March Update 2023

Hi everyone,

Sorry I’ve been quiet recently. I have been dealing with a bad case of burnout/exhaustion and other health problems since around Christmas time. I have been off work since the back end of December and have only very recently started to go back into the bindery for a few hours a day, a few times a week. It will be a little while longer before I’m back to full speed and full health.

Having said that, please DO NOT WORRY ABOUT CORALINE. This is still in the process of being printed. As well as having a hefty wait for the paper, it has been a complex print job and has involved Phil at Hand and Eye working hand in hand with another printer (Hurtwood Press) in order to offset print the images for the standard edition. Phil is now letterpress printing the text, frames and silhouettes around all of this. It has taken a lot of working out and a lot of tests, but it is on the way. We should have the printed sheets for all editions in the bindery very soon and then we will begin work on the bindings. We are still on track to deliver in the first half of this year (fingers crossed) but we will, of course, keep you updated as we progress with it.

I have received a lot of messages about the remaining copies of the standard edition of Coraline. I’m sorry for the continued wait on those. I will get to the sale of them sometime before we ship the books, in the first half of this year. I will let you know well in advance when that will be. They will be sold by lottery only and there are about 150 copies available.

It has become painfully apparent that I can no longer continue to do the binding/designing of these projects alongside the administrative/sales/customer facing part. It is way too much for me to cope with everything on my own, so I have decided to take on an admin assistant who will be, to begin with, working a couple of days a week and taking these responsibilities from me. I will then be able to focus purely on the production of books. We will see how that goes for a while and if it works out, that person will be responsible for the lottery and invoicing when we get to selling the remaining copies of Coraline.

Thanks for reading and understanding. I have not posted any of my personal health problems for sympathy or for any other reason than to keep you in the loop. I would not usually post something so personal but we have a project ongoing so you deserve to know what is happening.

One thing I will mention is that, as part of my ‘rehabilitation’ and while waiting for Coraline, I have been slowly working on a couple of very special copies of Stardust with Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. We hope to auction these off for charity fairly soon. We will auction just one first and then leave it up to Neil to decide when to auction the second one. I’ll post some pics and more info on social media and by subscriber email in a few days probably.

Thanks so much,

Rich ❤️

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