A small press in Sagamore Hills, Ohio.
We want the next generation to read the great books, fill the margins with their own thoughts, and one day hand those copies to their children.
Founded by Christopher Martin. We design and set every page of every book here in Ohio.
How the press began
The press started from two beliefs about books. A great book deserves a copy that lasts, one that is sewn, bound in cloth and handsome enough that a young reader reaches for it. And a book becomes more valuable the more it is written in.
The margin came from a journaling Bible. Years of notes in one show what a reader learned from a passage, and how differently the same verse reads at another time of life. The Commonplace Edition puts both beliefs into one book.
The Juniata
We named the press for the Juniata River in central Pennsylvania, the river we went back to most often growing up. We kayaked it, fished it and camped along its banks, and we still think it runs through those mountains as beautifully as any river we know.
Our mark is a river winding through hills above an open book.
Juniata River Press is a trade name of Juniata Publishing House, Ltd.
Twenty years on
A student reads Frankenstein in tenth grade and writes in it as the class reads it: a line marked in Walton’s first letter, a question beside the creature’s demand for a companion, a word looked up, its meaning written beside it. At the end of the year the book goes home.
Twenty years later, at thirty-five, they take it down from a shelf in their own house and open it. The notes are still there in a fifteen-year-old’s handwriting, and the marked passages bring back what they thought at that age.
We make the books for that reader. They are sewn in signatures, cased in cloth and printed on heavy paper so the copy is still whole when it comes off the shelf.
Tradere posteris
To hand on to those who come after.
Tradere is the Latin verb for handing something over, and the root of our word tradition. Posteris means those who come after us.
The great books reached us because other readers kept them and handed them on. We hope each student will hand on a little more, the same book with their own thoughts in the margin. A copy written in at fourteen or seventeen shows who its reader was then and what the book did to them. Whoever gets it next reads the story and meets that reader too.
Our Publisher’s Note puts it this way: “when you eventually pass the book along, the next reader will have something of your thoughts to accompany this classic text.”
Three commitments
Books that last
We will not make a book that falls apart. Every edition is sewn in signatures, cased in cloth over board and printed on 120 gsm cream paper. A glued paperback would cost less to make. We chose the sewn book because a copy meant for a year of margin notes should still be whole for the next reader.
The better book first
When a better book and a bigger profit pull in different directions, we choose the better book.
Within reach of schools
We keep the staff small and spend little on marketing, so the price to schools can stay as low as a lasting book allows. The press needs a steady profit to keep making books, and we will not grow it at the expense of students.
How the books are made
We start from public-domain texts, choose the translation where there is a choice, and set every page to one design: a 7 by 10 inch page, a text column of EB Garamond, a ruled column in the outer margin, and a line number every fifth line.
About the book explains each of those choices, from the length of a line to the weight of the paper.
Every chapter ends with a prompt, written to our house guide and checked against the text it quotes. Before a title goes to press we look for widows and orphans, for any prompt stranded at the top of a page, and for any chapter missing its prompt.
Write to us
We read and answer every message ourselves. Write to chris@juniatariverpress.com or use the contact form.
Juniata River Press · Sagamore Hills, Ohio