In 2023 I was elected as a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders and one of the perks of this role is being eligible to bind a Booker Prize shortlisted binding. The Booker Prize for Fiction is one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, given annually to the best work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. Winning the Booker Prize often provides international recognition and a significant boost in book sales for the author. The prize is named after the food distribution company Booker McConnell which sponsored the Prize for many years. It has had several other sponsors since then, but the name remains simply, “The Booker Prize”.
Designer Bookbinders began creating unique, handmade editions of Booker Prize-shortlisted books over thirty years ago in 1991 and you can see many of the previous bindings done in previous years on their website. The society creates these bespoke books as gifts for the authors of the shortlisted novels. The idea to bind special copies of the books was Lisa von Clemm’s. Lisa was a bookbinder, collector, and philanthropist who was a prominent and influential figure in the bookbinding community. She was known for her long-standing support and encouragement of bookbinding and conservation at institutions in both the United States and the United Kingdom. She and Gail Taylor did bookbinding classes together. Gail’s husband Jonathan Taylor was Chairman and Chief Executive of Booker McConnell.
Angela James (Fellow of Designer Bookbinders) used to have to badger the publishers to send her copies of the books in uncut, un-sewn sheets, which was always a problem. It was often impossible to convince the production people that the society needed the books in sections and quickly, they could never understand why it would take 5 weeks to bind a book! The paper quality was dreadful, invariably the sheets arrived about a week late and were often already sawn into ready for glueing.
Finally, Angela suggested that the books should be digitally reprinted on a paper of her choosing i.e. acid-free and with the grain direction running head to tail. Angela continues to organise this, deciding how many folios to a section which is not always easy to estimate. This also means that the six binders can have the sheets by the day, or day after, the shortlist announcement. Angela knows the shortlist in advance, having signed a non-disclosure agreement, so is able to plan all of this in order to maximise on binding time.
The “Booker Thirteen” longlist was announced on July 29th this year, a couple of months before the six shortlisted books were then announced on 23rd September. Once the longlist was announced I put forward a list in order of preference of the novels that I wished to be paired with. Of course, there was no knowing at that stage which of the thirteen would make it through to the shortlist, or if one of the other binders may have selected my top choices of novel before me! Some Fellows choose to leave it up to chance and bind whatever they are given after the other binders that year have had their novels allocated, but I felt I wanted some control as some of the titles didn’t appeal to me.
As well as binding my own Booker Prize shortlisted this book this year, I also run the social media for Designer Bookbinders so I have been juggling the making of the book with compiling work in progress images and creating content for the society. In 2024 I was invited to the Booker Prize Awards night at Old Billingsgate in my role as Publications and Events Manager for Designer Bookbinders. This year I will be sat on the table with my author, Ben Markovits, and his publishing team which will be very exciting!
I have decided to write this blog post in diary form, as due to the tight time frame from getting the sheets for this book and delivering it completed to The Booker team, every day counted! I annotated my thoughts and processes throughout so it feels appropriate to share it like this.
Day 1 of 40: Wed 24th September 2025
The sheets have arrived! Open to find The Rest of Our Lives. Already know a bit about this as it was on my top six to bind…
“Tom Layward, a 55-year-old law professor from New York City, has just dropped his daughter Miri off at university in Pittsburgh. Rather spontaneously, he decides to travel across the United States instead of returning to his wife in New York. Layward’s wife Amy had an affair 12 years ago, and Tom made a promise to himself that he would leave his wife once their children had moved out of the house. Tom is also unhappy with his life and without fulfillment. He describes himself as being in a C-minus marriage, which will only give him the opportunity of a B-grade life. He was recently placed on administrative leave by the university due to a series of violations. He refused to use him/her preferred pronouns on his e-mail signature line and he provided legal advice to an NBA team owner who is in the public spotlight after making racist and sexist comments. These transgressions cause him to be vilified at the university. His students petition for his removal. To add to his misfortunes, he has an unknown, yet lingering medical condition that causes palpitations, fatigue, and intermittent facial swelling.
Tom drives across the United States, visiting old friends, an ex-girlfriend, and a former business partner; and also interacting with strangers. He eventually reaches California where he visits his son Michael, and plans to visit his father’s grave. When Tom was younger, his father had left his mother.“
I am surprised that there is just one set of sheets – I can’t make any mistakes! Folded sections and nipped them in the press. Downloaded audiobook and immersed myself whilst embroidering another project. Thankfully it is quite short at 6 hours 30 minutes. Managed to listen to it all in one day, although my concentration wavered a bit towards the end so I will need to re-listen to the latter part of it and also plan to re-listen to the whole book at least one more time.
Immediately started to think about design concept and what colours I might like to use. Do I use red, white and blue for USA? After listening, realised how little I want to use red, white and blue and instead think down the line of green, yellow for the tundra. Quite excited about the prospect of cacti. Let’s hope part of the road trip is through the desert!
Many references to basketball, I’m going to have to include this as it is very relevant to the protagonist and I can’t ignore it. I am not very familiar with basketball so will have to research this.
YES! Las Vegas is in the story – let’s base the cover design around this in a loose way with road signage and cacti, I am very excited by this! The title of the book could be depicted in an iconic Vegas-style sign using onlays and also stitching? Will have to make two signs – one of the box as well. I should also add stop-signs and traffic lights – all using the green/yellow/burnt orange colour palette. Look for yellow desert flowers too? Start pulling papers and leather out of my plan chest to see what I have.
Edge decoration could be coloured like the acid green tracing paper I am thinking of using for the endpaper? Would have to try and colour match. Perhaps the edge decoration could have cactus spikes painted onto it? Ordered book or cacti and also “Rand McNally” road map of USA – could feature the maps of the route that Tom drives on the binding somehow?
Day 2 of 40: Thursday 25th September 2025
Listened to the first half of the book again whilst folding and marking up the text block for sewing. Added green paper guards onto the first and last sections and then created a pricking template to sew the book onto 4 tapes.
Selected green and yellow for the leathers and papers. The basketball thing is also leaning me towards burnt orange, but perhaps just in the endbands? What colour can basketball court floors be? Can they be yellow too? Decide to depict the basketball court in dark green, but should I split the court across the doublure and endpaper or the two doublures and have a different endpaper?
In fact, why not do one doublure part of the court with the other part of a basketball? Can place them so they are in somehow mirrored: the circle of the ball and a circular part of the basketball court? I should experiment with making up the lines of the court and the basketball with written words: bought a fine white paint pen to try out for the basketball court. Need a relevant font too – something squarish and graphic which I can use across the book as a whole.
Still thinking about also adding maps for the route – will wait to see what the maps look like when they arrive. Also starting to think more of edge decoration looking like a chain link fence, ordered some bird netting to try printing this – could work? Green chainlink fence – will test printing from this.
Prepared leather to send off for splitting.
Need to listen to the rest of the book again, to get more details from the hospital at the end to see if anything relevant to add across the design.
Sewed the sections onto 4 tapes through holes that were pre-pricked in the sections.
Day 3 of 40: 26th September 2025
Started work on the sample board. Used two smaller pieces of green leather scarf-jointed together to conserve the main piece of the skin for the cover. Scarf-jointed a small strip of yellow leather to the bottom (for the central yellow road line), but further up from the turn-in with grey suede strip for the ‘road’.
Cut the cacti onlays freehand from different green leathers, some skin side and other the suede split for variation – great that this design can be quite free in this way and may make it a bit quicker to work on given the tight time frame.
Day 7 of 40: 30th September 2025
The bird netting arrived, a good scale for the book. The chains of fences are diamonds, with a flat top to cut the netting to print like this – I will have to add in the top horizontal line of the fence by hand.
Printed tests from netting onto smaller pieces first to test out how well it would work. Due to the netting being fused at the joints, and therefore more proud with bumps here, although the pattern prints I will have to touch it up by hand with pen and paint. Applied green acrylic paint to the netting (green for the “Crayola green” description at the start of the novel), and quickly squeezed it in the press onto yellow paper.
Decided to just print the pattern on half of the page – visually more interesting and saves a bit of time with the touching in too! Plus plan to work the pattern across the foredge too which will be tricky, so less edge decoration to do this way too.
Made up endpapers. As doublures were planned to be different colours, thought this could work well for the leather joints too. So, orange leather with a central black stripe for the front leather joint and green leather with a central white stripe for the back leather joint. I used a “Crayola green” bi-folded paper and laminated the printed papers to this to make up the endpaper.
On page seven of the book there is a quote, “But there were also things like…one of Amy’s kindergarten pictures, glued bits of sea glass, and real sand and grass, and the sea painted in Crayola green”. Colour description stuck in my head and can use this across the binding in the printing and painting of the chain-link fence, as well as in the endbands, plus the bi-folded second sheet of the endpapers.
Day 8 of 40: 1st October 2025
Decided to sew the endpapers with orange thread, as a nice contrast against the gutter of the green bi-folded paper. Then tipped the endpaper onto the green paper guard previously attached to the first and last sections. Then knocked up the head and spine and applied PVA glue to the spine.
I ploughed the foredge of the book to the trim lines that had been printed onto the pages.
I then rounded and backed the book. Firstly, using a backing hammer I created a rounded spine by hitting it into shape. I then marked the size of the shoulder onto the waste sheet, put the text block in between metal-edged backing boards and clamped in in press. Applied a bit of water to the spine to soften the glue before forming the round of the spine using the power of my thumbs! Spine further rounded with backing hammer and then removed from press and shoulder creased further to ninety degrees over the edge of a metal ruler.
Spine then lined with archival Kraft in between the tapes and left to dry. Top and bottom edges ploughed square. Had to do this twice as I erred on the side of caution and didn’t take enough off the first time so you could still see the printers trim marks on the pages!
Top edge sanded with Abranet to remove any marks. Wanted the edge colour to match the colour of the yellow Satogami used for endpaper so did some colour matching with acrylic paints until I found the right solution. Applied thin layers to the foredge first, letting dry and sanding lightly between applications.
Edge then clamped up and marked lightly with a pencil to join the netting pattern form the front to teh back endpaper.
Once happy that the pattern matched, painted the pattern in using a very fine paintbrush and the green paint. Did edge decoration: foredge first. Touched up with green pen and then applied a pencil layer on top to define the lines more. Yellow then applied to the top and bottom edges of text block, and voilà, a full coloured edge to match the endpapers!
Day 9 of 40: 2nd October 2025
Finished embroidering sample board (around traffic light and the gold of the ‘lights’ around the sign). Stuck sample board leather to the board and infilled the back with watercolour paper and Zerkall – I love this bit as it makes the leather look so much more finished.
Started a test for paper doublures. Orange back doublure to have a basketball outline on it. Can I work a heartbeat line into it, to illustrate the health issues of the protagonist Tom? Tried this out and I don’t like it, it just does’t work. Think it will be lost and a bit confusing so will proceed without this on the outline and remake the orange doublure section for the sample board.
Time to sew the endbands: double core, marked the section centres with strips of paper. Cut two core pieces (the primary core is vellum and leather lamination, the front core a piece of cord stiffened with PVA glue). Selected silk colours: green for the “Crayola green”; burnt orange and black for the basketball. Initially sewed across the core with green and orange and added the extra colour detail in after: black stripes and dull green in amongst the Crayola green.
Ends of silk threads glued down and then whole spine lined with archival Kraft. On top of this goes the one-on, two-off hollow and it is left to dry.
Day 10 of 40: 3rd October 2025
The spine needs one extra lining layer: reverse goatskin stuck down to the spine with paste and bandaged up once drying to help it keep the curve of the spine. Once dry, this layer and the archival Kraft underneath are cut to the length of the endbands (make special care not to nick any of the endband threads!).
Time for the boards which were laminated a few weeks before to ensure they had dried properly. Firstly they were cut to size and little pieces of board stuck to the inner edge as a spacer. Then, they were bevelled roughly to shape with a spokeshave, and then sanded with Abranet to finesse the shape. ALWAYS MARK WHICH BOARD IS WHICH WITH AN ARROW! Don’t want to end up with the leather stuck on upside down!
Positions of tapes carefully marked on front and back boards with pencil. Channels then chiselled through the boards at an angle and further opened up using a fine spatula. Tapes then pushed through the holes using the same fine spatula.
Lined boards of book with an extra outer layer of handmade paper which was sanded once dry to smooth out the boards a final time.
Part two in this series of blog posts will include the diary entries covering both the onlays and embroidery phase of this fine binding. You can read about it here.
You can also se completed images on this binding in the Fine Bindings section of my website here.