Saturday 16 October 2010

Lino Printing For Fun and Profit

I decided to list some lino print cards on Etsy, that rather fine site for selling stuff what you made yourself.

It's not really about the money (common fib, I know, but what I mean is that it's not really worth the money, given how long the printing takes). What I'm interested in is the process. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how authors promote themselves online, and this is my way of creating a parallel challenge for myself. And if I can combine two so-called skills of mine - print making and marketing - then I'll be rather pleased.

Anyway, having listed m'pinecone card, and a rather nice lady having bought one ... I now have to print the bugger.

Here's how it's going:


All the stuff, including rolled-out ink, lovely roller, board for keeping the lino in place (for fiddly registration purposes) etc.


Two bits of lino, one for the highlight colour, the other one for the rest (not printing the 'Christmas '09' bit this time round, for obvious reasons).


Nice new press, clamped to a bit of kitchen.


Highlights printed and drying.

- Update - All finished now:


All ready to send one out into the world. Exciting!







Saturday 9 October 2010

What I Want From An Ebook - Part II

Since I posted that, the excellent James Bridle has launched a campaign called Open Bookmarks, whose aim is to enable sharing of reader comments across reader devices. And he sets that aspiration in a very interesting historical and literary context. Read all about it here and also see the interesting comments below, in which James describes what he wants, and I would entirely second this, as "selfish socialising" ie control over who reads your annotations.