The weird trip to Salem, AZ
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This is the story of how Salem, AZ #1 came to premiere at this year's Mid-Ohio-Con, and all the bumps along the road.
Coming up with the idea and writing the script weren't problems. Convincing Nicole McClain to be the model for Kerry Connelly was so easy it was astonishing. The book built its own buzz because everyone loved the concept of a "withcraft western." The ashcan mini Paul Schultz and I made sold well and got people talking.
The book's first delay was Paul's decision to have Bill "Inkslinger" Wilkison to finish inking it after Paul had drawn and inked the first ten pages. Paul is a fine inker in his own right, but has grown to love letting others ink his own work so he can pencil more lovely artwork. Bill, a fan of the book since seeing Paul's first sketch of Kerry, lovingly inked the book and did a great job. It wasn't much of a delay, but it was a brief halt in production.
The next delay was me figuring out if I wanted to print it in black and white or in color. I had a colorist lined up for it, but he was already far behind on other projects for me. Paul loved Bill's inks so much that he convinced me to print it in black and white. This decision was quickly followed by the third delay - neither Paul nor I had a scanner for the images. Paul's was long since defunct and my new laptop PC wasn't compatible with our old scanner. Paul soon got a big scanner and started sending me the images.
I then lettered the book, which took me about a total of two weeks. I then had to find a printer. I had planned to use the folks who had printed my last two books, but I couldn't reach them and figured they'd gone out of business. Jon Hodges, of Bad Place Productions, suggested a printer they had used in the past. He said they got a good deal with them and he gave me plenty of contact information for them. I called them, spoke with one of their reps, and gave them the details of the book.
Here we run into "Major Obstacle" #1. The book was designed to be printed sideways, and I wanted the book stapled along the short top edge. The printer started asking me about the physical dimensions of the pages. I had no idea how to figure this out. I could tell them the dpi and MB size, but I had no idea (at that time) how to tell you the physical size of a digital image. I also had never been asked this by a printer. I have self-published many books by now, and no one has ever asked me if my pages were a certain size or not.
The printer sends three price estimates (for 500, 600, and 800 books). The cheapest of the three was not only more than double what Jon told me it should be, it cost more than four payments on my house. I called the printer and more or less told them they were out of their minds. Another employee called me back and explained part of the reason the price was so high was because I wanted the book stapled along the top edge, which meant they had to use bigger paper and that greatly increased the cost. She thought, however, that we could work out a much better price if we changed a few things.
She did some figuring and sent me a new price quote. It was now only the cost of three house payments. She also said that if I could reduce the physical size of the pages they could use smaller paper and cut the cost even more. She suggested that I let their graphic designers shrink the pages, and not do it myself, in case there were minor corrections that their designers would end up doing anyway. Their charge for this convenience was $100/hour.
Mind you, I am learning all this within a month of the Mid-Ohio-Con. I have sworn to have this book printed for the show. I had neither the time to resize 52 pages nor the money to pay someone $100/hour for something I could do myself. In desperation, I called my original printer and learned she was still printing books. She said she could get me the books on time for the cost of less than two house payments. She also said she could perfect bind the book (like a graphic novel) along the top edge and I wouldn't have to resize any pages.
"Major Obstacle #2" then smacked me in the mouth. The printer's machine broke and was leaving weird streaks across the interior pages. She searched desperately for replacement parts as the Mid-Ohio countdown clock kept ticking. She found the parts and fixed the machine. After that, I didn't hear from her for a few days. I called and then ran into "Major Obstacle #3." The machine that printed the color covers was now broken and it appeared I would have no books for Mid-Ohio. She, bless her heart, searched everywhere for parts, but wasn't confident she'd find them and also figured this breakdown would drive her out of business.
Mandy and I started the drive to Mid-Ohio without any books and I told Nicole McClain that we had none. I felt horrible because she had even more people asking me about the book than I. We weren't more than a half hour from home when the printer called to tell me she had managed to get 50 books done. I was so happy that I missed an exit on the highway. She planned to overnight ship them to me at the Hyatt hotel in downtown Columbus.
Once in Columbus, we ran into "Major Obstacle #4" when we realized there are two Hyatt hotels in downtown Columbus and she had shipped them to the wrong hotel. Fortunately, the other hotel was only six blocks from ours. Mandy was able to pick up the books the next morning and bring them to my booth at the show, surprising Nicole in the process.
Now I need to find a new printer to finish the print job. I've contacted one, but they say they can't perfect bind a 52-pager along the short side and they have a 1000-book minimum. I don't need 1000 books, so I'm looking for someone else. If you know a good printer, let me know. I may print the next batch with the binding along the left side to make things easier. If that's the case, consider yourself lucky if you got one of the original 50 with the short edge binding. They will be rarer than they are now.