8/29-30

Continued to work on soft cover designs for 19 books. I don't think I have found the most efficient way to work on cover projects. I have tried doing projects individually and I have tried to do projects in batches. This time I am doing the 19 books as one large batch. I think this was a mistake because there is a lot of boring work to do before you get to the fun part of making a cover. My feeling is the first 85% of making a cover is routine and the last 15% is exciting. Well I have the 85% done! The next several tomorrows is going to be a lot of fun!

On Saturday I had breafast with Robert and picked up 9 finished books. He and I discussed how he caught my error of buckram colors on one project and his approach to a complex stamping job on another.

8/28

Took a break from soft cover designs to do some cleanup of finished book photos.

8/27

As I sat tonight working on soft cover designs, my thoughts drifted to what has been happening at Capitol Bindery and Snow Dog Printing/Binding.

At Capitol Bindery Kevin is doing some very skillful work with 60s-70s comics. Comics from that era seemed to have inconsistent art placement on the finished page. But Kevin has developed a routine of examination and then refolding pages as necessary so that they sew more squarely and trim more evenly.

The end result is most impressive on books with 15 or fewer issues.

At Snow Dog Todd continues to improve on the precision of soft cover spines. So that means with each new batch of books the spines are more complex and daring. It is amazing how far Todd has come since the beginning of the year. Because before then he had never worked with comics. Now he knows what his approach should be depending on what paper stock of the comic is. Newsprint comics still present the greatest challenges to making a soft cover book. Comics done on slick, glossy stock is the easiest to make into a soft cover volume.

I was asked recently if I was avoiding participating on the bookbinding boards. No, I said. I have projects to do nearly every day. Most days I get up at 3:00 am and work until 7:00 am. Then I go to my day job. Other days I start working at 6:00 pm and continue until 10:00 pm. And some days I do both. When I leave my day job things will be easier (I hope). In the mean time I am loving what I am doing but I have to cut corners somewhere and being on the boards seems to be a place where I can save some time.

8/26

Spent several hours in the evening doing rough builds of several covers for soft cover projects.

8/25

Took the day off from my day job to be home while new windows were being installed at my house. I spent the morning photographing and packing 16 finished hardcover books. I spent the afternoon doing clean up of scans for 19 soft cover book covers. Got them all done and then went to the post office to ship 6 boxes of books.

8/24

Spent the whole day doing scanning and removing pages for soft cover projects but I finally have every project ready for building cover designs.

8/23

Had breakfast with Kevin and Robert at Capitol Bindery. We discussed the chatter on the internet binding boards, what the competition is doing and upcoming reservations. Picked up 16 finished books and dropped off 20 books to work on.

Met with Todd at Snow Dog. Dropped off 5 books to work on and discussed the 19 that will be coming to the shop shortly. We also discussed the chatter on the internet binding boards.

Spent the rest of the day pulling staples and doing scans for soft softcover projects.

Hardcover Score Card
20 books at Capitol to be bound.
3 books at my house waiting to go to the bindery.

Soft cover Score Card
8 books at Snow Dog to be bound.
19 books at my house being worked on

8/22

Double checked orders to take to Capitol Bindery and Snow Dog on Saturday.

8/21
Up early to continue doing soft cover book prep. Four new books arrived to be made into hardcover volumes. Confirmed with Kevin at Capitol that we are meeting on Saturday. I expect to pickup 16 finished books and to drop off 20 new books to be worked on. In the evening I unpacked and prepped 4 new books to be made into hardcover volumes.

8/20
Up early to answer emails and do price quotes. Made arrangements to meet with Todd at Snow Dog on Saturday. I will drop off what soft cover projects are ready then go over the ones I am working on at my house with him. In the evening I did final prep for 5 soft cover books and then went back to adjusting 3- customer designed covers. I realized/remembered that pages needed to be removed which would affect my tweaks so I stopped to work on removing staples, back covers and two sided ads.

8/19
Up early to work on soft cover projects. I usually complete projects on a first come first serve basis. But when we make a mistake on a book I move the redo to the front of the line. One recent mistake we made is a book that had two issues out of order. Another mistake on another book is we neglected to add some insert sheets between issues. The only way to fix such mistakes is to rebuild each book from scratch with new materials. In the evening I worked on making adjustments to three covers designed by the customer. So far I haven't done a good job of coaching people to prep covers properly when they do the design. The common thing people do when they design their own covers is to forget to design in wiggle room for the spine and they place text to close to the edges of the front and back covers.

8/18
Up early to put the finishing touches to hardcover layout sheet for 11 books then emailed them to customers for their review. In the evening I made a few requested changes and re-emailed them to customers.

8/17

Back from my business trip to answer 57 emails and unpack/organize comics for 11 hardcover books and 8 softcover books. I will spend the rest of the day working on layout sheets for hardcover projects and designs for soft cover projects. Life is good.

8/10-16

Away on business.

8/9

Had breakfast with Kevin and Robert at Capitol Bindery. Dropped off 8 books to be worked on and picked up 10 finished books. Went straight home to photograph, pack and ship the finished books. I made it to the post office with minutes to spare.

Hardcover Score Card
16 books at Capitol to be bound.
0 books at my house waiting to go to the bindery.
6 Books on the way.

Soft cover Score Card
2 books at Snow Dog to be bound.
12 books at my house being worked on

8/8

Did final prep for eight books going to Capitol Bindery in the morning. Worked on scanning covers for a variety of soft cover projects.

8/7
Two new books arrived to be made in hardcover volumes and six books arrived to be made into soft cover volumes. I am leaving for a business trip on the 10th and won't return until the 16th. It looks like all hardcover volumes will be dropped off to Capitol Bindery on Saturday to be worked on while I am gone. On the soft cover side it looks like the next batch of books won't be dropped off to Snow Dog until the 18th. So I will take the soft covers as far along as I can before I leave and then they will wait until I get back.

8/6
Three new books arrived to be made into soft covers. These were designed by the customer and are excellent. But they do present a bit of a challenge since the way they are designed leaves no wiggle room for when the cover is attached to the comics. So I spent some time trying different things to see if I could get some wiggle room without making any design changes.

8/5
Two new books arrived to be made into hard covers. I got them prepped to take to the bindery on Saturday.

8/4
Two new books arrived to be made into soft covers. I worked scanning covers and building elements.

8/3
Worked on various details for both hard and soft cover projects. This included labeling six boxes to be shipped on Monday and answering an unexpected wave of emails (16 of them).

8/2
Had breakfast with Kevin and Robert of Capitol Bindery. Picked up 6 finished books and dropped off 14 books. Of note was a hardcover volume of the And then One Day series to be given as a gift from Krypton Comics to the creator who is doing a signing on the 6th. Dropped off the finished book to Krypton on my way home. At Krypton they had five comics I needed to fill in some holes in a long run of Captain America comics. They also were able to help me with content for a replacement soft cover book we need to redo. Instruction weren't quite followed so we will rebuild the book and keep the first version as a sample. Finished packing 14 soft cover books.

8/1
Up late doing final prep on 14 books being sent to Capitol Bindery to be made into hardcover volumes. Of note is a two-volume set of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Got 14 soft cover books that I picked up yesterday photographed and pre-packed for shipping.