I hear you on all those points you've made. Am I alone in being happy no matter what way this turns out? If it gets picked up by a small press it's more cost effective but less special. If we do this ourselves we're part of a very small group of people in possession of the books and that's cool too, if more expensive.

I'm actually in the US but I used pounds for precision purposes because of the exchange rate possibly changing.

Would you be willing to go in with me on the stamp for the slipcase if we could use Jeff's equipment? I'd gladly pay it to have a badass slipcase with the full cover art stamped in silver, and I'd want to commission it as early as today because if the leather book will have similar dimensions we could have the slipcases long before. Here's Jeff's email if you want to drop him a line: jeffrey.whiley@ntlworld.com

Sorry for the double post,

It occurs to me that if ever there were a precedent for an edition like this which we maybe ought to use as the measuring stick, it's the Elantris leatherbound edition recently produced by Sanderson's in-house publisher Dragonsteel. I do wonder, however, whether they themselves manufactured it or whether they could tell us where to look for someone who could do it. They were able to produce large quantities of those books and sell them for MSRP $100. That catches the eye.

Do you happen to know, or can you find out, what the biggest die his hot foil stamp press can handle?

I sent an email.

I've kicked tires on this sort of thing before with him and here's what he had to say about making something custom:

How it works is if someone designs the image for the the case I then get a metal plate made for the hot foil printing.The plates cost from about £15 to about £50, if enough people are interested in a certain slipcase like The Martian and RP1 then I don't pass on the cost of the plate.

Edit: And the slipcases I ordered from him in the past have been between £13- £15. So they're very reasonable.

I hope Bakker publishes some limited edition stuff through someone eventually... Really just anyone other than Overlook.

A year or so ago SubPress did an AMA on Reddit and someone suggested James S.A. Corey. Lo and behold, here we are and they're taking preorders on book 2.

I could also see Centipede Press being game to publish a special edition. The largest obstacle is Overlook. They seem quite miserly and I think it would be A Great Ordeal to get them to cede rights for a limited edition run.

I had to run to my bookshelf and check. Honestly, it never occurred to me to put the dustjacket back on. The new hardcover boards are slightly bigger both in width and length. The dustjacket still covers about 99% of it though. That said, the boards can be cut to any size, so you could explicitly cut it so that it would be no larger than the original covers.

I look at it the same way a lot of leather special editions are done (for example Steven Erikson lettered from Subterranean) which are both leather and wrapped in DJs, and I envision possibly even commissioning a traycase or somesuch to house the dang thing. I love this author so much that I'm going to make him a shrine next to my Erikson lettered...

Once I finish, I'll be sure to figure out what it will cost to do it again. This has taken me over a year to do, though it's more like a week or two of work for a real binder working on it. Randomly guessing so that I can put my foot in my mouth later, I'd probably expect a 6 month lead time, more/less depending on how busy she is.

These details are important but not as important as getting the thing done! I just can't wait to see the finished product and as long as we're talking about a price comparable to a standard special edition (~$350 or so) I'm in. Hell, 6 months is standard turnaround from preorder to book arrival from Subterranean, haha!