Erratic Printing - the Evolution of Phony Lid

The First Phony Lid Book

The first book published by Phony Lid was a collection of poems by Marie Kazalia. I'd first started publishing Marie's work while I was still in Birmingham, in the pages of Vagabond Review and the FYUOCUK broadside. But Marie had so much material, all relating to her experience living in a run down hotel in the Mission District of San Francisco, that I wanted to put a collection together, the first Phony Lid book. 

Marie sent me numerous emails fulls of poems and I read them all, making a short list and then my final selections. These became the book. Since I had no idea how to make a book, I handled the printing the same way I handled the printing of Vagabond. I was only doing 200 copies, so I went the OfficeMax and ran off the pages on their self service machines. I had the covers done behind the counter. They didn't come out that great, but I figured the work out, over saturated look went with the material. 

I knew the photographer, a friend of Marie's, wouldn't be too thrilled with the result... he'd gone through a real hassle trying to get a decent shot of the actual hotel in the Mission District written out in the poems, The Crown.


I found a bindery in Pasadena and dropped everything off. 
When I picked up my order, I was dismayed that the ink on the cover came off on my fingers. 

I didn't know what to do at first. The covers looked horrible. I set them out in the sun, hoping to dry the ink. But after a day, there was no improvement.  I went back to OfficeMax and complained and a guy I had dealt with several times before agreed to print new covers for me on the color printer. Since I couldn't rebind the book and I had 200 copies of the book already printed, I ended up printing dustjackets and solved the problem that way. 

The black and white photo came out great on the color copier and I was satisfied with the result. The dustjacket was a little annoying, but it was better than having the ink come off on the reader's fingers. 

When it came time to reprint the book, I knew for sure that I wasn't going to handle the printing on my own. I had already redesigned the entire book, from the interior pages to the cover, and found a printer in East LA that would do the covers offset. The bindery in Pasadena would print the inside pages and do the binding. 

The final product came out great. Though over the years, the covers have become incredibly rubbed, since the printer didn't use a coating. But I kind of like how they look worn out, not due to some printing mishap, but through use, even though they've mostly been in books on on shelves.