Publishing Operations

The goal, for so long, has been to finish the Core Creative Materials of "The Gnomes of New Hope; Zach and Zebby's Grand Adventure". This has been an arduous task, because once a product is released, one cannot go back and correct errors, otherwise it is an exercise in futility, that would ultimately impair your market and the public opinion as a whole.

Publishing the series of Storybooks is only one aspect of the project. Those Storybooks originated in the Libretto for the stage musical, but that stage musical originated in a simple puppet show, which also found it's beginning in a short story.  The progress through these literary expressions is something that has taken time, many years, in fact.

The Illustrated Storybooks are the culmination of this lengthy process. Certainly, releasing a final product into the marketplace represents a clear statement about the value of the product and doing so reflects, not only the quality of workmanship, but also the ability of the person or persons involved. 

With this Storybook series, the design has been a large part of the presentation. As I have said before, that design is comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of interlocking components. It has been a monumental task to coordinate those components and to assure that they are balanced and correctly integrated. One aspect of doing that is corrections. When an error is detected, sometimes it is easily corrected, other times it is a major effort to rectify. 

Only yesterday, I was daunted, once again, by searching throught the files to find an original design document, only to conclude that it was gone. I have had many files disappear inside of failed hard drives. Fortunately, I have  devised  other methods of recovering the work if necessary and have profusely saved the material in various revisions, with are represented by the current and final layout being Rev 225.

So, now that the final layout materials are ready for press/digital presentation, my effort is focused on getting the production line set up in the studio. I want to be certain we are capable of publishing and binding a basic amount of books in-house. In that way, we will not be dependent upon vendors to produced a finished product. That is the goal, but that goal does not exclude using suppliers to publish the finished product. Rather, setting up for in-house production offers us security in being able to deliver once the product is introduced into the marketplace.

I have pointed out elsewhere the parameters of selling the books. I intend to publish somewhere around a thousand units in-house, anything more than that will likely be jobbed out, but that depends on the version being sold. All hand-stitched books will be produced in-house at Image of the Mind Studios, while perfect bound versions will be produced by my service vendor(s).

Look for other posts to expand upon Publishing Activities.

AG 🎭🇺🇸