Lost Art Press

Day: September 11, 2018

Be Your Own Dang Publisher

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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We get a lot of unsolicited manuscripts and book ideas at Lost Art Press – way more than we could ever hope to handle. As of now now we have 18 upcoming books under contract, which is more than five years of work for us.

So when potential authors come calling, I am quick to encourage them to publish their book themselves. (If they embrace the idea, that tells me something about their dedication to their project. If they reject the idea, that also tells me something about their dedication to their project.)

These days, it’s easy to print a decent-quality book using a “print-on-demand” (POD) service. These POD products aren’t permanent books. The pages are merely stacked and glued. With traditional books, the pages are folded, sewn and glued, which makes for a much more durable product.

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But the POD option is a good one for guerilla publishers. Or people who want to make only a few books at a time. There are many companies that will print and sell your POD book (Amazon and Lightning Source are two of the bigger players). But there is a smaller and sometimes cheaper option.

Local libraries often have “Maker Spaces” that have POD machines, such as the Espresso book machine, a $185,000 technological wonder. The Cincinnati Public Library has one, and I’ve been using it for the last year to print off workshop manuals and personal publishing projects with great success.

Yes, it sucks that its book blocks are glued and not sewn. But there is a solution: Sew the book blocks yourself. It’s not all that difficult, and I’ll demonstrate the process in a future blog post.

Lately I’ve been printing up the 70-page manuals that I’ll give to students who take my staked furniture classes. Compared to other photocopied and stapled manuals, these POD manuals are nice. And they don’t cost much more than a trip to Staples or Office Depot.

So, if you have your own publishing project in mind – “The Baptist’s Tool Chest” or “The Democratic Design Book” – you might want to first give your local library a call to see if it has a POD machine. You might just put me out of business some day.

— Christopher Schwarz

Another Award for the Deluxe Roubo Edition

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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At Lost Art Press, we don’t enter contests or seek awards for publishing, design, woodworking or… anything, really. (The reason we don’t do this is complicated. Buy me a bucket of beer some time, and I might tell you.)

Despite this, we are gratified when our books are recognized. And so today I am particularly pleased to announce that our deluxe version of “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture” has been named one of the 50 best books of 2017 by the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts).

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This recognition is due entirely to the work of Wesley Tanner, who was the art director and designer of both the deluxe and standard editions of our Roubo volumes. Wesley went to enormous personal lengths when designing these books. They are, as I have said before, the nicest modern books I have ever held or seen.

We spared no expense in making these deluxe editions, and I doubt we will ever embark on a project this complicated or elaborate again. In short, this book is insanely nice. Printed on thick paper made by Mohawk using wind-powered turbines. The printing is at a line-screen resolution that our other printing facilities cannot match. The books are bound halfway across the country at the only place that can handle the 11” x 17” page size. And this same facility makes the custom slipcases by hand.

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And here’s the kicker – the contents of this book are as exquisite as its manufacturing. This book isn’t a reprint of some public-domain classic. “Roubo on Furniture” is the first English translation of an 18th-century French masterwork on woodworking that is still used in court cases on workmanship. “l’Art du menuisier” by A.-J. Roubo is one of the foundations of Western woodworking. I consider it required reading for anyone who values traditional practice — as told by a traditional practitioner.

But enough of my blather. Congrats to Wesley on a job well done. Someday this $550 book will seem a steal to the collectors of the day.

— Christopher Schwarz

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