Toolemera reprints are on SALE
When You Chose
US • Buy Direct From Toolemera Press
Each title has the US • Buy Direct From Toolemera Press option. This option is a direct link to my IngramSpark eCommerce service. Buying direct means no wholesale/retail upcharge. I receive the maximum profit per book ordered, saving you cash and putting more in my slush fund. A healthy slush fund means more publishing for me, ergo, more books for you. Currently the Buy Direct eCommerce service is linked to individual titles. I'm working on a page featuring the entire set of links as clickable widgets.
2024 has been a great year for Toolemera Books. Your purchases of these classic texts exemplifies the continued interest in learning and practicing traditional crafts and trades. I published my first reprint, Mechanick Exercises by Joseph Moxon back in 2006. My intent was to see if print on demand would be a viable way to provide quality books and affordable prices. What use is knowledge is only those with deep pockets can afford them? To date I estimate 6000 books have sold through a variety of online book retail and wholesale sources. That's a lot of knowledge at reasonable costs.
Once in a great while I am asked why don't I publish in sewn hard cover? Simply put, the higher cost would exclude a great many readers. Hard cover books have either a cased glued binding or a sewn, buckram covered boards, aka Library Binding. A library binding consists of signatures (sets of page), folded and sewn on any one of a number of commercial machines, one of which is the Smythe binder. The sewn signatures are glued to a cloth backing and then glued into the buckram cloth over boards covers. Often both the buckram spine and the cover are blind stamped in white, black or bronze leaf decoration.
Library bindings are known for durability but with that durability comes a much higher cost per book. My goal has always been to keep retail prices at affordable rates, typically between $12 and $25. Some books can be printed on black & white commercial inkjet machines but some require color printing in black & white or grayscale when fine details, engravings or halftone images are present. The greater lines per inch of commercial color inkjet printers gives me a book closer to the original, if not precisely like the original. It's a tradeoff that benefits the reader with a book within budgets.
For 2025 I have a number of titles in process. Having been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2024, my publishing hours are a bit shorter yet I'm still plugging away. In the works are a number of early Japanese woodworking books, scroll saw patterns and of course some Sloyd.
My most sincere thanks to all who visit and read my blog and those who purchase Toolemera Press titles. Your interest keeps my interest.