tsukareta! I'm tired!

Today was another gratitude inducing day from my co-workers at the Board of Education. I had a whole day there, so I took advantage of it and finished making 240 new books for HAJET.

What does making a book for HAJET take? I'm glad you asked. I was just about to tell you.

Step 1.
Get a manuscript. The book I've been making for the last month or so was a brand new book. It was time to update the old one, somebody came to us with a manuscript, we said great. Next time I'll make sure there's a page limit. The manuscript was 359 pages, plus frontspieces.

Step 2.
Get supplies. I went to a discount store and bought paper for a fraction of what it costs my BOE to buy paper from the town printing office. Which was good, because I bought 75 packages of paper (500 sheets per package).


Step 3:
Photocopy as required. The most recent book I have been making is a new one, so I printed 200 copies of a 359 page book. Other books printed to date have been shorter and only 50 copies at a time.
Yes, I have spent a lot of time with a photocopier.


Step 4:
Collate. Some of the stuff I've copied I had a friend with a collating machine do the job (Miss Jeshie in the next town over - thanks Pippu BOE!). Some of this book was supposed to be collated by another board member, but it didn't happen in time. So for this latest book, I did it all in-house. Me and my wonderful office. I will have to marry all of them, I love them so much. What does that mean exactly? Well, you put all your piles of paper in a line and pick them up one by one to put them in order. This morning we finished the last of it -- 200 copies of 34 pages. That was the easy part of the day. There were 8-10 people helping me.
Sorry, I was busy collating and didn't take a picture of it. But let me tell you, a Japanese collating team in action is a thing of beauty.

Step 5:
Print covers.
See photocoping Step 3.

Step 6:
Bind books. My office has a binding machine so I can do it all in house. This is good, becuase I can get things done faster, but then again, I and my office have to do all of the labour. It does keep costs down though.

Step 7:
Have the ragged edges cut by the town printing office. This will take about a week it seems.

Step 8:
Ship and sell books. Yeah!

Step 9:
Start printing the next set of books. I think it will be a long summer.

As HAJET Publisher, to date I have:

- photocopied over 90 thousand pages
- collated over 45 thousand pieces of paper (okay, I had help for this)
- printed over 300 covers
- bound nearly 300 books

And there's so much more to come...