Batsmen collect rituals. The glove tug between deliveries, the prod at a pitch that has not changed since the previous prod, the long stare at square leg as if the answer were chalked there. Then, fully prepared for everything, they find a brand new way to get out. Jon Hotten’s Vinciness, or The Unbearable Sadness of Batting is a dry, very funny study of those idiosyncrasies, and in March we printed its A5 hardback first edition.
Our first flick through confirmed two things. The prose is witty and bang on point, and the design keeps up with it: illustrated chapter pages on silk punctuate the text, and the montages in off white and pink are seriously stylish. Here is how the book reached the crease, in order, as one of our casebound hardbacks for independent authors.
The toss, played across two hemispheres
The first email came from Dan, the designer at Fisher Classics Creative Studio, who works from Australia. We quoted a straightforward A5 casebound book: a 170gsm silk cover, matt laminated, plain endpapers and uncoated text throughout. The next morning Jon, the author, wrote from the UK asking for our posted pack of printed stocks to come to him instead, so he could feel the papers before the pair talked specifics.
It is a small move worth copying. When your designer lives a long flight away, send the samples to whoever will be holding the finished book.
A net session over Zoom
Samples in hand, they booked a Zoom call with Mike for 9.30am UK time, which made it morning for Jon and evening for Dan. Between that call and the final files, the spec grew in two directions. Plain endpapers became printed ones, on 170gsm uncoated. And the text block turned hybrid: 80 pages of 120gsm uncoated carry the prose in black, while a 12 page section on 130gsm silk carries the full colour illustrated chapter pages.
That split is the cleverest decision in the book. Uncoated stock is kind to the eye over long reading and has a natural, bookish handle. Silk gives the artwork a smooth surface where the pink stays clean and fine ink splatter keeps its edge. Colour goes only where it is needed, and the reading pages stay in economical black. Writing something with colour on a handful of pages? Ask about printing those pages on a separate silk stock.
Declaring with the files in March
Dan’s artwork landed, and we told him it was “a truly brilliantly designed book”. The cover sets an italic title over a pink brush swash, with a batsman caught mid drive, his bat trailing an arc through a cloud of pink and grey spray; a fine printed speckle makes the whole case look like aged paper. Inside the boards, hot pink endpapers repeat a row of identical batsmen, with one of them singled out in a white circle. Chapter one, This Is Not A Book About James Vince, opens on a near empty page and a single black brushstroke. Later plates layer a pink sun, a cricketer and a shark into collage, or show a lone batsman walking away from broken stumps beneath a slash of pink. On the back, a dictionary entry defines Vinciness as the state of being immersed in the beauty of a game, or a moment of promise cut short by carelessness, recklessness or bad luck.
Only one fix was needed. Dan had to resupply the text as individual pages, not spreads. We sent a screenshot of the exact InDesign export setting and our cover video guide, and joked about opening Sydney, Melbourne and Magnetic Island branches by the autumn. Our walkthrough of the page order a hardback file needs covers the same ground for anyone else setting up a case.
We preflighted every file and shared one PDF proof with both of them, so author and designer could sign off from opposite sides of the planet. Jon asked a sharp question first: how do we check quality, especially on the cover? We explained that we run sheets on press to bring the colour up to speed and hit specific ink tolerances, and that our press minder watches it for the whole run. Dan’s reply was brief. The pink was the major colour, it looked great, and he was happy to proceed.
Close of play and the first verdicts
DPD delivered to Jon in late March, and his note arrived the following lunchtime.
“The books arrived yesterday. Thanks for a terrific job. I haven’t been through the whole consignment yet, but they look great.”
Jon, author of Vinciness
Dan, still waiting for copies to make the long trip south, sent five words: “Can’t thank you enough Mike.” A few weeks later he wrote again with better news still. Jon had sold out the first run.
A second innings in paperback
For the second edition, Dan pictured a paperback in the spirit of a Penguin classic, with a Marber grid cover. We printed it at 181 x 111mm. The text runs in black on 100gsm Lessebo Vanilla, a warm, bookish stock, wrapped in 300gsm silk that is matt laminated outside, and the spine comes in at a slim 6mm. Slim, text led formats like this sit squarely within our paperback printing for self-publishers.
Before the files were final, Dan asked whether the vanilla paper would hold his textured image treatment. Mike’s view: the artwork carried a decent amount of noise and a heavy black, so it should print with clarity, but very light grey tones could turn more muted against the warm paper than they look on screen. He also confirmed that a 6mm spine can carry type if the font size is compact. With a pre-order running and an on-sale date in early June, the books arrived before the day they went on sale. Jon wrote to say “What a brilliant job on the Vinciness paperback”, adding: “Great stock choices and they look fantastic. Selling quite well so far”.
Split teams can copy this one’s sign off routine. One proof goes to everyone who must approve it, so nobody signs off alone, and the print files stay tidy once the books ship, because a sold out first run can bring a second edition round sooner than you expect. Your own edition can go in to bat the same way, starting with the numbers for a case bound book in our quote calculator.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
