Robbi has been working furiously for the last few weeks, illustrating the next volumes to go out for both Idiots’Books and Bobbledy Books. On the Idiots front, she has been working on Sisyphus Rex, a spirited fable of bad leadership and the perpetuation of the same old disappointing outcomes. The illustrations look like this:

And the cover looks like this.

Sort of…notice how there seem to be two books in one book? That’s because there are. We do our Idiots’Books printing with a company called Lightning Source. They’re great because they’re affordable and fast. They’re not so great because they only offer a limited number of template options. We want Sisyphus to be a horizontal book (meaning its spine is much shorter than the book is wide). There is no template with the dimensions we want. And so, we set up our file “two up,” meaning that we print one large book that contains the contents of two small ones.

We have to use our trimmer to liberate the individual books. This requires careful measuring.

And even more careful cutting.

Notice the care. Such care is rare for me.

I prefer to act in rash and hurried ways.

But when I am done, we have two small books instead of one big one.

Once I’ve trimmed the bottom of the top book, I have to trim the top of the bottom book.

Because the bottom of Sisyphus “bleeds,” (which means that the ink goes all the way to the edge of the page), Robbi had to leave a little strip between the two books.

This little strip, once trimming was done, turned into a little book of its own. A special sort of book book with a very short spine and a very wide page.

We reviewed our proof today and placed the bulk of the order. We suspect to have the rest some time next week. We’ll have the letters and envelopes waiting, so consider yourselves warned that Sisyphus is coming soon to a mailbox near you.

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