Bookmaking for Dummies

I find it ironic that as I sit staring at the open word document I have trying to come up with what to say and how to say it. I can easily click over to Blogger and write freely. Perhaps it's because I am getting a running start at it. Jumping over that ledge is a lot easier when you just close your eyes and go for it, rather than sitting and waiting around staring at it until the image is burned into your retinas (not the Kodak version).

I have been working on the book for my 365 project for almost two months now. It is a daunting task. I have gone through almost 10 revisions on layout and schemes because I cannot simply find one that I like. Do it this way and there are too many pages for it to be affordable (by affordable I mean less than $60... stupid Blurb). Do it that way and I can't seem to find a way to get the Spectra and SX70 shaped images to look right together. It is a complete disaster and just when I am happy one way I notice something that bugs the crap out of me.

I really don't feel like this should be so hard. My first book (blog post coming later on that) went to gather so easily. I woke up one morning and thought to myself, yeah I can do that. Sure enough 6 hours later I had a 50 page book of my trip to Boston on its way to my house. Why is this one so much harder?

I'd like to think that it can be boiled down to a few points, the scanning for one. I started off with the idea to feature all 365 photos. So I got to scanning them all at high res. I was able to finish up with July before I decided I would start working on the layout... only to realize a few days later I hated it. But the problem was I didn't think to scan the whole image, frame and all. I just scanned the photo itself leaving off the white border. Why did I do this? I have no idea, but that meant that the hours I put into re-scanning all of those photos was for nothing. As the current version of the book uses the whole frame.

I suppose I could ramble on forever about this but suffice to say the book should be done within the upcoming week or two... or at least I hope so.