Excellence. Perfection. Beauty. The goal is striving for these qualities.
What happens when three perfectionists collaborate on a project? They have difficulty saying when it’s done.
After a long and exhausting week of editing, formatting, laying out, proofing, updating photos, pulling out our hair, we’ve finally finished the production of 100 Faces of Marin. Reaching the end of a major project is always a satisfying feeling, and there’s nothing like perusing the final PDF, basking in its beauty, and uploading it to the printer’s FTP server.
The problem, of course, is that book production like this has the potential to go on endlessly. There’s always going to be that extra space, the curly quote facing the wrong way, the double hyphen that should be an em-dash.
But we’ve worked hard on this intense project and the final result should be beautiful. And we’ll take pride in it. I feel proud that my name will be on this book.
The interesting thing about book production vs. Web production is this: The result of the former is final; it is printed and absolute and will end up in the hands and on the bookshelves of those who read it. I want it to look just right, and there’s nothing I can do to fix any errors after it’s finalized. With Web production, I can always go back later and make edits. Electronic text is fleeting. You are reading this now, but it is unlikely this text will ever find a home in your bookcase or collect dust on a shelf in a library. And this text will certainly never be cataloged in the Library of Congress.
Both are satisfying, but the gratification of making a book is tremendous. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands.
1 response so far ↓
1 Kim // Oct 12, 2004 at 9:07 am
Congratulations on an obviously long and involved project. To have your name on a book in print is indeed a wonderful feeling.
So when will the Irish release be? =)