Book Projects
Why produce a book?
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If the question is, "why produce a paper book instead of an e-book?" then one answer is that
material is submitted to print-on-demand services in the form of pdf files,
so the the processes for producing books in paper and electronic form
are very similar.
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If the question is, "why produce a book instead of a webpage?" then one answer is that
static nature of books gives the book producer more control over
layout.
Print books also give more control over color since they are independent of the
calibration of the reader's computer/phone screen.
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If the question is, "why produce a book when so many books are already available?"
then one answer is that not everything worth writing about has been written.
There are many things happening today that are worth preserving.
Also, some of what was written is in the process of being lost.
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My first book is a about an artist who had been working for decades.
Though he had been featured in book and magazine articles, those relatively few pages
barely scratched the surface of what he had to offer.
Documenting just one of his projects turned into a book with over 140 pages.
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My second book was originally produced (by someone else) on a manual typewriter and
photocopied for decades. The process of photocopying this book degraded the
quality of the images and print.
In particular, many of the Japanese characters were no longer legible.
My project was to produce a clean digital master copy that would
restore and preserve the book and allow printing without further degradation.
My First Book - A Photo Documentary
This book started out as a technical exercise for learning about what
goes into producing a book:
from photography and image processing to writing and typesetting.
But in the end, I felt very fortunate to have been able to see
firsthand this amazing artist at work, and share that view with others.
Book Preservation
DIY Books
This page has some notes on how I typeset my books.