Another year means another opportunity to use my favorite web site; Blog Booker!
(the fourth edition of a BNS book!)
The blog booker website is free for use, they only ask for donations. I have been religious about donating (they suggest 10 euros) because if the site every disappeared I would be really sad! Export the .xml file from the blog, click on a few options, and well, depending on how many posts and what dates you input, a few minutes later you get a .pdf you can download.
I create the pdf every 6 months
I have a Word document that I use for the covers…..I only now realize I messed up and didn’t use art for the front in 2013…but honestly, I think the days of boy-generated art are long past. And Wiley deserved a cover shot!
Printing the book was a bit of a challenge; the books can get really long (300+ pages) and even the cheapest commercial option of FedEx/Kinkos was hundreds of dollars to get color printing.
So, (shhhh!), I print the books at work on the laser printer there. Up until the 2nd half of 2013, I’ve been printing 2 column double-sided pages
This worked out and kept the size of the books down (they still run about 1-2” thick…they aren’t small!).
But, the latter half of 2013 prompted a change to single-column sheets….turns out that those game reports from Coach Stu didn’t format very well at all in 2-column mode. Will have to work on that this spring, but, the 2nd half of the 2013 book is only one-column.
(I guess, depending on the size, I’ll have to look at more one-column printing. Because the pictures are nice!)
The binding is pretty straight-forward; I tried to go for a hard-bound book deal but just couldn’t make that happen. Fedex/Kinkos has something they call perfect-bind, so, the pages are glued together to the binding. I give them the .word file with the cover; they print it 18” x 12” and there you go. The local branch doesn’t do this work, so, they have to ship it down to the Troy location; it usually takes a week, and it costs about $12/book (since I’ve provided them all of the pages).
