Approaching Year Ten

I’ll preface this post by saying it was originally meant to be a live stream. Sure, there would’ve been a written summary afterward, but my plan was to announce most of this live—along with giving you a tour of our new workspace. I even promised “first half of April” in the last newsletter… but, well, life had other plans.

Not only did we not quite finish the move, but I also had to undergo surgery I could no longer postpone. Things are still happening, albeit at a slower pace than I would personally like. Still, there’s a truckload of exciting news to share, and I’ll dive into all of it below. So grab your beverage of choice, get comfortable, and let’s catch up on everything happening with your favourite publisher.

A Brief Lesson in History

As the title says, Amaranthine Books will soon celebrate its 10th (official) birthday—more specifically, on June 12th.

Even though that is the official founding date, at least when it comes to when the company was established, it’s neither when I first had the idea for Amaranthine, nor when I decided to fully invest myself into the wonderful world of bookmaking.

You see, the idea for Amaranthine Books came to me around 2012/2013. I would have to dig through old emails to find the very first mentions, but it was then that I started to think about it and how it would become my endless pursuit of the extraordinary.

Similarly, I didn’t give my full attention to Amaranthine until 2018. It was an extremely demanding hobby and my ultimate creative outlet, but it took a lot of courage to let go of the safety net—and let go I did.

Some of you already know the rundown after that. Dracula was published, followed by a myriad of other books where we established ourselves as a bit of a quirky publisher with a knack for pushing the envelope. Some even called our books gimmicky. I have to admit—I loved that association. Not because I thought the books were actually gimmicky, but because there were strong passions about them. You could love them or hate them, but you couldn’t ignore them. This was a clear sign to me that the plan and vision had merit.

Endless Pursuit of Extraordinary

Jump to 2022, when we embarked on an exciting journey—one that would enable us to have almost total control over the timing and quality of our production.

Before that, most of our production was outsourced. This often led to delays and questionable output, which meant certain steps had to be repeated until we achieved the quality we aimed for. I could sense we were on a precipice. Either continue depending on others, OR take a plunge and move our production in-house. A tall, almost impossible task.

It started with the purchase of Heidi, followed by acquiring an old—practically derelict—building in downtown Zagreb.

Where others saw problems, I saw immense potential. Mind you, others were right too—the road to getting that building operational was paved with problems. Almost three years later, and only now are we getting close to finishing it.

If building Amaranthine Books was stressful and hard, this was that, tenfold. It is the single most difficult thing I have ever done. Nevertheless, the potential is still there—and growing!

Production Like No Other

When I first announced our move over a month ago, I had no idea how difficult it would be.

Not only is Heidi still being serviced after printing 2001: A Space Odyssey, but we have only partially moved. In order to accommodate us, our contractors rushed renovations on one part of the workspace so we could at least move our stuff there and place Heidi as soon as servicing is done—because Sherlock is (im)patiently waiting. Only next week or so will all of us finally be at one location, not just our equipment.

To compensate for the delay, we each took the things we needed for our work and spread ourselves across our homes, often visiting each other to collaborate (fun fact: marbling was being done in my kitchen and dining room). It felt like 2018 all over again—looking (and operating) like some kind of a startup. Only this time I wasn’t alone and I’m proud to say the team did their best to minimize delays, and keep production alive despite the circumstances.

2001: A Space Odyssey – Cave Edition has been finished for some time now, however we’re still waiting for the shipping boxes. I suppose it might take another week or so, but the address confirmation emails should be coming soon. At least we’ll be packing them in our little corner of the office, so here’s to small victories!

But what will this new workspace and new production bring to the table that makes it worth so much trouble? Well, besides Heidi (our letterpress cylinder) and HAL (our giclée printer), others are coming to join the fray:

• Heidelberg Windmill (letterpress for smaller formats)
• Wohlenberg guillotine
• Laser machine for engraving, marking and cutting
• Cutting plotter
• Two 3D printers
• CNC machine
• And a myriad of smaller tools and machines; from leatherworking to metalworking.

This will vastly expand our prototyping and production capabilities, allowing us to create even more extraordinary editions—making our old ones pale in comparison. Just thinking about the possibilities makes me incredibly excited to work on new titles. Not to mention the new workspace will look quite… extraordinary.

But our goal wasn’t only to bring production in-house for ourselves—it was also to eventually offer our craftsmanship to others.

Once fully operational, the most important gain will be reliability. We’ll be able to time the production perfectly, and even start producing books in advance, without relying on preorders. The added benefit? Other publishers will also be able to make use of our craftsmen.

That’s why, around the time Amaranthine Books celebrates its 10th birthday, we’ll also introduce our first sister-brand. Even more, the company itself will probably officially change its name, making Amaranthine Books one of the sub-brands.

This new sister-brand will be dedicated to production, which will grow even further this year—because two more people will join the production team. Thus, they will no longer be “Amaranteam” but will bear a name of their own—whether appearing in our books, someone else’s, or even in completely different projects, because now we will have quite a range of capabilities.

To the Letter

Our in-house production isn’t all we’ve been working on. In fact, memorise the headline above—it will be the title of a very special post when the time comes. It might be one of the most extraordinary journeys we’ve embarked upon.

Ever since we even started to consider our own letterpress printing, a major question arose: typography. You see, letterpress printing is done best if you use a type that is suitable for it. This will make it easier to avoid slurring and bleeding, while allowing for a proper bite. For me, picking the typography was more of a flair thing; something reserved for the title and for chapter headings, while the body text should be easy on the eye. Now, mind you, picking a typography for the body text for each title has its own merits, especially if you know what you are doing; even more so if you are not deeply invested in letterpress. It allows you to set the mood; maintain it, even.

But I had something else in mind. What if instead of flipping between different types, there was one special typography? One that could fit well with both science fiction and fantasy; one that reads easily and prints well; one type to rule them all, if you will.

A couple of years ago, I contacted Marko Hrastovec, who owns the Hot Type foundry and teaches at the Croatian University of Graphic Design. Not only that, but he’s exceptional at calligraphy—he was the one who wrote the titles by hand in The Portrait Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray. That’s how we originally met, so it felt quite natural to explore this idea with him. And so development began: working on two types—a serif for the body text, and a sans serif for the flair.

After many moons, we are finally approaching a phase where we’re just ironing out the details. The picture above shows an early stage of development, when we were still figuring out the direction we wanted to head in, but now that we are approaching completion, it just feels right.

You can expect this new type to appear in all our future books—except for Sherlock, which will continue to boast Baskerville for the sake of continuity. Titles, subtitles, chapter headings, etc. will still feature a carefully chosen type for each specific title, but the body text… that will be our own typography. And I can’t wait to share it with you.

Brave New Website

This new type will also be used on our new website, which has been in development for some time now.

It won’t just be a redesign—we’re building it from the ground up. It will feature a completely new webshop, new pictures for all our editions (both old and new), and a range of quality-of-life improvements like designation tracking, automated matching rights transfer, and more.

The timeline for deployment is before the end of the year. We’ll need to carefully transfer all the data, while making sure nothing breaks when it comes to functionality. But once it’s live, it should be a lot faster, sleeker, and more powerful.

You can also expect some new payment options as part of the upgrade.

Honourable Mentions

You may have noticed that our communication was somewhat rare over the past few months. Not only was this due to all the moving and coordinating of production during these stressful times, but I also had to undergo surgery for a total hip replacement. I had been delaying it since last summer, hoping better days would come where I could allow myself some time off. When those days never came, and it became difficult to walk, I had no choice but to go ahead with the surgery.

This, of course, added extra stress to our already fledgling production, especially because we weren’t even on the same location yet. Fortunately, the recovery has gone well and I’m almost fully mobile again. The other hip will probably have to be replaced in a few years, so I can’t help but feel like some sort of cyberpunk character—which, fittingly, is my favourite genre.

While we’re on the topic of favourite genres and cyberpunk, I do have another announcement to make—if you’ve endured reading this far. Back in those early days of 2012/2013 when I came up with Amaranthine, I also had another idea: a story.

Over the years, I toyed with it, building the world where the story takes place. It was supposed to be one book, which then became two. Finally, it settled at three. I set up the storylines for all three books, but finished the first one at the end of 2019. It is called—Successors. If I would have to give a brief description, I would say that it is a political thriller set in a cyberpunk world. It is much more than that, but for now let’s leave it at that.

It took years of editing and tweaking to get it right, working on the story whenever I found spare time, most often in the early morning. About a year ago, I had my first alpha tester read through the manuscript. Now, I have a development editor working on it, and later, that same editor will do a line edit. If everything goes well, the whole thing might be ready by the autumn of this year.

I still haven’t tackled the question of publishing. It feels wrong to publish it under Amaranthine Books, since we only publish classics—works that have stood the test of time. Not to mention, I don’t know who would buy a limited edition from a debut author.

In time, I’ll share a synopsis of the story, and if you like it, I’ll keep you posted on the progress. I am eager to get it out after all these years—not to mention starting work on the next one. It should go faster, now that the foundations are laid. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Finally, to address the slow communication I mentioned earlier: I am the sole manager of our website and most of our marketing efforts—posts like these, the newsletter, and everything else. When all the above happened, I simply had no time to communicate properly, apart from the occasional post in the Facebook fan group, and it felt terrible. That’s why now we’re looking for an additional person to join our ranks, whose sole purpose will be to make sure our stories are told.

This person will handle regular newsletters, create posts both here and on our social media, and also make videos of our production—so you can see more of what happens behind the scenes. I will still post as well, but it will not all be dependent on me. I feel this is really important, especially because there were many times I’ve seen something happening in production and thought, “This would be a cool thing to share with our fans,” only to be swept away to another task.

If nothing else, these moments should be preserved for posterity—and at best, shared with those who care about our craft.

If You Made It This Far – Thank You!

Now that I’ve finally found the time to share all this news with you, I hope you can understand why all the endless delays and production difficulties happened. By nature, I am a very meticulous person, so these problems were felt on a personal level as well. But I do hope you now see that it was not all for naught. More importantly, I hope you can see that many great things are coming—and you can expect even more exciting projects from us in the future.

There are a few other incredible things already in the works, but unfortunately, I’m unable to share more until we are allowed to do so. But they are quite exciting.

Stay tuned!