Earlywood: The 'A' Is Now at the End

Publisher’s note: Good morning and welcome to Earlywood, a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes, it originally appeared in a magazine article. Or in a blog post. Or, in this case, a book – “The Anarchist’s Workbench.” Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. We hope you enjoy it.

ROLL OUT THE BARRELL: This is what it’s like at the Lost Art Press storefront every day. But without the accordion or bird cage. And without the mess.

When I quit my magazine job, I was done with corporate publishing, but corporate publishing wasn’t done with me. My former employer, F+W, still owned the rights to “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use,” and it sold thousands of copies, year after year. They had no plans to give it up, and the book was translated into French and German.

Meanwhile, we grew Lost Art Press from a beer-money boondoggle into a small but respectable publishing company. We took th…