The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Saturn Press: The Art of Letterpress in a Digital Age
In this episode, I chat with James Anderson, co-owner of Saturn Press with his with Diedre. The humble greeting card might seem like a relic in our digital age, but as James reveals, these tactile treasures carry meaning far beyond their paper boundaries.
James shares how Saturn Press creates distinctive cards using vintage presses from the 1940s-60s, explaining that the very constraints of letterpress technology drive a creativity that digital perfection cannot replicate. "I'm not a Luddite who hates technology," he clarifies. "I just love that technology from 60 or 80 years ago remains relevant today." These limitations in color palette and printing technique result in cards that feel comforting, unique, and beautiful – qualities increasingly sought after in our screen-dominated world.
Behind each Saturn Press card lies a thoughtful process of selecting art from their extensive ephemera collection, commissioning licensed artists, or revitalizing work from overlooked historical artists. The company prints on carefully selected natural white paper with deckle edges, creating a wholesome tactile experience that enhances the visual design. Sustainability guides their decisions too, as they work to eliminate plastic from packaging while maintaining the product's integrity.
Perhaps most compelling is James's insight into why greeting cards still matter: "A sympathy text just doesn't cut it. If you're participating in a social relationship, you want to show it's worth enough to buy a nice card, write something meaningful, and put it in the mail." This intentionality explains why independent bookshops increasingly embrace stationery as both a profit center and a natural extension of their literary community.
Discover the magic of letterpress and why these cards aren't just purchased but treasured, displayed, and even framed as keepsakes. Visit saturnpresscards.com to experience these distinctive designs for yourself.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 305. You may have noticed that there has been a change in the days our episodes are released. We've changed from Mondays to Wednesdays and sometimes they may be bi-weekly. I've had to do this for a few reasons. One is that I have a ton of reading to do over the next few months for the podcast and also for the in-person events I do in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and soon to be, ojai, and I'm going to be at the Boston Book Festival moderating a panel there in October. So I've had to switch things around a little bit. So, anyway, I look forward to seeing you on Wednesdays. In this episode I'm switching things up a bit and exploring another aspect of independent bookshops, and that is greeting cards.
Speaker 1:Saturn Press was first established on the rocky soil of Maine's remote Swans Island in 1986. Their distinctive designs and high-quality letterpress printing have attracted a large following. Printing have attracted a large following. James and Deidre Anderson now operate Saturn Press from the charming and historic town of Kent, connecticut, in the Litchfield Hills, where they are proud to continue their tradition of developing beautiful and unique letterpress greeting cards.
Speaker 1:Saturn Press cards are loved by customers because of the compelling and often quirky designs printed on high-quality paper. They can see and feel the difference between a satin press card and others. A satin press card is the perfect way to celebrate a milestone, brighten someone's day and to share sentiments for those you care about. James and Deidre and the entire Saturn Presses team's guiding philosophy is simple create beautiful things for everyday life. You may have heard me recommending Saturn Press cards on a few episodes because I fell in love with their designs when I spotted them at Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara. James and Deirdre also sponsored a couple of episodes of the show and I'm proud to recommend their cards. Hi, james, and welcome to the show. It's lovely to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Mandy. It's super to be here and looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 1:I am too. So let's begin with learning about you and your wife, deidre Anderson, your careers in product development and education, and what led you to assume ownership of Saturn Press in 2024. But before that, I hear an English accent, so where are you from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I grew up in England and went to university there, worked there for a couple of years and then came to the US for business school and so, yeah, I've been here in the US 35 years now, but some people still say I have an English accent. I don't know. My mother says I don't. When I go back there, she says I have an American accent. So it all depends where you're starting from. But yeah, so grew up in the UK and spent essentially all my adult life here. My wife, deirdre, is American and so, yeah, let's talk about a little bit about Saturn Press and how we come to own it. So so my background is really in business and I spent my career doing large-scale product development projects, primarily in the payments industry, and so I had a chance to build some pretty big systems and have some, I think, some pretty beneficial impacts on that industry.
Speaker 2:If I might say so myself, my wife was a teacher. She taught kids with special needs, special education, and then really the impetus for Saturn Press was. You know, there's always an element of just kind of randomness to life. My daughter actually loved the cards, she loved the product. She started sending it to a whole family and, through a series reputation. It had some great distribution, including a number of independent bookstores, and they were ready to retire. So it was kind of an opportunity to switch gears.
Speaker 2:You know, I like to say that I wanted to downshift but I didn't want to get into neutral, I wanted to keep doing stuff.
Speaker 2:I wanted to be active and so running my always always had an aspiration and kind of a dream of running my own business and this was the opportunity to do it.
Speaker 2:So it's a lovely business because I would say a couple of things. One is we get to deal with kind of images and you know we don't produce art, but I think we produce things that are artistic and we also we deal with the loveliest people in as our customers, you know so, including bookstore owners, gift store owners. We do sell to museum stores, we sell directly to the public, but everybody who buys cards seems to be just the loveliest people in the world. So I've dealt with lots of people in my business career, but never with people who are as friendly and as happy to do business as bookstore owners and gift store owners. They're just people who seem as friendly and as happy to do business as bookstore owners and gift store owners. They're just people who seem to like the product and just happy doing what they're doing and seem pleased to just kind of extend it and do more of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I look back at all of the people I have interviewed, who are either booksellers or independent bookshop owners, they all have a couple of things in common. One is they love to read. The other is that they're curious curious about the world, curious about people and they enjoy sharing their love of story with others. And there are many booksellers who have gained a PhD or a master's and they are at their happiest selling books. Correct, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you're absolutely right, Mandy, you've got to love the product. I believe in. If you're doing, if you're in business, you really have to appreciate the product. Otherwise it's just too hard right If you don't love the product. And books and books are obviously a great product. You know they're sort of distilled wisdom for humanity but you've also got to like people as well. If you're running a store, you've got to actually enjoy the interaction with the public and helping people find better products, so better books. And so we've been longtime supporters of independent bookstores. Wherever we've lived, we've always frequented independent bookstores.
Speaker 2:I don't remember any time when my wife has not been reading a book. She's really the bibliophile. I know you introduced yourself as your podcast as a bibliophile. My wife is a fellow traveler in that clan with you. She has never not got a book, and if she ever finds herself on a plane without a book, it's a source of huge anxiety for her. So, yeah, so she's really the reader in the family for her. So, yeah, so she's really the reader in the family. I'm not such a deep reader as she is, but so bookstores are, you know, always been part of. I. Actually prefer shopping in a bookstore to actually reading the book. Sometimes it's just such a and I've bought many books that I've never read Because I love the idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I must agree, I love having books around. I'm surrounded by them right now. Okay, from booksellers and books. Back to Saturn Press. So you are a letterpress greeting card company. Can you explain the process of letterpress printing and what makes this art form stand out from other greeting card companies? When I go into indie bookshops and I look at their card collections, your cards really do stand out because they are so unique and they're kind of old worldly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what I like to tell people is that our presses were the photocopiers before they were photocopiers. So if you were running a restaurant in the 1960s and you needed a couple of hundred copies of a menu, there was no photocopiers, right? You couldn't just go to the copy shop and copy them out. You didn't have a laser printer, and so you would take out your handwritten, you know menu. You would take down to a little print shop and they would print it, and they would print it on a letterpress press, because that was what presses were.
Speaker 2:I letterpress is essentially there, that essentially the derivation of what gutenberg invented all those years ago, uh. And so you know the character. The defining characteristic is it's 100 analog, in the sense there's no chips, there's no computers, there's no screens on those presses. Two of my presses are from 1940s, one of them's from the 1960s, uh, and one of them's from the 1950s. So I'm not that young, but they're all older than me and they're still working, which is fantastic. So I've always sort of had this love of analog technology that is still relevant, even in 2025. So I own a 1964 Land Rover. I have a 1959 Austin Healey Bug-Eye Sprite, which is this tiny little British sports car, but I love the fact that it's analog. Now, I'm not one of these Luddites who doesn't respect technology and hates technology. It's more that I just love the idea that there's technology that's 60 or 80 years old that is still relevant today.
Speaker 2:And letterpress is very much like that, and I think the reason it's relevant is partly because of its constraints. Reason it's relevant is partly because of its constraints. So printing today is all digital and it's on these huge presses and that's what we see all around us and that's fantastic. But that also means it looks a lot like what we see on our screens every day. It's kind of perfect color representation. It's a trillion colors. You can't do that with letterpress.
Speaker 2:Letterpress, if you do a three or four color card, that's basically as much as you can do, which forces you, therefore, to be very disciplined about the number of colors you choose and therefore about how you prepare the art to be printed and turned into a letterpress card.
Speaker 2:And I believe that that's what makes it appealing to consumers, because we're all surrounded by perfect digital trillion-color representations. And when you see something that's not that, there's sort of an element of charm to it and it seems to engage consumers in a way that's different than digitally printed products that may sit next to it. And so we only do letterpress. That's our thing, that's our aesthetic and we are very much an image forward letterpress company, meaning that there's some companies, card companies, very text forward, and that's great. We are very much around images, and so our images come from lots of different sources. Images, and so our images come from lots of different sources, but in the end they all have a kind of look and feel which tends to be simpler than what people see in their daily life and therefore seems to appeal.
Speaker 1:I think of three words when I see your cards. The first one is comforting, the second is unique and the third is beauty.
Speaker 2:Right, there's a sort of a familiarity, and some of them are some of. We have some certain lines that kind of play into that. So we have something called upcountry sketches, which is a line that is, you know, I think of it as kind of a Boy Scout handbook, you know brought to life. So each individual card has some kind of very simple how-to-ness to it, but it's very much simple line drawings, simple coloring, but it seems to appeal to something in people, or people find something in it, which is that the simplicity is, as you say, comforting and appealing. That's what we find when we talk to customers.
Speaker 1:They remind me of woodcuts.
Speaker 2:Yes, woodcuts are a version of letterpress essentially, but yes, there's a. Woodcuts are a version of letterpress essentially, but yes, there's a. There's a strong similarity and again, it's really, I think, because of intrinsic constraints to the technology, that sort of drive to a certain aesthetic outcome. And so, you're right, there's yeah, so there's people who print woodcuts and then maybe graduate to letterpress, because there are more things you can do on letterpress. It is more automated in the sense that our presses are. You know, they have electric motors and they can be used in a commercial context, but still they have these kind of basic aesthetic constraints that you have to manage around.
Speaker 2:And you know, I believe creativity comes around from managing around constraints. If there's no constraints, you don't need to be creative, right? And that's the kind of the modern digital technology which is amazing, right? You just press a button and you get a perfect replica. It doesn't seem to engage the human kind of psyche in the same way as something that has.
Speaker 2:People can sense that there were constraints and then we managed around those and the result, I mean, all they see is the image that comes out of it, but it seems to appeal to something inside people and I actually think there's an element, you know, I listened to a couple of your podcasts there's an element which is, if you think about the independent bookstore, versus, you know, the kind of Amazon as a, obviously they have to do everything other than books, now, it seems. But there's also an element where it's the same product but it's in a totally different context. Right, you change the whole context and the bundle of services and the bundle of value is very different and people find it appealing. Right, it's, you know, it's a part of a community, it's a part of what makes their town different. And so I think people can sort of distinguish between something that's, you know, kind of super efficient and something that's somewhat more kind of aesthetically pleasing, or pleasing to their soul, in a sense.
Speaker 1:And I also think it has something to do with the colors. They are calming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we tend to be a bit muted.
Speaker 1:And James, where do you find the artists for your designs?
Speaker 2:Well, so we're pretty eclectic. So one of the things that we inherited when we bought the company was a very, very large ephemera collection. So the previous owners were real ephemera buffs. So they had we've literally got, you know think, like four dozen banker boxes downstairs full of individual books and images, all of which have some kind of theme, and so sometimes we'll have an idea for a card and then we'll go to those banker boxes and find images, and then we'll just sort of interpret them differently. We do some work with licensed artists, so there are some. And then the other one is that there's lots of fantastic artists, many of whom have fallen out of the public eye. Their art is in the public domain, and so sometimes we'll take that art and we will interpret it for letterpress. So it's not, you know, we always give credit. We use the expression it's after a certain artist, it's not, you know it's not a photo of it.
Speaker 2:It's an interpretation of it, but obviously if we've been inspired by a specific artist, we want to give them credit, and so those are really the three sources A lot of it's from the ephemera collection, some of it's from licensed artists, and then some of it's from established artists, and again, many of which have fallen out of the public eye. Because if you see, if it's too familiar when somebody sees it on the, on the, on the rack, that doesn't work it. So, you know, an element of familiarity is okay, but if it's too familiar, you know, we we don't want to do a knockoff of Picasso. Right, picasso's plenty available and you know he was great, he's Picasso.
Speaker 2:But there's lots of artists out there who did great work that have been forgotten, and my wife has a particular desire to focus on female artists who've been, you know, essentially been forgotten, because a lot of them were forgotten in their own time, unfortunately, and so she's done some work to try and sort of find some artists that she likes. But at the end of the day, it's got to be something that's pleasing. We're not making a political statement. It still has to be something that somebody wants to buy and pick off the shelf. But honestly, there's a lot of work out there. I like to say we're a bit of a magpie because we sort of pick things from different sources and sometimes combine them, but the end result we think is generally pleasing.
Speaker 1:And can you talk a little about the paper, because the quality is beautiful, the paper looks and feels wholesome, and I know that's a strange word to use for paper.
Speaker 2:No, I like it, mandy, I like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, the paper feels like it has depth and it enhances the artwork.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we spent a lot of time on choosing paper, and paper is something that when I bought the company I didn't appreciate how. You know, I'd seen lots of reams of copy paper in my day but that was about it and newspaper and and magazines, but I'd never really done anything with paper. So it was, I had to come up the learning curve and we had some help from some, some people in the industry, uh. But yeah, so we, there's a couple of things we, we did with the paper. We chose to do with the paper, uh, and you picked up on them.
Speaker 2:One is that we, we have a decal edge. So if you go back in time, the decal edge actually originally was when you made paper back in whatever 500 years ago. You would have this big tray, you would put pulp into it, it would settle out and at the edges it would be kind of wrinkly and that was a decal. Now, of course, over the subsequent hundreds of years, there's no need to have that. We actually like our cards to have that decolletage because we think it signals to the consumer that there's something a little different. So we have the decolletage. It's very hard to get decolletage paper nowadays, but we have a source, uh. And then the other point which you picked up on is the amount of texture. So we think that, uh, and there's a fine line there, too much texture makes it too hard to print, but we think that a little texture also just kind of pops the images and also tells people it's something a little bit different. So, yeah, so we source our paper.
Speaker 2:The paper is sourced, it's in the US, it's from a US mill, and so we're happy about that, especially in today's environment. Yeah, but papers are a very big decision for us, because everything we do goes onto the paper and the paper is a part of the product. So, yeah, we spend a lot of time figuring it out. But I'm glad you noticed it we also don't do bright white, we do a natural white, because we think that also creates the impression it makes the images. The images don't pop out of the paper. They kind of they obviously are on top of it, but they're resting in this kind of restful color I call it. So it's a slightly it's what's called a natural white. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what about sustainability? Does Saturn Press have a sustainability standard?
Speaker 2:Well, so it's an interesting topic. So we are constantly looking at everything we do to make sure that it's as sustainable as possible. I would say I'll give you a couple of examples of things we've done. One of the things that we're on a mission to do is eliminate plastic from all our packaging materials because we don't think we need it. And so we just redesigned our Christmas boxes and they don't have any plastic in them. They have an aperture on the front, aperture on the back. They're fully made out of paper, so they're 100% recyclable. We eliminated the paper and plastic which was in the prior design, so once the inventory of those goes through, we'll be at 100% paper. We're also looking at some of our products that are printed. We have some products that are printed on pressure-sensitive labels that tend to be more plasticky. We're looking at how we can go back to paper on those. So I wouldn't say we have a formal standard, mandy, but we are constantly trying to make sure that what we do is sustainable.
Speaker 2:Our thinking is that we don't want somebody in the store to pick up a product that we've made and feel bad about the purchase. So we want them to feel good in all dimensions. We want them to feel good about the product itself. We want them to feel good about the value, but we also want them to feel good about the impact they're having on the environment, and so that's kind of our approach. We're not perfect. We can't achieve perfection. Some of our customers do require products to be put into cello bags. The reason is unfortunately and I'm sure a lot of your listeners will appreciate this which is that people walk into stores holding a coffee, eating a donut and picking up product and you can't have that happen and without getting damaged, and so people you know some of the people want plastic bags on every product so we're pragmatic, but we are trying to do things where we can at the margin, uh, to improve the environmental sustainability, uh.
Speaker 2:And so you know it's a it's a long game, but we're committed to trying to be a good steward of the environment in our own tiny little way.
Speaker 1:Step by step, as they say. Let's talk about box sets in two forms. You mentioned them earlier, but if I'm a customer and I go into an independent book shop and I see your cards, am I only going to see them as separate cards, or can I buy them as gift sets or box sets? I'm sorry. And then also, if I'm a wholesaler, can I mix and match? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the way we package is we have individual cards that you'll typically see in a spinner, so we will sell those to book cards with bookstores, gift stores, museum stores, people like that. So they'll buy them and put them individually either into a spinner or onto a wall or whatever. And so that's probably the biggest single way our cards go, which is we sell wholesale and then they're bought individually. For the holiday season we also do boxes of eight cards, eight envelopes, single design, and they are sold through wholesale. And then for those people who don't have a retailer near them, we do sell online on our website, which is satinpresscardscom. So we have those options available.
Speaker 2:We really do like to support our retail partners because they're the people who've kind of you know, they bought us here, they got us here, so so we, we, we prefer that channel wherever possible. But it's a big world, it's a big country and not everybody's going to have a retailer near them, and so we, uh, we do sell direct on the web as well. Uh, for those customers who don't have a retailer near them and obviously, you know, we, we have a number of cards, as as you've probably seen, and not every store can stock every card. So sometimes people want something very specific so they can get it from us. We sell mainly in the US. We have a couple of great customers in the UK, france, but it's mainly US, but we're open to sales everywhere in the world. I think there's a great greeting card culture in the UK. I know Not all of the world has a greeting card culture, but we're available everywhere. The internet's everywhere and we're on the internet.
Speaker 1:I find this interesting. I have a lot of friends who send me cards. I have one in particular. Her name is Karen, she's Irish and if I sneeze she will send me a card and I love it. I've kept them all. They're on bookshelves behind me. You can probably see some of them. And my sister, susie, in Australia, is the same. She's a real card sender and I just love it. It makes me feel good when I receive cards in the mail. Or, you know, if I meet Karen for a walk she'll give me a card. It's heartwarming and kind of magical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there really is. I totally agree with you, mandy. Another line I didn't mention is we have a number of sympathy cards, and so sympathy is one of those occasions where I mean a sympathy text just doesn't cut it right. You're going to send a text to tell somebody you're sorry that they had a loss. You've got to show that you made a bit more effort than that. That's my belief.
Speaker 2:If you're going to participate in some kind of social contract or social context with somebody, you want to show that the relationship is worth enough to go buy a nice card and then put the address on it, write something meaningful and then put it in the mail. And I think that's part of the reason why it's meaningful when it's received, because it's because you know that there was some effort went into it. It wasn't just a trivial like oh, I'm sitting at a stoplight and I'm going to send a text, kind of attitude, right, it's something. It was more intense and more intentional than that and that's meaningful for people. And so, yeah, absolutely, we reading cards are very meaningful and we've had, you know, a number of occasions where people have reached out and they've said they've received a card, particularly in the scenario of a sympathy card and how meaningful it was and how beautiful it was, and so it really does mean something to people when they get a card was and how beautiful it was, and so it really does mean something to people when they get a card.
Speaker 2:Uh, and so, you know, and because because I also think that there's an element of uh, I think people appreciate the fact that somebody has has thought about what would be a right, a nice card for them, and it's sort of, I like to say it's a gift for both people, right, because the thinking about somebody is almost a gift to yourself and then the sending it is is kind of a gift to the person who receives it, and so, yeah, so I think you know there's, you know when, when I was talking to people about buying, you know a gift, a greeting card company, some people like, oh, I don't send greeting cards anymore, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like that's fine, you know you be you, but there's a lot of people who do, and I think it does. It is meaningful to recipients on certain occasions and you know it's a chance to bring a little bit of beauty into somebody's life on a daily basis cards that they had or that I had sent to them.
Speaker 1:And then I have the matching ones that they had sent me and, as I said earlier, just about all of Karen's cards are on bookcases behind me, but beautiful cards, or cards that make you think about life, they're pieces of art.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly, I can see it. You've got postcards behind you. Exactly exactly, I can see it. You've got postcards behind you. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And my take on art in all forms is that I'm interested in how it affects me emotionally. Cards for me are a memory, and so I'm surrounded by memories, I guess.
Speaker 2:So we've had a number of people tell us they actually frame our cards, put them up on the wall, which is a great tribute Because, like we say, we don't think we're producing art. Art's something you see at the Met or the Mono or the Frick, but we're producing something artistic and if it gives somebody that much pleasure, we're just happy to be part of it.
Speaker 1:And do you ever do special orders, for example, if someone's having a wedding and they love your cards and they want you to create something specific?
Speaker 2:So that's something we've thought about. Right now we don't do that. There's really two parts of the kind of letterpress world. There's the custom work, which is wedding invitations is probably the iconic example, and then there's what we make to start, and so right now we don't have that flexibility. We are looking at that idea, mandy, which is how could we serve that second use case, that kind of custom use case. But we have some work to do to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:So right now we do sell to some people in bulk, where we sell to some charities who want to send nice cards to their donors and things like that, but we're not in yet in the business of being able to do custom interiors and custom messaging. We're not that far away from it, but it's just. It's a very, it's a kind of a different business because it's heavily driven around the customer service experience and the review processing, getting the edits and everything, and there's people who are very good at that. So for now we're really in the kind of we make to stock and then we sell out of our inventory. But it's something we're looking at because I think there's certainly an opportunity to pair the imagery with some kind of text that's particularly meaningful to a customer. It's just, we're not quite set up yet to do that.
Speaker 1:And that brings up something else for me too. Are all of your cards blank inside, or do you have a writer writing text?
Speaker 2:So most of our cards are what we call everyday cards and they are blank. Then there's two lines that have greetings inside or text inside. So all our holiday cards, all our, all our christmas cards, essentially have christmas and new years. They all have a greeting inside. And then our sympathy cards come, either greeted or ungreeted, depending. Some people just want the image, some people want the text as well, and so we sell those both ways, and all our holiday cards have some kind of text.
Speaker 1:You know, we're not we're not.
Speaker 2:we're not writing long poems, we're not like writing long. We're not we're not that kind of a card company. It's quite. You know, it's just a couple of lines, but people seem to want that for holiday Christmas cards, but most of the time for our you know, for our everyday cards, we leave it up to the individual consumer once they've bought it, so they're going to deliver the final personalization. So, yeah, that's our approach and different people take different approaches on that, but we're not really set up to write long, big poems.
Speaker 1:Personally, I prefer cards that are blank inside. I like to write my own sentiment for the person I'm sending a card to I agree.
Speaker 2:I agree, you know we've we've had some feedback from. So our cards are a slightly larger format. They're five inch by seven inch. We've had some feedback from some people, some of our retailers, saying our cards are too big for your cards, are too big for our consumers. They get intimidated by all that white space. I was like I don't know what to say about that. But we have smaller cards as well. That's what I said. We have these little cute which we have these grace notes which are just like little, you know small formats Like well, buy the grace notes then if it's too much white space.
Speaker 1:And perhaps people purchasing cards from independent bookshops prefer to write their own verse.
Speaker 2:Correct. You know, our cards are generally blank, they're ungreeted, and I think it's the case that there's really a tie into the bookstore channel, because the people that are shopping in independent bookstores, you know they're more literary, they're more thoughtful and they're able to, you know, fill in a card without getting intimidated. So, yeah, we think that the blank cards, for most occasions, are the way to go.
Speaker 1:I love that you mentioned white space, because I really love white space and I appreciate it, even in books. If I open a certain book and the text is crammed, the formatting is crammed, I can't read it. It's really hard on my brain and on my eyes.
Speaker 2:Well, it's unpleasant, right, it's unpleasant, yeah, no, there's a look, there's a real, there is a true skill to laying out a book and to, I mean, it's not something I could do, but I know. One knows the difference when one sees a book that's been well produced and been well laid out and the content, the font has been chosen carefully and the context of the content has been interpreted in a way that's, you know, appropriate. You feel it, and maybe you feel it more in the negative, when you find something that hasn't been done so well and has been, you know, the font is wrong and, as you say, it's all crammed in there. You feel, you know, you just it feels like an unpleasant experience, which is not what you want. When you're going to be spending multiple hours with a book, you want that feeling of kind of, you know, feeling comfortable and, you know, and enjoying the experience.
Speaker 1:I agree. Before I ask you about what you're reading, I would like to ask one question you about what you're reading. I would like to ask one question how do you see the role of stationery cards, etc. Even pens, which I adore evolving into the independent bookshops around the world?
Speaker 2:The one thing, mandy, we've seen a lot of, or beginning to see or maybe it's just we're just observing is that a lot of books are getting a lot, bookstores are getting a lot more serious about stationery, including cards, as a profit center. But it's actually becoming quite meaningful to bookstores because, uh, partly, I think, because, um, a lot of the classic stationery stores have got shut down, uh, and so, uh, the sort of what I call the functional stationery stores downtown don't really exist anymore. But what we're seeing is that more and more bookstores are getting serious about stationery, so that includes pens, notepads and cards, and some of them are actually spinning off now, sort of what I call aesthetic stationery stores. So, here in New York City or in New York City I'm not in there right today, but in New York City or in New York City I'm not in there right today, but in New York City there's McNally Jackson I'm sure you're very familiar with, given your name.
Speaker 1:Yes, Sarah was one of my earlier guests on the show.
Speaker 2:Well, they started this thing called Goods for the Study, which is totally it's got no books in it, it's all stationary. So it's kind of interesting how important, how there's there's sort of this interesting symbiosis between these two businesses of books and stationary, and more and more bookstores are getting more and more serious about stationary as a, as a category. And there's also something happening and I believe it's related similar to the discussion we had about analog and about how people are fed up with kind of everything being digital and everything on their computer. Where there really is, uh, a shift to, you know, people wanting stationary products, there's the whole journaling movement. That's a. That's really a thing. It's really a thing. It's not, it's not a little fad, it's really a thing. And so we're seeing a lot of smart bookstores basically picking up on that, because it's the sort of same demographic and the same sense of sort of what's the right word? Sort of same.
Speaker 1:I know exactly what you mean. I have seen people spend a fortune on a journal, and so it makes perfect sense for independent bookshops to be carrying stationery. And also my other love beautiful, beautiful ink pens. Now, I know you said that Deidre is more of the reader than you, but I'm interested. What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I had to go back and look at it. So I'm reading a book called it's called the Gold and it's a British book and it's about a very famous break-in. The largest theft at the time was it's called the brink's mat burglary uh, which was took place in the 1980s in the uk and they just did a tv show based on the book and it's called the gold uh, which I've watched and I wanted to go back and see the next level of detail on the story and partly, I think it's because I am British and this was a period of time when I was in England and it was a big deal and it had this very long afterlife as a story because they stole back in the 1980s. It was, I think $26 million worth of gold was stolen and it was a very, very long investigation, but also there was a lot of colourful characters and it turned out that a lot of the money ended up funding the development of docklands in london, where I used to, where I used to have an office.
Speaker 2:briefly, and so there's sort of there's always kind of little interpersonal interconnections uh where the criminals ended up it was actually not that far from where my parents still live, so there's always kind of funny personal connections. It's called the Gold and it's just a you know. For me it was a very interesting story because it was just sort of happening when I was growing up and you sort of see these things and they have very, very long afterlife. So that's what I'm reading right now and enjoying it a lot.
Speaker 1:And what year did you leave the UK?
Speaker 2:I left the UK in 1991.
Speaker 1:And what year did you leave the UK? I left the UK in 1991. Okay, so I moved from Australia to London in 82, stayed there through 83, moved out to Los Angeles and then I was actually there again I think it was 85 for about 10 months.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And one of my sons and his wife lived in Kent in Canterbury for a while and now they're both working in Cork in Ireland. They love it.
Speaker 2:We love Ireland. My wife's family is Irish American, so we spent time over in Ireland and one of the things that my wife and I do every year we can is we do a long distance hike in the UK. So we've done Pennine Way, we've done all these long distance hikes. And so it's funny because I grew up in England but I actually only ever seen tiny little corners of it because of you know, sort of university and work and everything, and I'd never really seen most of the country. So subsequently we went back and we do these long distance hikes. It's a beautiful country to hike, certainly to hike through.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you have a good bolt hole if needed.
Speaker 2:If I need to, yeah, Hopefully I don't need to.
Speaker 1:Well, James, it's been great chatting with you.
Speaker 2:Likewise Mandy.
Speaker 1:And thank you for explaining how letterpress printing works and for our listeners. How can they get in touch?
Speaker 2:with you. Yeah, so the website for booksellers is wwwsatinpressus and the website for consumers is wwwsatinpresscardscom.
Speaker 1:That's perfect. Thank you, james, and thank you for being a guest on the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mandy. I've enjoyed it a lot Lovely to chat and look forward to our collaboration.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to my conversation with James Anderson from Saturn Press in Kent, connecticut. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson-Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, and my executive assistant and graphic designer is Adrian Otterhan. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.