Hello:

I am in the process of printing my first actual physical book that isn't an ebook. I'm using LibreOffice, FocusWriter and the GIMP mostly on Fedora machines in the pursuit of this goal. Currently we have a test plate and the intent is to print up some test impressions this weekend. The manuscript (short science fiction piece) is pretty much finished other than for some images still being worked on.

The plan was/is to produce a pdf with images embedded which will be sent to BoxCar press who will produce a polymer plate from it. This plate gets adhered to a proprietory base they make and locked into the chase of an old Craftsmen platen press bolted to the dining room table. At that point, its old-school ink and paper make-ready and printing by pulling a lever for each impression (my press is hand-operated).

Once printed, its time for bindery operations... its looking likely that I will be having that done by a book binder.

Its been quite a journey so far, and per some off-list conversations I've had with Oliver Guitierez (sorry if I misspelled your name Oliver) I thought that maybe it might make an interesting article for Fedora Magazine.

It would probably end up being a three-part article, and as it is very much visual, the book having illustrations in it, there would probably be quite a few images, some screenshots, i.e.: turning a photograph into a line drawing using GIMP, and some photographs showing the press and the other hardware being used.

Does this sound like an article that would be of interest?

Thanks,

Dale