Tag: Publishing

Final Pre-Press Stages

On By zosimasIn Project, Publishing, Thebaid BookLeave a comment

Photo Edits, Final Proofreading of Text near completion

Dear Friends and Fellow Pilgrims,

CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Schema-hieromonk Ambrose (Young), Pascha 2013, Entrance of the Theotokos Skete, Hayesville, Ohio

I hope you all have had a good Lent and Holy Week, and a most radiant Pascha! What with the liturgical cycle, tax season, and other filing requirements it’s been a full plate here, and I apologize for the lack of updates over the past several weeks. The good news is St Tikhon’s and I both been busy, and I have much to report since my previous update in late March.

The Final Proof Copy of the Thebaid book was every bit as affirming as my initial impressions led me to hope, with only eleven images requiring any edits, almost exclusively regarding brightness. Out of over two-hundred images, that’s only about 5% that needed any further attention. My original hope for the Final Proof Book images was to reach 90% completion, with no more than ten percent (~20 images) requiring any further edits. To hit 95% was a major achievement, and gave our publishing team some real “wind in our sails” as we turned towards Holy Week. Out of the eleven revised images there are two which need an additional adjustment, then the images will be completed and ready to go to press.

The final proof-reading of the text is being finished by a member of the St Vladimir’s Seminary Press editorial team, and I’m looking forward to that status report during my weekly pre-press phone call with St Tikhon’s Press tomorrow (May 9). Of course, I also went over the text and format elements myself, and identified a “baker’s dozen” or so items for correction, mainly having to do with spacing and ligature, or punctuation.

Perhaps most engaging for STM Press and me has been the completion of a few final design elements which we had deliberately left until the end of pre-press. Deciding on a 2-page-spread image for the book’s end sheets was particularly enjoyable, and further, helped us decide on two other 2-page spreads in the front matter to highlight some important components of the book. No spoilers, so I will decline to say anything further, except to express my hope that you who have been following this project most closely will appreciate the opening pages of the book and why I kept it under wraps.

My weekly pre-press phone calls with St Tikhon’s Press will continue until we go to press. If you were looking at the side bar on the Thebaid website and didn’t see anything scheduled for the past few weeks, that was due to an oversight on my part, now corrected, where my calendar entries for the Pre-Press Phone Calls were tagged for my personal calendar, not the Thebaid Book Project (which is synched to my Thebaid Website). As soon as we have future dates for sending the file to press, and an expected date for receiving of the book shipment at St Tikhon’s, I will post those also.

Lastly, on a different topic, I am pleased to share with you about the recent launch of a new podcast series which you may enjoy: Homilies of Fr Ambrose Young. (I included with this post a favorite photograph I made of Fr Ambrose serving at Pascha in 2013.)

Adapted from the podcast description:

Hieromonk Ambrose (Young) is the author of numerous books and articles about Orthodox Christian life, and was editor of the journals Nikodemos and Orthodox America in the 1970s and 80s. Born in 1943, then Craig Young, at the age of 27, converted with his wife, Susan, and their small son, Ian, from Roman Catholicism to Orthodoxy, taking the name Alexey, for St Alexis, the Man of God. In 1979, he was ordained a presbyter of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), serving mission parishes for the next twenty years. After the death of his wife in the late 1990s, Fr Alexey, a spiritual son of Fr Seraphim Rose, was tonsured a monk and became Hieromonk Ambrose. For the last ten years, Fr Ambrose has been limited by illness.

I feel blessed to have been in close orbit around Fr Ambrose and the Skete of the Entrance of the Theotokos in northern Ohio (where he served in retirement as chaplain) for several years. One of the goals our small community had was to begin collecting and republishing Fr Ambrose’s writings, and perhaps record and distribute his homilies. It is therefore a great blessing to see this first series of his talks come to light and make its way to the internet. Fr Ambrose kindly give his permission and blessing for me to include in The North American Thebaid Book his article, “What is a Holy Pilgrimage?”, which was transcribed from a talk he gave at a retreat in the late 1990s. This article is one of the pillars on which the Thebaid Book is based, and there is, to my knowledge, almost no other article on pilgrimage like it, breathing the savor of Holy Orthodoxy, which makes it all the more important that it now will be seen by a wider audience. Thus it is a providential and timely occurrence that this new podcast series should be launched just as we are preparing to send the book to press.

With that blessing in mind, I wish you all a peace-filled remainder of Bright Week, and a luminous forty days to the Ascension of the Lord. Watch for more news coming very soon, I hope and trust.

Yours in our Risen Lord,

zosimas

Preparing to hit ‘Send’ – A New Year’s Book Update

On By zosimasIn Project, Publishing, Thebaid Book1 Comment
Cemetery Chapel in Winter, Dormition Monastery, Rives Jct, Michigan

Dear Friends & Supporters, Fellow Pilgrims All ~

Christ is Born! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

The suspense builds at our end as we prepare to send the book file to the printer to order the Final Proof Edition. Even during the holidays we have been working behind the scenes on final details.

See below for links and details on preordering.

In our most recent news, back at the start of December I had completed the last image edits and file conversions to 4-color (CMYK) mode, which optimized them for the book’s offset printing. The proofreader returned the completed text edits about a week later, and my editor at St Tikhon’s Press has since then been replacing the place-keeper images and text in the layout file. Sometime in the next several days I expect to receive a new “final” PDF file of the book, and my editor and I will review it together and make any final tweaks before ordering the Final Proof Edition.

New to this round of updates will be the final designs for the book cover, the dust jacket, and the end sheets. These are the finishing touches, so to speak, and will complete the “look” and “feel” of the book.

So, the Final Proof Edition is finally at hand. As I described it recently for a friend, “we are now days away, not weeks.” Later this week, I hope we will be “hours away, not days.” I’ll update you when it has been ordered, and we’ll move forward to the final pre-press stage, the inspection of the printed Final Proof, after which we go to press.

My heartfelt thanks to all of you who have supported The North American Thebaid Project through your preorders and prayers, some from the very beginning, way back in 2016! Thank you for believing in this unique photographic pilgrimage book project and backing it with your contributions and pre-orders. You have made all of this possible, and I am deeply grateful. 

My thanks again to all you who have recently pre-ordered the book. If you haven’t pre-ordered, please keep in mind that there are real benefits to doing so, such as the inclusion of a signed & matted fine art print from the project (not available separately), and the option to order the Deluxe Limited Edition (signed & numbered with leather-bound cover and signed & matted print), which will not be available through standard retail channels, but only through pre-order. See the below Pre-Order Notes for details and links.

Watch for another update when we order the final proof copy! 

Yours in Pre-Press Mode,

zosimas

† Pre-Order Notes:

  • Pre-orders of The North American Thebaid book are still available for a limited time at The Thebaid Store.
  • Discounts available for multiple copies of both the Standard Edition and the Deluxe Limited Edition.
  • The Deluxe Limited Edition (Leather-bound, signed & numbered, with signed and matted print) is available only by pre-order for a limited time. Once the book goes go to print, we will close the pre-order Thebaid Store.
  • Signed copies of the Standard Edition (with a signed and matted print) are available by pre-order until the book goes to print.
  • The signed and matted 8×10 prints are only available by pre-order bundled with the book, and will not be available separately either before we go to print, or afterwards. There are currently no plans to offer individual Thebaid prints for sale.
  • Pre-orders will be shipped before retail channels receive their copies for resale.
  • Upon publication, the Standard Edition will be available through the STM Press Bookstore, and through other online and ‘brick and mortar’ resellers.
  • Contact STM Press with queries about discounts for resellers and church bookstores.