8/01/2005

Publishing a Book

What a headache. Literally. I plunged into InDesign. Great program, but of course I had to keep looking up lots of stuff. But I've got the basics down.

As I may have mentioned, I'm starting off with the simplest layout you can imagine - and I'm going to call the book and organize it into 7 "chapters." Each chapter will have a roman numeral to separate it from the others. What the 7 chapters mean - what these groupings mean - I'm not sure yet. It is like tossing down Tarot cards at this point.

The name: VII Photography Groupings

That is as obscure as you can get without leaving the title blank. I wonder whether there has ever been a book called, "untitled." Sort of like the "white album."

I've been reading as much of the Lulu.com stuff as I can. Some of the usual "my book looks horrible" in the discussions; and others very happy with the results. Talk about "what color space" is Lulu using with their printers etc. That seems a mystery.

I've already created a couple of test PDFs with sample pages - and of course they look great with the inkjet - but what they're going to look like from Lulu - time will tell. I decided that it doesn't make sense to order someone else's b&w book from Lulu because whether it looks good or bad, I won't know who to blame. I'm just going to have to take the plunge myself. And there is a proof mechanism (I'm pretty sure) where they send you a copy before you really print up a batch.

And even if I'm not happy with the result - I will have a hardcopy at the end of all this - man - I'm pessimistic. I do have a way of anticipating all the things that might go wrong. I suspect that is leftover from my computer days... No - can't blame it on computers - it began when I was about eight years old... Lot's of responsibility as a kid - that's what did it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave,

Don't know of any books that were called "Untitled," but there's an album by that name. Sigur Ros's last album was "( )" which is just "Untitled" done in a more fancy way. Great, great music, very different than anything else.

Anonymous said...

Well, with "VII" somewhere in the book's "plat", as it were, I would start thinking it was a kind of goof on the Zone System.

And, speaking of working on one's own books, here's some interesting stuff from someone who has an established publisher, but did a lot of stuff himself:

http://bermangraphics.com/press/ralphgibson.htm

Shot me if I sent you this before. I still get a bit of a kick reading it.

Anonymous said...

Ouch...typos after midnight really slay me (especiall when I keep confusing the "Login and Publish" and "Preview" buttons). ;-)