Whether it’s a Bible from the 1400s or a children’s book from the 1950s, Gail Lindley has seen it — and probably has restored it at Denver Bookbinding Company.
Lindley, a third-generation bookbinder and owner of Denver Bookbinding, believes there’s still value in the printed word — even as digital books gain more traction and the bookbinding profession slides. Her business has managed to thrive since it opened in 1929.
Lindley’s grandfather, Axel Erslund, purchased the company in 1946, when it was at 22nd and Welton streets.
“At that point in time, everything was done by hand,” Lindley said. “It was very labor-intensive, so every time a new piece of equipment came up that would help in the process, my grandparents bought it.”
The company moved to LoHi in 1964 , when rising property taxes sent Lindley looking for a smaller location. She purchased a 4,500-square-foot building at 1401 W. 47th Ave. for $1.5 million.
“We had to put in a lot of work to get it ready,” Lindley said. “But a lot of it was cosmetic.”
Denver Bookbinding office employee Stephanie Bradford said bookbinding requires 20 steps — including sewing pages together, affixing cloth binding, trimming book edges and stamping covers.
“We see some very interesting books that come in here, such as old family Bibles,” she said. “People think they are extremely rare, but we see about 24 a year. Another thing we find a lot of is children’s books.”
Denver Bookbinding Company repairs and restores about 1,000 books a week. The . The company also does on-demand printing of books — as few as one copy and as many as 500.
“Restoration will begin at $75, but in the East, they won’t look at you for less than $120,” Lindley said. “Sometimes, we have people that come in and money is not an object at all. … If their book is $1,000, then so be it.”
Mark Andersson, president of the Guild of Book Workers, a national organization for bookbinding and conservation, said although there are few multiple-employee shops in the country, smaller book binderies have succeeded.
Andersson operates Panther Peak Bindery in Tucson, where he repairs books by hand for $150 to $200.
“There are some people who are working privately,” Andersson said. “Most of us who are doing this on a small scale specialize in something, either repair or doing edition work.”
People still enjoy books because they like to flip between pages, or for the emotional significance of the book, he said.
“Books seem to be hanging on in spite of digitization,” he said. “There’s a place for e-books, but they haven’t snuffed out books in the way everybody thinks they would have.”
A showed that while 76 percent of adults reported reading at least one book in any format in a year, about 4 percent said they read only e-books
“You will have those people that prefer digital, but you are still reading books to your kids,” Lindley said.
The bookbinding industry has experienced a sharp decline because of e-book creation, which also led to fewer academic and library book repairs.
In 2007, many libraries began adding digital acquisitions, and as a result, U.S. library binderies suffered a 70 percent loss, Lindley said.
The same year, there were 63,000 print binding and finishing workers. In 2012, employment numbers dropped to 54,900, and by 2022, that number was expected to drop to 52,900, .
However, employment numbers dipped to 51,430 in 2014, indicating a sharper decline than was predicted.
Fifteen years ago was really a high period in binding, and Denver Bookbinding had 25 to 30 employees, Lindley said. Now, the business has 12 workers.
“If you weren’t strong in your market, if you didn’t own your own building and if you couldn’t react to the market quick enough, you didn’t survive,” Lindley said. “The ones that have survived, they know that they are a niche.”
Right now, the industry remains stable for Lindley and Andersson.
“I think (book binding) will continue on as it is,” Andersson said. “Fifty years from now, I don’t know what will happen. But it probably won’t change much.”
Amy Edelen: 303-954-1440, aedelen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/amyedelen
