What is book design? That’s a question I asked back in 1998 when Jane Coughran and I published The Cabins of Mineral King.

The answer was too complex and computerish for me to comprehend. We paid someone to prepare our book for printing, and I had no understanding whatsoever of what was involved.

When I published The Cabins of Wilsonia, I figured I could do that stuff myself, being the owner of a Macbook and having written this blog for 5 years (at that time).

Holy guacamole. I had no pickin’ idea. It involved buying InDesign and learning to use it. This necessitated 2 trips to Seattle for training and many desperate calls for help. It also involved a huge number of uncharitable and unChristian thoughts towards Adobe, the makers of InDesign and Photoshop Elements, the latter of which is supposed to be simple to use.

Fall down laughing. . .

In spite of the difficulties, I got ‘er dun.

This gave me a false sense of confidence in believing I could do the book design for someone else, 2 years of forgetting later.

Oh my. This calls for a calming picture, and I’ll have to continue this little saga tomorrow.