About Me

Hi!

My name is Kathy! I am 26 years old and the person behind this small one woman business.

I love reading about the people running small businesses, so I thought I'd give writing my own journey a chance, so I could show you just what went into getting to where I am now and how grateful I am for it all :)

How my Hobby became my Dream Job

I graduated from school in 2019 and after years of not touching a book that wasn’t required reading for a class, I got back into reading solely for myself. I could not stop devouring book after book and soon I joined bookstagram to talk to fellow book lovers.

This is where I discovered Special Editions for the first time, even though back then they mostly only had solid color edges, I was enticed immediately!

As I had just graduated, I did not have a job and no means to afford said Special Editions. I started studying at university but before Covid hit in the beginning of 2020 I dropped out. The particular major I chose was not what I wanted to do with my life. I decided to give myself some time to figure out what that would be. In the meanwhile I continued to immerse myself in books and the book world and kept admiring all those pretty books, and quickly became obsessed.

Especially, with figuring out a way to make them myself. I have been into art my entire life and enjoyed creative hobbies for years, so I was convinced this is something I’d be able to do. I started researching for hours on end to find a way to make pretty edges. I bought myself an airbrush and all the necessary equipment, and immediately started experimenting. It took a few tries to get a solid result, but getting there was such a joy.

I started trying new things every day, first solid colors matching exact colors from the cover, then color gradients, and after receiving an amazing gift from my mom, a cricut, I instantly started working out how to do stencils and stencil edges.

There were no other shops or even artists doing anything like this back then, so everything was up to me to figure out, but I enjoyed every second of that! I was having the time of my life with this new hobby, and was excited to share it with other bookies, so I started posting my progress on my Instagram account. Pretty much immediately I started getting requests asking me if I could also work on other people's books. I was very hesitant about this, as I was afraid of ruining someone else's book. But the requests kept coming, and seeing my favorite books with the additional art made me so happy, that I would like to bring other readers this kind of joy as well! And there surely wouldn't be any harm in spending some more time on this hobby while still desperately trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go with a future education or job.

I looked into what I had to do, legally, to be able to do this, filled out and filed all the necessary paperwork, and accepted my very first commission.

One turned into two, and two very quickly turned into too many to count. I spent more and more time every day and week working on commission books that were being sent to me, and I absolutely enjoyed every second of it. So much so, that in the beginning I completely forgot this was only supposed to be a hobby, or maybe something on the side.

At some point I realized, I didn’t need to look into what else to do with my life and job, I accidentally found what I am supposed to do and what I want to pursue! With this happy turning point, something shifted. I have never felt that much determination in my life before. I knew I would open my shop and would do everything in my power to make it work.

At first I only accepted orders where the books would be sent to me, I added the edges and sent the books back out. But with working hard on new edge designs and styles, my followers and orders consistently grew. Other bigger book companies only offered color gradient edges at this point, so I made an effort to do more detailed and different edges than them, I wanted to do my own thing!

After I posted my cover matching edge on Crimson Cranes one day in 2021 (the cover being continued on the edge, my specialty at the time), and gaining 10.000 followers in 24 hours, I decided to switch from Etsy to my own website. There I finally started offering books with the edges, all made to order, this way I was able to have a wider variety available as I did not have to build any kind of inventory. When I got an order for a book, I instantly bought that book at the bookstore and then worked on it when it arrived. I am so incredibly thankful to everyone who supported me during that time, as it was a crucial part of me staying consistent and continuing to put everything back into the business, especially with the difficult times that were heading my way.

The Long and Rocky Road to Where I am Now

I had established a good amount of followers and also customers, and I grew my shop a lot. It was a happy time! Until, after constant requests from German readers to also offer German books (as I am based in Germany), I did give that a go, and immediately got sued by 3 German publishers at the same time, for a 6 figure amount. Yes you heard that right. No warning that they were unhappy with me offering their books with edges or a request to stop, they immediately went for suing a one person small business.

It took several weeks of sorting this out with lawyers, German books were not produced with any edges yet so no one really knew what the law was here. But simply stating they “did not wish to see their books altered like this” was sadly enough for this not to be decided in my favor. All this took a heavy toll on my mental health and almost ruined my business with the expenses that were added constantly. I wasn’t even making anywhere near a full time salary, or to be honest even part time. They settled on a lower sum in the end, but I still had to pay off the cost for 2 years.

I was heavily considering calling it quits right then and there. Luckily, I did not. This was still my dream, and I did everything in my power to further better my work so I could pay off this insane and unnecessary fee. I have never offered another German book after this. I still get asked regularly to please do so, but after this tortour, I will have to sadly disappoint my fellow Germans.

Instead of quitting I decided to give making my own book box a try. I enjoyed coming up with the themes, books and items for each box! I did make quite a few boxes, but I sadly had to realize that doing everything by hand, items and edges, was getting too time consuming, with added delays from new releases, that always took their sweet time to arrive here in Germany when I am desperately waiting for them, it became too stressful to keep going.

In 2022 I experimented with a LOT of bookish items! Pin hoops, foiled and wooden bookmarks, jewellery, coasters, journals, sun catchers, resin book holders and other resin items. I wanted to expand what I offer and I started doing regular Shop Drops every couple of months, which were quite popular!
So much so that I started researching printers I could use to print edges instead of doing them all by hand. But there were no suitable or even remotely affordable options yet.

2023 was probably the craziest year in my business so far! I continued to grow my skills and started doing hardcover designs. All of them were handsprayed with stencils, just like all my edges.

Fourth Wing was released in June and I loved the premise of the story so I knew it had to be added to the Shop. I created a beautiful, shimmery gold cloud edge with a dragon on it for my shop drop. What happened next, I could have never expected. When the book was uploaded, I immediately received multiple orders. I think about 15 on the first day, which was (and still to this day would be) a lot! My post showing off the edges started to get shared all over Instagram, and over the next few days, I suddenly got about 100 orders! But the shares, and the orders did not stop! With the popularity of the book, the orders exploded and soon I was sitting in front of over 800 books that needed to be sprayed. Yes, over 800. I still cannot believe that happened!

This was also the first book I did a very detailed hardcover design for, so I was in for a mountain of work. Countless hours were spent wrapping each book to protect it when it is being sprayed, cutting and weeding all the edge and also hardover stencils, and then obviously spraying all the edges and hardcover designs. You also cannot forget about packaging. Earlier that year I sat down to develop some signature packaging for my shop, and because I am a notorious perfectionist I chose something quite time consuming. Especially when you now have to put wax seals on 800+ packaged books. Of course I could have decided to not wrap any of the Fourth Wing Books that way, but I wanted every customer to feel how grateful I was for them and their order!

I worked at least 16 hour days, 7 days a week, no days off, very little sleep. It took a good couple of weeks, but because I did not take better care of myself, I ended up injuring my back from working so much.

I spent a few days in bed, unable to get up, in the worst pain of my life. I went to multiple doctors, but to this day, no one can really tell me what happened.

I didn’t have a choice but to continue to work through this pain, I was not about to disappoint all the lovely people who gave my shop a chance. These were one of the worst couple of weeks and months of my life, but the gratitude I had for all these orders and trust from customers kept me going even through the meanest emails and facebook posts I had to endure during that time as well!

My mom was my life saver, because she started helping me out. At first only with wrapping some books for spraying, then weeding stencils, until I even taught her how to spray. We made such a good team, she did an incredible job, and I could not have gotten through that time and the orders without her help and all her support! 

To this day I am still dealing with this back injury, it has turned into chronic pain, and alongside other chronic health issues, continues to mess with my everyday life and work. But, this shop is still my absolute everything, even after all these years, it is what keeps me going :) 

Remember me researching printers earlier? 2024 was finally the year I got somewhere with that! Thanks to all the fourth wing orders, I was able to qualify for a loan, and also managed to find a printer that seemed suitable for what I needed it to do. I scheduled a viewing and test printing with the company and drove halfway through Germany for it. I got shown how it works and we did lots of test prints. The company and the printer seemed like the perfect fit. 

I was soo excited about taking this step in my business, I immediately started planning what books I would do first, and was extremely thrilled about finally being able to produce even more detailed designs, hopefully with a bit less physical work and in less time (Spoiler alert, that last part did not turn out as anticipated haha). Even with the big investment, I decided to immensely lower my edge cost, which I was also very stoked about, because while I do not want to sell my work under worth, I do want to be as affordable for everyone as I can be.

Everything was going splendidly. Until I paid for the machine. I instantly was unable to reach the person I was talking to for weeks and even months about this printer. I was unable to get any kind of estimate when the printer would get delivered. Mind you, this printer almost cost 30.000€, this was the biggest purchase I have ever made to this day.

After several weeks, the printer finally got delivered, but the nightmare had only just started. The company had done a full 180 to how they were acting before the purchase. The printer only worked for about 2 weeks, before breaking for the first time.

The issues continued for months (and still do to this day).

I have tried to make peace with being stuck with an unreliable company behind the printer and do my absolute best to be prepared for as many broken parts as I can be, having them on hand ready to exchange them myself when needed.

During 2025 I invested most of my time into getting better at designing my printed edges, it wasn’t as easy to switch to the digital edges as I had anticipated! I had to find my style again and try different things to see what works for myself and for my customers. Since fourth wing I had stopped having regular shop drops, so I made an effort to establish reveal weeks. I now add new books to the shop once per month, during said reveal week, where a new book and design gets revealed each day for a full week. I have also expanded my work with authors, indie authors in particular! Super grateful to get to work on author orders and to constantly evolve my designing skill and improve my edges. I have gotten such amazing feedback the last year about the attention to detail and quality of my edges, I am so proud that my work can still stand out, 6 years later!

Something else that has been such a joy has been working together with my Reps on Edges. Sometimes when working on a design of a book, they have some suggestions or even sketches that I can use as inspiration for the edge designs. And on some occasions Reps have even been designing finished edge designs in their own style! It has been amazing to see the support for those edges and collabs!

I am excited to see what the next few years will bring and what exciting opportunities are waiting for me!

I absolutely love how far this shop and I have come, doing all this work all by myself for so many years now. No matter how long I've been doing this, I still treasure every order just as much as I did in the beginning! I think as a small business it is very important to pay extra attention to quality, details and other important things like eco friendly but safe proper packaging. That and our commitment to our customers truly can set us apart from all the huge companies offering mass produced edges. And that is what I strive to do every single day I have the privilege of this being my job thanks to all the lovely readers out there ❤️  I made a promise to myself all those years ago to not give up on this dream, and even with all the stones in my path and now being chronically ill, I still pour all my heart into this and will always continue to do so! :)