Crafting a Book: The Package

I hope you enjoyed the photos I could include in last month’s installment of Crafting a Book. I’m dying to show everyone the projects from the book!

Last month, I wrote about making the project prototypes for the book. I wish I had known during the making process that I should take a step back and enjoy it, since the steps that follow are a little (just a little) more stressful. They include some of the practical behind the scenes details that I find most interesting about this process.

Earlier this month, I turned in my “Package,” the term Stash gives to all of the collateral material that is necessary for producing the book. Actually, this month I also had to deal with shipping my projects–more than a dozen up-to-full-size quilts–to California. That was an adventure. I can tell you now that UPS and FedEX will *not* pick up from your house with less than a day’s notice, even if you desperately open accounts with them. I can also tell you that a 5′ 1″ person can drag a box as tall as herself through a FedEx parking lot, albeit with some awkwardness (although ask me about trying to fit it in my car…)

Well, the quilts arrived safe and sound and then I went on to packing up the rest of the things that my team need to design and create the book. I thought some of these might be surprising to you, so I figured I’d give a little more detail.

Firstly, those step-out models I mentioned a few posts back? This was the time for me to send them. Each how-to photo needs to have its own models, and each photo is given a number, which is how I’m to label the models. Now for me and my designs, which often use really large appliqués, figuring out how to ship these models without crushing them has been a challenge. I settled on rolling them, and then I had to figure out how to label each model adequately while rolling them into the same package. Some of my models were easier–they fit inside gallon zip-lock bags that can also contain the requisite label and snapshot showing how they’re to be used.

I also sent cut samples of nearly all of the fabrics I used while making the projects for the book. These will be used by the book designers to “spice up” the pages. This is one of the elements of craft books that I most love, so I was happy to provide the designers with whatever I can. Still, cutting all the samples took at least half a day, not an inconsiderable amount of work.

Then there are the photo permissions. For any photos I supplied (that is, not taken by the Stash Books team), I needed to get written permission for them to be reproduced. Not so difficult with my head shot photographer in town, but a little more complicated for the 17th century Spanish painting that I’ll be including. At least my art history background prepared me for the process of getting permissions from a museum.

There are a bunch of other things included in the Package, such as the myriad checklists pictured above. Perhaps I’ll write about those in another post. The things I just described, though, were not things I had ever thought about when looking at other craft books (well, except for the museum-owned work of art), so I hope they were somewhat interesting for you to read about.  From here on out things will be in my editors’ and designers’ hands, although I expect that I’ll be called on for some editing. I’ll keep you posted about what happens!

Thanks again for reading, and let me know in the comments if you have any questions or curiosities about the publishing process. I’d be happy to devote a post to them!!

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