The concept of finalizing

My guide of Lebanon is done, really done. It is now in the hands of the printer company; there is nothing I can do about it anymore. And I guess that all is a good thing.

 

The last 4 months have been tough, challenging and time pressuring. Finalizing the text, finalizing the maps, finalizing the cover and finalizing the lay-out. Looking at the definition of to finalize ‘To put into a final form’, it seems short and simple. Finalizing my guide was a whole different story.

 

The text – After I had my native English speaking friends pre-editing all my chapters, it was time for the main editor to have a look at them. As much as he miscalculated how much time it takes to edit 216 pages – the total size of my book – I completely underestimated the time for processing his comments, which, I have to say, were great and very useful. In the meantime I had some final things to sort out; a few missing phone numbers, directions, locations, rates, etc. Now knowing there was a reason for these ‘little’ last things to remain unsorted, this took massive time. To unravel a location in Beirut can take easily take 2 hours on Google followed by 2 hours of wandering around. Well, at least a confirmation of that what you are doing is useful. After all information was in place, I printed and read my guide, then printed and read it again. Mistakes are endless, obviously my ability to find them was not; at one point you seem to become completely blind for your own writing. And then a week before printing – after having FINALIZED the text – I saw that a bar I put I my book had shifted owner and name. Yes, I changed it.

 

The maps – I think my friend sorrows the day he offered me to draw the maps for my guide. Forty maps we ended up with. With the exception of a few main cities, street maps of Lebanon’s towns are absent. Creating a map generally means starting from scratch. With the help of Google maps, some existing maps in other guidebooks, and all the information I gathered myself, it still was…a real science. I don’t want to bother you with the details, but I am not exaggerating saying that in total we spend a good 300 hours on them. They came out lovely.

 

The cover – The cover was nice, the cover was fun. No rules, no practicalities, just a creation of how we liked it. I have to admit that the printer company needed to make a small change having to do with bleeds for printing, but other than that, a most rewarding job!

 

The lay-out – When I started my book I felt that Word would do for all pages, with the exception the cover and the chapter pages; these were the only ones I would have properly designed. So, I had done all my lay-out in Word – 216 pages with columns, headers and text boxes – until I realized this wasn’t good enough. All the time I spent, the guide deserved better than that. So I downloaded InDesign; the program that professionals use for designing book, flyers, etc. After a week of teaching myself – with a little help from Google and a friend – the lay-out started all over again and another six weeks passed by. After adding the guide colours – naming them Lebanese green and Lebanese red – I could nothing else than be happy with the result.

 

And then, the printing. I selected the printing company already three months ago. It is the largest printing company in Lebanon and according to their information the most modern one in the Middle East. The way they offered me their time and help was amazing; yet the days of handing over all the files was not. Despite all their expertise, it is you that have to make the final decisions: the colours of the pictures, the thickness of the paper, whether or not to use an extra ink pattern to make the colours more ‘clean’, including the most stressful: signing off the proof prints hearing the words ‘from now one it’s your responsibility’. Yet, putting my last signature on these documents meant it all – THE GUIDE IS DONE!!!

 

Tonight, I will sleep either very well or very bad…