Books

Since the mid-1990s, I’ve written, co-written, and edited many books, some across several editions. This is a list of current titles, sometimes in print and ebook format, and sometimes only in stock as ebooks. For an even more comprehensive list of my books, visit this page. (For details about my publishing company, Aperiodical Publishing Co., read this page.)

Flong Time, No See

Currently in crowdfunding, February and March 2026.

Why did typesetters get paid to compose metal type and then throw it away? How did one New York Times printer stay employed for over 50 years on a “job for life”? Why did newspapers print up to 10 editions a day? Why do we use > as a mark of quotation online? How could you avoid an infestation of type lice in your metal type drawers?

What—what I ask you!—does flong mean?!

The answer to these, and many other questions you never knew you had about the history of printing, will be found in Flong Time, No See. This book brings together work I’ve researched and published over the last seven years, revised and expanded for this publication. These are stories about how we made and shared the written word—and what we lost along the way. While the constant thrum of technological change plays a key, demanding role in these stories, working people stand at the center. The history of printing is the history of labor, and I identify many unsung people to celebrate their professions.

Estimated 352 pages. Print edition planned as 6×9–inch format (15×23 cm) with a full-color cover and a black-and-white interior. DRM-free ebook.

Six Centuries of Type & Printing

If you have ever wondered how the craft of printing was invented and how it evolved, this book answers that question and many others. Starting with Chinese and Korean printing before Gutenberg, Six Centuries of Type and Printing traces the development of type design, type manufacture, presses, and printing through the present digital era with many stops along the way. This book explains how many aspects of printing and type remain the same, despite a shift from metal to photography to bits, across almost six centuries of constant improvement.

The print edition is 64 pages bound in green cloth, foil stamped on the cover, and printed on a rich paper. The book features bright red endpapers printed with black illustrations of printing and type artifacts. Also available as a DRM-free ebook and as an audiobook.

About the Second, Offset Edition

A second print edition, which shipped in mid-July 2025, was produced on an offset press by Hemlock Printers in Burnaby, B.C., Canada. The ebook edition was revised to include end notes, bibliography, and a full index of the print and ebook edition.

About the First, Letterpress Edition

The first print edition of roughly 425 copies was composed in hot-metal Monotype Bembo by Effra Press in England, and came in a slipcase of the same green cloth. Illustrations were printed from zinc plates. The book was printed by letterpress in London by Hand and Eye Letterpress. Spinner Buchbinderei in Germany handled the hardcover binding, foil stamping, and slipcases. This edition sold out in early 2025.

How Comics Were Made

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1234"] How Comics Are Made , June 2025, designed by Mark Kaufman; cover by Mark and Glenn. [/caption]

How Comics Are Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page (June 2025) covers the entire history of newspaper comics from a unique angle—how they were made and printed. The foreword is by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon.

The book turns to the stories of creation: What did artists’ originals look like, and how were they transformed for print? In the days before digital reproduction, how did a cartoonist tell a printer they wanted a 30% green? How, in fact, did the Yellow Kid get his tint? Does a cartoonist have to conceive of a comic differently now when aiming for multiple print and digital appearances in different formats?

The answers are surprising, revealing, and beautiful. You’ll see reproductions of art and artifacts that have never appeared in print anywhere, and some historic comics will appear for the first time in any medium in this book.

This bookstore edition from Andrews McMeel Publishing shipped June 3, 2025. You can order a copy worldwide now!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1430"] Cover of How Comics Were Made (2024), designed by Mark Kaufman [/caption]

This book first appeared in a special Kickstarter edition published by my personal press, Aperiodical LLC, in October 2024. Copies of that edition are sold out. The contents of the Aperiodical and Andrews McMeel versions are nearly identical—one interior image was swapped out. The Kickstarter edition had a deluxe laminated cover with French flaps; the bookstore edition is a hardcover book with a printed cover, printed endpapers, and a dust jacket.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] The hand-bound letterpress edition [/caption]

Not To Put Too Fine a Point on It

This ebook is a collection of 10 researched and reported articles and essays about type, printing, and language: the history of SHOUTING WITH CAPITALS, Google’s effort to make a font with all the scripts of all the languages in the world, archiving a Web site for 10,000 years, a look at Walt Whitman’s history as a printer, how letterpress printing has come back from the dead, and more. Read more and purchase the ebook.

A letterpress edition with six of those stories, beautifully handbound by an artisan bookbinder, was created in a numbered edition of 100 plus 25 author’s copies. Sold out, March 2023.

Take Control Books

Take Control Books is over 20 years old, and I’ve been writing titles for that whole time. As of April 2025, I have nine actively updated titles that may be of interest, primarily focused on security, safety, and communication:

London Kerning: TypographiC Perambulations around a City That Remembers

London has long been a place where type design and graphic design coalesced, and where the machinery of making fonts and the people with an eye to create them intermingled. London Kerning (2018) captures a slice of both the contemporary part of it and its history, especially regarding type designer Berthold Wolpe. (The print edition is sold out.)

Find out more about the book here. With the passing in mid-2020 of The Type Archive founder and leading light, Sue Shaw, I decided to make the ebook edition available at no cost.

In 2022, the The Type Archive was forced to vacate its premises and relinquish collections it held in trust to the Science Museum Group and other parties. A commemorative volume about the institution was crowdfunded in December 2024: Type Archived.

Other Titles

The Magazine: The Book (Year One)

I collected a few dozen of the features that appeared in the first year of The Magazine into a hardcover book and a longer ebook edition. The ebook edition is now available free. (The hardcover edition is sold out.)

The Magazine: Complete Archives (2012–2014)

The Magazine published nearly 300 non-fiction stories across its 28 months in existence as a fortnightly electronic periodical. We produced 58 issues from October 2012 to December 2014 —over 500,000 words from 150 authors. This entire body of commissioned work has now been put into a high-quality, DRM-free ebook. Purchase your copy now!

For an even more comprehensive list of my books, visit this page.

Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past