The purpose of the workshop was to create an awareness of the intricacies involved in producing a standardised book which has a good shelf life and is better at handling for the reader.

"I have seen many books which over a period of time see cracking of the spine, or there is an unevenness of the signatures on the edges, or one particular side of the spine swells, apart from the mouse trap action which shuts the book on opening it and makes it difficult for the reader to handle it," said P Sajith of Welbound Worldwide. "A failed book is not a book and that is what we wanted to address by creating awareness on how all of these can be avoided with proper grain direction of paper, standardised bleed and spine margins, avoiding coating on any surface of the spine inside and so on." Sajith was joined by Dinesh Ingawale and Suresh Nair for technical queries and solutions.

Among those who were present included Alpana Khare (designer), Sherna Dastur (designer), Raghu Khare (design student), Milan Bhattacharya (freelance production manager) Jitendra Thakur (artist/illustrator, production manager, Eklavya), Uma Iyengar (publisher, The Book Review), Antara Dev Sen (publisher, The Little Magazine), Naresh Nadeem and Mamata (editors, People's Democracy), Komita (editor, Leftword Books) and Indu Chandrasekhar (publisher, Tulika Books).

Chandrasekhar said: "It was an extremely educative and useful interaction. I see this as a first step towards ways of working together in the future - and I do intend to try and set up a core group of independent publishers, designers, typesetters, print production persons and paper dealers in Delhi, to carry this information and knowledge sharing mode forward."

The workshop was a part of Welbound’s Knowledge Yatra which is "truly mobile and intends to host similar seminars in different parts of the country," concluded Sajith. "We have done similar workshops for book publishers like Orient Blackswan and Pearsons ."

If you are a book printer or a publisher and willing to host a similar seminar in your region you may contact welbound@gmail.com

 

Glimpses from the session