll continue my learning on that elsewhere. But I'm enjoying the binding. The Ideal would be to work for a fine press though while learning but you learn with the pathway open to you at a given time.

>63 LT79-1: Could you link to which course you're doing?

I now live in Canada (there is nothing out here) but am from the UK and visit often so would be good to know what opportunities are there so potentially could time things appropriately in the future.

>64 Extrasolarian: sure, I'll send you a PM with some details.

>63 LT79-1: Funny, I feel like people are often looking to the UK as the source of all the genuine book people! I, for one, much prefer the content of the Society of Bookbinder's publication than the Guild of Book Workers. (I haven't read anything from Designer Bookbinders, but there fact that there are 2 publications should be a feather in the UK's cap). Perhaps we are thinking about different things when you say "genuine book people".

Also curious what structures you've been learning that haven't shown up on the forum yet.

Bookbinding in the US is still maintained at a high level in my opinion. There are quite a few private schools that specialize in binding and many opportunities to study with individuals. The Guild of Book Workers site has many links for opportunities. Many opportunities in France as well, lots of book binders, paper makers and marblers around Provence I meet with when I'm teaching at Louis Jou in Les Baux.

The last time I attended the Oxford fair I observed more fine press than book arts. Not sure about the other fairs.

>66 yikou: I meant in the sense Glacierman mentioned above and how many categorise it on this forum. Genuine book people = acknowledge the primacy of letterpress printed words / typography, Non book people or book artists = primacy of image and artistic expression with the book as an object.

In terms of UK, I'm out in the wilderness unconnected to 'book people'. I only met them at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair. You're more likely to meet book artists. It could be different in other parts of UK.

With the book structures, I'll try to take some pictures this week as seeing them is easier than describing them.

>68 LT79-1: I guess this could be described as an Oxford-lite, and presumably much more accessible for you:

https://ludlowfinebookfair.co.uk/

>69 duncjl: it is and I had no idea this fair exists. One to bookmark, thanks!