From Cover to Cover
Always have been, always will be.
We started as children writing down every whimsical fantasy that came to our young minds. In between the snippets and stories, we made stuffed toys to illustrate the sets moving across the great stage in the theaters of our minds.
Then we grew up. But we never really stopped, at least not completely. By the time we got back together and wrote a little ditty that went like this…
“Making the toys we made when we were young,
Writing the stories we wrote just for the fun,
Working with the tools our father could not use,
Singing the songs we did not know to sing.”
...the internet had arrived and the publishing world had changed beyond recognition just as it is still changing today.
In the brave new world of publishing, more and more of the marketing is left to the authors. Back then, even though your chances were slim, you could put a manuscript in an envelope with return postage, take advantage of the reduced book rate postage, and know that at least somebody, even if they were the lowest mouse on the pole, would read it or at least look at it. Now they will not even accept it. Only through agents, they say, and agents are probably more difficult to engage than the publishers were in 1940. So when we began writing stories once again, we realized we needed to take a different course in approaching the market. Living on limited budgets at the time, our contacts and quotes from the various on-demand and self-publishers was disappointing to say the least.
One day we looked at each other and said, “Let’s do it ourselves. We can do this.” So we did.
Showing it around, one thing led to another until one dear lady enthusiastically insisted, “You must write a book and explain exactly how you made this one.” Clearly more interested in how we made the book than what was in the book, she was insistent in telling us what to do.
We hesitated and stalling we asked, “What would we call it?”
“That’s easy,” she said and added, “Call it From Cover to Cover by Sarah Alison Jones.” She went on to quickly and concisely detail the content, purpose and appeal of the book. The result was From Cover to Cover and it does in fact, “cover” everything. What we did and what we still do.
And now about making your own book...
It’s not rocket science. You can break the mystique of publishing a hard cover book and create your own with equipment you may already have. It can be done.
Or...you can make your own quality paperback book. Part of the secret is using the "sewn-in" signatures that make up the text pages of the book.
And...you can also print detailed intstruction manuals for digital equipment such as cell phones, cameras and calculators that now come only on disc instead of in real book form. We just completed a 384 page manual for a new hand calculator. It's really great having a paper copy for easy viewing and reference.
And there's more...using the same equipment you can make small notepads of your own design. Your imagination is the only limit.
Sarah Alison Jones takes you step by step from cover to cover, through the process she used to make her first books and then From Cover to Cover. 177 diagrams and photographs show in detail the “how to” of computer set up, printing and paper selection, and creating the actual hard cover book. Great for authors, family histories, business or class anthologies. Don’t settle for a plain cover or ordinary edition for your hard wrought writing. Be extraordinary and take self publishing to a new level and showcase your first edition in style.
Included in From Cover to Cover is Bear’s Story, the delightful recounting of how her Mistress Sarah’s book From Cover to Cover really came to be written.
I have seen the books Sarah has made. They are awesome.
I am on the waiting list because I want to give one to my daughter as soon as they are available.
BS, Seattle WA
From Cover to Cover Complete Bookmaking Kit
From Cover to Cover complete bookmaking kit includes everything we use to make our books including the tools, supplies, our own special equipment we developed to make construction easier, and of course, the 339 page instruction book From Cover to Cover, a hardcover book made the same way as the process described within its pages, plus a 34 minute DVD (yes, it was done pretty low tech, the way we do a lot of things...with what we have available to us) but it does give a visual presentation of our hands in action as they create a book.
You will need a few things of your own, or at least have acess to them because they are not included in the kit and you probably already have them. They are: a computer, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher software programs or other similar programs with which you are familiar (instructions for computer work are given in Word and Publisher 2007, Mac instructions are not included), a laser duplex (prints on both sides of the paper) printer (black ink only), a paper cutter and a sewing machine.
I can't believe you made a hard cover book.
You must write a book about how you did it with such limited eqipment. LJ, Olympia
From Cover to Cover Table of Contents Excerpt from book Bookmaking Kit
Hardcover Book, 339 pages, $47.50, Free shipping