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Thursday 21 March 2013

Vanities and Vexations is published! an easier matter than in Jane Austen's time

And is also available on Kindle.
This may take a day or two to appear however as the immediacy of electronic information transfer isn't that immediate.

However at least it doesn't take as long as it did for Jane Austen, who had to wait for her MS to be typeset with moveable type, the physical printing of the first run, after the expert in that field had worked out where to put them..... because in a physical book of the era before perfect-bound [glued in] pages the making of a book involved the making up of sigs where several pages were enclosed together [usually one sig would be printed on one sheet of paper and then cut to be sewn together]. If you have 12 pages in a sig, for example, the first double spread will have page 1 and page 12 on one side, and pages 2 and 11 on the other, inside which is the spread of pages 3 and 10, with 4 and 9, and so on.  Is it a pain?  too right it is!  And yes, I DO know because I've done it manually by using the printer on the computer to print two pages side by side and sewn and bound them. 
And then when all the sigs are assembled and sewn, they are joined by sewing down the back and attached to the book muslin to attach them into the spine, and the whole are of bookbinding is a mighty business in itself and I couldn't put it better than Kathryn Kane in the Regency Redingote to be found HERE.

Of course Jane also had to wait for her novel to appear three times over each time as it was published in three volumes.  I may moan about technology but I have to say, I'm glad I live now!  especially as CreateSpace are continually improving their service [thanks CreateSpace, great team!]

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