A little over a year ago, The Breach House Gang (a writers’ group I’ve been part of for 17 years) hired me to put together their (our) fourth anthology. I agreed, but only if we could do something a little different from our past anthologies, which were your standard 6×9 paperbacks with black-and-white imagery. Half of the Gang, you see, are also visual artists. We needed something that would highlight this. A square book. And colour.
Initially we discussed a hardcover, limited-edition artbook, but for very solid reasons rejected it (cost being primary, but also wanting to reach as many readers as possible). After some research, we went with Createspace’s print on demand, whose colour options were reasonably priced, and whose colour reproduction was surprisingly good.
That decided, a size was chosen (8.5 x 8.5), and all that was left to do was… well, everything! Set word-limits, gather the material, edit the writing, send it back, assemble the images, request higher resolution, arrange in some kind of logical, pleasing order. Choose the font group, chose the font size, margins, all that. Copyedit! Proofread. Run it past everyone in PDF. Fix more things. Run it past everyone again. Proofread x10. Print the proof. Gather everyone to see the proof. Fix more things! Eliminate spine text (per Createspace request – book too thin). But once that was set, we placed the order for 100 copies. Total cost? Just over $1000 (including shipping).
After yesterday’s launch of the anthology (October 18, Attic Owl Reading Series, Moncton), there were 10 copies left.
The book online is here.
Lee Thompson Editing + 