More Sifting

Seems a lot of us Mil­lenial artists are reach­ing the end of a failed exper­i­ment in mak­ing a liv­ing in part from our art. I’m hatch­ing a small solu­tion, for myself, and I want your thinkin’ all over it.

Chapbooks for Editors 101: Assembly & Finishing

It occurs to me in my last post I didn’t give pre­cise instruc­tions for your printer: • You want the doc­u­ment double-​​​​sided. • You want it UNSTA­PLED. Print­ers and job shops have enor­mous machines with expen­sive main­te­nance, and have to charge you through the nose for bind­ing. 20 min­utes and the cost of the sta­pler will come in far cheaper for more than 30 books in just about all cases. • Remem­ber to use the paper you picked out. Bring it to them if you bought it else­where, and show them exactly how you want every­thing printed. Any printer worth their salt will pre­fer an over-​​​​explained job to an under-​​​​explained one. So now you’ve got…

Chapbooks for Editors: Production Decisions

Finally. We’re here. My favorite part of the book­mak­ing process. Till now it’s been a ques­tion of soft­ware acqui­si­tion, skills, tech­ni­cal hoo-​​​​ha. But today, today we talk about paper. And ink. And sta­ples and string and glue and mag­nets… and on. Today we talk about mak­ing your book. And the way there doesn’t start where you’re expect­ing. Or, if you’ve been keep­ing up, it very much does. 1. Themes What’s cen­tral to your book? Is it classy? Delight­fully trashy? High-​​​​strung? Grungy? Weird? Tra­di­tional? All this should already be reflected in the design, and will be fur­ther mag­ni­fied by the choices you’re about to make. And let’s be clear: choos­ing at ran­dom from the Kinko’s cat­a­log of…

Chapbooks for Editors 101: Imposition

Okay, folks. You’ve made your book. You’ve combed every inch of it, proofed again and again for typos, and designed every­thing to the best of your abil­ity or will­ing­ness. It’s time to impose. Impo­si­tion is the technical/​​printerly name we give to reorder­ing all the book pages for print. And here’s the great news: we’re going to skip most of it. (If you’re inter­ested in how it works, here’s the Wiki arti­cle.) If you’re work­ing in InDe­sign CS, there’s an old plu­gin you can no longer buy* (drop a line and I’ll help you locate a copy) called InBook­let, which gives you all the con­trols you’ll need, and then some. InDe­sign CS2 and up fea­tures a…

Chapbooks for Editors 101: Book Design 4

Ah, the Table of Con­tents. Ignored, neglected, pos­si­bly abused clear­ing just inside the for­est. If you’re seri­ous about mak­ing books, the ToC is one of the most impor­tant ele­ments of the book. If you’re not, no wor­ries; mediocre ToC’s are the rule, so tak­ing no risks won’t raise any eye­brows. Let me stress, how­ever, that all I use the Table of Con­tents func­tion in InDe­sign for is accu­rate page num­bers. Though it can do quite a bit to auto­mate how you style your text, I’ll do quite a bit more to my ToC’s, which the func­tion can’t do. Nav­i­gate to the spread where you’ll put your ToC. From the bot­tom of the Lay­out menu, choose Table…

More of the Impossible

I love magic  –  the type that stu­pe­fies adults. I love the knot the magi­cian ties in my per­cep­tion. It moves of its own will, and I can’t unravel it. I think it’s crit­i­cal for adults to have this feel­ing. We start deny­ing it, and all its cousins, soon as some older kid calls us chicken for being afraid of the base­ment stairs. Then we become that older kid, and new mys­ter­ies replace it; some take us by the groin, some take a 2×4 to our heads. But we lose that inno­cent won­der. On This Amer­i­can Life a few years ago, a behav­ioral psy­chol­o­gist was dis­cussing tod­dlers. Turns out, no sur­prise, they’re lit­tle sci­en­tists. But here’s what…

Chapbooks for Editors 101: Book Design 3

Now to the good stuff. Today we’ll talk about plac­ing poems, edit­ing para­graph styles  –  and as the con­sen­sus last time was more bal­ance of soft­ware and the­ory  –  more of that mys­ti­cal process of choos­ing type. Plac­ing poems. With any luck, you saved your doc­u­ment from last time, so open it up. If you didn’t, go through the steps in Book Design 2 and come back here when you’re ready. It’s cool; I’ll wait. Today I’m gonna demo with a poem by Shira Erlich­man, from her col­lec­tion Adver­tise­ment for a Human Being. Lucky you, plac­ing poems is EASY. Go to the File menu and choose Place…: Nav­i­gate to the poem you want to drop in, select it and click Open: Position…

Chapbooks for Editors 101: Book Design 2

Today: set­ting up mar­gins and page num­bers. That last post was all the­ory, and as promised, these are the goods. After this we’ll move into plac­ing poems in the book, but today we’re going to do setup. Click each image for a larger, leg­i­ble ver­sion. First, open a new doc­u­ment with 36 fac­ing pages, letter-​​​​half sized: Here’s a view of the type tool in InDe­sign CS4, with some expla­na­tions. Very lit­tle (if any) of this has changed since the early days: As this is a very fast overview for writ­ers, and not design­ers, if it’s not high­lighted, I’m not cov­er­ing it here.* To cre­ate new text, grab the Type Tool (the T but­ton in the palette on…

Chapbooks for Editors 101: Book Design, part 1

Before we get started. We’re going to be look­ing at design pri­mar­ily in InDe­sign CS4, because that’s what I use, and how I can explain it best. 95% of InDesign’s fea­tures have corol­lar­ies in Word, Google Docs, and other soft­ware  —  they’re just not as sophis­ti­cated or intu­itive. So I encour­age you, before any­thing, to get to a copy of InDe­sign; it will make your lay­out job expo­nen­tially eas­ier. Many col­lege com­puter labs have it loaded, and if you fore­see mak­ing mul­ti­ple chap­books in the next five years, it’s worth the invest­ment to acquire a copy. Let’s tour a few impor­tant con­cepts we’ll put into prac­tice next time. For the week­end, just think about these things. Every step…

A Most Curious Process

I believe every writer must know how to make a chap­book, and should have a friend who can make her a perfect-​​​​bound book. At first, for empow­er­ment, self-​​​​made legit­i­macy, and a lit­tle extra scratch. But later, for edit­ing. There is no bet­ter way to see your man­u­script than as a book. Sure, you could hand it off to a friend or edi­tor, loose-​​​​leaf, in the stan­dard copy shop box  –  and it’s ful­fill­ing to take part in lit­er­ary tra­di­tions – but the trans­for­ma­tion from man­u­script to book is pro­found. Your sen­si­tiv­i­ties to qual­ity and coher­ence kick up a notch. It also makes typos and non­sense read a lot worse, too. And what bet­ter serves edit­ing than forc­ing the weird…