Bookmaker

It is time to put together the last 500 or so copies of Never a Dull Moment, a book Hilary wrote when she was still doing home school. We had 2,500 copies printed (actually the printer did an overrun of several hundred copies). In order to keep costs down we turned down the $1.75 or so it would have cost to have each book bound by the printer. The idea was to be able to have it sell for $8.95 retail. We had been told by some booksellers that self-published books tend to be way overpriced because the writers can’t get small runs published for a decent price. Working backward from the discount a bookseller takes, our production cost, and a reasonable profit, we ended up doing the collating and binding ourselves.

We’ve sold around 2,000 copies, but the demand is still there at the ranch and the store at Florence Lake. We have several file storage boxes in our storage building filled with collated pages that need to be assembled into finished books. My goal is to put together fifty books a day until they are all completed.

Each book consists of seven 16-page “signatures” plus covers. My job is to punch the covers, then each of the signatures, then assemble them, and finally spin on and trim the coil binding.

A sticker with the ISBN number and price is placed on the back cover. Then in bunches of ten books they’re wrapped in stretchy plastic so they won’t slide around and get damaged. Finally they’re put back in the storage boxes, ready for sale.

After punching the thousands of holes with the little manual binding machine, I have a right hand that’s sore and a right arm that’s primed for an arm wrestling match.

(Canon lens cap in middle photo is for scale.)