![]() The first page is my title page and is not numbered. The Sasquatch’s Dilemma has only seven pages. I thought that for my first “real” book project, I would do a single-signature book. I still had much to learn, but by gosh, I was a printer of sorts! Eventually, the dining room became the print shop. ![]() I took a rare day off from work and visited the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, which was a very educational trip. I gradually acquired more movable type fonts, a couple of line gauges and assorted other items of printer’s paraphernalia. I’m pretty sure that somebody there must’ve drawn the short straw there every time I got a response to an email! I discovered the magic of photopolymer plates and the Boxcar Base. I exchanged countless emails with the folks at Boxcar Press, picking the brains of many people there. I started to frequent Briar Press and Ladies of Letterpress among other locales on the web. By the next week, I had some usable business cards, though they were not as flashy as “professional” cards. Then I went to a local office supply store and ordered a quantity of business cards with nothing printed on them. Now, like most semi-discarded platen presses, it needed some work, but eventually I was able to start making impressions.Īt first I used standard copy paper to print things like receipt templates. Three weeks later we moved the press from his pickup truck to mine. One day I met a man who was a printer and happened to have an old Craftsmen Superior for sale. I did a little checking and discovered that most presses suitable for this kind of project were also beyond my means. Having had a brief introduction to letterpress printing some fifty-odd years ago, I did think about the possibility of a hand-operated tabletop platen press, if I could find one somewhere. ![]() I investigated the possibility of getting my work printed into “real” books, but like most beginning writers, I lacked the capital. Now, while most of the customers at my day job were impressed that I had written even one book, let alone three, they were decidedly non-plussed when they found out that my books were only collections of pixels, not “real” books. My first novel, The Wives of Jacob, Book I, In the Beginning, was and is only available as an ebook. Our usual fare is serialized runs of just over a hundred impressions. In his own words, meet Dale Raby.Ī little bit about me – Ampersand Storybooks produces primarily small single-signature books, written by myself, though we may soon be branching out to begin printing stuff written by others. You are our heroes and we’d like to introduce to you one pressman who explored Book Printing. And we love when someone sends us the final fruits of their labors. We feel like we are right along with them (cheering) as they figure out each step, particularly when we can be a small part of the process.
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