7/31

Picked up 14 finished books from Snow Dog.

Finished updating cover gallery.

7/30

Continued to work on soft cover gallery. No new books from Snow Dog. Todd still needs more time. Spent some time pre-assembling boxes for shipping. There has been a sudden resurgence in interest in hardcover binding. People I haven't heard from in a year or so ago are emailing me for quotes. On the soft cover side I have a small publisher who want us to make 50 copies of one of it's 6 issue mini-series.

7/29

Continued work on soft cover gallery. Two new books arrived to be made into hardcovers.

7/28
Talked to Todd at Snow Dog. He needs a couple of extra days to finish a batch of books so I will check in with him on Wednesday. While I am waiting I will continue to work on updating the soft cover gallery.

7/27
In the morning, I finished book prep for 21 hardcover volumes to be made by Capitol Bindery. Then I turned my attention to updating the soft cover gallery on my web site. This will take a few days. I am over 70 covers behind.

7/26
Had breakfast with Kevin at Capitol Bindery, picked up 5 finished books and dropped off 11 books to work on. I held five books back to do some additional prep on. Seven new books arrived to be made into hardcover volumes. Spent a couple of hours unpacking and organizing all the books that had arrived this week. Later in the day I worked on layout sheets and other book prep tasks.

7/25
In the morning I Talked to Todd at Snow Dog and it looks it will be Monday before I can pick up finished soft cover books. Two books arrived to be made into hardcover books. I worked on layout sheets for projects that are on the way. In the evening I finalized prep so that I could take 16 books to Capitol Bindery on Saturday to begin work on.

7/24
Worked on layout sheets for several different hardcover orders, then I double checked each order for anything out of the ordinary. I noticed some gate fold covers that I tagged so that the binders wouldn't accidentally sew them.

7/23
Answered questions on the various estimates I wrote. Two books arrived to be made into hardcover books.

7/22
Spent most of the night working on price estimates for $2,200 worth of hardcover business and $780 worth of soft cover business. Yes things are going well. I really can't afford to take a day off or I get too far behind.

7/21

Talked to Todd checking on the status of 14 soft covers in the works. He still needs a few more days to finish them. Stopped by Capitol Bindery to give them a rush job. The rush is for an upcoming guest to Krypton Comics.

7/20

7/19

Met with Capitol Bindery for breakfast. Picked up two finished books and dropped off 5 books to work on.

The two finished books were for the manager of Krypton Comics (two volume set of Dennis the Menace)

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

7/18

Shipped out 5 boxes of books. Stayed up late doing final prep for two different hardcover orders. Decided to hold one back while the customer and I discuss spine stamping.

7/17
One of the things you don't think about when starting a new mail order venture is packing-trash, left over packing materials that can't be recycled or reused easily. I always know things are busy when I exceed two bags a week that I set out for the trash collector. This week I set out six bags.

I got ten new hardcovers photographed and packed for shipping. They will ship out on Friday. Also shipping on Friday are the books being donated to the Mid-Ohio Con charity auction.

7/16
Stopped by Snow Dog Bindery to drop off 14 books to work on. Todd has been reading my blog so he had a good idea of what was coming. After we talked about the current orders we talked about the next batch that I am already doing designs for. Some customers already have their next orders sent to us while we are working on their current orders. Spent some of my evening do rough cover placement of elements for several new covers before getting back to organizing several hardcover orders.

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

7/15
Stopped by Capitol Bindery at lunch today to pick up ten finished books. For me picking up finished books is one of the highlight of any week. As usual the books came out superbly and I enjoyed the binders showing me all the extra little things they did to make the bound comics come out so well.

I wasn't able to photograph the new books because I was still in the middle of prepping a hardcover job (Captain America 226-375; each book has 25 issues).

7/14

Five more books arrived to be made into hardcovers. I made some final adjustments to a couple of orders and sent out a couple of emails double checking on some details.

7/13

Spent the day double checking orders and doing book prep for both soft and hard cover orders.

7/12

7/11

7/10

7/9

7/8

7/7

7/6

7/5

Took the day off to celebrate my 33rd wedding anniversary.

7/2-4

Worked on building 14 different covers. I like to work on several covers at once. I think they turn out better because I have more time to come back to a cover to tweak and refine it.

7/1

I get asked to do dust jackets quite a bit. Especially since I do custom covers for soft cover books. I have resisted but I do experiment from time to time for a few hardcover customers. Here is the latest experiment. I was asked to alter this Akira dust jacket so that it would be viewed in the normal western reading fashion.

The challenge for me is to find a way to print them at an affordable cost. I am aware of several different ways, I am just not happy with any of them yet.

I will report back when I am happy with the results.