Letterpress and hand-bound editions, conceived by consensus.
The fine press community thrives on collaboration. Thus, a new experiment: A press whose editorial and design decision-making is in the hands of its members. Our goal is to produce one letterpress and hand-bound edition per year — the rest is up to you. Please read about our experiment below.
Membership by Invitation
New members are invited to join at the outset of each Consensus Press edition. If you would like to join, please contact us to be added to our waitlist.
Proposals
In the first stage of each Consensus Press edition, members may submit an edition proposal. Proposals consist simply of a short description (max. ~10 words) and a long description (max. ~200 words). The short description is expected to be purely descriptive, and the long description may include argumentation in favor of the proposal. Here’s an example of an excellent proposal:
Short description: “Areopagitica” by John Milton, with woodblock artwork.
Long description: Milton’s “Areopagitica” is one of the foundational texts establishing our modern notion of “freedom of expression”. Milton argued against press licensing – the process by which a text had to be approved by a censor before publication. This address would be a perfect start to Consensus Press, especially if paired with woodblock artwork, a medium strongly associated with the fine press movement.
Proposals may be however vague or specific the proposer chooses; the “boundary” of what constitutes a proposal is entirely up to each individual member. Ultimately, in voting the members will determine what constitutes a “good proposal”.
Edition Election
Our members then determine which proposal will be elected…
Second stage: All proposals will be given a simple up or down vote. How would you vote on the above proposal?
Third stage: The five proposals with the highest approval percentage go to a second round. Their proposers have the opportunity to expand upon the long descriptions (max. 1,000 words) and our Trustee weighs in with a short commentary on each regarding cost estimates, craft methods, a judgement on feasibility, etc.
Fourth stage: A ranked choice ballot. For a description of how ranked choice voting works, see here.
Fifth stage: Members discuss, debate, and vote to hone the elected proposal’s details into its final form.
Ordering & Production
With an edition elected, the Trustee determines the price to produce the edition, and sends an invoice to each member.
Thereafter, the Director works with craftspeople to bring the edition to life – all the while consulting the members when any important decisions arise along the way.
Consensus Press is governed by By-laws, enacted by the members in September 2025. They can be viewed here.
The By-laws
Director & Trustee
The press has two officers: the Director, who runs the press day-to-day, and the Trustee, who is the press’ financial guarantor and legal steward. The current Director is Richard Hardesty, proprietor of Rising Wolf Press and scholar of private presswork, especially in the American West. The current Trustee is Griffin Gonzales, proprietor of No Reply Press.
Our Philosophy
Consensus Press is an experiment. We hope to make the experiment a success, and a potentially exciting part of our fine press community. Still, things might go awry! As the press gets on its feet, we’ll rely on the input and patience of our members. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or suggestions as we get the ball rolling.
Our only immovable principle is that the editions which Consensus Press produces be fine press – that is, printed letterpress and bound by hand. Besides this, all power to the members. We expect the membership to be able to weed out bad, improbable, or even divisive proposals, as well as reach a consensus around the ambition and price point for each edition.
We’ll err on the side of under-regulating the process rather than over-regulating it. There are quite a few “What if…?” questions which might reasonably be asked. For example: “What if the elected proposal proves too expensive for most of the membership?” Rather than do the guesswork of regulating away such possibilities in advance (with the attending unforeseen consequences) we prefer to leave the process open-ended. Through its open-endedness, we hope the process itself will conform to the consensus of our membership. In the above case, if a member deems this possibility undesirable, they should vote down proposals for lengthy, elaborate, in-copyright (that is, expensive) editions in the first round. If a sufficient faction of the membership does so, overly-expensive projects are effectively regulated against.