Volume 1, Number 4
Apr 1976

Latest Word on Journal Binding

The Abbey Newsletter is issued by the Academy Bindery, 3225 Central, Dexter, Michigan 48130.

It is mailed free of charge to customers, amateur and professional bookbinders and friends.

No entrepreneur has replied to the invitation issued in our last newsletter, to take over our entire Journal binding business, leaving old books and all the rest to us. But six library binders have indicated an interest in binding journals for us at a reasonable price if we go on doing what we did before, up to the point of sewing, and let them handle the end of it that is highly mechanized. That is, we would pick up from the customer, keep records, collate, and make out the binding instructions, very much as a bindery prep department would do for a library or libraries in a university.

We have talked with half of these binders already and hope to make a choice of one in a month or so. If in the future a qualified entrepreneur does turn up, and it seems the customers would be better served with an independent agent as a go-between, we could still make Journals into a separate branch of the business or sell it intact without a break in service.

There will be little change in the appearance of the bound volumes and no change at all in the collation or pickup and deliver arrangements. Prices will stay the same, but there will be more variability in the time it takes to get the work back. Instead of 6 or 7 weeks, it may be 5 to 8 weeks. We will announce the transition ahead of time. Most likely it will around July 1.