I helped in the creation of a REAL book.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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[sub]note: moderator approval received[/sub]

Yeah, yeah, I know we have authors and whatnot around, so it’s not such a big thing overall, but it is to me.

One of my best friends since highschool (we graduated in 2002) has been working on writing a book for about the past three years. He was heavily involved in student organizations in highschool (and now in college) and was in leadership positions in many of them. He noticed there were scads of leadership books directed at adults, but very few aimed at students and fewer still specifically at leading student organizations. So he wrote one.

He shopped it around for a while, but eventually decided to self-publish. So he needed a way to get his words on the page, which is where I came in. I’m a newspaper page designer (or have been for the past several years, and want to do it as a career). He asked me to lay out his book. All 224 pages of it.

Books are different from newspapers. A lot different. Eventually we figured it out, but it was an interesting ride. All told I spent about 60 hours actually putting words on the page, making graphics, adjusting formatting, etc. Another interesting fact is that we did the whole thing nearly 200 miles apart…we did everything through email, him sending me the chapters, me sending him the layouts.

We finally finished everything and sent it to the printer a little before Thanksgiving. He’s apparently expecting to have it back from the printer in a few days, as he’s scheduled signings around Central Illinois beginning on the 7th (!). I can’t wait to actually hold a real book that I designed.

Before this gets any more rambly, I’ll just say that it was a very good experience (probably won’t hurt the resume either), but I’d only do it for someone who was a very good friend (or is paying me well) since it’s very stressful too. If you’d like to learn more about the book, feel free to visit his (self-maintained and therefore still-under-construction and not-the-most-professional-in-the-world) website at www.optimalitypress.com. If you’d like to know more about the actual process, feel free to ask me here. A lot more goes into it than what most people (including myself, before this) realize.

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Cool! I do hand book-binding for a very, very small company that makes custom coffee table books (not moderator cleared, so I won’t link to our website - email me if you want more info) so I know the elation that comes with actually being part of the creation of a book.

The first time I made a book - physically *made *a professional book, I actually felt full of awe. Wow! A book! And I made it! With my own two little hands! How cool is that? :smiley:

This may sound absurd, but every time I make a book, I think of the technology I’m using, and how it’s essentially unchanged since those medieval monks and their illuminated manuscripts. (There’s no automation in our binding process, just little ol’ me with a thread, needle, pages and glue.)

Congratulations!