Afton House Books

It has been months since I have posted anything: my apologies. There are two items of open business that people commonly ask me about: slip cases and a new printing. Let me give you an update now.

The financial situation in Italy has been appalling. I am fully confident in my printer there, but I have been taking a “wait and see” position on new orders. Part of the issue is the Euro, which have rarely failed to rise after I place orders. Perhaps Someone is watching.

My plans at this time are these: I will announce, in January, the cost and shipping date for slip cases. I will accept payment in full (think in the $75 range). This will guarantee your case, and will also come with expected shipping. Shipping to the US will be from Virginia; shipping to the EU will be from Milan. Rest of the world, most likely Virginia-based. I will leave the ordering process open for 30 days, then orders after that will be on a “if you are lucky” basis.

I plan to do something similar for the next impression of the CVIE. I will accept a 50% advance payment, with a schedule for the printing of volumes. Cost will have risen to about $1495. They will be printed in pairs; but printing will take place over a relatively short period compared to the first impression. Before you ask: I need the large up-front because I pay for all materials up-front. This is the only way in which I can guarantee that paper and covers match. This will be a short run: again, I will open orders for only one month, print a few extra, and orders after that time will be on an as-available basis.

I still have available, on consignment, a full Readers’ Edition of the original VIE. $4500, including domestic shipping. Shipping overseas to be discussed.

Questions? I’ll be happy to answer them…

My printer says:

“I am set, all material has been bought. As soon as I hear from Marcel and Joel, I print. Biffi is making the bronzes for stamping. I should be sending you books within the end of April.”

And that folks, is authoritative… I know it’s much longer than you (or I, for that matter) had anticipated, but printing is imminent, and I hope to be shipping to you before the end of April.

Bob

Sometimes, folk are interested to hear what goes on in getting a book out the door. Part of the process is getting the book set in the format to be printed. This involves a program, in our case Adobe’s InDesign, that is really a means of “painting” a page with text from something like MS Word.

This is both labor-intensive, and a skilled craft. But even once it is done, there are interesting issues. Here’s part of an e-mail exchange between the compositor, Joel Anderson, and one of our main proofers, Marcel van Genderen:

On your last finding, p 621 in “Strange People, Queer Notions”,
“connoisseurs stuff”, I’d expect an apostrophe too. It was printed
this way, and a search of the TI notes, which are still in the
textport file, doesn’t find the word mentioned.

…I think “lid to the gypsy still” is equivalent to “the lid of the
gypsy’s still”, as in the pot they use to distill their poteen.

If you don’t believe that the still was ambulatory, then you might be inclined to insert a possessive. But here’s the response from the Marcel to the Joel:

I read: lift the gypsy, still dripping. The comma is not there of course.

This is amusing, but during the work on the original VIE, we had texts with 600 marked exceptions. These were meticulously tracked down, researched if necessary, and marked for correction. I write “marked for correction” because the folk who made the fix/no fix decision didn’t actually implement the change. This was done by a separate group of volunteers.

When I have a few moments, I may pull a sample sheet from the original work, so that you can see what a text looked like before we addressed the various issues. It’s an eye opener.

More later…

Bob

My compositor made the mistake of asking me a question about the Lyonesse maps… so I asked him a question. Here are some responses:

Initial proofing for volume 3 is nearly finished. Corrected file will then be sent to the proofers for verification.

Volume 4 goes to the proofers Monday.

All of volume 5 has been set but for Green Pearl and Madouc.

Sixteen of the 26 titles for Vol. 6 have been set. We’re also adding JV’s collected forewords, prefaces, etc., to this last volume.

We are moving along pretty well…

Bob

The Engine Room, far below deck, gets to communicate with the Effectuator on the Bridge from time to time. He would like me to set out on the blog the titles set in the last week or so:

Languages of Pao;
Clarges (aka “To Live Forever”);
The Last Castle;
Cugle, Skybreak Scatterlight; and
Son of the Tree.