Well, it happened. I had such great ideas, and it was all for naught. I promised I’d do a giveaway of this nice leather-bound gray copy of The Meldling. An excellent idea, I thought! And then I had a stroke of the most amazing luck – I acquired a piece of very beautiful, thin red leather.
See, bookbinding leather is hard to get and quite expensive. It has to be thin, and light, and very high quality. The gray book was only covered in garment leather, and it was nice enough of course, but now I had something even better! And so I set to making a new copy of The Melding, and I gave the gray copy away to our neighbors.
And the binding failed.
This is the most heartbreaking thing that can happen to a bookbinder, and now here I am. The sewing of the spine snapped while I was in the middle of gluing the cover, at a point where I couldn’t stop. I managed to pull it back together but the book is permanently damaged, and the signatures are loose at the back. It’s probably still good enough to read, but it won’t last and I’ll be lucky if it can be repaired.
That is no good to me, dear friends. I will not send out a book unless I truly believe it’s well made, and this one is a failure. I have no book to give away now. I’ve already printed another copy, but bookbinding takes time.
I’ll have to do something with the duds. I’d say I’ll have to put them up on a page here or something, just to get them to someone who might like them.