Volume 8 is here!

I should have posted this earlier- it is always such a whirlwind when a new book comes out.

Volume 8 of this series is now available and was well received at the Baltimore Show, with a third of the press run selling over the course of the weekend. 

The good folks at Total Printing Solutions were fantastic, moving mountains to have things ready for the planned release and doing a spectacular job. These are the same guys who made the Eversharp book for me, and I was so impressed with the quality of their work that I was excited to work with them again.

The link to order the book is here.

As of right now, the only source for the book is yours truly. Normally, I'll simultaneously release a "second printing" edition through IngramSpark, with the idea that their print-on-demand service can reach a wider audience through Amazon and book retailers. I've never liked the product IngramSpark delivers -- there is only one paper option, so it doesn't look as good. In addition, they are slow, expensive, and the way they package books for shipping (especially bulk orders) doesn't protect the corners from getting dinged up. 

And, this time there has been an additional complication: IngramSpark now has a 2-gigabyte maximum for file uploads, and this one tips in at 3 gigabytes and change. My man-behind-the-scenes, David Braughler at Braughler books, tells me that he can't compress the files any more without compromising the quality of the photographs, and he recommended reaching out to my "customer service representative" to explore other file uploading options.

I put that in quotes because their "service" is nothing but chatbots repeatedly telling me how important my question is while failing to answer  it. I will do an IngramSpark edition if they ever get around to answering me, but it's been a month . . . 

I digress. It's for the best, really. The ones TPS made are so much nicer anyway. 

Details about the book are in the last couple posts and on the website - buyers of previous books retain their number in the Order of the Leadheads, and new members are automatically initiated into the Order and will also receive their custom commemorative stickers to place inside the front cover. And then there's the upcoming pen shows: Atlanta, Chicago, Raleigh, DC, Detroit and Ohio are on my calendar for this year. 

Thanks to everyone who has supported this project. This volume, and all my prior books, are proof positive of my conviction that print books, my first love, will never die - the power doesn't need to be on and Google doesn't need to cooperate to enjoy a great story as long as it is immortalized in print. I've always said if any community will keep the art of print alive, it will be those who celebrate putting marks on a piece of paper! 

On Schedule For Release At the Baltimore Show!

I am pleased to report that The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 8 is in the hands of the printer, who promises that I will have books in hand at the Baltimore Pen Show - March 6-8, 2026. For those who will be attending, the Baltimore Show website is here.

To preorder, visit the Legendary Pencil Company website here.

"It's a beauty!" reports Richard Keith, who as always helped with editing and reviewed the proof - the book has a lot of things you won't find here in Internetland.

For starters, I resolved the camera issues that plagued me as I posted the original versions of the articles. I reshot about half of the images from these articles for the print version, so images like this:

Now look like this:

It was a painful process, but well worth it - after all, print (unlike the Internet) is forever, and I really wanted the pictures to be as spectacular as possible. Here's a page from "The Case for Cases":

In previous volumes in this series, my goal was primarily to preserve these posts - just in case Google gets another wild hair and starts deleting images (that's what happened to the articles in the first three volumes). This time, there was so much new information that came to me after the online articles were published that I included numerous updates not included in the original versions. As an example, check out this great blue Pearltex Carter's set that came in:

After I gave a talk for the Aldus Society a couple years ago about my books, one commenter wryly noted in his review that I do things backwards, posting articles online as the rough drafts to crowdsource added information for the print version. That process served me well, and several articles were substantially rewritten based on comments from the loyal peanut gallery. The best example of this was the "Striped" or "Wartime" Duofold article, which barely resembles the original version.

I've added something else to make Volume 8 easier to navigate than previous volumes: a Table of Contents.

As in  previous volumes, this includes a cumulative index for Volumes 1 through 8:

Finally, I included a "Stop Press" page at the end. A couple last-minute finds turned up after layout was complete, and I would have been remiss had I not included them.