Current Status

On and on it goes... Well, my most recent efforts have been to finish the book covers for both the Gnome-Sized and Big People Books. That involved getting the IBSNs and the pricing schedule right for the whole series, setting up the copyright page, the back cover synopses and the inner back page. You would think that was not too hard to do, you would be wrong. There are dozens of elements that needed to be cross-referenced between the four pages of 10 books. Since they are the covers, they needed to be right. It's amazing how, once the overall design was laid out, a flow of small tweeks gradually had to be made, in terms of size, color, style and positioning. It's frustrating to continually think I'm done, only to find other adjustment that need to be made. One example is that the components in the whole collection of covers cannot be stored in one file, that sounds like a simple matter if duplicating the file, it's not. Along the way, I discovered that elements in the files diverge from one another. Dimensions are slightly different or alignments change between files. Possibly that is a result of making alterations to the layout, in an attempt to gain consistency. What that means is that, ultimately, after all the design elements are matched, a new file containing only the finished flattened layers needs to be made in order to match the scales and dimensions of all the covers. But that means working with multiple files to derive the final components across the full collection. In other words, the design of Act One, Scene One thru Three needs to remain the same in all instances where those words are referenced. Multiply that by more than twenty and you see, it can get confusing.

Well, the covers are almost done. One thing that did occur in laying out the covers is that the bleed on the hard copy layout changed. There was an error in the centering of the entire layout. Now I will have to go back and assure that all 700+ of the inner pages match the bleed and centering of the covers. Part of the reason that happened is that the first generation (of Rev 245) covers we're laid out using the inner page overlay. That is the twine frame (which you can see from samples posted below). I was so wrapped up in getting the whole of the e-Storybook done that I didn't realize that the cover backdrop of the hard copy books was different and also that the positioning of the covers was different as well, because of the outer wrap and thickness of the hard copy books. I was working from the perspective of the e-Storybook which is a very different technical design.

So basically, it's all very complicated and it has taken two decades to get to this point !

This morning I was thinking that I just want to be done with this. I really want to put sales, promotion and everything into the hands of someone else. I'm just very tired of working on this. It's almost done and that's only the books! You can  read about the other stuff below. 

So if any professionals who engage in Post-Production activities want a good opportunity, let me know. It's really time to stop cutting bait and start fishing.

AG

Operating Expenses

Refer to IMS Management via The IMS Virtual Studio at ImagemindAG

IMS Publishing

I started IMS Publishing as a tool to published this series of books. Little do I know how involved it would be. It's not just a matter of writing the books, which I have a dozen sitting there in various stages of completion, but it involves the whole gamit of other business relationships and processes. For some time I have been thinking through the binding of The Gnomes of New Hope. 

As you can see here I have designed these books to be stitched in this fashion.

I'm set up to do this quite well for small quantities, but the trick is to be able to produce higher quantities cost effectively. The big problem is punching the books. Stitching I'd done by hand. I don't think these much chance of automating that and even if I could come up with a way to automate that, and I tried, it takes more time tending to the machinery then it does to stitch the book using manual methods. So punching is the key here. I am in the process of designing and constructing pinch press dies to implement punching one whole book in one pass. I'm not certain what thickness I can get away with, but we'll see. I'm gathering the tooling for that, now that the printing files have reached their final stage. I am about to print the prototype run of the whole seven book collection. Once that is done, I will move into designing and fabrication the boxes for the boxed sets.

I'm getting the shop set up for the production line. I have multiple workstations partially set up to create a flow of product from assembly to shipping. 

There is no point to working on sales until production is up and running, but the first level will be a shopping cart scenario. In the meanwhile, I can conduct the business of sales on a wholesale level that is tied to a release schedule and purchase of books in quantities sufficient to fund the completion of the artwork. Anything less than that is a distraction and will draw me away from finishing the artwork. As I have said before, I can provide the books in a perfect bind edition, without the hand stitching in quantities exceeding 5k. You will find posts below that outline sales objectives. I may have posted that information on IMS Publishing, which is where that belongs. Being very occupied finishing up the printing layouts, I have not been updating that sales information, but I will tend to that when appropriate. If you wish to discuss anything contact me via email. The address is; image.of.the.mind.studios@gmail.com

AG

Dividing the Collection

As I said in the last post (and on The Gnomes of New Hope Facebook page) laying out the book covers became the lastest stage in publishing. After having finished the page layout for the entire collection, I needed to define how the books were going to be divided up, so that the number of pages match as closely as possible between books. There are to types of books, The Gnome-sized and The Big People Books. The Gnome-sized books will be issued as Seven Books, while the Big People Books will be issued in Three Volumes. Both type books will also be available in boxed sets. Of course, there also is the e-Storybook.

It has been challenging matching up the IBSN numbers to the books and adapting the covers. The GFX on the covers is different between the two editions, so that makes ten covers in all, not to mention the boxes for the boxes set.

So that's were it stands right now. The books are getting closer. I know I keep saying that, but doing the IBSN numbers, bar-codes and covers has identified a total of fourteen published book products. There's more to come, including five stories contained in The Gnomic Tales.

That's all for now. AG