Episode 116: Blank Bridge

What constitutes a real book? For most of my non-bookbinding friends it is a picture and title on the cover and spine plus a headband. I made my first demi-headband the other day. A rolled piece of bookcloth around a piece of string and sewn into the signatures using a contrasting color. I like it more than the glue on kind of headband, that's for sure.
On the other hand, I've also made two roundback books in the last couple of weeks. Both Frankenstein and Dracula were roundback and Frankenstein had my first attempt at sewing headbands. But the thing that really makes a book a Book in the minds of mere muggles is the cover design. Do I really want to start learning how to design a book cover well? That's definitely a rabbit hole one can fall down.
That said, here are two covers of two of my novels that I have designed. One, Tristram's Printer: A Typographical Love Story, is available from Smashwords.com. It's about art, love, bookbinding, and artists. Calvado: A Deadly Love Story, is being edited for clarity and consistency. It's about love and murder.
But I think the covers, the headbands, the roundback all contribute to a good-looking book that would be easier to sell than even a coptic binding, even if the coptic binding were excellent. The fact that it doesn't 'look' like a book. I, of course, would have to show the buyers the advantages of a coptic binding vs a perfect binding.