Look what I got today! 45 cases of North Country Quest!
We got a tour of the printing plant, Color House Graphics in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was surprisingly like the press and mail rooms at Ludington Daily News, eh? (Maybe if I fail at this author thing, they will give me a job.) They allowed pictures, so I'll give you an abbreviated tour too.
This is the machine that puts the layer of laminate on the cover of the book. It's heat sealed.
Here is their bank of offset presses for doing book interiors. They also have some digital options, but these are the presses my book was printed on.
This was interesting to me. This is a full set of signatures (the sections) for a book. They are coded so the order can be seen at a glance, and although at this size you can't tell what it is, there is a number so that if something happened, the signature could be immediately identified as to which book it belongs. Those notches are not to hold glue, which was what I thought. They actually are ground off before the binding glue is applied.
This machine was running, so it's a little blurry. Ignore the pair of white gloves. You can see part of a cover extending toward you under one of those moving blocks. It's being pressed against the compacted and glued signatures. Now look to the block just beyond and you'll see that the cover is being folded around the interior of the book.
At the end of the line, the books are pulled off by hand and packed in boxes.
My buddy Robert met me there and we filled his truck and my car with books. We went out to eat, and Robert had to show off his reading skills. Don't worry, he's just fooling around. I gave him copy #1 for his help.
The books look great. I'm really pleased with Color House's work and the way I was treated by the staff, and I would recommend them to anyone who needs an offset print run. They don't do print on demand.
OK, I know more about what I'm doing now, but this was a much better experience than when I had North Country Cache printed (different printer). My house smells like fresh book ink!
If you pre-ordered a copy of North Country Quest, it will be going in the mail tomorrow.
If you want to purchase a copy see me, or email me at jhyshark@gmail.com
 | See Last Time I Saw Robert |
2 comments:
Congratulations!! Thanks for the tour. So interesting.
What an interesting process. Got a laugh out of the picture of Robert reading the book.
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