Chugg, chugg...

At one time I thought I'd be delivering a Review Package via DVD. I can still do that, because I do have a Business Plan, which includes "The Elder Gnomes Joint Venture" to fund and manage operations, but for now I'm focused on Publishing.

I just keep chugging along. As I said, I'm focused on the covers. What I realized, after I thought I was done, was that the spines on all the individual Books and the Three Volume Set must align properly when the books are sitting together on the shelf. You would think that was simple, but it's not as easy as it sounds, particularly when the discovery occurred AFTER the lion's share of the layout work was done using a different criteria. I have to say, I have made some modifications to the GFX on the spine, which I think and hope will greatly improve the clarity and vibrance of the book covers as a whole.

It's somewhat frustrating to realize how many different versions of the layout there is. It's all because of different printers and methods of assembly. My priority has been to assure that I can publish and bind the books in-house, not because I want to spend my time making books, but because I don't want to be trapped by not being able to provide product. So I have, not only, been setting up a full production line,  but also concentrating on inventorying at least 250 units of each book. 250 x 7 = 1,750, plus if you include the Three Volume and Boxed Sets, so there's still some investment on my part, beyond the facilities, etc. That's not to say I cannot still provide inventory to a distributor, at any time, so long as it's paid for in advance. The more the merrier. 

There will be a scheduled release plan spacing out the release of each book, depending on how much working capital each book provides. It's a delicate balance. AG

So what's going on already?

Ok, so this layout is killing me. What now? As I said in the last post; I'm finalizing the book covers. It's critical that the elements of the different covers align properly with each other. Being seven books in the set, or three volumes, as both Gnome-Sized and Big People Books, and in both Hand-stitched and Machine-bound editions, each of those variations requires a separate file. In addition, the spine width varies, depending on the number of pages. All told, that means there are forty separate products. 

Well, the real difficulties in preparing those covers has been that; working on each book layout presents the problem of slight alignment variations occurring. Some of those variations have been a result of my own adjustments, but also, I have found that, although I generate the files from the same components, the files are not always duplicates that match. I know that sounds strange, because we all expect digital files to be exact duplicates, but when it comes to alignment issues; they are not exact duplicates. I'm not sure why that is, but if I were to guess, the alignment elements are not resident in the file, rather they are generated by the program. In any event, I have had to create a new component of the file system to deal with these alignment issues. The mistake I made was basing my GFX files on CL (centerlines) and starting on that basis with each file I generated. You see CLs are added to each file and do not copy over when duplicating a file. That means there is the distinct reality that they are not all the same, even though you base them on file components that are the same. So the answer to that problem is to base the canvas on a grid from the start and once that is consistent lay down your centerlines on that grid, not the borders of the canvas. Once the background and canvas are set, then build your layers and guidelines on that grid. I made the mistake of not using the grid and that cost my untold hours of grief.

So that's what's going on. I'm now rebuilding the files into the foundation of a grid based layout. I expect that it will be easy to transfer the critical individual book layers over to the foundational background layers that are locked to that grid. Doing that also changes the size of all the layouts, covers and interior pages, to match the parameters of the grid. So that means once the covers are set to the new grid based foundation, I will need to go back and adjust the inner pages to match. I need to go back anyway because I have changed the density of a background layer to give the inner page more dimension.

All of this leads to the fact that; once it is absolutely correct, the collection can be released to the world, allegedly without mistakes. Once that is done, I will be shifting back over to music composition and getting the score printed out. It never ends. AG