Press in a Shed
By Henry B Stevens
Today the question is not, “Can you do it?” but rather, “How fast can you do it?” Most all aspects of life have a need for speed today, more speed tomorrow.
Writers can now benefit from the “pod,” print on demand, services offered by iUniverse and the similar services.
But small projects, such as poetry chapbooks for emerging poets like me, can use existing computers and printers to produce marketable books very quickly. Review copies can be produced overnight and passed to reviewers the next day, providing quick guidance for authors.
I use a text editor, Notepad, to create my poems. Next they are copy and paste into Word. Page setup is Booklet and the number of pages is 12. My printer is set to Landscape, print two sides, one page per sheet. I use Hammermill pastel colored paper, 8.5x11 20 lb. The printed output is collated and folded into booklets 8.5x5.5. As I made my Word file 48 pages I need four booklets for one chapbook. The booklets are then stapled with a Bostitch long arm stapler. Tape is applied for the binding.
This is the recipe. Some will know exactly what I am talking about. Others will consider the preceding paragraph gibberish. But it works. The output is saleable. The output can win contests. If you desire these results, then this is one way it can be done.
But, there are many variations that can make use of part of the process, farm the rest out and achieve the desired results. For instance, a master could be produced by a computer person, and the author could use a copy machine. Let’s back up further. The author could use the output from the text editor and make the master to use with the copy machine.
How? Make a dummy with plain paper, go through the dummy and number the pages. Take the dummy apart and use it to build your master. One could even do this with handwritten pages and make an attractive chapbook or book. Remember, a book is just a chapbook with more booklets, and probably glued with hard covers.
Publishing is not the straight-jacket it was years ago. Publishing will expand its options as time goes forward. There will be increased opportunity for writers to share and sell their writing.
Emily Dickinson wrote for years and hid her poetry in a trunk. It was found and published after her death. Now Emily is widely read, studied and is the basis for MFA work. How sad.
