What’s Up & What’s Next?

It might be the middle of summer, along with the accompanying heat, but we’re hard at work. We’ve managed to balance a few days off here and there among ourselves, but for the most part, we’ve been focused on clearing our backlog. There has been a lot of other activity going on in the background, and while I still cannot announce anything openly (yet), I can at least hint at a few things (and I think most of you enjoy our little game of hints). More on that later in the text—but first, the first part of the title.

What’s Up?

We’re halfway through the binding process for the Tycho Edition. It’s wonderful to finally see them in one heap, and as soon as we receive the traycases, we’ll start shipping the bound copies. Getting this edition through the door will be a major milestone. You can see the flip-through video on our Facebook page.

While we were binding these gorgeous editions, we also completed all the cases for the HAL Edition. That’s another major milestone, and it’s great to finally tick that off our checklist.

As soon as we’re done with the Tycho Edition binding, we’ll move on to binding the HAL Edition and the Roman Numeral Edition. The Lettered and Roman Numeral Editions took a bit longer because of the tipped-in giclée illustrations within the letterpress book block, but this combination is unmatched—nothing beats the vivid image of a giclée illustration combined with the tactile and organic feel of letterpress text.

Meanwhile, we’re in full preparation for printing The Hound of the Baskervilles. The layout is ready, the paper is on its way, and we’ve just ordered the plates for printing. Sherlock, having many known factors due to the previous edition, should be a much quicker production—especially now that we’ve settled into our own production.

So that covers the current state of things at your (hopefully) favourite fine press publisher, which begs the question…

What’s Next?

This is where things get tricky. Not because anything is particularly complicated, but because there’s a certain timeline for when things can happen and when they can be revealed. This has been especially hard because several extremely exciting things have happened over the past few months which I couldn’t speak about at all. So, the following will reveal only some of the news, while the rest will only be hinted at, mostly because there’s a protocol to be followed. Besides, someone must feed the rumour mill—might as well be me!

June marked a very special month for us—more specifically, 12 June. It marked ten whole years since Amaranthine Books was officially founded. A lot has happened in those ten years, but standing where I am now, I see that there is still much more to come. To mark this new chapter, we made a certain (but significant) change. After all, nomen est omen, right?

At the same time, another thing aligned. It’s the culmination of years of planning and over a year of negotiations on one-very-special-project (which will remain a secret for now). It’s almost comical how much effort and prototyping it took, but it will be another “world first” for us—this time taking fine press to a whole different level. As soon as the prep work for the announcement is complete, all shall be revealed.

While working on all this, we’re also working our next title(s). We’re still in the development phase, but the groundwork is being laid so we can move into pre-production as soon as the backlog is cleared. That’s why we’ve temporarily stopped offering our services to others until we’ve caught up with our own production.

Finally, as part of our efforts to expand production, I realised there will be a lot of new (and old) machines involved—machines which are often finicky (looking at you, printers). Not only does Google seldom offer any real insight, but waiting for a technician takes up precious time. So, it made sense to train our own expert!

In a time when practically anyone and everyone has their own AI—often used as a chatbot for customer support—we’ve decided to once again go against the grain. First of all, I don’t believe in chatbot AIs in an industry such as ours. It’s too small and too precious not to deserve a human touch. Second, while machines may not need a human touch, they could benefit from other machines—so having an AI trained specifically for our set of machines seemed like a logical use of technology. It’s currently in the beta testing phase, but it will soon be ready to roll out. Naturally, we’ll be able to train it further should we acquire another machine—so just like any one of us, it’s a work in progress.

So there you have it—a bit of news, a few hints, and some updates to shake up your August lull. I hope most of you are enjoying your holiday somewhere and recharging your batteries for the rest of the year. It certainly looks like it’s going to be an extraordinary one.

Stay tuned!