Editing The Pen Addict 279/transcript (section)

== Sweet Tooth Origins ==


'''Brian Bedell:''' Sweet Tooth started life as something really different, as a lot of them do. And I'm not going to get into what it was. But I was really happy with it. I thought it came out great. The perforations were pretty neat. We were real worried about that's one of those things. You know, you're going into production with tens of thousands of books. And you don't know if they're going to come off the press and all the pages are going to fall out or people won't be able to hear them. So we did some testing on that as quickly as we could in the time we had. And I think, again, that one came out very close to what we were hoping for. And it certainly has its fans. It's maybe, you know, again, not for everybody. But it's a good one.

'''Jim Coudal:''' I have it somewhere around the middle. Yeah. So I don't, you know. But don't ask us which one we like the least because we're not going to tell you.

'''Brian Bedell:''' I'll go on the record as saying that it's orange, not red. Oh, here we go. Sweet Tooth. It's not orange. It's red.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow. This is one of those, you know, what color is the dress thing. It's exactly that.

'''Jim Coudal:''' I can go get one and we can ask everybody what they think and we'll see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We will do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We'll do that after the show. We might as well do it. What's your favorite edition, Brad?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's always been grass stained green. I just love the green. I love the letterpress cover. I love how... Blind embossed with a little varnish.

'''Brian Bedell:''' I love how bad it comes through. Well, that was Dan Barron too. And that was one of his first big jobs. And yeah, he was learning just as we were.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Like it's totally comes through the front of the cover, right? But it looks awesome. And the green graph, that one's always been my favorite. Back to your America, the beautiful. I was on the, I don't know what to do with this when I received it. And over the years, it's probably like, you know, probably like a top five edition. And the other one, my second favorite one is American Tradesman because that cover feels so awesome. Yeah. And that one never gets any love, but that's probably one of my favorite ones.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because it has the... What did you call the... It's like a wavy kind of corrugated. It's like a corrugated.

'''Brian Bedell:''' What do they call that? Yeah. I can't remember. And it's a duplex paper too. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So those are the grass stained green and American Tradesman are my two favorites. I will say that with...

'''Jim Coudal:''' Well, we could just do this all day. But I will say one thing that I really loved was when we could make enough books that we could afford to buy two rolls of enough paper that we could make our own duplex paper. And that would be Shenandoah. Is that we could actually, as we say to people all the time, it's very easy to take a white piece of paper and put green ink on one side and orange ink on the other side. It's a little more problematic, but much more satisfying to take an orange piece of paper and a green piece of paper and bind them together with pressure and adhesives and make them into one piece of paper. And we, Ravenswing and American Tradesman were duplex papers that were made by Nina, I believe. Right. I think they're both Nina. I'm pretty sure. They're both Nina, but they are pre-manufactured as a duplex paper. Whereas at Shenandoah, we got to make our own duplexes. That were your choices. That were your colors.

'''Brian Bedell:''' As we've grown, it's harder to do some things, but it's possible to do other things we weren't able to do before. Right.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Like we can't do some of the hand work just because the number that we're making is so much, but we can... The number being bigger gives us more flexibility in terms of, I don't know, numbers and bringing the cost per piece down to a way where we can actually do it. And our new pitch black is a custom duplex paper as well. And we actually, in that case, we bought two full rolls, which would really fill up this room, right?

'''Brian Bedell:''' Yeah. Yeah. They're pretty big. But yeah, that was the first time. Three tons each. Yeah. We had the other stuff custom laminated, but that was actually ordering from the paper company custom duplex paper, which was a very, very big order of paper. Yeah. Those are great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' People love pitch black. I love byline. Love, love byline. But I think if I had to have a favorite, it would be Night Sky, which I have today with me. That edition just blows everything about it. The back, the foil I love and the reticle grid is just, it's like the perfect, it's like the perfect feel. That's very...

'''Jim Coudal:''' By far the longest film we've ever made at six hours and 20 minutes.

'''Brian Bedell:''' I was going to say that's one of my favorites for sure, both because I did the illustration for the back of the star maps and it took me days to do that. And I learned a lot about constellations. And then Steve and I went out to film that at Great Basin. And just two nights, if you ever get a chance to go out somewhere where there's just no light pollution whatsoever and there's no moon and you can just lie in the ground and look at the stars for two nights in a row. Hours and hours. It does not get boring for a second. It's amazing how much fun that was.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I want to do a quick lightning round. All right. Right? So we can play a bit of word association. It's talking about each of the additions. Just have some very quick questions. Oh, okay. So we'll do this. We'll go Jim, Brian, each one. All right. Hardest to make.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ambition. The gilding process or the different formats? All of it together. And it came out really well. Yeah.

'''Brian Bedell:''' That's second place, but first would definitely be Two Rivers. That was way more complicated. I mean, we knew we planned for it, but that was crazy. It's a lightning round. We can't explain.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Simplest to make?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Butcher orange and butcher blue.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I'd agree with that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll take this paper and this inside.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So not necessarily favorite, but in your opinion, the best or boldest design? Boldest design?

'''Jim Coudal:''' Dime novel.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brian Bedell:''' Yeah. Maybe America the Beautiful for me.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Best paper? Interior best paper for sure. Dime novel. Exterior best paper. Any one of a hundred French books that we've done.

'''Brian Bedell:''' Yeah. We love French. That's just obviously our go-to and we kind of almost have to force ourselves not to use them sometimes.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Or you could say expedition, which isn't even paper at all. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a wonderful little thing. The best inside print. Like the texture of it? Yeah. Well, the pattern. The grid or the lines or what is your favorite? Or color. Personal?