We have now signed off our fourth proof of Edna’s Diary from Amazon. Really, the last two proofs were necessary only to tweak the back cover. I think this is often the case: you can rapidly get the contents right, i.e. the text, but the number of spatial variables on the back cover raises the chances of misalignments etc there, so you just have to keep rejigging and resubmitting it until you are satisfied. That is the stage we reached last week. Assuming Amazon themselves now approve the book for printing, the complete cover (without the barcode) should look like this:
Unfortunately, though, I have now noticed the two faint brown patches at the top of the front and back cover, which in the proofs were obscured by Amazon’s thick overprint ‘Not for Resale’. Aaaargh! Perhaps no-one else will notice them, but perhaps Amazon’s quality control (which is good) will say they are flaws… To be honest, I jumped to the conclusion that they were smudges from Amazon’s own printing of their overprint band. But they are not. They are where my mother used Tippex to white out words and write over them. The Tippex, of course, was white, but after twelve years’ fading and the imposition of a blue ground they have come out brown!
This has necessitated a long discussion between Sam2 and me about what we are going to do when we receive our sample of the book and can see just how conspicuous the smudges are. Since the whole point of the cover design was to show what a diary written by a stroke survivor looks like ‘warts and all’, I am in favour at the moment of leaving them there (if Amazon permits) and adding a few explanatory words to the Introduction apropos of my minimal tampering with my mother’s text.
We paid Amazon £30.87 for the four proofs sent ‘expedited’ — which meant that we received them back within three days — and I think that is reasonable. If you don’t go for ‘expedited’, the proofs can take up to a week. The ‘expedited’ service means that we have got ahead of our original schedule and I am bringing the official publication date forward. It will finally be determined by Amazon, but could be as early as 15 May. That will give me plenty of time to send out copies in advance of Aphasia Awareness Month — June.
Watch this space for the publication announcement!
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon c.1901
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon, 1912
Captain of the 11
Nearly there…
We have now signed off our fourth proof of Edna’s Diary from Amazon. Really, the last two proofs were necessary only to tweak the back cover. I think this is often the case: you can rapidly get the contents right, i.e. the text, but the number of spatial variables on the back cover raises the chances of misalignments etc there, so you just have to keep rejigging and resubmitting it until you are satisfied. That is the stage we reached last week. Assuming Amazon themselves now approve the book for printing, the complete cover (without the barcode) should look like this:
Unfortunately, though, I have now noticed the two faint brown patches at the top of the front and back cover, which in the proofs were obscured by Amazon’s thick overprint ‘Not for Resale’. Aaaargh! Perhaps no-one else will notice them, but perhaps Amazon’s quality control (which is good) will say they are flaws… To be honest, I jumped to the conclusion that they were smudges from Amazon’s own printing of their overprint band. But they are not. They are where my mother used Tippex to white out words and write over them. The Tippex, of course, was white, but after twelve years’ fading and the imposition of a blue ground they have come out brown!
This has necessitated a long discussion between Sam2 and me about what we are going to do when we receive our sample of the book and can see just how conspicuous the smudges are. Since the whole point of the cover design was to show what a diary written by a stroke survivor looks like ‘warts and all’, I am in favour at the moment of leaving them there (if Amazon permits) and adding a few explanatory words to the Introduction apropos of my minimal tampering with my mother’s text.
We paid Amazon £30.87 for the four proofs sent ‘expedited’ — which meant that we received them back within three days — and I think that is reasonable. If you don’t go for ‘expedited’, the proofs can take up to a week. The ‘expedited’ service means that we have got ahead of our original schedule and I am bringing the official publication date forward. It will finally be determined by Amazon, but could be as early as 15 May. That will give me plenty of time to send out copies in advance of Aphasia Awareness Month — June.
Watch this space for the publication announcement!
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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