The February edition of All Things Country Magazine is at the printers. Took a whole 4 minutes to send it from our little farm in northern Estill County to Dayton, Ohio! I sure wish we could have 12,000 copies delivered in 4 minutes.
Times have sure changed over the years in publishing, although some things still remain the same. When I started in the newspaper business, I worked on a big old machine that didn't have a screen. My copy sat directly in front of me and I had a little bitty window that showed about 4 words, maybe 5 if they were short ones. And they disappeared every time you 'returned'. If you made a mistake, too bad! And you didn't know if you had even made a mistake until you took a film canister out of the big old machine, walked back to the darkroom and developed the 'galleys' - long strips of film that the type was printed onto.
You then took the galleys and read through them. Using a blue printers marker you crossed out lines that had errors. If you were lucky there were none. This rarely happened! You then had to sit back down at the big old machine and type JUST THAT LINE. If it happened to be longer than the line you were correcting was, then you had to keep typing until you caught up, so to speak, on your galley. Once corrections were typed you then had to repeat the developing process to get your galleys again.
The next step? The one that had me thinking my very first day on the job whether this was the job for me or not! You ran your galley through the wax machine, laid it on your light-table and using a pica pole (a printer name for a steel ruler) and your trusty x-acto knife - you cut your lines of corrections out and placed them over your error on the original galley. And of course, it has to be perfectly straight so you don't see a crooked line when the paper is printed.
Whew! Did you get all that? How many of you remember those days? This was only the first step in a very long process. I spent hours standing in front of light boards laying out pages of type. As straight as possible. I got pretty good at it by the time I started on my first 'apple' computer and didn't have to do it anymore. Another thing you got good at? Keeping a firm hold on that x-acto knife. You wouldn't believe the times I've dropped one and it just missed my foot. Trust me, an x-acto knife falling from about 4 feet straight down puts a pretty good puncture in the top of your foot! May not seem like it would, but the sharper you kept your knife the better, so it was very sharp - with a very sharp point!
So many changes, yet so many things remain the same. Delivery is one of those things. We've gotten pretty good at it, but still can't get it all done in one day, two days is really pushing it sometimes. The winter months are much harder obviously. I guess it has changed in some ways - we don't have to deliver it by horseback! Although when the gas bill comes in, it makes us wonder!
Another thing that never changes .... putting an edition out without some kind of mistake in it. I try. I try my hardest. But it never seems to happen. When we pick up the book, it usually doesn't take me long to find an error. A good part of the changes that have come around down the road ... the ability to correct my errors and upload it to our website. I can't fix the printed edition .... but I certainly can fix the online version!
I try not to look at the book more than a couple of times when it comes out. I get too disappointed. And heck, I've seen enough of it by the time it prints. By the time it prints and is all delivered, it's time to start on the next edition anyway!
So, February has been 'put to bed' as they refer to it in the printing industry. It's time for a nap .... and then to enjoy my one true time off each month! The day before delivery begins. And I say a day off, but I'm never too far from my emails .... or the critters outside, which is our other non-stop job!
Thanks for following along ... and have a beautiful day!
Pam
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