Where The Magic Happens: The Basement Publisher

As we begin a new year, I thought I would take some time to talk about my work space, the equipment I currently use to write and design books, manage my graphics projects, organize my blogs and house all my reference materials. My "office" work space in the basement is quite small (approximately 6.5' x 8') - in fact, I sometimes joke that it's so tight, you don't so much enter it as wear it!

That said, there's a lot packed inside--a newly upgraded HP PC (more on that later), with a triple-monitor setup, a couple external drives, webcam, microphone, an Amazon Fire tablet, a Brother color inkjet printer/scanner and an Epson V30 flatbed scanner. For audio, I send the HP's Bang & Olufsen sound output through a 70's-vintage Harman-Kardon A402 amp into two pair of monitor speakers. To rip vinyl LPs, I use an 80's vintage Technics turntable, then run the output directly into a Behringer USB interface into the PC for monitoring and editing.

If this seems like overkill, it is; the laptop is seldom used here, and the tablet is for TV.

 Whatever space isn't taken up by equipment is home to books; 90% of the titles here are devoted to  architecture--primarily medieval, tudor, elizabethan and revival styles--English and American, along with related arts subjects. Some are old and rare, but the subject matter is fairly tight. The rest of the titles that made their way into the room cover such things as book design, writing, publishing, typography, graphic design and photography. There's also a tiny bit of space left over for decorative things like pictures, old toys, memorabilia and other tchotchkes that provide both inspiration and distraction.

Looking Back: The Challenges of Part-Time Publishing

When I initially created American Biblioverken, my goal was to simply create an imprint that I could use to publish and distribute my first novel, The Steadfast, back in 2002.

I had briefly investigated finding an agent, but although my queries did obtain some helpful feedback, the process seemed just too time-consuming. Furthermore, my vision for the book included the finished product, with very specific design and layout parameters, and I was disinclined to leave all of this to someone else. I thought the best way to bring this vision to reality was to publish the book myself, which I did.

Never mind that I did not have time to market the book (I was busy at a full-time job as it was) -- part of my motivation was to check “Writing a Novel” off my bucket list of things to do, and move on. I was appreciative of a few nice reviews I got—including the local newspaper—but fifteen years ago, hardly any review publications were accepting self-published work. So, I moved on.

However, after completing one book, it was tempting to try another. I started working on a few more projects, and completed a second book for some professional colleagues, The BLT Hypothesis – A New Approach to ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome, which I produced and created for their own imprint. I also took an interest in curating and re-publishing some public domain works, and began several long-term projects along these lines. Stories of Ohio, a work by Ohio writer William Dean Howells, was the first of these, published in 2012.

Making The Old New Again. And Doing it the Right Way.

Over the years, I’ve bought a lot of books on Ebay. Primarily, these are books on art, history and architecture, and many are old, out-of-print editions. Some are relatively rare and hard to find.

Yuck! #1

Occasionally, due to high cost or rarity, I’m unable to obtain a particular book; a good example of this might be Old Cottages, Farm Houses and other Half Timbered Buildings in Shropshire, Herfordshire and Cheshire, by E.A. Ould, originally published by Batsford in 1904. Original editions are almost impossible to find. A digital copy is available via Google Books as well.

 

 Which brings me to the third option, a new, POD copy available from one of many “public domain” specialist printers. This also brings me to the point of this post.

I have only come across a few physical copies of these types of books, and each one has been severely wanting in terms of quality and design. A post on The Long Gallery, regarding the example of Alan Jackson's The Half-Timber House: Its Origin, Design, Modern Plan, and Construction sets this matter out clearly; the new version was produced from a very poor copy of the original, to the extent that the illustrations were almost useless as a complement to the text. Thankfully, I have been able to obtain an original edition of the book, and the quality problems are plain to see.

Uggh! #2

I suspect this issue is quite common among the majority of “public domain” publishers who apparently do a quick “rip-and-scan” of an old book (or a print/digital copy of an old book) and then make it available to buyers at a vastly inflated (and often outrageous) price. Often, these types of books include poorly-reproduced illustrations, sloppy or illegible text, crooked page scans and photographs obscured with a distracting moiré pattern. Many of these examples are simply shameful, and could be immediately dispatched to the garbage can.

Sadly, for buyers in search of a particular book, there may be no other option. Until now.

Suffice to say that why I do make use of digital books, I generally prefer printed books—especially since I like to add them to my library shelves. As a result, we have taken on a new effort, which is to uncover older works that are deserving of good treatment and re-publish them in all-new editions, with a serious approach to quality and design.

When I say all-new editions, I mean that the text has been run through OCR and proofed, the book has been laid out with an all-new design (deemed to be complementary to the original) and that the images have been carefully re-scanned and photo-retouched in order to make the quality as good as possible. This also includes an attractive, new cover. The result is almost a new book, and one which represents some significant time and effort to produce. And yet—I feel we can sell such a book at a price which is still lower than the noxious “rip and scan” versions one finds today.

 Really? #3

In doing this, we seek to create an edition that we would be proud to have on our own library shelf, with a quality design that actually relates to the book’s material. If you’ve seen these modern re-prints on Ebay or on Amazon with their generic cover designs (often featuring images that bear no relation to the subject matter) you know exactly what I mean.(see the illustrated cover examples)

In some cases, we may also include supplementary material or commentary that provides modern insight, or which puts the historical material in clearer context. Likewise, illustrations that provide visual explanation may be added where appropriate, or where it may complement a book full of pure text.

Our initial efforts along these lines have included some smaller works; two books in a series on brewing beer, and an arts series that so far includes two brief works by William Morris. In addition, our edition of Stories of Ohio, by well-known American author William Dean Howells is another example of how we are interpreting these classic works for new generations. You can see these in our current lineup.

As we move forward in this particular effort, we are determined to build a significant niche featuring overlooked architectural titles. We are nearing completion soon on a work involving house building utilizing traditional earth-built methods, which we believe will have significant interest for those adherents of sustainable construction techniques.

Stay tuned.

We Publish Games, Too: Mind Your Manors, a Collectible Country House Card Game

We have just published this collectible card game for The Long Gallery, featuring a custom 54-card deck including 52 full-color cards depicting some of England's most distinctive houses and manors.

Printed by The Gamecrafter, a US company that specializes in custom, print-on-demand games, the cards are high-quality, printed to the same specifications as most playing cards or popular gaming decks you would find in any hobby or retail store.

As for the game itself, it is a simple, turn-based game, where the object is to be the first to collect one or more suits of a particular color; the play is somewhat similar to old games like In Castle Land or Happy Family – and you may wish to develop your own rules.

 

New Considerations on Book Design

David Meerman Scott has some interesting thoughts about the changes in the way people experience books, based on new technologies and the many different ways we obtain and process information. Meerman notes how he added the URLs of Web sites, blogs, podcasts, videos and other links at the bottom of the each page in case readers wanted to go to the sites he was writing about. Subsequently, one of his readers asked why books couldn't be more like websites, using various ways to display information and be more interactive.

Does this new "style" of literacy really call for a new book model? It might - at least for some types of books. We are looking at this situation right now. After the initial publication of Summit Academy Institute Press' The BLT Hypothesis, the authors have asked us to take another look at the book design and see how it could be enriched from a visual and communicative perspective.

Bust in Media & Publishing - Boom in Books?

Today, the Publishing Industry is clearly operating under a different economic model than is was in the past, and most people are inclined to believe that the downturn we are seeing is primarily the result of new technologies that are leveling and shifting the playing field. Quality content is available almost instantly in digital formats, at low or no cost, via computer or phone-based ebooks and audio podcasts. Printed books as we know them, professionally printed in black & white or full color, are within reach of almost every author. Most importantly perhaps, the means to distribute and promote new works is globally manifest in the incredible reach and speed of the Internet. Through websites, blogs, forums--and most of all--social media tools--the Internet now providers authors and readers with a wide range of intimate venues to promote, comment, critique, debate, exchange ideas and raise awareness of an almost limitless selection of creative works. Many are good. More are bad. But the Internet provides almost equal access to all in terms of distribution and the theoretical possibility of having a book reach its maximum potential.

Wishing I Had a Local Resource Like This.

I had come across a link to their upcoming conference - "The Form of The Book" about a week ago, and downloaded the program brochure, even though I am not able to attend. But a closer look at the website of The St Bride Library reveals an incredible resource for anyone interested in printing and the graphic arts. The London-based organization rightly promotes itself as the world's foremost printing and graphic arts library, offering over 50,000 books on printing technique visual style, typography, graphic design, calligraphy and more.

Re-formatting Content. But Not Like You Think...

Back in 2002, I was looking at a project to take some public-domain material and create something that was useful, trying to update some ancient texts in a new and interesting way. I managed to gather together some historical works, essentially covering the period from the end of the Roman Occupation to the Saxon invasions. These included Nennius, Gildas and Caradoc of Llancarfan. I also threw in an outline of Clovis' ancient Salic Law, as kind of a bonus. Whoooweee!

Time Magazine Ruminates on the Future of Publishing

A couple of days ago I pointed out Gareth Powell's insightful post on Blorge regarding the impact that reading books on iPhones and iPods is already having on the publishing industry. Now, Time Magazine is weighing in on the subject, with a timely article on how new technologies and even social changes are affecting the traditional practices of the book trade.

iPod, iPhones the "Smiler with the Knyf?"

Personally, I think the increasing worry that reading on the iPod and the iPhone will soon lead to the "death of the book" is somewhat overstated. But this does not keep me from investigating the devices' potential, and how they might best be used to distribute various types of written and visual communication.

I must admit, however, that Gareth Powell's insights in this Blorge article - iPods and IPhones: Death for the Book Trade provides some interesting thoughts on this subject, particularly the example he uses regarding iPhone: The Missing Manual - available in print for about $20 or so, but (for a brief time) available in the iTunes store for $3.50 - on special. That deal may have been too good, since the iTunes edition seems to have been pulled.

Like other recent writers, Powell agrees that there will always "be a market for superbly produced books which are a pleasure to read," but for content more appropriately and conveniently suited to portable formats like the iPhone, the future of the printed page may be slightly more in doubt. Do you think this new type of delivery represents more than just a niche market?

In Praise of the Big, Big Book

Here is Volume One in the pride of my own book collection, a two-volume set from Thomas Garner and Aurthur Stratton, entitled The Domestic Architecture of England During the Tudor Period. I think I picked these up about twelve years ago from Zubal in Cleveland; if you love this style of architecture, then having one of these books in your lap is an indescribable experience. And they are definitely lap books...at 12" x 16" inches, these big folios books weigh in at about 6-7 lbs each, I would estimate.

This was a Second Edition, plublished in 1929. The two volumes are a superb reference, featuring excellent written descriptions as well as a number of beautiful measured drawings of some of England's best known Tudor houses. There are a lot of gorgeous photographs as well; though they are, of course, in black and white and not in color, they are wonderful to look at. In many cases, I actually prefer gazing at these old B&W photos, since they seem to convey the appropriate feeling of "Olde England." The printing is wonderful as well, and the graphic richness these books display--even with two-color printing--is quite remarkable.

Books like these are one of the reasons you see so many "stockbroker" tudors on the streets of our older neighborhoods. Nostalgia was a big draw early in the last century, and a host of revival style homes were being built all over America, with builders and architects inspired by books such as these. So was I, when I built my own home. Sadly, most builders today clumsily try to ape these historical styles with very unfortunate results.

It's also interesting to note that these books were published in 1929. While they were being prepared for print, I doubt that anyone would have seen the Great Depression coming, and that the period of building these great, expensive and majestic piles was pretty much over. During the coming years, the moderne age would gradually take over. Not only was there less money to build, but let's face it--the smooth, spare styles of the 30's and 40's, with their comparable lack of detail--was cheaper to build. In today's economy, the effect we will see on design overall will be interesting to contemplate.

By the way, I believe Zubal has another set of these. Even if you are not into architecture, they are superb examples of the bookmaker's art. I'd love to be able to do something like them at some point.

Book...booklet...whatever. It's inexpensive.

Another project we did for Summit Academy Institute ...this was a small 44 page booklet called The Asperger Toolbox, which was designed primarily as a handy resource guide for teachers in the classroom. It wasn't designed as a comprehensive guide to Asperger's Syndrome (a form of high-functioning autism) but it does give teachers a quick reference to the observable behaviors that can help identify the condition, as well as some solid strategies for helping Asperger students function more comfortably in a school environment.

The Institute wanted to use Createspace as a source printer for this item, as the pricing structure for a book this size was better than Lulu, which would have required the book to be priced at a couple of dollars higher. It was really designed to be purchased in quantity, and suitably priced (under $5) as a loss leader...so it follows that the profit margin is very small. The cover design is pretty straightforward, and this should also be the first in a planned series of small handbooks covering practical topics in special education. Availability is scheduled for the end of the month.

Linux Page Layout Setup

One of the the projects I am slowly working on is adding a linux file server and a linux desktop to my network; the file server is of obvious use, but I would really like to set up a combined windows/linux workstation and try open source Scribus out as an alternate page layout program. I have always used and continue to use Quark as my primary page layout and book creation software, but over the past year or so--as I have used and tried to familiarize myself with linux--I am investigating whether I could utilize it as a solid alternative to a windows or mac system.

I have still to settle on a linux distro however; I am not dual booting this workstation setup, rather the idea is to have one windows PC with a dual monitor setup, using a KVM unit to switch one of the monitors over to a older but still functional linux PC I have. This is a pretty straightforward process, except for the fact that the newest versions of Ubuntu/Kubuntu choke on my graphics card, Mandriva refuses to run my wireless card, and Freespire won't add new programs. PCLinuxOS seems to work just fine, however, so while I would prefer Ubuntu, I may just go with that.

As far as Scribus is concerned, it seems to offer most of what I would need. It supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation, along with useful vector drawing tools, SVG import/export and support for OpenType Fonts. I have read some of the accompanying documentation and comments which mention a "new" approach to page layout; being rather stodgy at times, I'm hoping it isn't too new. All in all, this is really just an experiment, and it will be interesting to learn whether a switch to open source tools is really in the cards for me. As for my approach on evaluating all of this, I will probably just pick an upcoming project and then set to work on it, using this setup.

Apparently FLES Books has just come out with a very comprehensive manual for Scribus (about $43 as I write this, not bad for a 439-page guide) which provides a detailed overview over the hundreds of features it offers, as well as numerous tips and tricks. Also, I found a nice list on the Minuteman Press/San Diego website that lists a number of other page layout and design tools for linux, including GIMP (image editing), Hamster Font Manager and others. I'll update you on how this progresses, but don't hold your breath just yet; I have hardware issues to clear up.

Post-Christmas Purchases

Being both book-lovers, my daughter and I usually exchange Borders or B&N gift cards at Christmas, and I finally used mine this week to get a couple of nice books by Ellen Lupton, which I'm sure will be very useful in my upcoming projects. Thinking with Type (2004) is an excellent basic guide to typography, and her latest book Indie Publishing (2008) is a compact guidebook on the basics of book layout and design. The latter provides the most essential information you need to get started in self-publishing, presented in a very sharp and well-organized package. Both books are from Princeton Architectural Press, which produces some really beautiful, high-quality work.

Regarding Lupton's Thinking with Type, I must admit I have not spent a lot of time thinking about typography recently, and it made me fondly remember how much I used to enjoy pouring over old issues of ITC's U&lc magazine during my earliest career years. Her book is a great refresher, and one of the later sections, which notes avoidable typography "crimes" was very enjoyable. Helpful, too; I see there were a few things I had forgotten about...

The Brilliance of Bickford-Smith

Like many, I've also been inspired lately by the work of Penguin's Coralie Bickford-Smith, who's work continues to impress just about everyone. Being a fan of retro-inspired design, I naturally love the work she has done for the Classic Boys Adventures Series and their new range of hard-bound classics. This in-depth interview on design:related provides some great insights into her work, as well as how she got started. Her comments on her early career inspirations, like Quadrille's Tricia Guild books and her current projects involving textile design are reflected in the latest hard bound classic covers-which, when placed together, remind me of colorful bolts of printed cloth found in a fabric store. Simply brilliant.

Latest Project: The BLT Hypothesis

Our latest project involves a couple of books for the Summit Academy Institute Press. The primary effort involved The BLT Hypothesis, which I think will be a groundbreaking work in the understanding of disabilities like ADHD, Asperger's and related conditions. The authors are some of the country's most knowledgeable experts in educating children with these conditions, and operate the largest group of non-profit schools in the country that are specifically designed for them.

Nina Messina did a very nice job on this cover, and the authors also had some help on the editing from Ruth Dean and Melissa Thomson at The Writing Toolbox. We set up the interior page layout and pagination on this one; Word was used and converted to PDF, which would not be my choice, but time was a big factor and in the end it all turned out fine. I am hoping the Institute can secure distribution through a group like the Autism-Asperger Publishing Company.

Normally I would convert all of this text into separate chapters using Quark, but since Word was used we just flowed the primary book block (front matter was handled separately) as one file. This was rather tricky - especially in the latter stages when Dr. Kaplar was building the index. I also would have liked the illustrations to have been handled differently, and this is a lesson to heed: always have your artist work with the publisher before illustrations are produced. The style was fine, it's just that in this case, the images were not drawn individually on separate pages, and they were really too small--so even when scanned at 300dpi, the results were barely acceptable. We are already talking about a second edition of this book, with better illustrations and a foreward by a nationally-recognized expeert who has read and commented on the book. That should come later in the year.