Cthulhu Cycle Books Paperback Recovers #3 & #4

Here are two books recently finished and for sale now on eBay. They are Cthulhu Cycle books, published by Chaosium, that have been re-cased with custom hardcovers. Their design is very similar to the first and second paperback recover projects that I did earlier this year.

The books that I chose to recover are "The Three Impostors", and "Disciples of Cthulhu II". Actually, I had originally intended to recover "Arkham Tales", but I made a mistake in my original calculations and the cover I made for "Arkham Tales" ended up being too small. The book's pages stuck out past the boards on the fore edge. Fortunately, "Disciples of Cthulhu II" was a little smaller and fit the cover I had made.

While "Disciples of Cthulhu II" worked out nicely in the green cover intended for "Arkham Tales", "The Three Impostors", in the blue cover, gave me some problems. Due to a flaw in my covering method, the French grooves at the hinge practically disappeared. This created a problem with the book opening after the text block (main pages of the book) were glued into the case (cover). I ended up having to tear it out and do it over. Unfortunately the error could not be corrected without destroying the cover and starting over. The only compromise possible was to glue the text block in and let it dry while the book was open (which is not the normal way of doing things) and let the end papers wrinkle up when the book was finally closed. I managed to keep the wrinkles confined to the rear end paper. Not my best work and certainly not a desirable outcome, but I decided to let it slide rather than start over. If it doesn't sell the way it is, I suppose I will either keep it for my own copy, or I might eventually disassemble it and try some radical repairs.

If you are interested in bookbinding, I recommend you visit the Book Arts Forum. It has a very nice collection of book and paper arts enthusiasts who are very helpful.