TL;DR: No action items for you. I've been testing pens on paper and I've got some preliminary layout to show you. If you have questions or concerns about anything relating to your order please email [email protected]. I'm giving you all another chapter to read. The chapter can be accessed by clicking over to Backerkit and logging in. Your next update will be the week of April 28 - May 1. Details below.
Details:
It has been a very stressful few weeks for people (like me) who work with Chinese based companies to get products manufactured. One of the reasons I love working with my printer in China is how proactive they are about solving problems and how precise they are with producing products. I want to continue to work with them. They've saved my projects from huge errors and delivered top quality items. The chaotic announcements of tariffs, changing of tariffs, and rescinding of tariffs has played havoc with business planning. It is very difficult to budget a project if the cost you'll have to pay doubles while the product is in transit. This is the situation for anyone who put a shipment on a boat anytime in the past month. I know of people who are choosing to warehouse their projects in China until there is a stable set of costs and they can do math about whether they can afford them. If the margins are slim, some projects will end up being pulped because that is the easiest way to cut losses.
Here is the good news for this project: Bound paper goods (like books) are exempt from the new tariffs. This is because the US President has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the tariffs and country based reciprocal tariffs by declaring a “national emergency”. The IEEPA includes a specific exemption clause in the Berman Amendment that protects publications, both commercial and otherwise, from its regulations, ensuring U.S. citizens' right to access information. As a result, even if tariffs increase, printed books will remain exempt as long as the IEEPA is used as the legal basis. (I have learned a LOT more about tariffs and exemptions this week than I really wanted to have to know.)
I still get to work with my preferred printer to produce this book for you. The Custom Designed Notebooks will be shifted to their Maylasia plant because Journals are not exempted. I'll keep you posted about whether that shift will create a change in the delivery timeline.
I tested various types of pens on the paper that will be used for the custom notebooks. I wanted to make sure that it will be nice to write on and will support various inks without smearing. The paper does really well! The only pen which had a smearing problem past 30 seconds was the dip pen, which is due to the nature of dip pens and not a flaw of the paper.
I'm also working on layout for the book this week. I use InDesign as my layout tool. In this
A page spread in InDesign
Immediately after grabbing that screenshot I realized I did not have the section title on the left hand page, so I updated that. I also realized that InDesign had the wrong "workspace" selected. So you can see a difference in available tools between the first screenshot and the second.
InDesign is showing the same page spread as before, but different tool buttons are available.
I tend to work in only the Typography workspace because I've learned exactly where all the tools are located. In the other workspaces I feel lost.
Here is a different page spread in InDesign One thing that is very important when working layout is to recognize that the blue and red guidelines affect how you view the page and they won't be in the final. So I always export to make sure I'm seeing what the reader will see.
a two page spread with words, headers, and page numbering
The pages look different without the guides. I can already see some problems I want to fix.
The same page spread with sections circled and numbered in red.
1. The top of page titles are much too close to the body text. This is visually confusing. I need to create separation here. 2. This header needs editing to be more like a header and less like a question. 3. I need to make sure that the page number placement isn't too close to the edges of the page. 4. This is two lines of a paragraph floated onto the next page. If it were only one line that would be an "orphan" line and I would definitely have to move it. You never want a single line of a paragraph floating by itself at the bottom or top of a page. In this case I still might want to consolidate so that this bullet list paragraph stays together.
There are lots of small decisions that can really affect the look and feel of a book. I get to make lots of those decisions in the next few weeks.
That's my update for today. I'll update you again the week of April 28-May 1 after I've returned from a family trip. Thank you for being part of my project! Sandra
