In this conversation with the New Century Edition (NCE) Managing Editor Stuart Shotwell, we learned about some of the hard work that goes into identifying and choosing a printer for our Deluxe books.
What sent you looking for a new Deluxe printer in the first place — what’s the story behind the search?
Actually, there was nothing new about our recent search for (yet another) printer. Printing the New Century Edition volumes has essentially been an ongoing quest for a printer who can produce books to our specifications. We started in 2000 with an excellent printer in Virginia. They offered a sewn binding and handled our two-color interior without difficulty. But after the first three titles had been printed (Heaven and Hell, Divine Love and Wisdom, and Divine Providence), we realized we needed a new paper that bulked less—that is, one that resulted in a somewhat thinner volume, but retained the smooth “feel” and high opacity of the paper we had been using.
To make a long story short, from that point on, finding a printer was often a question of working with the company that could get us an acceptable paper. Paper companies were going out of business or consolidating across the United States, and furthermore the high-quality paper we needed could in some cases be obtained only if we ordered a boxcar load of it—at a prohibitive cost. The market has settled to some extent now and our favored paper, called Cougar, seems to be more commonly available.
However, a new problem arose in the latest reprint of Heaven and Hell: the printers could not use our supply of double-dyed purple cover cloth in their binding machine. They had to send it out to a specialty binder. It was also clear that the printer was not interested in keeping our account; they wanted to print cheap paperbacks, not our labor-intensive hardcovers. This set us on a new search for a printer who really wanted our business and could handle the entire book manufacturing process.
What actually makes a Deluxe edition “Deluxe”? When a reader holds one, what should they be noticing?
We always think of the content as what makes a Deluxe a deluxe edition. The Deluxe has not only the same translation as the Portable edition, it has a preface, an introduction by a significant scholar, a host of notes to explain the text and provide context, and several indexes to enable readers to hunt down points of interest. Sure, you get the most important part—Swedenborg’s wisdom—whether you buy the little paperback Portable or the Deluxe. But suppose you were reading your Portable and came across the passage in True Christianity 160 that mentions Egyptian mummies being made into pills. Or §834, which mentions a mysterious ivory spoon. Wouldn’t you be curious about exactly what Swedenborg was referring to? The Deluxe edition has notes that will tell you. These two sample topics are fascinating, if minor, but the Deluxe also explains major points of theology and history that may be just as baffling.
All that having been said, the Deluxe is of course physically different from the Portables. The Deluxe is printed in a larger format, on beautiful paper, and has a cloth-wrapped hardcover. Anyone holding it can’t fail to notice the superior look and feel of the paper, and indeed of the entire book.
A lot of that quality seems to live in the binding — could you walk us through a few of the choices there, like the difference between a rounded and a flat spine?
The ultimate book binding is what is called a Smyth-sewn binding. To create it, the binder gathers folded sheets of paper into groups of thirty-two pages called signatures. These signatures are sewn with thread to a backing material, which is then fastened to “boards” of heavy fiber covered with cloth. Although most of the Deluxe volumes have been bound in this manner, changing times have led us to switch to a different binding that uses a type of elastic glue instead of thread. This change is not what we prefer, but it has cut our costs in half. And I do mean that: using a Smyth-sewn binding doubles the cost of a book.
There are further refinements in hardcover binding, such as the ones you ask about. The traditional rounded spine sits nicely in the curve of the human hand, but—no surprise—it’s more difficult for today’s binding machines to reproduce. So hardcover books today often are given a flatter spine. The look is quite different, to the discerning eye; and since we embarked on our series using slightly rounded spines, we’d like to continue that way if we can.
Was there a moment in the process that surprised you, or a detail in the finished books you’re especially proud of?
We were surprised to learn that our newest printer was not going to use inkjet technology, but was instead going to use an older technology called offset. In order to print the two colors used in our Deluxe volumes, inkjet technology requires the paper to pass through the press only once. Offset technology requires the paper to pass through the press twice: once to lay down the black text and a second time to lay down the red text. Most short-run books are printed by inkjet technology now. We prefer the offset process, because we have a lurking suspicion (perhaps just a prejudice) that the ink used in offset will last longer—perhaps even centuries longer—than the ink used in an inkjet printer. And the durability of the Deluxes is definitely something we’re proud of.
Anything else you’d like readers to know about the Deluxe books?
We at the Swedenborg Foundation and the New Century Edition team are committed to providing twenty-first century readers with the highest quality texts and physical books. We want our scholarship and our books to last a lifetime and more. The Deluxe edition is the highest form of our endeavors. We have made an unrelenting effort over the years to maintain the quality of those books despite the ongoing upheavals in the publishing and printing fields and the constantly increasing costs of book production.
Stay tuned. There is more great Swedenborg to come, published with all the loving care our readers have come to expect.
View the New Century Edition collection on this page.
