Bookbaby

Can you call something "New and Improved!" if it got improved before it even had its debut?

***

I've been keeping a very late schedule lately because my baby arrived this week. I was really thrilled at how bright and glossy and colorful she was, and then I started looking for ways I could make her even better.

I was lucky to enlist the help of our art conservator friend, whom you might remember from this post. T. has a weekly sleep-over at our house, since we live close to the museum and then he doesn't have to commute so far to work. I used that opportunity to get his expert advice on my book's appearance, layout and images.

With his input, I realized that there were two photos that just didn't make the cut, when compared to the rest of the photography overall. As I went through the remaining photos in my inventory, I came to the conclusion that I didn't have anything better to replace them with either.

So yesterday I woke up even earlier so that I had almost an hour in Chinatown to myself before it was time to go to the office. It was a cool, misty morning, and very few people were out. Solitary figures in Portsmouth Square, practicing tai chi. A father, hand in hand with two little boys, perhaps on their way to the playground.

What was most special about this walk were the few elderly gentlemen that seemed genuinely welcoming to me, that smiled and nodded, or waved or said "good" to me as our paths crossed.

What was also special was that I ended up with 120 photos, many of them excellent. Which meant that I had to find room for them. Instead of replacing two images and calling it a day, my book went from 40 pages to 60 because there were so many other images that I couldn't believe I got so lucky with.

My book went from being a baby to a toddler, I guess.

Which meant that I was up until midnight sitting in front of the computer. Again. Thank god for cosmetics. Otherwise I'd look like an extra from the House of Wax. (I feel like one, though.)

***

All of this publishing business is bringing out memories of the 8-year-old girl in me. As a kid, I was always making tiny books and laying out my version of the Macy's fashion catalogs. No dolls, no stuffed animal could hold a candle to the chance to make a book, complete with a well-stapled binding. The books were generally illustrated in felt-tip pen with great care, but the writing was often plagiarized from random portions of Little House on the Prairie or Aesop's Fables. (At the time, I was more interested in the book production process, and meeting my internal publishing deadline was more important than where the text came from.)

(For years, my parents thought I was a something of a writing savant until I finally told them that they'd unknowingly been enjoying the excerpted words of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and not my own brilliant prose. They were crushed. But the single, extant copy of Vertrud and His Friends is still a family classic. As is The Fox and the Charry Tree.)

***

I wonder what kind of girl-powered publishing genius I would have been by now if I had had access to blurb.com as a child.

Oh well, better late than never, right?

ps. I promise this is the last version of the book and then I'll give you ALL the details! I have to make sure that my little girl is as perfect as I can make her before I send her out into the big world.