Mr. Penumbra is up all night

The print shop is humming. Here, I’ve just com­pleted a batch of small books, bringing together beau­tiful paper from Italy and Japan to sup­port one of my favorite short sto­ries. I’m offering these to you as part of a bundle, pairing this story with a some­what rad­ical exper­i­ment in reimagination — a return visit to Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book­store.

In my last edi­tion, I told you this is a season of change. It’s also a season for learning new things, doing the work, placing fresh bets. Here’s mine.

I’m Robin Sloan, a writer, printer, and manufacturer. This is an archived edition of my newsletter, originally transmitted in July 2026. You can sign up to receive future editions using the form at the bottom of the page.

As usual, this newsletter has a few dis­tinct parts. Here’s what’s ahead:

• Summer Work­shop 2026: two sto­ries in print

• Another big summer: the season it all began for me

Summer Workshop 2026

This summer, I’m offering a bundle of two booklets. Both are written, designed, printed, and bound by me; both are offered in an edi­tion of 1,000.

One will ship immediately, the other later this summer, and, naturally, I’ll mail these any­where in the world. Here’s what ships immediately:

The Writer & the Witch

Of all my short sto­ries, this fable has the most fans — I still receive emails about it. It’s my favorite, too, in the sense that, if I’d never written a single thing other than The Writer & the Witch, I’d still be pretty pleased with myself.

The Writer & the Witch is the story of a curse, and the blessing it becomes. It’s the chron­icle of a life — long and strange — wrapped up in a fairy tale.

The story has never been avail­able in print. For this edi­tion, I pro­duced a com­pre­hen­sive revision, and also added illustrations:

The book is a cool object, printed on Italian paper with a fab­u­lous gritty tooth, wrapped in end­pa­pers from Awagami Factory, made with radish leaves. This was a luxe selection, more than dou­bling my bill of materials … but once I’d assem­bled a test book with the radish paper, I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

I have to add: this paper SMELLS amazing (!) and I hope it main­tains some of its aroma in transit.

Okay — The Writer & the Witch is the story you’ll receive immediately. And the one you’ll smell immediately.

The second book will ship later this summer:

Mr. Penumbra's All-Night Reading Room

Used to be, writers didn’t just pub­lish their sto­ries and forget about them. Revi­sion was customary, and we are not just talking about typos — a novel’s plot might mutate between edi­tions. By the begin­ning of the 20th century, that live­li­ness had stilled; today, it is mostly con­fined to comic books and their mul­ti­media adaptations, with each retelling of a character’s origin adding a layer of var­nish to the overall work.

In fic­tion, we have lost that degree of cre­ative freedom.

I’m very proud of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book­store, both the short story and the novel, but/and they are not the sto­ries I’d write today. I don’t only mean that the inter­play between books and tech­nology has changed since I wrote them — although, yes, that’s part of it — but also that I have become a dif­ferent writer, and a better one.

Of course, I’ve put bigger ideas and sharper skills to use in my sub­se­quent work: Sour­dough and Moonbound, all the short sto­ries … yet the kernel of Mr. P is so good, so delicious, it seems a shame to leave it lan­guishing in the past.

So! Mr. Penumbra’s All-Night Reading Room is a blank-page rewrite of my first short story — not just revision, but reimagination. The inter­play between books and tech­nology is today even richer than it was back then; San Fran­cisco is burning bright with new money, weird science; and Ajax Penumbra has things to say about all of it.

If you care to return to the orig­inal Penumbra story, you’ll find, as I did, a hint of this renewal spring-loaded in its conclusion:

But I’m fol­lowing the clues, one by one. What will I make of it all? A book? A movie? Super Book­store Bros., the video game? I don’t know yet. But I’m going to try to make it so won­derful that some­body else will want to carry it into the future for me. And then hand it off to some­body else. And some­body else after that.

Turns out that “some­body else” is … future me.

Here is the exciting part: I am writing the new story NOW! Long­time readers know I have always loved this kind of energy. There was, of course, my daily news­paper serial in 2020, and, as far back as 2010, I was com­posing sto­ries, start to finish, up in the air.

I’ll com­plete and revise this all-new text over the next few weeks, then ship fin­ished books in August. At this moment, they are just a pile of raw materials:

This new story isn’t avail­able on its own, only as part of a bundle with The Writer & the Witch. You can buy them together over at Penumbra Print Shop.

Another big summer

My career as a fic­tion writer kicked off in 2009 — my per­sonal annus mirabilis. That summer, I wrote and self-pub­lished three things:

• In June, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book­store, the short story that would grow into a New York Times Best Selling novel.

• In August, The Writer & the Witch, the story that proved “I could do it again” … and that “it” was fun.

• In October, Annabel Scheme, my first novella, and an early Kick­starter success.

Penumbra was the “viral hit”—viral in 2009 terms, very modest — that became my calling card. Meanwhile, the fact that people were willing to pay for a phys­ical copy of Annabel Scheme is what embold­ened me to quit my job. My courage had its limits — I took a dif­ferent job a few months later — but the taste of inde­pen­dence turned out to be terminal. I began work on the Penumbra novel in Jan­uary 2010.

Back then, there was a def­i­nite prompt for my self-pub­lishing: the recent arrival of the Kindle Store, and with it the oppor­tu­nity for anybody — anybody! — to sell e-books in that marketplace. (I know this seems quaint from the van­tage point of 2026.) I had acquired an early Kindle; I loved the matte grit of its dis­play; I loved the idea of my own words appearing in that frame. It seemed a realm apart from the web.

In the years since, the Kindle has matured and curdled … the web has become an even more brutal arena … and only one realm has remained truly, reli­ably apart. Only one realm has remained reliable, period.

That’s the realm of the phys­ical, of course.

The dig­ital realm was my springboard, and of course it remains useful; look at us here, meeting on this screen! Although … even email feels threat­ened these days, doesn’t it? The clear mes­sage of the past decade, and the past few years especially, is that we need to regroup in the real world, urgently, before our minds just … float away.

If, back in 2009, the Kindle’s weird dis­play was my catalyst, then today there is no more ener­gizing frame than paper and cardstock, sta­pled and folded, stamped and mailed.

I remember feeling totally overwhelmed, back in 2009, by the task of ship­ping out those Scheme novellas. I car­ried them in bun­dles to a little con­tract post office on Clement Street in San Fran­cisco and watched bleakly as the clerk processed the parcels one … by … one. Nowadays, thanks to my expe­ri­ence with Fat Gold, logis­tics have become easy, even fun. Ship­ping a thou­sand orders isn’t a burden — it’s a Tuesday.

Speaking of staples

I promised you a glimpse of my gear. This is a Mor­gana booklet maker, state of the art in 2013, acquired by me, well-used and only slightly dented, in 2025:

Sup­plied with printed pages, this machine stacks, jogs, staples, and folds them, finally applying a neat trim to the book’s front edge.

The process is smooth, fast, and thunky:

We are MAKING THINGS out here! This is Summer Work­shop 2026. The Writer & the Witch ships immediately, wrapped in its pre­cious and pun­gent radish paper; Mr. Penumbra’s All-Night Reading Room will follow.

Bundles are avail­able now.

Thanks, as always, for your enthu­siasm and sup­port.

From the print shop,

Robin

July 2026