Tadaaaaa!
This is the main project I have been working on since Christmas: my first book!
I started my Blog (BeaG’s Blog) in April 2020 and have been posting a BG (that’s how I call a post on my Blog) every single week since.
A BG can be a short story, an essay, a poem, a drawing, a photo animation, or any other kind of creative post.
Everything on my Blog, including the Blog itself and my portrait drawing (with markers), was 100% made by me.
Last year I bought a new PC (an iMac, after having used only Windows PC’s so far), with all new software.
Once I got the hang of using it, I bought Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher and started making my book in Affinity Publisher (meanwhile learning how to use it) (and adjusting the pictures in Affinity Photo) right after Christmas.
My book contains the first 100 BG’s of my Blog and is made to look as much as the Blog itself as possible.
It is bilingual (Dutch + English), just like my Blog.
It wasn’t a matter of ‘just copying’ the contents of my Blog into a document on my PC.
I had to build it all up from scratch.
And Affinity Publisher gave me the option to prepare my book for the printing company too.
So I decided to do everything myself and not use a self publishing platform.
Why pay for things you can do yourself?
It is a high quality book, sewn, bound and with a hard cover.
It has satin-shine nearly white pages.
It measures 27 x 23 x 2 cm and weighs 1.325 kg.
I also designed the cover of the book (and did the calculations for it, just like I set margins and bleeds for the content).
I got compliments from the printing company’s studio for how well I designed the contents and the cover. I thought that was pretty special.
I started negotiating with printing companies in March and after ditching two options, at my third try I found a printing company that was both affordable and enthusiastic to work with private customers on small orders.
Since this was the first time I ever published a book, there was a lot to be learned. But I knew exactly what I wanted, so I just had to negotiate the technical possibilities and make decisions based on costs.
It was frustrating at times (a lot of waiting), but it was also a lot of fun, being my own designer, proof reader (Marc helped me with that), corrector, negotiator, publisher and financier.
I also had to be firm and demand that issues, even little ones, be solved. I wanted nothing less than perfection.
That feeling of holding my first book in my own hands (shortly after my sixtieth birthday) was amazing!
I hope you like it!
(PS: I made this post after getting permission and do’s and dont’s from the mods.)
