#fanbound books

[elizabethminkel]

Earlier this week I reported on the very depressing for-profit fic pirating happening in certain corners of fandom—but (somewhat coincidentally, timing-wise) I also had the joy of reporting this story on fanbinding, and the work of the @renegadeguild! Featuring the words (and fanbinds) of the brilliant @celestial-sphere-press, @butterfingersbookbinding, and @fanboundbooks (who also talked about Renegade on the most recent Fansplaining episode).

Renegade's binders are strong proponents of the non-monetized gift economy—they truly embody the spirit of fanfiction, in my opinion, both in the communal way they share their work with fic writers and each other, and in the DIY way they approach making books:

There’s a strong parallel between the amateur, instinctive nature of fanfiction and the act of fanbinding. While plenty of fic is penned by formally trained writers, much of it is not. Tiffo, who binds as Fanboundbooks, likens the reverse-engineering involved in teaching oneself both activities. As writers, people try to figure out why stories work. Fanbinders collectively share the process of learning to turn that work into a physical object—tactile, clean, often beautiful. Fic is largely unencumbered by the forms and structures of traditional publishing, and fanbinders approach their work with the same spirit. “People will often say, ‘How do I do this?’ or ‘What’s the rule for this?’” Tiffo says. “The answer that we always try to throw in Renegade is, ‘This is what other people have done, but know that there is no rule to your book—you can make whatever you want.’”

It's a shame seeing people conflate the bad actors of the pirating situation—many of whom don't appear to be in fandom and seem motivated by pure profit—with the work of fanbinders at large, and seeing people scared to try out fanbinding because of the recent news. Not-for-profit fanbinding is just as legal as writing fanfiction, and I don't speak for all fic writers, but if someone ever bound one of my fics, I'd be so touched I would almost definitely weep. 😭

[fansplaining]

Renegade is very interested in the gift economy, and so we bind because we love fic and we love the stories that were made for us and we know that they were made out of the kindness of someone's heart and the love and the passion that they feel for that thing, and they're not making money, and they're spending all of their time, and we wanna find a way to say 'I love this thing, I also love physical books, and so I wanna keep it." But also it's a way of kind of giving that back, right? You know, you write fic for each other...this is just, to us, another way of expressing that...this is really important and we think it's both valid as a form of media and literature, and also it's a way we can show that to especially the author. Right? We can say, "Hey, this was important enough that I wanted to make it."

— on our most recent episode, we talked to @fanboundbooks about fanbinding and the @renegadeguild. Click through to listen or read a full transcript!

[nocturnus33]

The meaning of mistletoe by Endrina, first volume of The secret language of plants. @llendrinall I have read this charming story several times. The voice of the narration, with its fairy tale reminiscence, is something I really like. Endrina is a great author, it is worth reading their novel length fics.

Typeset by Lindsey P. For those inexperienced in fandom, this story can be read for free at AO3.

What I like:

It's quite a simple binding, but something in it remind me of the old editions of my childhood. Reading it give me a special kind of joy, it's both, the comfort of this story and the childhood-like feeling this tome brings me while holding it

What I could do better:

I had problems with the guillotining of the edges, but went ahead [I had already lost a lot of material with a failed first printing]. I couldn't say what happened, but - for me - that mistake gives a Je ne sais quoi to the edition that I love. I don't know why, but when I was a child, back in the 70's, I had many books with the same feeling. The paper was a bit thicker than usual, and the edges weren't perfectly cut. I didn't realize, until I sat down to read this edition, that this binding conjures up memories of my childhood.

Special thanks: During the process, I had a severe case of printer hiccups (Or binder's brain hiccups, to be more precise) but @getfuckedblr hold my hand and helped me.

@llendrinall 

[If I learned to bind, you can do it too. It's not that difficult... ok a little at first, but it is doable. Don't buy fic binds, ok? It spoils fandom's fun]

[swordsmans]

There's been a lot going around in the last week or so about fanbinding and concerns from fic authors about binders profiting from their work. I just wanted to clear the air a little around here with some info about my own work just so we're all on the same page.

I will never profit from any fanbound works, including my own. Every book I bind includes a legalese section in the beginning of the typeset stating that it is not for for-profit resale. I do not charge anything for books I choose to bind and gift myself.

I will never sell another author's work even indirectly through commissions. My fanbinding requests are open exclusively to fic authors who want their own fics bound or exceptional cases of a third party who can guarantee a gift copy will make it to the fic author (and, preferably, any interested fic fanartists) with author permission.

I will never sell finished typesets. Ever. No negotiations. If you want a typeset I've already made so that you can bind a copy of the fic for yourself, just ask. My own typesets are available for free to anyone who wants them, and I'm happy to share other typesets to trusted parties as long as I have author permission and a guarantee that they will not be monetized once the typesets leave my hands.

The books and typesets that do end up on my store will always be 1) copies of my own fics; 2) priced free/as low as possible with a "pay what you want" option. I will never put binds of someone else's fics on my store. I will never list a bind of my own for sale that is not also (again) accompanied by a free typeset. This is to ensure that no aspect of the fanwork is behind a paywall (including other artists' fanart) and any money exchanged is exclusively for the physical art of binding.

I have a deep, lifelong love for books. As a librarian, my entire life (both personally and professionally) revolves around free and no-profit access to knowledge and stories. I can't speak for others (especially the assholes on Etsy), but I did not begin binding fanworks with the intent to profit and that still holds true. I have the utmost respect for fic authors as both a fan and a fellow fanwriter, and I'm wildly disappointed that a few bad actors have put such a negative spotlight on a corner of fanart that has always been fundamentally about uplifting and supporting fanfiction and fanwriting at its heart.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

[starblightbindery]

Editor's Note from The Black Sands of Socorro by Patricia A. Jackson

While researching Patricia A. Jackson’s entire body of Star Wars work for a short story anthology, I came across the West End Games sourcebook Star Wars: The Black Sands of Socorro (1997.) It’s a crucial work of Star Wars ephemera: The first creator of color writing for Star Wars in an official capacity, writing not just about individual characters of color, but centering entire cultures populated by non-white characters. A young Black woman in the 1990s wrote science fiction for Star Wars, worldbuilding with concepts like antislavery, indigeneity, linguistic divergence, and settler colonialism...while Disney-Lucasfilm in the 2020s ineffectually positions Star Wars as a post-racial fantasy.

I non-hyperbolically refer to Patricia A. Jackson as the “Octavia Butler of Star Wars,” not because fans of color need to be officially sanctioned by Lucasfilm to create Star Wars content, but because of how difficult it is to carve out anti-racist space in a transmedia storytelling empire. Challenging even in transformational fandom spaces (e.g. fan works), to broach race in affirmational fandom spaces—or while writing content for the property holder—is to be unflinchingly subversive.

And Jackson did it first. In an interview with Rob Wolf in 2022, Jackson described her experience writing race into Star Wars in the 1990s as an “experiment.” The planet, peoples, and cultures of Socorro were a way for Jackson to obliquely, yet concretely, center Blackness and racial justice into Star Wars, pushing the racial allegory constrained by the original trilogy to its limits.

Since it’s inception, Star Wars has spent much of it’s storytelling on the fringes of the galaxy (whether it’s Tatooine or Jakku, Nevarro or Ajan Kloss.) The Black Sands of Socorro is an extension of that trope, but where the Star Wars films used indigeneity as set dressing (eg. “Sand People”, Ewoks, Gungans, etc.) Jackson creates a vivid world where indigenous culture and settler colonists collide; where characters are coded with dark skin and central to the action. The planet Socorro is distinct as a Star Wars setting. As one of the only places in the galaxy where slavery is eradicated with a vengeance, Socorro refuses to let go of a plot line Star Wars media often leaves behind. Socorro is a haven from Imperial fascism, a space where readers are invited to imagine a story that does not center around occupation.

When I learned that Patricia A. Jackson no longer has a physical copy of The Black Sands of Socorro, I realized that I had the materials and the means to create a fanbound hard copy for her home library (well, and also for my own home library.) While this handmade book is not an exact reproduction of the RPG supplement, I hope my renvisioning of the supplement as an in-universe travel guide lives up to the original work.

As the idea of creating a travel guidebook based on the original material percolated, I reflected on the State of Race in Star Wars in the year since I compiled Designs of Fate, an anthology of my favorite Patricia A. Jackson short stories. In May 2022, actress Moses Ingram debuted as Inquisitor Reva Sevander, the deuteragonist in the Dinsey+ streaming Obi-Wan Kenobi series. As predicted by Lucasfilm—and any fan sick of alt-right Star Wars related “whitelash”—Ingram was promptly subjected to a firehose of racialized harassment and misogynoir.

Yep, fascist self-proclaimed fanboys complained about a Black woman Inquisitor in 2022, having no idea (or deliberately whitewashing) that one of creators of the entire freakin’ concept of Inquisitors was a Black woman writing for the Star Wars Adventure Journal three decades ago.

Then, a public facing Star Wars account (@StarWars on Twitter) broke precedent and slapped back at the trolls. Lead actor Ewan McGregor filmed a video retort, posted on @StarWars, stating “racism has no place in this world” and telling off the racist bullies: “you’re no Star Wars fan in my mind.” A few months later, Disney+ debuted it’s second flagship Star Wars streaming series of the year, starring a Latino actor as the protagonist. In the opening episode of Andor, a police chief describes Diego Luna’s eponymous lead as a “dark-featured human,” perhaps the closest the franchise has ever gotten to acknowledging out-of-universe constructions of race, to date. The series explored aspects of imperialism with more depth than Star Wars had previously done on screen, such as the Empire’s treatment of the native people of Aldhani. And, in November, the The Acolyte, a Disney+ series co-developed by Rayne Roberts, announced Amandla Stenberg and Korean actor Lee Jung-jae as its top-billed leads. Stenberg will be the first Gen Z, mixed race, Black, Inuit, queer, and non-binary actor to lead a major Star Wars series.

On the Patricia A. Jackson Star Wars front, in 2022, Jackson’s character Fable Astin was an easter egg in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Jackson will again write for Star Wars in an official capacity in From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, due for publication in Fall 2023. A series about Lando Calrissian, the galaxy’s most famous Socorran, is still in production, so I have my fingers crossed that we may soon see Socorro on camera.

I wonder if this past year will have been a fulcrum year for BIPOC fandom. Maybe Disney has finally realized it’s bad for business that the alt-right uses social media algorithms and Star Wars fan spaces as a soft recruiting ground to radicalize young white men? Maybe Star Wars as a franchise will continue to loudly disavow fan whitelash and firmly position performers of color in true leading roles? I really hope so. On the other hand, as much as I am in favor of increased representation in Star Wars storytelling, I am also troubled by Disney-Lucasfilm’s framing of the Galaxy Far, Far Away (GFFA) as “colorblind.” Recently, Star Wars fans have been asked to accept that in the (a long time ago) sci-fi futurepast GFFA, humans have always been post-racial, and it’s just a coincidence that racialized people were not caught on camera the way white characters have been for years. The galaxy is post-racial and it’s just acoincidence that the movers and shakers of the galaxy have largely been depicted as white men for the past 40 years of media.

For example, in the decade since Disney rebooted the expanded universe, fans have learned that Star Wars’s biggest galactic war criminal to never be depicted on screen is Admiral Rae Sloane, a bisexual Black woman who was the leader of Imperial remnant forces, one of the architects of the First Order, and personal mentor to General Hux. Under Disney-Lucasfilm’s post-racial retcon of the Star Wars universe, the allegorical fascists are intersectional equal opportunity employers (at least in expanded universe content like animation, video games, and novels.) Along those lines, several of the franchise’s newly introduced, prominent women of color have been part of the Empire: Imperial loyalist Cienna Ree (Lost Stars), Inferno Squad leader Iden Versio (Star Wars: Battlefront II) former stormtrooper Jannah (Episode IX), First Order pilot Tamara Ryvora (Star Wars: Resistance), Inquisitor Trilla Sundari (Jedi: Fallen Order), Captain Terisa Kerrill (Star Wars: Squadron) and, most recently, Inquisitor Reva Sevander. Once the sole purview of stodgy, very white and very British men (demonstrably so even in the sequel trilogy movies,) now anyone can be a stooge of the Empire.

That’s not to say that marginalized people can’t collude with fascism, or that there haven’t been heroic characters of color introduced in recent years. Rather, I posit that in order to sell audiences on the post-racial/colorblind GFFA, fascist-of-color characters like Rae Sloane or Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon (The Mandalorian) are created by necessity. The franchise wants to at once be racially inclusive and yet never directly address race. In Star Wars, real world oppression is primarily explored through allegory—such as Solo (2018)’s bit on droid rights, the clone army, or the myriad of non-human alien bodies that nonetheless are coded with racial stereotypes. A lot has been said about how allegory in sci-fi allows audiences to grapple with inequality from a comfortable distance, and not enough has been said about which audience is being prioritized for comfort.

What does it mean when race is supposedly a non-issue for humans in the GFFA, but creators and actors with marginalized identities cannot participate in Star Wars in any capacity without experiencing identity-targeted harassment? In the past ten years, this has been true even for white women like Kathleen Kennedy and Daisy Ridley, but the vitriol has been most strongly directed towards Black women like Lucasfilm Story Group lead Kiri Hart, author Justina Ireland and The High Republic Show host Krystina Arielle. Can the Galaxy Far, Far Away truly be “colorblind” or “post-racial” (never-racial?) if the narrative continually centers white characters and replicates all the common racial inequities seen in commercialized Hollywood storytelling? Upon the release of The Force Awakens in 2015, critic Andre Seewood aptly described Finn’s positioning in the story as “hyper-⁠tokenism,” even presciently predicting that Finn would continue to be hyper-⁠tokenized in Episodes VIII and IX. As the narrative veered away from Finn, it also left unrealized a stormtrooper rebellion plot line where Finn could have been, in effect, a Black abolitionist. Actor John Boyega’s critique of his experience in the sequel trilogy aligns with Seewald’s assessment: “Do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important to the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side.”

Published in 1997, The Black Sands of Socorro came before Finn, before Mace Windu, back when all the melanin of Star Wars could be found in Billy Dee Williams’s singular swagger and James Earl Jones’s distinctive voice. Back then, the most prominent Black actress in the original trilogy was dancer Femi Taylor, who played Oola, the hypersexualized green twi’lek fed to the rancor in Return of the Jedi. Bantam Spectra, the publisher that held the license for Star Wars from 1991 to 1999, had no leading characters of color in its’ Expanded Universe. The first full length Star Wars novel by a writer of color, Steven Barnes’s The Cestus Deception15, would not be published until 2004. Even though the book featured two protagonists of color, they would not be depicted on the cover. At Comic-Con in 2010, I spoke with Tom Taylor, a white Australian comic book writer who tried to make the lead family in Star Wars: Invasion (2009) a Black one, but was shut down during the creative process. The comic instead depicts a family of blondes, because the publishers did not think fans would embrace leads of color. All this to say, the inclusion of melanated characters in Star Wars has been so, so hard fought. It’s incredible The Black Sands of Socorro exists at all. It’s more than worthy of celebration, and I’m floored that more attention has not been brought to it.

Patricia A. Jackson is a smuggler.

This sourcebook was explicitly written to assist fans in telling their own Star Wars stories, and in it Patricia A. Jackson smuggled in emphatic allusions to the Black Panther movement and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, smuggled in commentary on indigeneity and settler colonialism, and smuggled in multiple ways for fans to envision characters of color. Her writing has consistently added richness to the GFFA, and in The Black Sands of Socorro she envisions multiple histories for multiple cultures coded as non-white. She ensured the existence of not mere tokens, but flourishing societies of people of color in Star Wars.

The coda for The Last Jedi again shows how perilously close to tokenization characters of color, particularly Black characters, are in modern day Star Wars. In this film, the franchise returns to itsprevious exploration of slavery with the depiction of enslaved children on Canto Bight. The last speaking lines of the film are from Oniho Zaya (played by Josiah Oniha, a young Black British actor) who recounts Luke Skywalker’s heroic exploits to the other children. The film then closes out by showing that one of the downtrodden children is Force-sensitive—a future hero in the Star Wars mythos. In a film where every single Force-user depicted is white, the next generation kid with the potential is, again, a young white boy. Once again, the Black character can only serve the narrative in a supporting role. A franchise depicting a colorblind fantasy continually reifies racial and gender hierarchies in America. With The Acolyte, scheduled for release in 2024, it’s possible the franchise may finally be shifting past hyper-tokenism. In the meantime, fans of color and our erstwhile allies will continue doodling in the margins.

In the end, the sequel trilogy left the Canto Bight plot line (and the overarching slavery plot line started in Episode I) unresolved. I’d like to think the Black Bha’lir strafed Canto Bight and grabbed those kids. It seems like something they would do. Out among the stars, Oniho Zaya is adventuring with Drake Paulsen, and his story does not bracket another characters’; he is central. The Black Sands of Socorro is a launching pad for stories like that. It represents how fans of color have always carved out pieces of Star Wars for ourselves.

[theineffablecon]

Today’s TIC 4 Good Omens auction item is the chance to have a fic bound by Fanbound Books!

Check out Instagram: @/fanboundbooks, Tumblr: @fanboundbooks and https://fanboundbooks.carrd.co/

You can see our gorgeous 📗 in the pics and more details will be available during the Con!

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

No Less Unthinkable by Rageprufrock

It seemed fitting, given that there was fresh snow, to be able to take a picture of a fanbound Yuri on Ice fic outside. Looks lovely, right? Not captured by this photo: the fact that it was -29C/-20F, and I was outside in my winter coat and pajamas with no gloves or toque on, trying to get the book carefully wedged on top of an empty yogurt container in a snow drift before I lost the light for the day.

You will note that the rest of the pictures are taken INSIDE.

The cover and spine are a combination of chiyogami paper, stencilled acrylic paint, and some freehand disaster recovery experimentation. Endpapers are Japanese paper of indeterminate origin.

Yuri on Ice stole my heart when it aired! I was thrilled to see @rageprufrock writing in the fandom! So when I was sorting through my bookmarks when I started fanbinding, this was an easy choice. No Less Unthinkable is a sweet, funny fic working from the premise of, but what if past drunk!Yuri had slept with everyone BUT Victor?

(Fun fact: when I set out to bind this fic, I thought oh, this is a romcom! I bet I can show this to a few friends and coworkers who know OF fanfic, but aren't really involved, right? Without having to get into any complicated explanations of fanfic conventions? And then I noticed that there was sex on the very first page. Well. That narrows that pool for show-and-tell a bit more. )

I have since gotten more practice with typesetting and gotten a bit fancier, but I'm still pretty happy with how this one turned out. And I did NOT accidentally tip it into a snowdrift in sub-sub-sub zero temperatures, so go me!

[khashanakalashtar]

DISRESPECT HAS BEEN FANBOUND!!!

And oh. my. god. @sunshine304 went above and freaking beyond.

I mentioned that Disrespect was set at a fictionalized version of my alma mater.

LOOK AT THAT.

Sunshine, idk if you know this from your research or even our emails but the lanterns alternate colors every year and I'M RED CLASS. (which, if you knew about the alternation, you could have figured out from Tales...but I digress.)

LOOK AT THE SPINE. THAT'S ME. THAT'S MY NAME ON A SPINE. (omg I wrote this entire book look at it)

Every story in the series has a cover page:

THAT'S MERION. MERION WHICH IS LITERALLY NAME-DROPPED IN THIS VERY FIC. THEY HIDE HERE IN "Retribution" TOO. I'd know it anywhere, I lived here for two years. And so does Katara!

Look at the typesetting you guyyyyyys

adding a cut bc this is getting long

I have a copyright page! It's the stats for the overall series. And an author's note, which is the summary/notes of the series.

That's my arrrrt that's my photomanip of the agni kai shot

Old Library!! At least I think that's what we call it now?

I was already impressed at how you found a picture so very like my cover art and then I read the appendix:

(the appendix!! all the stats for the individual fics!) IT'S SILAT. IT'S LITERALLY A PICTURE OF PENTJAK SILAT FIGHTERS. OH MY GOD.

I 100% believe that's the cover art to Love Amongst the Dragons. (Making a large appearance in this fic.)

That's Pem West which I name-dropped as where Toph lives AS SAID IN THIS VERY FIC (though I just called it Pembroke) but again WHERE I LIVED ONCE.

Look at themmmmm

THAT'S IT THAT'S STEP SING THAT'S THE RED LANTERN AGAIN and if you need your memory jogged, Tales is the fic in which I made up a new Tradition so as not to spoil the existing ones but which closely resembles Step Sing.

LOOK AT IT

This is also partly my art (I edited some of the gaang into this picture) and in the back....IS DENBIGH!! Which is where Sokka lives (and Toph in sophomore year) and where the gaang hangs out! It's like their center of operations and THIS FIC BEGINS THERE. I had lots of friends in Denbigh over the years and we hung out in the common spaces a lot too.

Acknowledgements collected from all the fics! @eccentriccollective @the-lincyclopedia @softanimalgoose @ravenreyamidala and I'm sorry hereforthefic_onlythefic, I don't know/remember your tumblr user

in conclusion AHHHHHH THANK YOU SUNSHINE I LOVE IT SO MUCH

[scary-grace]

9 & 16 for the fandom ask game, please.

9) Write a recommendation of someone else's fic you enjoyed!

If you like your Barduil canon-compliant with an exquisite mix of joy and tragedy, @palmviolet's fic the year of what now is what you're looking for. Clocking in at an elegantly paced 55k words, this fic has everything -- epigraphs, Tolkien lore, believable post-BotFA politics, and an ending that's both inevitable and hopeful at the same time. And of course, top-tier characterization. Queue up a little fluff to read afterwards if you take canon personally like I do, but absolutely don't miss this fic. Did I mention it's complete?

16) Do people irl know you participate in fandom?

That thud you just heard was me laughing so hard I fell out of my chair. They do in fact know that I participate in fandom, because any time something happens -- a particularly exciting comment, a piece of art, an ask, or a whole beautiful fanbound book like @rainfern and @dyingslowlybutfasterthanyouare made of seeking a friend for the end of the world -- I have to tell someone about it. Sometimes I also out myself, either purposely (at a family dinner so everyone would quit making fun of my at-the-time fandom-obsessed cousin) or accidentally (by screensharing Kairos-in-progress with my internship supervisor). Tl;dr yes, IRL people know. I have very mixed feelings about that, but it's way too late to take it back.

Thank you for the ask!

fandom asks

[renegadeguild]

Renegade Loves Fic (Writers)

A Fan Fiction Writers Appreciation Day (FFWAD) Event

image ID below the cut

25 Participants 35 Stories/Series typeset 23 fandoms represented 34 Physical Books sent 5 digital only copies sent

Books sent round the world: Book Origin: 29 USA 2 Canada 2 Austria 2 unknown

Destination 25 USA 2 UK 2 Australia 1 Brazil 1 Canada 1 Philippines 3 unknown

Total wordcount: 2,084,974

Thank you to our participants! muppetmothman Annamon emilytrik PandaMomentum Mayskyy semnai rhipiduridae Tiffo|Fanbound Books Archivael MedRenGirl Zephyr Fire_Fly464 daemonluna - Gargoyle & Gremlin Press OneSaltyLeo cat!1675 amazincanasian Nim | Morning Star Bindery Annamon ZieZie13 | Blue Shoe Books spokir Amyda Mirilya Medrengirl | Mourning Mountains Bindery spiderverbicles Denois

Works included in this event:

A Lot of Edges Called Perhaps Hansbekhart

heliotropism redlightofkryptonite

The Poet's Wife HigherMagic

Witchboy series tothewillofthepeople (kvothes on tumblr)

From Wiltshire With Love MistressLynn

The Road Less Traveled cuttooth

This Ship is England The Guest Room Door All the Gold in Neverland clockheartedcrocodile

Human Error Jemariel

The Devil Went Down to Georgia (and then went down on Johnny) nobecauseofthevictories

The Kite String and the Anchor Rope fluerdeliser

Strut on a Line, it's Discord and Rhyme xiaq

leave all your love and your longing behind ScarlettStorm

The Real World FireFly464, Pamiiap

i walked and reached the sea poppyseedheart

Notes on a Nondescript Vegetable a kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea Dorinda

Carefully Everywhere Descending & Other Stories Jane St. Clair

A Ghost You Think You Know burning_artisan

no shelter but mine valkyrhys

rare is this love (keep it covered) valkyrhys

Play Away Saturnsorbits

Forgotten katsukikitten

Per Annum In Vitam TheFrenchPress

Alpaca Love JaskiersWolf

Sex, Love, and Rock 'n Roll EverythingButColdFire, aryastark_valarmorgulis, xo_marauders, lovingremus, literary_lion, Wereflamango

If I'm Haunting You, You Must Be Haunting Me mardia

"The Last" series LadyDragon76

A Good Man is Hard to Find chamel

The World That You Need Dira Sudis

Thank you to all the fanfiction writers out there!

[moorishflower]

Hi!! My sibling (who is the coolest) fanbound That I Should Wedded Be and I had the fun of providing some art. We both love your fics so thanks again for your beautiful writing <3

Here's a link to check out pics of the book it's bonkers they did marbled paper and everything I'm still reeling.

HNNNG I SAW I SAW

Christ this is SO gorgeous <3<3<3

Im just beyond honoured and beyond pleased and I've spent all day feeling lighter than air ToT

[nocturnus33]

The meaning of dandelions, by Endrina. This is the second volume of "The Secret Language of Plants".

As with most of my bindings, this book is "not perfct" at all, yet it joins my bibliographic collection of beloved imperfections. I like how it turned out despite everything.

This tome is full of errors due to my lack of concentration. I think I should change the name of this blog to "Adventures of an ADD fic binder". As some of my worst ADD days, yesterday wasn't the best day for me to try anything! The thing is, I had a great time binding this weekend, so no amount of mistakes will take that away. I still like my little green book.

Unlike volume 1, this time I remembered to put the headbands, yet I forgot the bookmark. More importantly, I got the series name wrong on the spine!

What I like?

I like the green cover, and how it looks next to its companion, the yellow tome. Likewise, the little dandelion seed on the back cover really charms me.

What could I have done better?

Apart from placing the correct title of the series?, I could have transferred the HTV with less temperature. There are plate marks on the cover.

I should have added the endpapers - I had them ready and forgot!

Plus, add the bookmark.

For those with little experience in fandom, this fantastic fic can be read for free on AO3. Just remember to leave a constructive comment for the author.

 @llendrinall 

[codeearth]

Hello!

So, you might have noticed, that I am kinda in love with your series, Loyalty Is Acquired Through Time. I would like to ask, if it is okay by you to make a fanbound book of your fic. I started working on the stuff back in June, I think – you know, the saving, to make pages look pretty, having the justified lines and separated words looking good.

And. I just realised that your stuff is kinda long and doing a book this damn thicc would be a challenge, and I know how to choose my fights. So, the question: do you allow me, my dearest author, to have a part of your story in hardback on my bookshelf?

With love, Tonhal

Aww, of course! I’m really happy to know you like the story so much you want it bound! I guess it would be pretty hefty with how long it is lol.

Send me a picture when you’re done!

[sunshine304]

Two of my finished fanbound books! I’d already whined about how I messed up the covers - the black one was the first one I put together and that’ when I noticed that I’d made a huge mistake. (*/ω＼*)

You can see it a bit with the endpapers, especially the red one; I didn’t put in all the effort because I thought it was a loss anyway. In the end, after spending the night in the press, it’s turned out alright after all.

More pictures and descriptions under the cut!

So, the mistake I made was to not leave enough space between the spine and the cover cardboards when I assembled the case. There’s a  reason it’s supposed to be 8mm, but I’d not written that down and therefore the space I left was not wide enough.This causes the stack to move away from the spine instead of staying in place. The book still opens well enough, but it’s noticeable.

Anyway, here are some inside pictures. It’s the amazing Word of Honor fic ��You’re the trouble that i always find” by sundiscus.

The title picture is by 一期一念_LMY  on weibo, who allows use of the art with credit. I had fun typesetting this, but I only noticed after folding that I had chosen the wrong font size... Ah well, it was one of the very first fics I typeset and it’s still readable.

The second book is of my own fic “Sign me up for that full-time, I’m yours”, a modern WangXian AU. I had fun flicking acrylic paint onto the endpapers to spice them up a bit. You can’t see it in the pic but some of the paint is metallic and shimmers a bit.

I found the booklinen for the spine a bit stiff, it’s got some special coating on it. The colour is very pretty, though, but it might be easier to work with on a book with a wider spine.

At first, I didn’t have a title picture because I was at a bit of a loss there... I then decided to use AO3 tags as a background and think it turned out quite nice.

The awesome max_maks_ on twitter allowed me to use some of their fanart in the book. I was super happy about it, because the art fit so well! I credited them on the info page in the front, of course!

I’ll add links in the notes because I don’t trust tumblr...

[zeawesomebirdie]

Hey Tomas. You said you do typesetting. I imagine that includes trying to find good fonts, having favourites etc, so do you... perhaps... want to talk about those? If you have an interest in them? Because I'm not into typesetting but I do love going on like dafont and trying to find good fonts that fit my OCs. Which, as a side consequence, also means sometimes in the street I go oh hey that's written in Little Lord Fontleroy, which I kid you not has happened thrice now with that exact font. People love it I guess?? At least it's not Papyrus or god forbid Comic Sans :') anyway yeah fonts. Do you have favourites. Do you want to share.

OH OKAY SO

first hi, I'm sorry this took so long to respond to, I've kinda been in the hospital and then recovering from a fatigue episode so I'm so sorry for how long this has taken, ily Ram thank you for your patience <3

Brief history on why I'm learning typesetting: I really want to have printed hard copies of all my favorite fics. Nothing more fancy than that. Then, the more I dove into fanbinding with the help of @renegadepublishing and their server, I also discovered the wonderful world of fandom history and preservation! And now that I'm active in a local queer sci-fi/fantasy group too, it's become even more important to me to print the fics I love. I'm currently learning to primarily typeset because I'm a little restricted on funds, so I'm going to get as much typeset as I can so that when I can finally afford the materials to print these fics, I'll be able to just print and bind all at once, y'know?

So the font I use the most has to be EB Garamond! I got mine from google fonts, but I just searched for it and I'm not finding it? It's not really my favorite per se, but I use it the most for the majority of the typesetting I do. It came recommended in @armoredsuperheavy 's Ao3 fic to fanbound book tutorial, which is my basis for all the typesetting I do at this time. (I wish I had actual examples to show off, but I haven't actually printed any of my typesets yet, and I wont print them until I can actually bind them y'know?) I've found it to be a good all-purpose font to fit a variety of fics, and it's looked just as good on my BotW fics and Star Wars fics as it does on knitting patterns!

My favorite font though would have to be Aurebesh Droid by StormtrooperOnWeekends! It's so smooth, especially for an aurebesh font, like bro it's so aesthetically pleasing!!! There were two others that I saved, specifically because they were for fics that needed a different vibe than that one did: Aurebesh Hand by Cinematic Captures and Aurebesh by Pixel Sagas. Aurebesh Hand was perfect for my obikin fic, and I saved the general Aurebesh font just to be on the safe side in case I ever needed a good all-purpose aurebesh for whatever reason.

Now for other fonts that I'm utterly in love with! I highly highly recommend you check out the work of Dieter Steffmann on dafont, who's been going through and digitizing old blackletter fonts. I'm a sucker for blackletter, like, omg, so to have a resource like this is so cool! And I haven't yet gotten to use the majority of these outside of dropcaps, but I'm hoping that I'll have more opportunities in the future!

So I'm still just at the beginning of my font exploration, as you can see! I'll take any recommendations you have, if you don't mind sharing!