The Book Arts Forum

Hello everybody!

I would like to share with you some very exciting news regarding the pre-launch of the first and most complete Step by Step Binding Visual Guide ever published to date.

Exclusively focused on magazine styled and flush mount albums, this guide has been conceived and perfected over many years of work and has been accurately produced to the very last detail to maximize its success rate when put into practice. In fact, it has become the company's manual by which we trained the people who worked in our bindery.

It is aimed directly at the professional photographic studio owners that need to differentiate themselves, while keeping their costs and turn around times under control in an ever fiercer and more competitive market.

While most companies offered standardized and mass-produced albums we took it upon ourselves to focus on quality and not quantity as we always firmly believed that individuality was the key to remain unique and profitable.

This "Know How" guide, as I like to call it, is an open book on all things Luxury Bound (or Digicraft) as far as binding goes as it has all that is needed to produce the books we have been binding for image pros over these past 8 years.

The contents of the guide range from a brief description of basic book binding terms and concepts through a basic book cloth cover, metal covers, fold out pages (single and double), book jackets and then more sophisticated covers as our Art and Art In Lay covers. The all important information regarding suppliers, inside info, and possible workshop layouts has also been included. In other words, anything you see in our site can be achieved by following the images and text in this guide.

For the first 2 years of the then called Digicraft, I personally bound each book from our kitchen in Sydney, Australia while my wife Laura did all the administrative work from a small office/room in the house. When we moved from New South Wales to Queensland we decided it was time to grow so we moved the binding operation to our double car garage. Yes, almost the entirety of our binding business has been conducted from our homes.

The reason why I am sharing this fact with you is to reassure you that there is no need for a big space to be rented out or for any sort of machines to be purchased in order to bind the exquisite quality books we had been doing for you all these years.

The one machine you will sooner or later want to own is a guillotine but we did without one for almost 2 years before we decided to own one.

The biggest secret for this guide to actually work is to follow it meticulously at first until you are confident so to avoid the pitfalls we endured and therefore saving yourself money, time and disappointment. Also, this way it will be easier for you to establish the cause of problems when they occur.

As a business owner you know that in order to increase your cash flow you can either raise your prices (highly unlikely under the current economic circumstances unless you experience an increase in demand) or to reduce your costs by sourcing your third party products such as your albums from a different supplier or to produce them yourself in house.

For this last option to be available to you our "Know How" step by step visual guide is all you need as no machine will be able to produce the fabulous quality you can produce by hand in house and at the same time allow you control over the turn around times and profit margins.

To get a very real idea of how the market is progressing, you may want to click on the following link which will open your eyes as far as how serious big companies (HP, Durst, Kodak) are about retailers making the books in-house.

Machines range from $25000 to $225,000 and still they do not achieve the quality level that one of our handcrafted books can reach. It is aimed at the mass production market but it's worth taking a look.

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_co ... ort_06.pdf

We have decided that for the first 200 guides ordered starting now we will make available at no extra cost all the images contained in the guide as high resolution files so to facilitate the viewing of the different steps of the processes and also to the first 200 we will mail them a sample pack containing the "raw" materials used to make the books to help you get started.

Be quick to place the order now to avoid disappointment.

Use the PayPal links in the site to complete the order. The total cost is just $99 ea. + Shipping and it will come in the mail so be sure to include your postal address.

I am sure you will seize the opportunity to be within the first 200 to get hold our "know how" guides and that you will profit from this otherwise unavailable information and samples.



Thank you for your time and I look forward to being of service.



Alex Larumbe
http://www.luxurybound.net

Anyone order this yet? I am curious about it.

Also, what happened to the book making business Alex, did you retire or change the name?

Fundy

Hello Fundy, thanks for asking. Yes, binding business has been sold and we are now fully dedicated to doing graphic design to our binding clients through www.allstylesdesign.com. There a few members who have ordered the guide but due to privacy policy I am not at the liberty to disclose their names.

I have however a fresh review of the guide by one of the best binders around, John Garner from www.bookcrafts.net let me share it with you.... Believe it or not, he paid for his copy

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Well Alex,

the guide is EXCELLENT , in fact its better than that, I mean it. I let Alishea have it on the weekend and feels I should have a copy for each employee with a few little changes and i agree with your permission of course. Now for the review.

I have been a Hand Crafting Bookbinder for 44 years and its very rewarding to see one of the people I helped along the way to refine the way he was putting books together come up with a method that can be used by any one prepared to have a go.

Having flush mount books made for you is expensive, there's e a lot of equipment to produce these books and Alex being Alex needed to adjust the methods without expensive aids and the books he has produced since 2001 are equal to any skilled Bookbinder or any album manufacturer.

There is not much I would change in the book as a training manual for my own staff although I recommend you print it in Black and White as it should be wire bound for laying flat on the bench as you work.

I have never had a training manual and all of my knowledge is in the head, Alex has given me the vision of what you can do with the aid of photos, 2 of my staff today are using the manual to teach themselves on putting these books together by the method shown, with one exception, they are completing the page as they build the folios together, the results are excellent, 3 hours start to finish of a 12 folio book 24 pages, so Alex in practice it does work, and I would highly recommend this DIY manual to any willing to have a go and will even supply book lot orders if need be.

I have never found a self adhesive to work well with leather fibers but Alex has. I am yet to use it being a traditional Bookbinder I use EVA adhesives on the cover making which could be recommended as a cheaper method than the self adhesive, This would be my only change to the reference, as Alex say's he has developed this method over years of working with photos and he has changed things to suit as he went along and what is published is now his method and I think all who make their own books will change little things to suit themselves as time goes on

If you are finding that the cost of using an album company is becoming hard on your business then spend the money and teach yourself, don't go for a lesser quality product from Asia, keep using your own lab and create your own masterpiece in 3 hours, you have put more time than that in just getting it to print and the end result is self gratifying and your clients will be overwhelmed with the finished product. If it all gets too much then you can send it to us at www.bookcrafts.net

Well done mate you have inspired me!


Best wishes and good luck!

John

Sorry Fundy, the first site went with an extra "." at the end. It should be:

www.allstylesdesign.com


Alex

Nice post you got here... Thank God I found this site... Really helps me a lot... I'm kind of a newbie when it comes to Book Arts...Anyways... Thanks

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Artist Website Builder

I own a copy of the book and am well pleased with it. It helped me get past many of the problems I was having with the Alt -f method

Micahel

What particularly did you change from the Alt-F method with the Lux Bound Book. I own both the Alt-F video and the Lux Bound PDF/DVD.

With the Lux Bound I'm having difficulty identifying which adhesive he is using and where to locate hips panels.

I've stuck with the Alt-F method for the book block because I can find those materials. I can't seem to find the adhesive and hips panels needed for the Lux method.

Do you have a resource for these to items?

Hi Tim,

Alex hasn't been back to the forum since 2008 so I don't think he'll be by to answer your question.

For the adhesive you can use the 3M Positional adhesive. Adorama still has the best price on the 11" wide rolls. Framing Supplies dot com has the best price on larger width rolls. For the HIPS, just do a Google search for High Impact Polystyrene. There are a bunch of places that have it. Even Amazon offers it.

The thickness that he uses is 0.5 mm which is approx .02" if I calculated it right.

Hope this helps.

Jackie