I Could Make Books, Just Like Everybody Else...

I went to Swiss Days this weekend to help my parents with their booths. When it's slow, I like to wander around and see the different vendors that have showed up for this glorious event of craftiness. Some products I really like--others are just gaudy and/or too frilly for my liking. And others are too repetitive (six booths of magnetic boards, anyone?)

A few years ago I noticed that nobody sold books at Swiss Days. This year, there were two booths selling books--one booth sold leather-bound stuff, and the other sold spiral journals. In reality, these books looked like the vendors had ripped off old covers of notebooks/text blocks and recovered them with a material of their choice. The spiral journals were covered with happy cheesy paper, fake flowers, and giant ribbons--something totally cliche LDS and taken from local scrapbook stores. (These people also re-cover The Book of Mormon with the same type of decorations and sell them for $20 each; they also advertise them as "Books of Mormon," which makes me cringe. Say this with me: copies of The Book of Mormon. Copies!)

The leather people's books were not much better; the leather itself was nice, but the text blocks they chose for their journals were horrible--perfect bound, and they didn't leave enough cover in the spine for the book to open all the way. This type of problem would drive me crazy.

So these two sights have made me seriously consider trying my hand in the craft show business. I love my coptic-bound books (my Dad calls them craptic bindings), but they're fabulous because the book will open all the way. And they're fast. And my books aren't totally girly and flower-like and make me want to throw up. However, I'd have to make about 500 of them for Swiss Days because it is the biggest craft show in the state. And I'd have to invest in a board shear to cut that much paper and binder's board effectively.

Of course this is probably a more viable option after I'm finished with my master's degree...