We’ve been printing and binding splits runs for The American Poetry Review’s annual Honickman First Book Prize since 2006. The American Poetry Review is the most widely circulated poetry magazine in the United States, and is dedicated to “reaching a worldwide audience with a diverse array of the best contemporary poetry and literary prose.”
What’s the Honickman First Book Prize?
The Honickman First Book Prize is awarded annually to a poet who has not yet published a book-length collection of poems. The prize is supported by The Honickman Foundation, which supports projects that promote the arts, among other issues; and Copper Canyon Press distributes the book.
Bookmobile was recommended to The American Poetry Review by Copper Canyon Press, whom we’ve been printing for since 2002. The series is designed by another long-term client, Valerie Brewster of VJB/Scribe, whom we work with pretty often through Copper Canyon Press as well as her other clients. From Valerie,
“I rely on Bookmobile. As a designer, I love being able to tell my clients that we can make a short run of hardcovers, or that we have a range of binding choices. Their incredible team: customer service, prepress, production—they make me and my clients happy. Those blog posts by Don Leeper are so informative that I bookmark them. “
What are Split Runs?
A split run is when the hardcover and paperback edition of a title are produced at the same time. So if the publisher is printing 1,000 paperbacks and 250 hardcovers, we’ll print all 1,250 interiors together. The copyright page will have the ISBN for the paperback and hardcover, so we can use the same interior file. We’ll then bind the paperback and hardcovers separately, of course, and we typically ship the paperback first. Our paperbacks take about 2 weeks to produce, but hardcover takes about 4 to 6 weeks, depending on our workload.
Why Bookmobile for Split Runs?
Our short-run print quality is excellent and our pricing is affordable—we’re especially competitive with offset printing on poetry titles, which typically have short page counts and shorter print runs. We also offer a lot more options than other short-run digital printers. We can do odd trim sizes: Divinity School by Alicia Jo Rabins, the 2015 Honickman First Prize winner, is 7″ x 9″. Poetry titles often need a wider-format trim size to accommodate long poetry lines. We also frequently special-order the case stocks for these titles—Valerie might specify saffron end sheets or a midnight-blue case wrap instead of navy, and that’s not an issue for us.
Interested in what Bookmobile can do for you? Contact me!