Paper Snake Press

This is the back. It was a painstaking process to cut this out with a fine-bladed xacto knife but it was worth every second. The scraps I had were identical, but it was really important to me that the front and back were not the same, and this is what I landed on. The cover (and the endpapers too, when we get to those) were inspired by a scene later in the fic when Crowley is showing off a rooftop garden paradise that he's made. This seemed like the kind of cool, lush, luxurious thing he might have in there. And I have to say it exceeded my wildest expectations. I didn't know I had it in me to make this.

And then the HTV got warped going onto the spine and I ended up with a wonky "o". We must remain humble. It's honestly still lovely though, I forgot it was there until I started writing up this post. I got a very good round on this text block, almost no swell (even after rounding, my books often have some swell, though it's only noticeable when I stack them). And the endbands came out unusually well. Those are, as always, custom made. They look good with the cover, though they were designed to match the endpapers:

These are that thick soft artisan paper that Joanne's used to sell. The gold bits are shiny foil. Again, secret rooftop Eden luxury vibe here. I have no regrets about this bind, though if I had it to do over again I might choose a solid color instead of a pattern here. Maybe. Maybe not. On the one hand I really like the pattern but on the other it is kind of a lot with the cover.

Couple of quick shots of the interior. I kept it a bit simple, honestly, which makes a nice contrast with the cover. That wasn't intentional but I can't say it doesn't fit. Feels balanced. Let's see, what else? There are, I kid you not, over 450 footnotes in this fic and those took some wrangling to get in line. I think that's the most footnotes I've ever dealt with in one story. Oh, and there's an extra chapter at the end which is a deleted scene that I had to track down on the author's other fanfic account (listed in the notes at the top of the fic) because they'd removed it from Ao3. It's public, it just needed a bit of extra leg work.

We do have a title on the spine though! That is pewter foil HTV and I thought it would be fun to make it vertical. I have done that a couple of times, but not all titles are suited for it and it doesn't fit the vibe for every fic. Here, however, it echoes some of the choices I made in the typeset, so I seized the opportunity.

Top view, showing off the shiny gray ribbon bookmark and the handmade endbands. The colors really are not shining through; they are chocolate brown and silver-gray stripe. It's a single core, very basic, and that's on purpose. This story is a lot less...frilly? flourish-y? than many others I have bound. I'm not sure those are the right words. It's hard to explain but a more tailored, less elaborate approach just seemed like the right choice. So the endbands are simple, the fonts are sans serif, the cover is less elaborate, and even the corner caps are a simpler design than the other choices I had on hand. It's a nice book, quality materials, feels good in the hand, but you have to meet it where it's at and understand what went into it to appreciate that. Given some of the story's themes I think that's fitting.

Alright, enough philosophy, let's look inside! The endpapers are cardstock, gray with this metallic gold circle overlay. I kind of wish I'd done an in-fill so the turn-in was less obvious under them, but I almost never do those so I didn't think of it till it was too late. It was hard matching anything with the cover material. My endpaper choices tend towards florals, highly-patterned chiyogami, and abstract marbles and none of those felt right, but plain ones would have been too understated. These were the right balance, though in hindsight I do wish they were silver instead of gold. Oh well.

Remember when I said Crowley is a mechanic in this? Yeah. He's dirty and it's hot. So we've got this streaky graphic I found on rawpixel that is probably supposed to be paint but to me looks like oil. I've got the whole thing on the title page and just the top part on the first page of each chapter, so it doesn't obscure the text. I tend to make my chapter headers kind of simple, which is fine but can get a little same-y when you do as many as I have, so I got a very little bit experimental with this one and made them vertical. The vertical spine title is echoing this. Gives the whole thing some cohesion. I love it.

Alright, there will be more photos but first I have to go on a rant about the lineco oatmeal because it SUCKS. I use their products a lot because they're cheap and accessible and usually I have no issues. This cloth has a different texture than most, I think it was called linen finish? It's toothy, nicely rough in the hands, and visually similar to the Italian book cloth that Hollander's sells. But I can buy this from Blick and not have to pay shipping. Win-win, right? No. Wrong. The Italian is so vastly superior that I won't be buying this again. It's really, really stiff, stiffer than buckram or cardstock or anything else I've used. It frays like a bitch no matter which way you cut it, that's why the ribbons were necessary to hide the seam. When I had to fold the cover back to tuck in the spine turn-in the backing material actually cracked at the hinge. I didn't know that was possible and have certainly never had it happen before. This stuff is awful. Don't bother with it.

Okay. Rant over. Have some more photos:

Spines and endbands! I love to do this trick with the spines, where the title is spread over multiple volumes, but it takes the right kind of title to do it so I don't always get the chance. They're very shiny and didn't want to photograph but they are very pretty in person. And for the endbands I chose double cores that I wove in the aromantic flag pattern. The word "aromantic" doesn't appear in the fic, but the authors did clarify in some of their notes that they intentionally wrote Crowley to be on the aro spectrum and I thought it would be fun to make a direct nod to that. And it became a bit of a recurring motif with...

...the endpapers! These are Renato Crepaldi marbles. Sometimes you have to spring for the good stuff. As soon as I saw them I thought of this bind and the aro flag colors. It would not be inaccurate to say that the rest of the bind was built around them. Aziraphale in this specializes in antique book repair (because of course he does) and a lot of design choices flowed from that. Marbled paper is a highly traditional bookbinding material, and the choice to do corner caps also came from here. You may have noticed that the ribbon bookmark is a deep brown, and that was chosen to match these endpapers even though black would have fit the aro theme better.

Ok, let's get inside:

The title page and the table of contents. Crowley, as it turns out, is sitting on a secret: he used to repair clocks. There's a plot-important grandfather clock in the story, so the title page stems from that. I tend to do very center-oriented title pages so this one was fun. And we have old books again on the contents page. Both images are from rawpixel, and both books have the same graphics.

I was able to retain the authors' chapter summaries this time around. A lot of older books have chapter titles that run on really long, and I thought it would be fun to nod to that here and add to the old world feel. And we have ornaments in the footer! Those are clock hands! Again, from rawpixel. I grabbed them from an ink drawing of a clock face. I also used them for a scene break image, though I didn't take a photo of that. It's like the first page ornaments, but there's no gap between them. It's adorable.

Photo of the spine, in which the swirly script font persists. I really wanted this book to be a flatback but it had just a bit too much swell, so it got rounded. The bookmark is dark gray, matching the htv, and the endbands are handmade. The leather extends further on one side than the other, I know. We are none of us perfect. It's damn cute though.

The endband colors were chosen to match these endpapers. Funny enough, they were bought for a different story. This fic is set at Christmas time, though it isn't actually about Christmas, so these ones with more of a winter motif were a good fit (better than they would have been for the story I bought them for, which was overtly a Christmas Fic). This theme continues once we get inside.

The title page has a holly frame. The setting is strong in this fic, out in the woods and kind of cozy, so it felt right to use a lot of greenery.

The image on the left up there, with the pinecones, originally had a twee little scene with a horse-drawn carriage in the middle. It was adorable but didn't suit the story, and that frame was too good to pass up, so I edited it out and put this quote from the author's Chapter 1 summary in there. None of the other chapters had the kind of summary that would work for this, but I thought this one worked really well to set the scene, so it's the only one I kept. And we have more holly in the frame around the chapter numbers. I grayed this one out so it wouldn't fight with the text. It was a little dominating when I had it in black. This softened it up. All the images are via rawpixel and in the public domain.

Title all swirly again on the spine, and a wider ribbon than I usually use but it suits the book. This is a properly thick one, about 450 pages all told. Not the longest I've made, but up there. And that gave me a chance to try out a new endband style, a true double core with a 3rd little mini core at the bottom. They took forever. Had to spread them out over two days and tie on more thread multiple times. Tied down almost every sig. They're also really wide and I had to make my covers a bit taller than normal to accommodate them, otherwise they would've stuck out. Next time I do this I will try to use thinner cores to mitigate that.

I also tried a couple of new things with the top turn-in. It's got a head cap, which isn't visible except really subtly when I compare it to my other books. This book's got an oxford hollow, a paper tube glued to the spine to support it when it opens, and the spine stiffener gets glued to the outside of that before the cloth goes on. When I do the turn-in here, I often feel like there's too much of a gap between the cloth and the endband, due to the hollow. So I took some thin little strips of very flexy chipboard (the same stuff I made the stiffener out of) and glued them to the stiffener facing into the spine before I put it on, then did the turn-in over that. That's the head cap (sort of, it's complicated), and it gets the cloth nice and snug against the endband. I love how it looks and I'm going to do this again whenever I do hollows now.

The other new thing is that I didn't put any glue on the turn-in until after it was folded over and tucked into place, and then I only glued the parts that are against the cover boards, not inside the spine. Way less messy, oh my god. Why did I not think of that before. And it still feels just as secure as my other ones. I'm never doing it the old way again. Oh, and I scored lines in the stiffener before I glued it on, to make it easier to curve. Also worked really well, will be repeating. Okay, more photos now:

The endpapers have vintage corkscrews on them. I bought these ages ago to do a different fic about wine, but that was a mini and there was a lot left. It's a florentine print and I reinforced it by laminating it to another sheet of paper because it was a bit thin. That worked nicely when I did it with momi paper, but it came out too thick and stiff this time. It's thin, but not as thin as momi. Next time I'll stick with tipping them on normally. It's not super clear in the photo but the copper corkscrew to the left of the hinge has a snake for a handle. That was 100% intentional and I want everyone to know it.

The title page has this image (rawpixel? or maybe vecteezy, I can't remember but it's in my notes somewhere) that I originally wanted to put on the cover, but my cricut hated it and my other plans shifted, so it ended up here. It's more organic than the frames I usually use, but it feels soft and gentle compared to those.

A couple of photos of the interior. At one point I chose a different accent image of a wine bottle that was vertically oriented with a frame to put the chapter titles in, but when I went to put it in the document I realized that it was actually. A beer bottle. What the hell. So that got thrown out, and I went with these instead, but I actually think they're better than my original plan. Most chapters have a POV from one of our two leads and those have the grapes and scroll, but a few chapters (called Tasting Flights) are from other POVs, and they have the bottle and glass. I love this, love how they are opposite each other but still recognizably part of the same thing. The beginning and end of a process. I love it so much that I used the same images for the contents page:

And I played with formats too, it's got text wrapping and it's staggered instead of numbered and doesn't have long lines of ellipses to separate the page numbers from the chapter titles. It's wonderful. I've been getting more experimental with the ToC recently and it's been giving me results that I love.

Nice red endbands, handmade. They were supposed to be two very subtly different shades of red, interwoven in a checkerboard pattern, but the reds ended up being too similar so the effect doesn't come across. It's there in my heart though.

You can sort of see it in the photos above but here's a better pic of the spine, where I've attached D-rings. This took multiple tries to get right and was probably the biggest roadblock in the whole project. Friend wanted something you could attach a strap to, for carrying the book around like a purse. So what it's got is the main spine board, covered like a normal book spine, then a loop of gray cloth (the same as the cover cloth, it's a scrap) with a D-ring, riveted through the loop and the board beneath, and then a second spine board with the same covering as the primary spine glued on top of that to cover the raw ends. The secondary spine has hollows carved in the bottom so there's room for the folded cloth, and the cloth's folded in thirds so there are no raw edges there either. The text block sits a little further out from the spine than normal, to make room in there for the reverse side of the rivet. The second spine board is close to the depth of the D-ring, so they're almost flush with each other and will lay flat better while you're writing. Otherwise the rings would have been the only part resting flat on the table. I was worried about the spine board bowing, either from that or from being attached to a strap, but it feels pretty solid to me. The metal corners are also a result of the strap request; I was originally planning leather ones but if it's being set down like a bag I thought those might get some hard wear and the metal would be better protection.

Endpapers! Those are Renato Crepaldi marbles and they're stunning. But they also caused a lot of angst, because the photo on the Hollander's site for them was dark blue. I was furious when I got them and they had so much orange in them. The cover cloth I had originally bought to match the photo had to be scrapped and this one subbed in because it clashed horribly. I can't deny that the end result is beautiful, though.

It's got that leather strip at the fore edge because I made a mistake on the turn-ins. This book's got a much deeper overhang at the fore edge than I usually use, and I added about a half inch to my turn-in to accommodate it, but it wasn't quite enough and I ended up with a strip of naked board there after I cased it in, which the leather hides. It's the same material as the spine, so hopefully it isn't too jarring. The back endpaper didn't need this treatment, but I put a strip there too so they'd match.

The reason for the deep overhang is that my friend wanted a pen loop, and I thought it would be best to have that tucked inside where it couldn't catch on things. I've never done a pen loop before, and I didn't want to use elastic because it wears out and I'm not sure how it reacts to PVA. So it's a non-elastic loop, made of faux leather, and you can't see it here but the inside is lined with the gray cloth the same as the inside of the magnetic strap in the same photo.

The pages are a precut unsewn text block from Hollander's, graph printed. I've worked with them before and they're great. The stitching is done with red embroidery floss, because I was told that a major theme for this character was the red string of fate and I thought that would be cool running through the signatures. It's the same color as the endbands. And one last photo of how well it lays flat. My binds don't always, that's been tricky for me to master, but it was really important here because you really especially don't want it closing on you while you're writing in it. That's annoying but manageable when reading, waaay more annoying while writing.

The cloth wraps all the way around the book. This was tricky as I don't usually line my cases with paper, just glue directly to the cloth, and doing that here resulted in little gaps right in the hinge where the cloth wasn't connected to anything. So I had to go back and line them afterwards. I also managed to mis-measure twice in making the case for part 2, resulting in having to re-trim the fore edge and cut down a too-large turn in. As a result the books are not as identical as I'd like, but I only had this one skinny piece of cloth so I couldn't do it over. It worked out fine but was very nerve-wracking. I wasn't sure about the black ribbon (to hide slivers of naked board) but once they were on it was clearly the right choice. I went with only volume numbers on the spine, since the cover is kind of busy with all the titles.

The books are really clearly a set, but they aren't the same. The endbands are handmade and the same pattern but in two different colors, chosen to match the endpapers (my favorite way to do it). Speaking of which:

Chiyogami endpapers, with peonies. Peonies are a recurring motif and symbol in the story, so once I knew these were out there there really wasn't any other choice. Sandford has the pink ones, the classic, sweeter ones to suit its happy ending. Tabula has the darker ones, given that it starts with the Bad Ending as its jumping-off point. Hilariously, this was a decision born of necessity. They were originally supposed to both have pink, but when I went to buy them in one of ChibiJay's paper packs they only had enough pink ones to do one book. The dark ones were a substitute. But I love them so much, it really couldn't have worked out better if I planned it that was from the start.

The books have the same title page with just the text switched out. I grabbed the images from rawpixel and just flipped them around to make a frame. It's one vertical banner and one horizontal one, carefully arranged so you don't realize it. I am only now noticing that they author's name is underlines in Tabula. That wasn't intentional and I have no idea how it happened. Oops.

First page of each book. Same banner as the title page. I flipped them around to make it feel like a perspective change. Everything in Tabula feels wrong, it's not the future we want for any of these characters, so flipping it feels like a weird funhouse mirror. It's unbalanced. That was on purpose. Makes them work together, interlocked, because you won't notice this unless you read both.

I dug up a fancy ornament for the section breaks. This is one of the many dingbat fonts from dafont, though I don't remember which one. Everything is floral in these binds, all the way through. It's ornate, it's beautiful, it's cloying, it's overwhelming, and I wanted that to follow through the whole story. And it worked!

I had some specific visuals in mind for this cover, in that the US government put out a lot of informational pamphlets around this time and at approximately this size. I went in thinking of propaganda-esque "how to spot commies" type stuff, but mostly what I found was educational topics (agriculture, health, psychology, history) and a lot of them looked a little like this--left-aligned, sans serif, different text sizes, sort of blocky simple graphics where they have images at all. I thought it fit well with a story where a major factor is one character working for the government, taking names for a "dangerous" countercultural movement. I am totally in love with the end result. It's perfect.

I didn't put anything on the spine this time (it's narrow, and the title's really long) but I did cut this apple out of the gold HTV for the back. I'm playing with the title a little. There's no putting that apple back, we've already eaten it.

Top view, with ribbon and handmade double core endbands. The colors were chosen to match the endpapers, and I don't know what the hell my camera was doing to that endpaper photo because they're much more vivid in person. The pink is a truer, hotter pink, the red's a burgundy that's close to the color of the cover, and they've got a heavy texture. This is thick paper; it's part of that artisan line that Joanne's used to sell. A significant portion of this fic is set in a hotel (where you'd hold a convention) and it reminded me of bold, busy hotel wallpaper.

Title page. Similar to the cover, though I designed this part first. I wanted to use that handwriting font on the cover so badly but I knew weeding it would be hell (even more than what I actually used) and the lines might be too thin to work at all, so I didn't. I like how it looks here though. Like it's half government pamphlet and half whispered personal note.

And a couple of shots of the interior. I love how this turned out, actually. Each chapter starts with a short section (a couple of paragraphs, usually) that's set apart from the action a little bit. Some of them are character backstory, some are a little introduction like this one. So I set those on their own pages, centered and a bit smaller than the rest of the text, left the backs blank, and then started the meat of the chapter on the next right-hand page. It helps beef up the page count a little bit so you don't have an awkwardly short book, or a huge number of blanks at the end. It zooms your focus in on this part, and it just looks nice. Professional? I feel like a Real Typesetter after doing this. And the plainer layout on the true chapter start page doesn't feel too simple in contrast. It did badly need those drop caps though.

The long title also let me split the running header into two, with half the title on the left page and half on the right, and I LOVE getting to do that but I forgot to take a photo of it so you'll just have to trust me that it looks cool.

Skinny little thing, barely enough room for a 1/8" ribbon, and the endbands are premade. Since I didn't pare the edges of the leather, I was worried there would be a very deep ridge under the endpaper for the turn-in, so for the first time I actually did a fill-in with some really thin chipboard before I pasted it down. I haven't ever bothered with it before but I can't deny there's no ridge. However, I think it did cause some warping in the cover, visible in the top view photo. The chipboard probably has too much pull.

I really like the way the endpapers contrast with the sort of minimalist vibes of the rest of the book. There's probably a metaphor in there, something about the right kinds of restraint allowing the things inside to flourish, fitting for a BDSM fic. Most of it was just instinct this time though. It felt right when I was choosing it.

Some images of the typeset to round things out. I kept it really straightforward all the way through, even the title page (where I would usually go nuts). This is a oneshot, not a chaptered fic, so I couldn't dress up the chapter intros even if I wanted to. But I didn't want it to be too plain, so whenever there's a scene break I have a drop capital in the same font as the other text. The no-frills typeset makes it feel...I don't know, maybe "focused" is the right word? But the drop caps sort of punctuate that. There aren't many of them but they have intention.

I forgot to take a photo of the endbands while I was doing the rest of my little photo shoot, so please forgive the messy backdrop. Here we have: nice square back tight to the spine, higher-res textures, the same ribbon for the bookmark that I used on the covers, and the endbands which are handmade and striped in alternating shades of soft green. One shade was chosen to match the spine, and the other...

...matches the endpapers. These are two-sided cardstock and they came from Joanne's (rip). The florals reminded me of a scene in the fic where Crowley's trying on a shirt with little white flowers, and it's not the right color for that (he's in burgundy) but once the comparison struck me it wouldn't let up. And the checkered print on the back reminds me of the Americana diner aesthetic that is also strongly represented in the fic, so there really wasn't any other choice.

Look at this title page. I am in love with it. I put it together from various free assets (the Noun Project really came through for me here) specifically to mimic the types of signs you see on the highways listing amenities in the next town. There's a lot of highway and interstate driving in this fic, as you'd expect, and I thought this was a clever way to set the mood. This is like, 15 elements that I had to manipulate separately and attach to each other, and the angel and demon had to be cropped down from full-body images. With wings, in the angel's case. Finicky process that was worth every minute. (It's so cute.)

First page, and an image of the interior with my line break art. I made them look like roads, and the lines in the center of roads. Like I said, a lot of driving in this one, and much of it in the large empty stretches of the country. I love these designs. They're so simple that I made them right in Word with its built-in shapes, and I've said it before but I am not skilled or knowledgeable on how to do 2d art. Almost all my image assets are pre-made and I do the barest possible edits to them. But these suit the story and set the tone so well that I'm kind of obsessed. It's making me think about trying more complex things in the future. I guess we'll see.

It has a back inset and I put Aziraphale there. He is in white HTV. A lot of PeniG's other GO works aren't exactly part of this series but they do connect to it either directly or thematically, and I have plans to bind those fics into a second volume which will have Crowley here, the same image but in black and facing the other way. That's a later project though.

This is a chonky book, over 500 pages, so a lot of space for more gold foil on the spine. And a fancy extra-wide ribbon, and handmade double core endbands in burgundy and teal. I like the pattern with the narrow black stripe separating the other colors; I've seen others do that before and I thought it looked like stained glass. Felt appropriate for a series about how the characters move in and out of history.

Look at that endpaper! Don't look at where it wrinkled going on. That's momi paper, it's very pretty, very soft, but very thin and stretches a lot when wet. I think the color is tidal? Or tsunami, maybe. I've had it for ages and have forgotten. Boats and journeys over water are a recurring motif in several of the fics, so this ocean-looking paper felt perfect. I had to learn a new endpaper technique for this, where you glue the fancy fragile paper to another sheet for strength, then fold them both over and sew them on like a signature. It worked fairly well and set to rest my worries that the very large text block would put too much stress on the wonderful delicate momi.

Title page! I've had this frame saved for ages in anticipation of binding this fic. It's from an old version of Le Morte d'Arthur and the white fellow on the back cover was lifted from it too (though not by me. I found them that way on rawpixel). I really wanted to lean into the historical feeling with this bind and a turn-of-the-century illustration fit the bill too well to pass up.

Where there is Aziraphale, there is also Crowley. Appropriately, only his colors have changed and they are the same under the surface. This is one of my favorite Contents pages I've ever made. And we have a nice image of the typeset, where I actually kept things fairly straightforward. Lately I've been leaving in the chapter (or in this case story) summaries on the first page of the chapter if they are short enough. Often they're not, but these were. And it leans into that old world feel, from the days when chapter titles were longer and way more detailed. I love it, and it works for the book.

Spine title and top view. I think I need to start making the spine titles in a smaller font. I think this one takes up a bit too much space. They're so annoying to weed at smaller sizes though. It's got handmade endbands in light blue and cream, and a gray satin ribbon bookmark. The top's not completely flat, sadly. Because of the climate I live in, I have to do my trimming before I back, which means the text block can skew a bit out of alignment during backing because it's not fully glued. That's what happened here.

One of the reasons I do public domain works is to have "decoy books" that I can show to people with whom I don't want to share smutty fanfic, so I try to do them as a sort of skill showcase. I realized as I was typesetting this that I didn't have any public domain ones that were rounded and backed, or with the accent strip that I've come to really enjoy the look of. So that was also a bit of an influence in doing this bind right now.

Metallic leaves printed lokta endpapers. They also coordinate with the chiyogami on the cover, but I'm not nuts about how these came out. Lokta wants to wrinkle so badly and I wasn't able to prevent it.

Title page and chapter header. The interior images are both from rawpixel and I've used the chapter number one before. The little bird graphic on the title page is from a dingbats font I found on DaFont. I forget what it's called but I can look it up if anyone's interested.

I neglected to take any close-ups of the text but I remain in love with the crispness of the print that my new laser printer has with folios. Now if only I can figure out why it's not doing the same with quartos...

The texture of the croc skin doesn't allow for HTV on the cover so we only have a title on the spine. I haven't done a vertical title in ages; most fanfic titles are just too long for it. So I was a little bit of an opportunist doing one here, but I think it fits. It's hard to tell in the photo but that's gold foil HTV. I didn't account very well for pull from the endpapers vs. the cover, and this is thinner board than I normally use, so the boards have a little bit of warping but it's not that noticeable in person.

The endbands are a premade blue and red check. The book's technically long enough to have had custom ones but I already had these and they were the perfect color. The bookmark is a really dark navy ribbon that's also a perfect match.

The endpapers also have dragons on them. They're Italian letterpress and the dragons are slightly raised. I love dragons. It's dragons all the way down.

Excuse the lighting; my phone didn't like all the white so it made everything look darker. We have a scale pattern on the title page (dragons dragons dragons) that I grabbed from the Noun Project and enlarged to be a background. I had a dragon font picked out for the chapter numbers but it didn't look good (heartbreaking) so we've got a different one from DaFont called Beholder. It's a bit old world, a bit fantasy, so I feel like it fits.