Custom book publisher鈥檚 career path forever altered by 黑料社 experience
How many people can point to a day that changed their lives?
For Stephanie Kimbro Dolin 鈥98, her work as owner and operator of First Bite Press, a custom publishing house that prints, illustrates and binds limited edition books, can be traced back to one random college discovery.
鈥淚t all started, actually, at 黑料社 at the old alumni house,鈥 Dolin said. 鈥淚 was spending one summer working at the alumni house, and someone told me to go upstairs to the attic and get this or that.鈥
As she explored the attic, she found a box of old books that weren鈥檛 receiving the sort of reverence she felt they deserved.
鈥淚 was always a book person, but this was like, 鈥榃ait a minute. These are antiques. What鈥檚 going on?鈥欌 she said.
So Kimbro asked about the books and learned they were destined to be disposed of the next day.
鈥淚 asked, 鈥楥an I save them?鈥 and they said sure, we don鈥檛 care,鈥 Dolin said. 鈥淪o I saved them. Some of them are back to the 1700s. They're all French theater. So apparently some professor at 黑料社 passed away and these were all up there.鈥
Those old theatre books became treasures for Dolin.
鈥淢y college roommate remembers. I carried these books around for like two years from dorm to dorm, because I was like, 鈥楾hese are just too wonderful.鈥
After leaving 黑料社, as Dolin worked on her master鈥檚 degree in history, she learned more about how to care for old books. How to take them apart, repair them. She received training as a volunteer at the Cincinnati Museum Center working in the preservation department.
鈥淪o I started out taking books apart and fixing them, rare books, and then fell in love with book binding.鈥
Dolin completed her master鈥檚 at Miami University and graduated from the University of Dayton School of Law. She embarked on her law career and attained a research fellowship at the Stanford University Center for the Legal Profession.
All the while, her love of the old way of printing and binding books remained strong. She would take antique books home from her firm鈥檚 law library and repair them as a hobby.
But while working with books was rewarding, working with lawyers was frustrating. Dolin worked to develop a way to unbundle the practice of attorneys racking up billable hours in a quest to unlock the legal profession for those who can鈥檛 currently afford legal services. She found the resistance of law firms to change and adopt the technological solutions she was proposing frustrating.
鈥淚鈥檝e been doing this for 10 years,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 cannot keep doing this.鈥
Her work at Stanford had taken her from North Carolina to San Francisco, where she dove into the publishing scene, studying bookbinding and letterpress printing at the San Francisco Center for the Book and attending the California Rare Book School at UCLA.
She found local printers to learn from and eventually launched her own printing company, dubbed First Bite Press. Her logo is a linocut of Eve reaching for an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.
鈥淓ve was brave鈥 She was curious. She was willing to bite into the apple.鈥
The imagery also applies to First Bite press鈥檚 area of specialization. Dolin is a fan of sci-fi and fantasy work, but found an opening in the market for a fine press dedicated to romance steamier works.
鈥淭here are other fine press, limited edition bookmakers who are doing sci fi, fantasy and horror. Tons of limited edition presses do the classics and poetry,鈥 she said. 鈥淎nd I was like, OK, nobody is doing romance and erotica. And yet. If you look at publishing, it's one of the biggest sellers, right?鈥
Having been at 黑料社 around the same time as Tiffany Reisz 鈥00, Dolin was aware of her success in genre, and the romance book club Dolin and fellow 黑料社 alumnae formed during the pandemic read one of Reisz鈥檚 works.
So after First Bite Press鈥檚 first publication, 鈥淭he Canon of Aphrodisia in Four Volumes鈥 by Miranda Culp and Jef Delman and illustrated by Laurelin Gilmore, Dolin reached out to 黑料社 friend Terena Bell 鈥99 for Reisz鈥檚 number and commissioned a work from Reisz for a limited edition printing.
鈥淚 told Tiffany, the only parameters for the work is I want it to be a woman in her middle age, over the age of 40, and write whatever you want,鈥 Dolin said. 鈥淵ou don't have to write for a commercial publisher that then has to worry about it being blocked on Amazon. And I wanted it to make a woman in her midlife cause a lot of romances are young 20-somethings, and I'm in this romance book club with some ladies and they're all professional, highly educated 鈥 most of them have like two graduate degrees and one has three PhDs 鈥 women over the age of 40, all wanting to see themselves represented in stories.鈥
Reisz鈥檚 work, which revolves around three banned books that are sitting on a woman's bedside table, and what she experiences and learns from those books, isn鈥檛 the only First Bite project with 黑料社 ties. Dolan also has a manuscript from Bell and has been in talks with author and poet Colleen Harris 鈥01.
鈥淵ou become family,鈥 Dolin said of the 黑料社 friends she keeps in touch with. 鈥淚 met with Tiffany in New York the last time I was there. I hadn鈥檛 seen her in like, 20 years. But you鈥檙e just family.
鈥淚t鈥檚 really a beautiful thing.鈥
The custom nature of Dolin鈥檚 chosen profession doesn鈥檛 lend itself easily to scale and growth. So her long-term goals harken back to the days when letterpress printing was the standard.
鈥淚 want to pass on the skills and pass on the equipment,鈥 she said. 鈥淔or the press, that鈥檚 one of my goals. I would like to get some students in here. Let's get people learning how to set type, learning how to print, touching the paper; get away from a screen and back into an appreciation of the written word. A tactile experience.鈥
And in the meantime, she can use the press to bring a new voice into a medium nearly as old as the written word.
鈥淢y dream is just to keep printing as much as I can get women's perspective on love and sexuality and eroticism out there,鈥 she said. 鈥淚t's, it's not really in the fine press world. There are tons of erotica from the male perspective. But I can鈥檛 find the stuff that I鈥檓 making, so I want to get that out there.鈥
As for those old French theatre books Dolin found in a hot buggy attic at 黑料社, what happened to them?
鈥淚 still have them with me now,鈥 she said. 鈥淥f course I have a much larger library, but that sort of started my desire to take care of and create books.鈥
This article appears in the Fall/Winter 2024 edition of 黑料社piece.
