Comments for The Bookbinding Studio Blog http://bookbinding.com/blog your blog for anything related to bookbinding Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:26:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Comment on 2010 by Denis http://bookbinding.com/blog/?p=66&cpage=1#comment-6 Denis Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:26:25 +0000 http://bookbinding.com/blog/?p=66#comment-6 Hello Alejandro, thank you for your comment, it's good to know that I am not shouting in a void, only to have the echo shout back. Do not feel sorry for me, I still have plenty of business to do, I will not be begging on the streets anytime soon. My advice, if I should be worthy enough to give any, would be to keep on binding until you can do it blind folded. A trade is like a musical instrument, the more you play it, the better it becomes. Soon enough you will acquire a reputation for fine work and customers will knock on your studio door by the trove. Here lies the danger of one's own success, when it is known that there is a good thing somewhere, everybody wants a piece of it. You will have to learn how to say no, and raise your prices. I am convinced that if you put your mind to it and persevere, you will succeed as master binder and profit from it. keep on the good work. Denis Hello Alejandro,
thank you for your comment, it’s good to know that I am not shouting in a void, only to have the echo shout back. Do not feel sorry for me, I still have plenty of business to do, I will not be begging on the streets anytime soon.
My advice, if I should be worthy enough to give any, would be to keep on binding until you can do it blind folded. A trade is like a musical instrument, the more you play it, the better it becomes. Soon enough you will acquire a reputation for fine work and customers will knock on your studio door by the trove. Here lies the danger of one’s own success, when it is known that there is a good thing somewhere, everybody wants a piece of it.
You will have to learn how to say no, and raise your prices.
I am convinced that if you put your mind to it and persevere, you will succeed as master binder and profit from it.
keep on the good work.

Denis

]]> Comment on 2010 by Alejandro http://bookbinding.com/blog/?p=66&cpage=1#comment-5 Alejandro Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:00:47 +0000 http://bookbinding.com/blog/?p=66#comment-5 Hi Dennis. Reading this post I kinda got you know, upsed and sad at first. I am still a new bookbinder, and an amateur actually. I've been doing this for 6-7 years now and still have so much to learn, that facing a reality such as this one (less market, less interest in hand-made books, less materiales, etc.) is nothing but hard. Still, I am seeing more and more people interested in learning the craft itself, and that has brought some light to us down here (I'm in Argentina, Latinamerica). I see more and more newsegroups, forums, workshops and stuff devoted to bookbinding and related crafts or arts. Even though that hasn't impacted me at a sales level (I don't have many customers, and new ones are usually hard to find), I believe it's also a good sign as it's showing a growing interest. When this has passed though, there will some interesting findings left I believe. We probably also need to face the fact that in a digital world, anything that's not is weird. That also means we need to better understand our present context to be able to grow along with any market opened to us. So what about marketing our products differently? Or re-thinking book-fairs? Or workshops and such? There's a lot to think about I believe, and a whole new year ahead :) My best, Alejandro Hi Dennis.

Reading this post I kinda got you know, upsed and sad at first. I am still a new bookbinder, and an amateur actually. I’ve been doing this for 6-7 years now and still have so much to learn, that facing a reality such as this one (less market, less interest in hand-made books, less materiales, etc.) is nothing but hard.

Still, I am seeing more and more people interested in learning the craft itself, and that has brought some light to us down here (I’m in Argentina, Latinamerica). I see more and more newsegroups, forums, workshops and stuff devoted to bookbinding and related crafts or arts. Even though that hasn’t impacted me at a sales level (I don’t have many customers, and new ones are usually hard to find), I believe it’s also a good sign as it’s showing a growing interest. When this has passed though, there will some interesting findings left I believe.

We probably also need to face the fact that in a digital world, anything that’s not is weird. That also means we need to better understand our present context to be able to grow along with any market opened to us.

So what about marketing our products differently? Or re-thinking book-fairs? Or workshops and such?

There’s a lot to think about I believe, and a whole new year ahead :)

My best,
Alejandro

]]>