Where We Are

My "update request" sense is tingling, so here's where things stand.

As you know, a few weeks ago, we had to stop work on the book temporarily to put VIDEO WATCHDOG #127 together. This issue was the first to be assembled with Donna's new widescreen monitor and it went a bit slower than usual, because there was a learning/adjusting curve involved, but no worries: It's at the printer now. We'll also need to take another short break at the end of this week to do the mailing.

It took me a couple of weeks to read through the book, checking the red lines and making my final text corrections, but I'm happy to report that Donna was able to whip through them all in less than two days. In other words, over 1000 pages of the book are now "text-ready." She's now on to preparing the corrected front and back matter for my final look-over and continuing to finalize the photos.

We've accepted the blank book dummy sent to us by our HK printer, approving the new paper weight and binding. We've cut back on the paper weight so that the final book will weigh 12 pounds, as opposed to the previously stated 14-15 pounds; we decided that the book was simply too heavy at that earlier weight to be a pleasure to handle, so we went for a thinner paper --thinner, but without conspicuous bleed-through. This new version is more easily handled; it feels good to hold it, or rest it in one's lap, and turn the pages. Donna also grabbed it by one of the covers and shook the hell out of it, and it stood up to the abuse -- not bad for a book with a 12-pound interior. (Even so, we don't recommend that you try this at home!)

As mentioned before, the next step after the front and back matter are finalized is to send the printer a test printing of select pages. Once we approve what comes back, we finalize by attaching the color profiles and off it goes.