A PRESS OF ONE’S OWN
There is a long, rich tradition of book-binding in independent publishing – perhaps most famously, Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard bought a hand-printing press in 1917, and they printed most of the books they published at Hogarth Press in their house in Richmond.
While RENARD PRESS is dedicated to making our books available to as wide a readership as possible, producing e-editions of all of our titles, we also remain resolutely committed to making beautiful physical objects, and we pay much attention to the production of our titles.
With a nod to Virginia, we also produce deluxe hand-bound editions of the books we publish – the Renard press, which you can see above, is fully operational, and gets a lot of use! Every month, we create one deluxe edition of the book we’re publishing that month, and our subscribers have the chance to win it. We also occasionally list such editions in our online shop, as well.
MORE INFORMATION
PAPERS
The papers on which a book are printed are, as most bibliophiles know, very important. Perhaps of foremost importance is the archival quality – the papers we use are acid- and “wood-free”, which means that they won’t yellow.
We do vary the papers we use, but our all-time favourite, and the most common paper we bind, is Fabriano Bioprima 85gsm – a strong, durable paper which ticks all of the boxes. Fabriano, a town in Italy, was one of the first places to produce high-quality paper – it has produced papers since the 13th century.
FORMATS
No two books are the same – so why should the production always be the same? While we think there’s certainly a place for mass-produced paperbacks, we also like to experiment with different styles of binding.
The pictured format, the concertina, is a take on the pamphlet form, which we think is a wildly neglected format of huge import.