Oh lordy, this is BORING:

I know I love my job, and Snowbooks, and everything, but I'm really struggling on this one. I am on a mission to become the best martial arts publisher in the world which is why I'm publishing a book called Ground Fighting, amongst others, later this year. A sneak preview of some of the spreads is above. A lot of martial arts books have greyscale photos, which are quite hard to follow, and our difference is that we have nice, crisp, colour photos with their backgrounds clipped away, and clear design, and high quality editing - which is all great, but it TAKES SOOO LONG. Especially when you have 1200 (one thousand two hundred - I repeat so it will sink in, because that is a lot) photos. So here's what needs to be done on the images:

- Take 5000 photos
- Select the best 1200
- Clip out the backgrounds of those 1200 photos (takes between 10-15 minutes per photo. Yup - a month's solid work. Remember that I'm also sales and marketing director, FD, bibliographic data manager etc.)
- Place each photo in the right sequence into the layout

At stages 1-3 it was too depressing to blog about this because there was still so much to do - but now all the photos are selected and clipped out. I'm now half way through placing them into the layout.

I tell you, this book had better sell otherwise not only is that money down the drain, it is the best years of my life - or so it feels. Think of me on this blustery Saturday when you're out scuffing through leaves, playing in the park or whatever it is you do with your weekends. Think of me pressing ctrl-D, select, ctrl-shift-drag, click, move, deselect over and over and over and over and over again...

// Update, late at night: Finished placing the photos! Yey! I feel like I've climbed the Himalayas or one of those desert endurance races, although on the plus side there's considerably less sweating involved in typesetting. Good news all round. //