Kickstarter

The first reaction is always, "Is it real?" One leather can look quite a lot like any other. The book covering has no smell, no tactile sensation or visible clue to suggest a tale greater than a writer's narrative; that is, until you open the covers and read the inscription on the flyleaf—Bound in Human Skin. Eventually your eye finds an unevenness of color, a familiar pattern, a blemish or even a faint tattoo. We know this is the fate of some unfortunate soul and assume there's no volunteering. The question is: How did this come to be?

The Newberry Library in Chicago has a handsome dark-brown book with gold decoration that contains the inscription, "Found in the Palace of the King of Delhi, Sept. 28th 1857, seven days after the assault James Wise MD Bound in human skin." Unfortunately, that's all the doctor tells us.

We get a bit more about one book's history from a seventeenth-century treatise on Spanish law in the Harvard Law Library titled "Practicarum quaestorum circa leges regias hispania." A faint, handwritten inscription explains that the skin comes from a "dear friend" of the inscriber, Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma (an African tribe) in 1632. The book was very important to Mr. Wright and was given to him along with "ample of his skin to bynd it." The inscription ends "Requiescat in pace."

-from Daniel K. Smith, "Books Bound in Human Skin: A Survey of Examples of Anthropodermic Bibliopegy"

Just a quick note everyone: we are done with copy editing, and so the book, all 91,000 + words of it, is now on to layout! We're excited to start working with images now, and to see how the book will start to take shape. We should have more on that front in a few weeks; for now, enjoy the above excerpt from one of the pieces in the anthology, from Daniel K. Smith.

Best,

Colin

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the long delay, but we’ve been working steadily and like crazy to put this thing together this entire time, and I’m excited to say that the book is coming along nicely. I’ve been working almost nonstop that time, editing the anthology over the past two months, working with 27 different writers on something like 90,000 words of text. We’ve been taking our time because we wanted to get it right—we wanted the essays to be more than just quickly dashed-off pieces, writing which represented the full scope and range of what the Morbid Anatomy Library has come to represent, and to make sure that each individual piece is as strong as it can be.

So, without further delay, I wanted to share with you the table of contents for the Morbid Anatomy Anthology:

• Naples: In the Court of Miracles / Chiara Ambrosio
• Look Not Upon Them! Maternity and the Monstrous Imagination / Stephen T. Asma
• Staging the Unconscious / Zoe Beloff
• At the [Human] Zoo: A Sampling of Ethnographic Exhibitions in the Modern World / Elizabeth L. Bradley
• Anatomy or an Ottamy? Bodies on Show in Georgian London / Simon Chaplin
• Ghost Images: The Curious Afterlife of Postmortem Photographs / Mark Dery
• The False Atrium: Notes on Mourning / Colin Dickey
• Demonic Children and Their Curious Absence in the European Witch Trials / Caitlin Doughty
• Birth of Venus / Joanna Ebenstein
• Soap Stories: The Mysterious Life and Dreadful Afterlife of the Mütter Museum’s Adipocere Body / Richard Faulk
• Staging Science at Wellcome Collection: Anatomical Models in Context / Kate Forde
• Giuliu Camillo: Renaissance Scholar, Conman, and Father of the Kabbalistic Theatre / Mel Gordon
• Morbid Curiosity Meets Morbid Anatomy / Richard Harris
• Memento Mori: Reflections on the Art of the Tableau / Amy Herzog
• Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class / Amber Jolliffe
• Hell Époque: Death-themed Cabarets and other Macabre Entertainments of Nineteenth Century Paris / Vadim Kosmos
• Skulls and Big Rigs: The World's Strangest Truck Stop / Paul Koudounaris
• A Philosophy of Wax: The Anatomy of Frederik Ruysch / Dániel Margócsy
• Death and Doctor Buchan / Ross McFarlane
• The Withering Crowd / Evan Michelson
• Stuffed Humans / Pat Morris
• Empress and Lover: Personifying Death in Mexico / Salvador Olguín
• What a Wonderful World / David Pescovitz
• Tough / Carl Schoonover
• Bound in Human Skin: A Survey of Examples of Anthropodermic Bibliopegy / Daniel Smith
• The Spiritualists / Shannon Taggart
• The Devil In 3 Dimensions / Ronni Thomas
• On the Non-Denial Denial of Death / John Troyer

Some of our original planned contributors had to drop out for a variety of unavoidable reasons, and we’ve replaced those writers with other really fabulous people, and in the whole, both Joanna and I think this list of essays represents a really fabulous and fascinating body of work.

I’ll admit, this process has taken longer than we’d like, and probably our initial goal of getting the book in your hands by summer is likely not going to happen. Partly that’s because, to be frank, there are elements to book production we just didn’t calculate in our original calendar: we’re sending the text this week to a copy-editor, which is a necessary step but not one we had first planned for. Beyond that, though, while we raised a good deal of money for this book, almost all of that is going back into production and paying writers, which means both Joanna and I still have our day jobs. But please be assured we are still devoting as much time as either of us can spare to this project, and it’s coming along nicely, if not as quickly as we’d originally hoped.

The copy editor should be done with the book by late May, at which point Joanna will take over and begin laying out the book. This means not only formatting the text but also working with all the authors to find images, secure permissions etc. This will hopefully not take too long, but, again, we’d rather have a book that’s full of beautiful and amazing images that is maybe a few weeks late rather than a rushed job that’s not as cool as it could be.

So we probably won’t have another update until the copy editor is done and the layout process is underway, probably sometime in June. But just reading through everything one last time in order to get it ready for the copy editor has reaffirmed to me what an amazing, wonderful book this is going to be. We really can’t wait for you all to receive it.

All the best,
Colin (and Joanna)

Several hours south of Lima, Peru, as the hairpin turns of the Panamerican Highway straddle desert and beach, sit the small towns of Pescadores and La Planchata. They are fishing villages specializing in anchovies, and their processing plants ensure that the roadway is perpetually covered in a bridle of putrid smoke that is intolerable to anyone who has not grown up here. In a country that counts tourism as one of its major industries, this area sees no outsiders. The only traffic on the highway consists of long haul truckers, who stop just north of the villages, at kilometer 744. For the drivers on their lonely routes, kilometer 744 is a pilgrimage site—it is akin to their version of Lourdes, a place where they are blessed, purified, and kept safe from harm. This is the Santuario de Calaveritas (The Shrine of the Little Skulls), a small chapel where God provides for trucker drivers. "This is our holy place," explains Jose Alarcón, a poultry delivery driver, "this is where miracles happen"—miracles that are so numerous that the local parish priests say it is impossible to even keep track of them.

(from Paul Koudounaris’ contribution, “Skulls and Big Rigs: The World's Strangest Truck Stop”)

Hi all,

So, it’s been a busy month for both Joanna and I, and I wanted to give you a quick update—we’ve been receiving pieces from our contributors for the past two months, and I’m knee-deep in editing them and getting ready to send them to Joanna for layout. Joanna, meanwhile, has been traipsing around Italy documenting some really beautiful, fascinating stuff (if you’re not following her travels through her blog, the Morbid Anatomy Facebook page, or her @morbidanatomy twitter account, you really need to do so). She’s due in London by mid-March, and will begin laying out the book then.

All of which to say that we’re still on track, I think, to have the book out by summer, though we’ll probably have a more realistic sense of our publication schedule once the editing and layout is done. In the meantime, above is a short excerpt from Paul Koudouaris’s piece along with a photo to whet your appetite a bit….

Also, last week I sent out more postcards and rewards to those who’d submitted their addresses after our first big mailing party. If you haven’t yet received a postcard, please let us know—if we have your address wrong we’d like to get that corrected before the book ships.

Thanks again for your support! We’re excited to share this thing with you as it shapes up into an actual book.

Colin and Joanna

Hi all,

So, January has been a busy month for us—perhaps busier than we expected. It turns out handwriting out 1300 thank you postcards takes a little longer than you might think, but we mailed them all out last week, and hopefully you should be getting them in the mail over the next few days. We were quite pleased with how the postcards came out—it’s a great and unique image, and the postcards are special exclusively to our Kickstarter backers. We hope you enjoy them as well!

In addition, last week I flew out to NYC to work with Joanna on logistics for the upcoming anthology, and while I was there we spent two days feverishly stuffing envelopes with totebags and books. We managed to ship out all totebags and books by Paul, Stephen, Mark and myself (Zoe’s were a little delayed; they should be mailed out very soon) to everyone who requested them and completed a survey form.

(A HUGE debt of gratitude to postal worker Yen who spent two hours with us Saturday morning, helping us fill out international customs forms, parsing media mail and first class to get us the best rate, and all in all putting up with the mountain of mail we had for her. And apologies to everyone else in Park Slope who tried to mail anything Saturday.)

If you ordered a print from Joanna, she should be in touch with you soon (if she hasn’t emailed you already) to confirm your choice and to get your prints in the mail to you.

Which means that hopefully by the end of January we’ll have sent you all everything but the book itself.

As for the anthology: while I was in NYC Joanna showed me some of the mock-ups that she’s been working on, and they look amazing. The book is going to look really great, folks—beautiful and readable and a joy to behold. Contributors’ pieces should start rolling in around Feb. 1, and with any luck, the whole thing will be edited, designed, and ready to go to print by late spring. We’ll know more as things come in, but that’s where things stand now, and we’ll keep you updated as best we can.

Again, thanks for your support! We’re really looking forward to this book, and are grateful beyond all measure that your enthusiasm has made it happen.

Colin (and Joanna)

Wow.

We awoke this morning to find our project finished as one of the most funded publishing projects on Kickstarter, both in terms of money raised and in percentage of our original goal.

Wow.

You all are truly amazing, and we owe you a huge debt of gratitude for showing your faith in what we believe will be a one-of-a-kind, amazing book. We are excited to make it a reality and can’t wait to share it with you.

Among other things, what this proves to us that there IS an audience for an intelligent approach to the macabre, the strange, and the darker side of life. That people will read and support high quality publications that exist outside the mainstream.

We’ve ordered the postcards and will mail them out as soon as we’ve received them and handwritten some 1,300 notes of thanks on them—with any luck, they’ll reach you before the end of the year. We also had to order more totebags, but will send those out to those as soon as we have them, along with the books and prints by our contributors.

Meanwhile, we’ve already began laying out and editing what we have.—we’ll be working like hell to get this thing to you as soon as we can, though those of you with some experience in publishing know this can sometimes be easier said than done.

Also: those of you who know you’ll be changing addresses between now and when the anthology is finally ready, don’t worry—we’ll confirm your address before sending anything out. Wherever you’re at, we’ll get it to you.

In the meantime, all we can say is thanks—thanks for your support, and thanks for making this fabulous thing a reality.

Joanna and Colin