Update 6/26/19
I was working to conform the remaining books to the current (and final) layout, mostly to find out how long it would take to do so. I wanted to get a grip on this before making a concerted push to release the first book in the series. As it turned out, I have been able to conform the first five scenes of Act One, which represent at least half of Volume Two, Books Two thru Four, within two weeks. The Libretto consists of twenty scenes. I have divided the Storybook into seven books Book One is the Introduction to the Gnomes of New Hope. Books Two thru Four comprise Act One of the Musical Stage Play, while Books Five thru Seven comprise Act Two of the stage play.
I'm considering publishing the books in three volumes for the Big People Books and Seven books for the Gnome-sized Books. Clearly, I cannot publish the Gnome-sized books in three volumes. There are too many pages to fit into the smaller books, but I think that with the Big People Book we can publish all nine scene in one book. The big problem there lies in the fact that a fully illustrated book is costly to produce. Not only the cost of printing the full color pages, but the cost of the artwork. As it stands, there are 348 illustrations that are needed for the remaining books. Those illustrations cost me a minimum of 300 dollars a piece, probably. more. So do the math and you and see what I have, and will have, invested in this project. Add to that that a Portion of that money is Front Money, which involves a three hundred percent return to the investors. So you can see that it is no small investment to complete this project.
As it stands now, I have begun distributing the books to bookstores. You may or may not be aware of this, but the MSRP of the Big People's Book has been set at the maximum I believe is tolerable, $29.95. Do you relaise that Booksellers expect me to sell them the books at a wholesale price of $11.95? There's no way that is going to happen! All business endeavors in this capitalistic system expect a profit. How dare they demand such a degree of profit! There are at least four other participants that need to make a profit from their involvement. As far as I am concerned, the profit in the product needs to be evenly divided between the participants. I won't lay out the budget here for you, but for the booksellers to demand such a profit is insulting. Therefore I will most certainly be selling the books directly from this web site. You will be able to search this site for a link to purchasing the books. It is not entirely set-up yet, but I will attend to it in the near future and make sure it operates properly. If you want to talk about buying books, send me an email to image.of.the.mind.studios@gmail.com. That's all for now. AG
ARCHIVE
I started off looking for the lyrics to "The Gnomen of The Yard", because of my last post. That song is in Scene Twelve. But as I was opening the files, I decided to see what was involved in conforming the remaining books to the final publishing layout. Well, how stupid would that be to start with Book Five! So I opened Book Two, being that Book One is now finished and represents the finished design.
Well, the entire collection was conformed to the layout that I used for the first prototype run. So for that layout, all the books have been finished. But that layout was rejected after I started serious proof-reading and making improvements to the design. Those aesthetic design changes, combined with technical logistic adjustments, resulted in a process that took literally more than five years to refine.
Now that I have started to address manufacturing and distribution of Book One, my real concern became "can I deliver the rest of the story if demand increases and how long would that take?" You know, once I initiate the books into the marketplace, if I can't deliver the story within a tolerable time frame, well, I'll loose my audience. People's span of attention is limited. If you have to wait too long to get satisfaction, after your interest has been perked, frankly, you loose interest, or it's taken away by something else.
So I needed to get a grip on how long each book would taken to be ready for press, before I push too hard on Book One.
It took a few tries to get the layout from Version 9.1 to conform to Revision A112, but after less than a week, Book Two is well over 50% finished! I think I can safely conclude that I can prep a book in about a month. But that assumes I have all the artwork finished, which I don't.
Those revision numbers above are real, although in a few instances I had to jump up in blocks of ten after the numbers got too confusing. Sometimes I had Rev numbers like Rev 89a too.
But I do have Books One thru Four fully illustrated. Well, I'm short (about) fifteen panels on Book Four. The rest of the books are spattered with illustrations. As I've said before, I still need 348 illustrations for the remaining books.
I'm developing a plan for expediting the Illustration process. So that we can produce the art with the time frame that matches a release schedule. As it stands now, if the first three books are released, say three to six months apart, and create sufficient income to get the artists working on finishing the illustrations, then we'll be good.
I say artists, because I want to move into 3D CGI, but I also was thinking of hiring colorists and/or line artists.
Well... I'm moving forward to get the next two books ready for press, before I push too hard on Book One. Our publishing is almost all set up. We are finished with the Big People book and have confirmed pricing for on-demand with that book. We need to do another test run of the Gnome-sized Book to lock in manufacturing prices for that book on-demand. We are now confirming the pricing for off-set and that is almost ready to go.
That's all for now. AG
