Last week, Chris and I went down to the printers in Nottingham to see the first sheets of Lofoten Rock roll off the press. Since then the rest have been printed and I received a set of unbound ‘running sheets’ yesterday. This is always a good moment when you can see the appearance of the finished pages for the first time. No matter how many screens versions and proofs you look at (and both of these have come a very long way in the last 16 years!) the only thing that really looks like the finished product is … well, the finished product. I think the impact this time was more dramatic than any previous guidebooks I have done simply because of the amount of stunning images this book contains.

We made a little video of the printing which you can see here.

We are also doing our best ever web offer throughout May - £5 off for all orders placed online from here.

Projected delivery times

UK online orders - week beginning 19th May

Rest of Europe - week beginning 26 May (far less predictable though)

Lofoten - local stock should arrive in the last week of May.

Such is the pace of things these days that one book has only just flown the nest (Northern England) and we are already well progressed with the next. Lofoten Rock as a project has actually been bubbling under for several years now, ever since Chris Craggs started visiting there waving his trusted weather wand. His statistics are: four consecutive summers since 2004, 18 weeks in total, less than 12 wet days, only 2 wash out days (I’ve had more rain during that time in France!)

All the while Chris has been beavering away getting the information together to produce the next guidebook to this wonderful climbing destination. Working together with the locals, especially Thorbjørn Enevold, he has managed to get a virtually complete set of photos and descriptions for all the major routes on the Islands. There are massive unrepeated five-day mixed aid and free routes on places like Storpillaren; major World classics like Vestpillaren (N6 about E1) on Presten; beautiful sustained slab climbs like Bare blåbær (N5- about VS 4c) and Solens sønner (N6 about E2 5c) in Djupfjord; plus remote peaks in the West, sport crags dotted around, bouldering, walking and beautiful beaches to relax on.

Putting it together into the finished book is my job and, not only been pretty easy this time, but it has been about the most enjoyable book I have ever worked on. The photographs of these huge granite walls are just so inspiring. Virtually every route line that weaves up them has me eagerly climbing it from my desk chair, dreaming about that holiday that we want to take up there (just as soon as I can steal Chris’s weather wand!)

The book is due for publication in May and we are well on schedule. It is looking really good so far and (as ever) I reckon this is going to be the best looking guidebook we have ever produced. For these big cliffs we needed big coverage so we developed a new ‘full page bleed’ style to cope with the extra large crag photos. The results are spectacular as you can see in the free Djupfjord download.

After a frustrating delay of a couple of weeks we now have copies of Northern England. The books arrived at Rockfax HQ this afternoon - online orders will be getting processed early next week, Cordee will have their stock now also. Most shops who pre-ordered will get their stock by next weekend.

The book looks great and the printers have done an excellent job as usual, despite the difficult circumstances with the binders.

So we did make February after all, only they had to add a day on to the month for us to make it!

For the first time in the last ten years we have encountered a slight hitch in the final printing process for one of our publications and by a curious twist of fate we have also been quite lucky.

Printing often involves work with two independent contractors - the printers and the binders. Binders tend to be large operations that run round the clock and have very full order books, printers are more flexible. This means that the crucial stage when promising the delivery of a book is making sure that the binders slot is booked well in advance. If you do this then the publication date tends to be fairly predictable.

Everything was on schedule for a publication date of around 18 February when we sent the finished book to the printers on 21 January. Then there was a delay in the paper delivery from Spain but this only slowed down the printing process, we were still on schedule for the binding slot. Then, on Monday 4 February, the binders we were booked into went bust (this seems to happen with binders more frequently than other businesses).

The upshot of this is that we have had to find another binders which has delayed the publication of the book for a week or two since they are all booked up at this stage. Apologies to those who pre-ordered the book - you will still get your copies before anyone else.

The lucky break was the fact that the paper didn’t arrive on time since, if it had, then our printed unbound copy would have been in the binders when they went bust. This would probably have meant that it would have been impounded until the receivers had finished doing their thing which could have delayed the book for a lot longer than a couple of weeks.

2008 is set to be another big year for Rockfax. We have six books that may get published although it is quite likely that at least one of these gets nudged on into 2009.

Northern England
This fantastic new book is at the printers as of this week and will be available in mid-February. Pre-order now at a special offer price. It is a great looking book which fits beautifully into the Rockfax format and compliments the others in the series well. At 360 pages and nearly 2500 routes it is no lightweight either.
The publication is really a hanger-on from 2007. We had originally intend on publishing it in the summer of last year but other projects, and the size of the book, caused it to be delayed for six months. It is actually the first one of our books since Northern Limestone in 2004 that has slipped more than a month.

Have a look at some page samples here - sample 1, sample 2, sample 3

Download the free Wainstones sample chapter.

Lofoten
The next book is to Lofoten in Norway. This is a very exciting project and, rather like Northern England, the culmination of several years of effort by Chris Craggs. We are working with local climber, mountain guide and businessman Thorbjørn Enevold who has supplied us with loads of information and generally helped with the text and descriptions for many of the more obscure routes. Chris has had four summer’s worth of great weather to get a stunning set photographs. I fully expect the book to be our best ever production from a photography point of view.
We are starting now with the final stages of production and the book should be published by May in time for the season.

El Chorro
The other nailed-on publication for next year is a fully updated guide to El Chorro. Mark Glaister is putting together a full new guide to this great area, with new crag shots, new routes and updated route information. We aren’t adding many new areas but the areas that we have covered in the past will be getting the full treatment. This is due for publication just before Christmas.

Winter Climbing +
The third in the ‘Plus’ series this time focusing on Winter climbing. The book is being written by Neil Gresham and Ian Parnell and we are aiming for publication late in the year but, with such a full schedule, it may get nudged on into 2009.

2009

We are already thinking about 2009. Top priority will be a new edition of Western Grit, but we will also be working on several other exciting publications:

North Wales Classics – Pokketz
Following on from the well-received Pokketz books to the Peak last year, we are producing this ‘best of’ guide to the North Wales routes. This will be roughly the same size as the Peak Pokketz books at 192 pages, but will contain full descriptions and photo-topos for all the best routes in North Wales. Areas include Tremadog, Cwm Silyn, Llanberis Pass, Cloggy, Ogwen, Idwal and the Carneddau.
The book is being written by North Wales local Jack Geldard. We are aiming for publication early in 2009.

Pembroke
This book is based on the original Pembroke Rockfax by Alan James and being added to, and brought up-to-date, by Mike Robertson (who won the Banff Award last year with his book Deep Water). We will be working hard on this project during the summer and intend to publish sometime in 2009. It will be a full A5 book with masses of colour.

In preparation for the publication early in 2008 of Northern England, we have released a sample chapter from the book as a free download. The chapter covers the historic Wainstones on the edge of the North York Moors - download it from here.

We are aiming to publish the book early in 2008. It may now drift into February since Christmas has got in the way a bit of the final production stages (baa humbug) but it will be worth the wait. With a book like this that covers such a vast area, it is virtually guaranteed that everyone will find somewhere new to visit, no matter how experienced they are.

Here is another example page from the book:

Trad Climbing + is now available for next day delivery from our online ordering and it should reach most outdoor retailers by the weekend.

The book looks really good with the colours as vibrant as we have come to expect. It is always a strange experience these days when a book returns from the printers. Ten years ago it used to be the first time that you had actually seen the book in all its glory. These days pre-press on the screen and proofs are so good that the book hardly even looks new when it lands in your hands. That said, it is always a great feeling that a long project has come to an end.

Sadly it is not a great feeling that I can share with either of the two authors since they are both travelling and are currently both uncontactable. Hopefully they will be back soon and able to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Our printers have excelled themselves and produced Trad Climbing + a full 10 days earlier than expected. That means the book will be available for dispatch from Monday 26th November and in the shops for the weekend of 1 December.

This is the fastest printing we have ever managed at just 18 days from submitting the disk to having the published books in our hand. Even more amazingly, we actually made some minor changes to the book last week, only 11 days before publication!

These are the benefits we get from using UK printers. Cheaper printing is available elsewhere but I have yet to be convinced by its quality and it is much more difficult to make last minute changes. The turn around time is also, obviously, much longer if the books have to come from China.

You still have a few days left to order a copy at the Special Offer Price of £17.45. (After Monday 26th November the book will be £19.95).

If you desperately want the book for Christmas then you can recommend it as a Christmas present for someone else to buy for you using our Recommend Form.

Trad Climbing + is now at the printers and will be published in the first week in December. As usual we are offering a special offer for pre-orders at £17.45 (plus delivery). This will get the book on your door step a few days after it is published and will be quicker, and cheaper, than any other method.

Pre-order it here

Recommend it as a present (for yourself) here

Download a sample chapter here

For the authors Adrian and John, we are now in the final stages of what has been at least a year-long project for them (infact even longer for Adrian since he was busy getting images for this book last year when he produced Sport Climbing +). We will be going down to the printers in Nottingham on Thursday 15th to see the first sheets rolling off the press. It is always a fun experience but also a useful one where we often make very slight adjustments to the colour to make sure it looks absolutely spot on.

The printing itself takes a couple of long sessions over two or three days before the ‘running sheets’ (large single sheets with 32 A5 pages on them) are cut and collated ready for thread sewing and binding. This is usually the only delay in the process since binders are in short supply in this country and we actually had to book them two months ahead. Once the books are sewn and bound they are then quickly boxed and sent off to the distributors in Leicester and Rock + Run in the Lakes for the online orders. Rock and Run generally turn round all the online pre-orders in a couple of days at most.

Mike Robertson’s superb Deep Water book has won the Mountain Exposition prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival. The prize winners were announced on Friday 1 November and I got the text message from Mike at around 3am to tell me the good news. Mike had flown out the same day and landed only 3 hours before the evening prize giving started at an airport 70 miles away! But he made it in time.

The full list of prize winners is up on the Banff MBF web site. Another winner was Stephen Venables with his book Higher Than the Eagle Soars so, all in all, it was a great showing for the Brits, especially after the BMC’s success last year with their Burbage, Millstone and Beyond book. The BMC also entered their Stanage guide this year and this was chosen as one of the seven finalists in the Mountain Exposition category.

Here’s what Mike Robertson said about the award:

I heard about Deep Water’s position in the final with just 30 hours to spare before the ceremony, and got the next flight out, finally arriving in Banff with an hour left… Banff is a beautiful town, and the Festival itself is an incredible event; it’s a real high to win the Mountain Exposition category. Of course it’s a team win; without Mark and Alan at Rockfax, this just wouldn’t have been possible – as big thanks to them for all their support.