Formatting Pictures for Coming Book

Now that I have decided on the size and fact that the interior will allow colour, I am going through all the photos again… I had spent some time converting them to gray and sized them for a different layout. Since Lightning Source has made the inclusion of inside color much less costly, it seems like the thing to do… especially with a grant from the Southern Kings Arts Council!

Since 7.44″ x 9.69″ is the largest of the lower per-page cost sizes, I’ll go with that. To pack the most material in with easily-read text lines, I’ll go to two columns. That means I can put pictures in columns with a width of 2.9″ or across both columns with a 6.1″ width… that gives me the width numbers. The height will become whatever is necessary to save the aspect ratio. I expect vertically-oriented photos will go in columns while horizontally-oriented ones will go across the page. Since as soon as one interior page has color the entire thing might as well be so, I plan to use lots and lots of pictures.

The one thing I learned from doing Loman’s first children’s book is that it is possible to set the color too intense/saturated and risk rejection by the printer, I will set the darkness of the pictures up from full “black” along with dropping the “white” down if there are large areas of gradually changing sky…the transition from full white to slightly colored produces visible bands where the printing changes from no ink to a few dots of ink… just make sure there are at least a few dots everywhere… going from a few dots to a few more dots is not so noticeable.

January 12, 2013

Called my bluff!

I recently received a grant from the Southern Kings Arts Council partially underwriting the printing of my sailing book. Unfortunately not much has been happening on the sailing front…the boat sits in the yard covered in perhaps 12″ of snow, which puts a damper on projects. But the grant did inspire me to get out the chapter drafts and fill in the activities of 2012…they called my bluff!

There was relatively little sailing done in 2012…my “crew” had mutinied and all the sailing was single-handed. It was a good time to make sure I had the autopilot technique down and that I could work out a sequence for sail raising and lowering.

The trailer was a major focus, since its rebuild the year before set it slightly too narrow, crushing parts of the outer hulls when the boat was pulled. I had to repair those spots as well as adding in new sensors for depth and boat speed to go with a new fish-finder. Also I got to break in a new GPS/chart-plotter…particularly useful for entering unknown harbors.

For several years I have been saying I will not release my book until I have a big accomplishment to report. More and more I think that must be an around-the-island trip. PEI should be easily circumnavigated in 10 days, assuming the wind cooperates. Since my (former) crew would be within easy reach of my cell phone and since any part of the Island can be reached by car in under 4 hours, she can serve as my emergency land support. I can use the time taking lots of pictures and should have a lengthy report ready for the book by the end of the trip.

Since there is a slight underwriting, and since Lightning Source now has a low-cost color option, I expect I will insert all the pictures into the book in color. Just thinking about it re-inspires me!

December 16, 2012

‘Chewing the fat’

What a folksy expression, but it probably fits what my friend Chris and I are doing on a quiet Saturday. Standing in the garage looking out on the 3-4″ of new snow in the driveway we reminisce about boating experiences.

He describes several times when his fishing boat… recommissioned as a pleasure craft…broke free of its mooring and was reported either by the coast guard or neighbors on far shores or tied up at a nearby wharf. So I counter with stories where the wind lifted my mooring block and carried my sailboat over in front of the ferry slip.

I talk about carefully timing the annual trips to the water in the spring and home in the fall to miss the ferry traffic. He counters with stories of quietly pulling his 28000-pound boat through the center of town on quiet early Sunday mornings pulled by a light pickup truck!

I talk about asking if the weigh station would weigh my boat, only to find it would also have to be inspected to be sure the trailer was road legal (virtually impossible with its 15′ width) and he talks about the challenge of picking up a new trailer in Massachusetts…a state that has no process to issue transit permits.

Sometimes these conversations can be one-upmanship, but I think yesterday it was discovering how much we have in common. Perhaps we can do some things together. After all, I point out to him, my annual fuel costs are about $20 while he can sink $500 in diesel for a one-day trip! But as my wife points out, such boats are able to travel quite independent of wind direction!

December 11, 2012

What are your interests?

I need to know what you, the reader of this blog, most want to know.

Reading material from Copyblogger, I had a moment of blinding clarity where I realized I have been talking about what interests me in the hopes it interests you. In so doing, at the moment I have wandered into the details of preparing E-books when you may be more interested in publishing, art, photography, or writing.

If you are reading this, I would be grateful if you would take a few moments and give me a comment or two.

In the area of publishing, I have a feeling for the difference between Lightning Source…whom I use for all of my books so far…and CreateSpace…which at least two authors I know have used. Here are the points I have found:

Create Space v. Lightning Source

1. They are both POD..print on demand…operations producing books at a higher per-unit cost than large-run offset printers.
2. They both seem to focus on paperback books, although hard cover options exist.
3. Printing and order fulfillment can be done by Amazon with no action on the author/publisher’s part.

4. LS charges a setup fee of $75 plus a proof fee of $30 or less; CreateSpace has no setup charges…I’m not sure about first-copy charges.
5. CreateSpace takes a 40% piece off the top of each retail sale plus the unit cost of printing the book. LS takes nothing but the cost of printing and shipping…wait, is there a $1.50 charge per order?
6. LS is NOT a publisher and has no programs for formatting or editing…they work with publishers who in turn work with authors, but anyone can become a publisher by filling out some forms at no cost. CS has an entire graded set of packages at increasing cost that go from simple layout help through fancy marketing packages…perhaps like some of the rip-offs of vanity presses, although I have not heard bad things of CreateSpace so far. The I-can-do-it-all-by-myself option exists but their marketing plays it down for obvious reasons.
7.While CS takes 40% off all sales, books submitted to amazon by LS are expected to offer the distributor a hefty discount…50% is typical, but I don’t know what happens if an author offers no discount…will they carry them and charge extra for shipping…I don’t know. In any case, sales through Amazon come out about the same.
8. The printing costs seem similar, although I have not done a size-by-size comparison.

December 6, 2012

Standing rigging replacement

When the mast came down this fall I discovered that about half the strands of the rear stay had broken at the top! That starts to look dangerous. So just a few days ago I took the old rigging in for an estimate to replace it…up around $300 for two cables with swagged ends and turnbuckles. I’m going to two lines to the mast top from the rear instead of the inverted “Y” that was in place…I want redundancy on all four sides of the mast.

Pondering the price, since I had already bought stainless cable last year, I decided to do my own, using galvanized turnbuckles and wire clips instead of swagged fittings. The total cost is about $30 on top of whatever I spent for the wire. Aside from spending well under $100, I have the capability to adjust the length by changing the size of the loops on the ends when I undo the wire clips. I had been struggling with a wrong length since I rebuilt the mast…it must be a couple of inches shorter than it was.

Buehler’s Backyard Boatbuilding is the name of a book which promotes using just the sort of rigging I’m going to try. He argues that the galvanized wire shows rust long before it weakens while stainless can hide the hairline fractures until they let go. There is no hurry, however. It just snowed for the first noticeable daytime amount. I don’t think sailing is in vogue at the moment.

November 26, 2012

Disqus seems to work!

After a week or two with comments handled by Disqus I have not had any spam. Considering that each site used to get 10 or more a day, that is pretty amazing. It should free me up to spend more time writing.

November 23, 2012

Boat-building Village

I’m forging ahead on the idea of a village…like Old Sturbridge Village or King’s Landing…to recreate shipbuilding in the mid 1800s. Tonight I ordered some books on traditional shipbuilding:

“American Small Sailing Craft: Their Design, Development and Construction”
Chapelle, Howard I.

“Architectura Navalis Mercatoria: The Classic of Eighteenth-Century Naval Architecture (Dover Maritime)”
Chapman, Fredrik Henrik af

“A Practical Course in Wooden Boat and Ship Building”
Van Gaasbeek, Richard M

“Boatbuilding: A Complete Handbook of Wooden Boat Construction”
Chapelle, Howard I.

They are all going to my son’s place in the US to get cheaper…read free…shipping, so I can’t start reading them yet.

My current plan is to shift the focus from one large half-finished ship to perhaps constructing smaller work-boat-style vessels using traditional construction techniques and actually completing them…perhaps one a year. I suppose they will have to be finished with epoxy or other modern preservation coatings so they don’t rot out in 7 years like the original wooden ships of the 1800s! The advantage of smaller vessels would be both reduced cost and reduced labor…if the construction can still show the process as it was 150 years ago, it should suffice. I want to run it by the Lunenberg Shipyard Alliance for ideas.

November 17, 2012

Book status report

Color: Over the last few months I have gotten into publishing color books…even with the color going right to the edges…bleeds. And my primary printer, Lightning Source, has come up with a lower-cost color option. So I definitely think the book will graduate to color pictures of the trips and construction.

Trip: My around-the-island trip has yet to happen, and I have pretty much lost the services of my first mate, who mutinied after getting seasick the year before this. But that cloud has a silver lining since she can serve as my ground crew if something goes wrong or I need supplies. After all, Prince Edward Island is no more than a 4 hour drive from end to end and with her living on the island there is no water to cross…a trip to Newfoundland would be a different story, So my resolve is strengthening to do the trip next summer.

Grant: The Southern Kings Arts Council has advertised grants to support struggling artists and they consider writers as qualifying. The grants are up to $1200 if one qualifies, and so I have applied for the sailing book. The color option will increase the price and none of these publishing activities are great profit activities. While my current focus is on the Revisiting Scripturebook(s), a grant would be the incentive to get going on the sailing book as well.

Projects:So as of now the boat sits in the side yard, waiting for the snow, with only minor work to do…the trailer modifications are about done and the radio replacement can happen in the spring. The last of the autumn leaves are still a brilliant yellow on the maple trees, but winter feels close.

November 17, 2012November 17, 2012

New book: Old Glory

Loman Bell is just about to release his new children’s historical/marine picture book entitled Old Glory. In it we are treated to a voyage on a sailing ship of the 1800s. The great part of the book is the illustrations…Loman has developed a dramatic bold painting style which sets his book…the first in a planned series..apart. There is no way to describe it except as a COLOUR book…COLOR to you people in the states. I include a couple pictures just to give you a feel for the work. It will be available directly from Loman as well as through Amazon.

oldglory02 — One of his bold illustrations

November 4, 2012

Comments moved to Disqus

I am trying the Disqus plug-in for comments in hopes that it will encourage more comments and block the multitude of spam that I have to delete every day. If it asks you for a login or some special procedure, my experience is that only once will do it for all sites that use it, but if you have trouble, please email me at schultz@pei.sympatico.ca

Thanks