Square - sized, please!
Staring at all the different options of book types on Print-o-man.com... I don’t think that we really understood what a book was until that moment. I mean, sure - we’d known about ‘reading’; that books have a front and back cover, and even all of the dreadful market research about pricing, popular books and printers. But the real moment of truth came, when Swara and I were hunched around the dimly lit laptop screen, staring at the website of print-o-man, wondering why on earth the drop down for the paper thickness extended all the way down to the pits of hell.
It took a dozen tabs open simultaneously, and countless calls - but ultimately, we’d learnt that books aren’t just made of ‘paper’. Following that, we faced yet another problem - a routine that we’d soon realise was the fabric of our entire process. What is a page? Whilst we’d labelled the different pages of the book with the corresponding ‘page numbers’ - it seemed as though printers had another thing in mind entirely. Some had decided that one page was two sides, whilst others considered one page to be one side, and some gave quotes by page number, whilst others by side number. We were way out of our depth, and again - a lot of calls and research was required to decide that the norm was probably one page being two sides, and quotes being counted by page number. This realisation unfortunately also meant that we had to retrace all of our steps, and get new quotes from printers equipped with this knowledge.
Then there was the small issue of page sizes. Our incredible design team and manufacturing suggested a square shaped book for a more fun childish look. However, after calling the first printer and responding to the question ‘what size?’ with ‘square’ it was evident that we needed more information than that. It turned out that 210mm by 210mm is a common size for such products, and upon measuring it out - it seemed to be the exact right side. This issue was therefore pretty easily resolved.
But - what about binding? Books don’t just get printed in one piece apparently. For a book as thin as ‘Felix and Friends’, the regular method was no longer feasible. Nor was it particularly feasible to increase the page number, thereby increasing printing costs just to have an easier binding method. After further research (you know the drill), ‘saddle-stitching’ was discovered. This is apparently the most common method used for children’s books, and would allow us to make a book of only 10 pages (i.e. the size of ‘Felix and Friends’). And then, just because some unseen, all-knowing force enjoyed watching our tab dancing and embarrassing research calls - the next hurdle was choosing a style of paper. As you can see - as humans, we have needlessly over complicated paper to the point that it’s more confusing to order than a pizza. There was gloss, matt, semi gloss, silk finish, abrasive matt, smooth, satin finish, laminated, non-laminated and yet again the drop down was a mile long. I can shamelessly say that Swara and I chose this completely randomly and thanked our lucky stars when the prototype resembled an actual book.
You would think that the most rewarding moment for us after all of this confusion, would be that unimaginably thrilling moment when we had the prototype in our hands. In reality, it was the day before - when Swara, Rayya and I were sitting around Swara’s phone in the psychology classroom, as the printer we were talking to asked us about the specification - to which the answer came promptly,
“210 mm by 210 mm, saddle stitched, 10 pages, 300 sgm for the front, 250 sgm for the inside - laminated front and back and full colour throughout.”
Silent high fives as well as the chance to correct the printer on the easiest method of binding a 10 page book was all the reward that we needed.
