Book One, The Big People's Book

I thought I'd post here, rather than on The Gnomes of New Hope page, since I need to embellish this blog somewhat.

The Gnome-sized book is essentially finished. There is another typo that showed up, which needs to be corrected, but other than that, it finally appears to be done.

The greatest delay in all of this had been issues with computer power and file size. Without going into details, my files have been frustratingly inaccessable, causing me to be forced to do the same work over again countless times. But I'm past that now. The fourth and final prototype run has been completed, showing that it is truely finished. It may have been quite a bit more than four runs, but it has been about four versions of the design to bring it to this point. Each version has different design specifications, not to mention the editing adjustments.

Work for the past month or so has been to conform the Big People's Book to match the Gnome-sized Book. There are a number of elements that do not interpret well when the book is enlarged, but also there are aspects that had to be changed for them to work in the smaller size. So those adjustments are underway.

The Gnome-sized Book has been sent out for quoting and evaluating the design for binding. If the binding house cannot provide the book according to specifications, the we will do that in house. The biggest issue is making production conform to MSRP. We have a certain practical and workable price range, but we also have design elements that are critically important that we keep in the design. Those design elements are not the standard binding found on most, if not all of the books on the market. But even so, the binding design that has been incorporated into the product line has proven to be a key element in marketing. So we need to produce the book in that fashion, as much as possible.

Since, production of the books in this way requires a degree of hand-stitching, production volumes are by necessity less per hour. I'm working out a production line now and building fixtures that will expedite production assembly.

The other approach to the hand-stitched design is to limit that production, based on demand. If significant demand is achieved, then the hand stitched books will only be made available either in Limited Editions, or possibly by special order for an additional charge. I'm developing those parameters and preparing our marketing package, for the time when all production is ready to proceed into public release of the series.

I'll continue to post the business of publishing these books thru IMS Publishing, here on this blog. I suggest checking the other blogs and social site pages, as I spread my thoughts around to keep them all fresh. I believe I identified those sites on the IMS Virtual Studio (www.imagemindag.blogspot.com)

AG