BBP Services & Media Attention
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| | What We Do
Birch Brook Press creates and publishes handsome, literate Letterpress and Trade books relating to popular culture, including books about books, baseball, flyfishing, music, the outdoors, translations of classics, and fine contemporary fiction and poetry. The press has also produced special editions for other publishers and cultural organizations, such as University of North Carolina/Greensboro, North Carolina Writers Network, Cross-Cultural Communications, The Smith Books, Bank Street Press, and others.
BBP's sister company, Birch Brook Impressions, offers complete antique book production services, from editing and design on through to typesetting, printing and binding. Sometimes these services are utilized by other publishers to bring out special editions to sell to the public, or by individuals who wish to commemorate some important personal or family event.
The literary publishing operation, Persephone Press, founded by Mary Belle Campbell, was acquired by Birch Brook Press about a decade ago. Persephone specialized in the production of quality letterpress chapbooks.
"The Alchemy of Words is beautifully printed on vellum via letterpress. For those familiar with Birch Brook Press this is no surprise. For those who aren't, the Birch Brook Press experience would be like experiencing a fine wine for the first time..." Eric Greinke, Poetry in Review, Presa Press
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How We Do It
Classic typefaces are cast in metal and set by hand or machine. Metal engravings are made from your artwork or we commission one of our artists to provide illustrations or wood engravings. Printing is done on antique presses such as Heidelberg platen and cylinder on acid-free Mohawk vellums and other weighty text and cover stocks such as Strathmore and Becket. On larger print runs, we can also provide computer typesetting and offset printing services to bring out quality trade editions. Through our subidiary, Persephone Press, we sometimes create chapbooks of literary interest. Hardcover and softcover perfect binding, as well as hand-sewing and hand-coloration, are available. Most sizes and shapes of book can be produced at BBP/BBI to your specifications. Because of the time required to bring out books by Human-Centered methods, Letterpress print runs tend to be small -- we have produced as few as one to as many as 2,000 copies. Publishers sometimes seek short runs to do a limited or special edition to sell at higher prices. On Privately Printed Editions for individual authors, artists or families, short runs are often requested because they are seeking personal rather than commercial consumption.
Reach out to BBP
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| art by Frank C. Eckmair |
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| art by Marshall Brooks |
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| The Media on BBP
"Inside Birch Brook Press you hear sounds you've probably never heard before...the slap of a leather drive belt against polished steel; the soft thwack of a platen against heavy paper. All this produces a book that gives the reader what the printer calls not merely a mental but a sensory experience. 'Placing readers in contact with quality materials, in books made by human hands rather than mass production machinery, adds a measurable quality to the reading experience...'"--BINGHAMTON PRESS-SUN-BULLETIN
"If Gutenberg showed up today in Delhi, New York, he could roll up his sleeves and go to work with nary a bit of retraining. Birch Brook Press makes not mass-produced computerized tomes but books lovingly hand-made, and when you run your fingers across the pages you can feel the letters. With a letterpress book, both your eyes and fingers can caress the words..."--SIERRA MAGAZINE
"Birch Brook Press has been publishing books for 20 years, specializing in letterpress editions, often featuring hand-set type and hand-mixed inks, with most printing and binding done at its facility in the Catskill Mountains. BBP's decision to soldier on in the grand tradition is laudable..."--SMALL PRESS REVIEW
"There may be better books than Fred DeFauw's FISHING THE BACK COUNTRY. But there isn't a handsomer one. Every aspect of this slender book of essays bespeaks care and craftsmanship. Birch Brook Press printed this letterpress edition on an Original Heidelberg Cylinder press, and Frank C. Eckmair added lovely wood engravings. Even the drop-in letters at the start of each essay and the page numbers at the bottom of each page show taste and discrimination...."--BILLINGS OUTPOST
"Birch Brook Press creates books the way they were done before computers took over -- in a slow way, out of wood and metal -- a very gratifying, a very organic experience that keeps the reader in touch with a book...."--UTICA OBSERVER-DISPATCH
Revisit BBP's Printing & Publishing Philosophy
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Reviews of BBP Books
"This celebration of THE ROMANCE OF THE BOOK is an ideal bedside companion...a handsome, letterpress edition--the texture of the type on the page adds a sense to the words it carries. The book was designed, set in metal,
and printed at Birch Brook Press..."--COMMON READER
"The rich, meditative motif of the library is the theme that links literary masters in a merry anthology from Birch Brook Press, MAGIC & MADNESS IN THE LIBRARY, a handsome letterpress volume illustrated with wood engravings and offering classic gems..."--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"There are only two other books I would pack if I were leaving on a trip tomorrow: The first is Birch Brook Press's FICTION, FLYFISHING & THE SEARCH FOR INNOCENCE, a collection of ll stories led by E. Annie Proulx's astonishingly twisted "The Wer-Trout..."--TOWN & COUNTRY
"EDITORS IN THE STREAM, from Birch Brook Press, is a gem!..." BACKPACKER MAGAZINE
"Birch Brook Press's BASEBALL & THE GAME OF LIFE: STORIES FOR THE THINKING FAN, is noteworthy..."--NY TIMES
"THE ROMANCE OF THE BOOK is a collection of essays celebrating books and the personal experiences writers -- such as Collette, Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, and Petrarch -- have had with them. As books are in danger of being supplanted by electronic devices, it is refreshing to read these eloquent tributes....--LIBRARY JOURNAL
"What I like best about Warren Carrier's RISKING THE WIND is its imagery. In writing about the beach, he describes 'lacy skirts of surf.' He clearly is in love with words. On his pages one encounters pends, plash, pommelling, loco, schlop, boses, brouhaha, weft, pipits, camber, filch. Printed from metal type on an antique press, this is a handsome production."--HOUSTON CHRONICLE
"Author Alma H. Bond has Maria Callas state that 'what makes me weak as a person makes me strong as an artist.' It is this artistic strength that holds the real fascination in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARIA CALLAS: A NOVEL." Have a look at our latest fine books
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