We’ve made great progress since the February update, but I’m afraid we’re still not done. What’s amazing is the sheer scale and complexity of this project — just when we think we’ve got a handle on everything, new vistas open up, new challenges. This has happened again and again over the course of more than a year’s production work. The good news is we’re up to the challenges; in fact not only does the book-and-project (they will be forever one in my mind) get bigger the further into it we go, it seems to be getting more beautiful, too. It really feels great! But the less good news is just that it’s all taking longer than any of us would like.
This week, we reached a milestone: the very first part of the book has gone to press, a small but crucial piece of the puzzle—two versions of the four-page signature sheet that will be included in the Numbered and Lettered editions of the book. One thing I’ve always disliked about certain signed, limited editions is the fact that so often the signature page is printed on a different kind of paper from the rest of the book, and then it’s “tipped in”, that is, glued into the book and therefore not really a part of it. What we’re doing is printing our signature sheets on the very same paper that the rest of the book will be printed on—80 pound Mohawk Superfine Softwhite Smooth Text, one of the finest book papers in the business—and once they’ve been signed and inscribed by the various folks whose works make up the book, those signature sheets will be integrated into the final 16-page “signature” — here I’m using that term in a different sense, as a printer’s term referring to the units or sections a book is divided into for printing purposes—where it will be sewn into the book along with all the rest of its approximately 800 pages. So our four-page signature sheet will be an integral part of the final book. In order to give Mssrs. Crowley, Milton, and — let us dearly hope, though I can’t promise!—Bloom a head start on signing these pages, we’re printing them ahead of the rest of the book.
And when will the remaining 800-odd pages follow those precious if precious few initial four to the printer? In June. Perhaps, if we are fortunate and all goes with a not unreasonable smoothness, as early as Bloomsday. (I promise I will post another update by then, either way.) On such a timeline, then, finished books would start shipping in the second half of August.
Thank you again for your kind forbearance.
Best Wishes,
Ron Drummond
Publisher