Making Books

While I am not a particular expert in the field of bookbinding, I have made a few things over the last couple years.

When hand-making a book, I feel that I need to have it fully planned out, the design complete, before I start folding paper. This is not quite literally true, but since there's an investment of time and materials involved, it's psychologically necessary (for me) to have the plan clear in my mind before I start. There are inevitable adjustments as we go, of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

I'm doing a trade book (prices starting at $2.49 a copy, holy cow!) on blurb's platform now, and in a way it's very freeing. I've done things on the blurb platform before, but always had a pretty clear plan.

This time I just wanted to make something and I had a couple portfolios that I thought could be cut to fit, to be the raw material.

It was interesting. The design evolved as I mucked about placing pictures, and so did the idea, and somewhere in there the book became about something. And now it's about that, and the pictures support that idea, and here we are.

I'll be pressing Print some time today, most likely. Super fun!