It just arrived this morning, and oh, it is pretty! I'm very happy with it, and I can finally stop worrying. (I never stop worrying about a print product until it is in my hands, and I can be sure the printing went okay. Glitches can happen, after all.)



Also, since I have been gently prodded, I have already put it up in the shop.

So now it's time for me to pack up the complimentary copies due to the museums and institutions, and for the German National Library (which keeps a copy of all the things published in Germany).

If you want to be sent a copy too, you can order it in my shop - or come and see me at the Nadelkunst on October 2-4 and buy it there.

The book is at the printer, and I hope there will be no more shenanigans. I shall wear any typo left in there, and any US spelling, and any glitch in line lineup - I'm fed up with doing corrections on it, and I'm also rather unhappy with how communication with the printer worked out. I will think thrice about using that service again.

Well, anyway, in case you like numbers, here's a rundown of a few numbers related to the gold embroidery book...

Days before today I wanted to have this dealt with and over: 2.
Number of pages in the final version: 56.
Number of different fonts: 1. (Thanks Thorsten!)
Percent the amount of pages has gone up from first estimate:  80%.
Percent the costs for making have gone up since my first calculations: 100%.
Days delayed due to post issues: 1.
People hijacked, cajoled or otherwise finagled into helping in some way: at least 16.
Number of phone calls undertaken due to the book: 5. (I strongly prefer emails...)
Number of times checked for errors, including typographical errors: at least 7.
Photos taken for the project: about 650.
Days I woke up way too early because of the book: about 10.

In case you wonder about the insane amount of photos taken, it went like this:
a) Make a list of steps that need to be photographed.
b) Set up equipment.
c) Do the embroidery for the steps required, holding a remote control thingie in one hand and peering through the camera viewer while stitching. (Optional: Realise that there are some movements that are hard to do when holding a remote control as well as the embroidery frame and a needle and the gold thread.)
d) Press the button on the remote control.
e) Slightly change angles of the piece that's being worked and press the remote control button again.
f) Repeat e) several times.
g) Look at photos. (Delete lots of them again.)

One of the many photos that did not make it into the book. See the remote control thingie sticking out of my right hand? The button is under my ring finger.

h) Realise there should be another one, or a different one of that step, to make things clearer.
i) Repeat c)-g).
j) If necessary, repeat h) and i).

Yesterday was spent (partly) at the library, checking up things in books. Today is putting the last few pictures in (they will arrive today), then final layouting and related edits, and then our trusty little printer gets to churn out the whole thing once for a very last check-up. (Oh, and showing it off to my family over the weekend.)

Also, there is a cover. It's blue, and gold, and beautiful, and it looks like this:


Also: Thank Goodness it's Friday. I can use a bit of weekend!

Here I am, well into the final bits of work on the embroidery book - tweaking, resizing, colour correcting and inserting pictures. Tomorrow will be a library day, where I will read and look up the final few books to give further reading suggestions for all the interesting stuff. (Or at least some of it.)

After that, the only things remaining is taking care of the cover layout (where I'll be getting some input from a friend), doing one printout of the whole shebang to check for any bad things that have crept in, do a final proofread to fix typos, and get a general impression on how nice my layout is. Fortunately there's a lovely book I got one day from a friend:


(That's "Graphic design for non-graphic designers", and it's a really wonderfully helpful book, and it's out of print, but you can get the ebook.)

 There's instructions for lots of stuff in there, including on how to set up the type area for a book. So I looked at that part again, did some thinking, and then did some drawing on a piece of paper. It happens to be a printout of the text (with no layout yet). Fun! And this is how the result of my having fun looked:

As much as I love computers, for some tasks you just can't beat a pencil, a ruler, and a piece of paper.

 Then the only thing left is to finish the front matter (German bookpeople call that the "Titelei" - which sounds very nice in a weird way, I think).

If things all go according to plan, I will send it to the printer on Monday... so only a few more days for me to spend in the thrall of the book. I'll be very happy when I can turn to other things again!

This will, more (more embroidery) or less (shoes will come tomorrow - they deserve their own spot)
, be the blogpost I intended to do on Friday... so here goes:

After my long Hugo ramblings, I did some more reading, and I'm obviously notthe only one trying to see the kerfuffle as the basis for a new awareness of the Hugo, and maybe dragging it into the Century of the Fruitbat (or whatever we have, currently). Ken Marable has made a blog to collect recommendations for things you consider nomination-worthy for the Hugo, for all categories, and open for everyone - or, as the blog itself puts it, "The Non-Slate: Just Fans Talking about What They Love". Go read his post about the blog and moving forward - I think it's a wonderful idea, and I'll make sure to visit the site.

In embroidery kit news, I've hit a snag - I have planned and put together the materials for a first batch of embroidery kits, and intended to make nice, colourfully illustrated instructions to show precisely what to do and how to do it. However, the kit will come at a price, as there's a lot of work involved in preparing the materials, and there's quite a bit of material cost as well. Making an appropriately small print run for a batch of instruction booklets would sort of still be possible, but rather in-efficient, and would add unneccessary costs. So after figuring this out, I'm now planning to make a general how-to booklet with instructions that will be part of the kit or available separately, plus an extra sheet of kit-specific information.

Work in progress. I've come a lot further since, though!

Unfortunately, the kit was on a deadline before, as I want to get it ready for the Nadelkunst. With the original plan, that deadline was sort of not too bad... but with the change of plans, the writing project has now grown considerably. Which means I'm now trying to get it all put together in time. Frantic typing, emailing, picture searching and embroidering ensues. Wish me luck. (Also, I am having lots of coffee and chocolate. Always helps.)

Things I did today: Take a walk. Restore some friends' website from a hacker attack (thankfully, that was quite easy). Scratch the mosquito bite of doom on my left calf. Cuddle the cat. Write emails. And...

... be totally excited about being on a radio show on Friday, together with Gillian. We'll be interviewed about our book "The Middle Ages Unlocked", and the really cool thing? It's a radio station that is also sending via the internet. It's the afternoon show in Talk Radio Europe, and we'll be on air this Friday, 10 July, somewhere between 14:15 and 15:00.

Tune in if you'd like to hear us talk about the book - there might be a fun fact or two for you to hear about...

I would really, really love to know why you are doing this.

I mean, I totally get being motivated to offer a book for free download when it's old, and out-of-print, and you know there is need for said book but it just cannot be gotten anywhere at all (or for a price that is in the hundreds, if not thousands, of Euros or Dollars or Pound Sterling).
I totally get not wishing to pay for a five-page scientific article that is fifteen years old, costs an arm and a leg to access for twentyfour hours, and of which you a) don't know whether the content will actually be of any use for you and b) do know that the author is not getting paid for copies sold.

I totally get that. But "The Middle Ages Unlocked" is brand new. It is easily accessible and it is fairly priced (at least I do think so, and I know that the price may still be out of range for some, and though I'm sorry for that I cannot really help it, but that's an entirely different topic and one only partly related to the book piracy issue).

The thing is... to upload our book to a filesharing site, or a download site, either as epub or as mobi or even as pdf, you must have gotten hold of a copy first. Did you buy it? (At least the very first of you uploaders must have bought it.) Thank you. Your buying the book supported Gillian Polack and myself. We are both freelancers, and income from our books are part of what we live on.

And then? Why did you upload it to share? I really don't understand. This is not like handing out a few copies to friends and relatives, because you are so excited about the book. Or like getting one copy and splitting the price among a small group, and then sharing the book. It's giving away somebody else's work, a book you presumably liked or found important and good enough to be worth reading, for free to a gazillion of people you don't even know. That's what I cannot understand. (Except if you got the book to upload it as bait for a scammy site that tries to spread malware, or get people to divulge their credit card information. That's something I could absolutely understand. Even though it makes me feel a bit sick to have our work used for that purpose.)

If you liked The Middle Ages Unlocked, wouldn't you want to have more books by Gillian and me? Wouldn't you want to support us so we can actually do that? Giving our work away for free is not a good way to go about it. Unless you buy multiple copies and give each of them away - that would be a very good way. (Also unlikely, I know.)

Or is offering the book for free download a way for you to make us suffer, because you hate the book, or you hate us personally? If so, congratulations. You have achieved your goal - we are both feeling stressed out by this issue, and are wasting time and effort on keeping the situation as much under control as possible. We are also both losing income over this. It's not much per book, but it is going to mount up over time. Gillian told me she lost a lot, almost all, of income from one of her books due to ebook piracy from free download sites. We are not getting advances (not every author does) so each sale lost is a real loss to us.

Authors put in work to make books, any books. It's nice to have that work appreciated, and a very tangible way of that appreciation is getting paid for it. If I have the impression that writing can actually contribute to my making a living, I will be happy to write and publish more. On the other hand, putting in a few years' worth of work, but getting very little or nothing in return... it's not going to make be utterly motivated to sit down at the desk and in the library again.

Having "The Middle Ages Unlocked" pirated and offered for free download so soon after its release also makes me wary of having ebooks of my work in the future. I'm a physical books girl by default, though I do know a lot of people appreciate ebooks, and I was beginning to change my stance. Now? Not so happy about it.

So. If you are thinking of uploading "The Middle Ages Unlocked" by Gillian Polack and Katrin Kania to some warez or dealz site for free ebooks, or some filesharing or torrent or bittorrent site because you like the book so much - please think again. You are not doing us a service.
If you would like to read our writing for free, I have this blog here, and Gillian blogs, too. She also posts on History Girls. Yes, it might not always be a topic that interests you, but in case of my own blog, you are invited to engage with me in the comments to ask for specific topics, or any questions you might have. I won't promise that I will be able to answer all of them, but it could not hurt to try.
If you would like to spread awareness about our book, blog about it or leave a review on some site offering the book for sale (Amazon has the most impact, but any bookseller will help). Or, even better, do both. Facebook-post about it. Share it on Twitter, or whatever other socialising site you like to use. We're happy about reviews, and we're happy if you spread word about The Middle Ages Unlocked.

If you're thinking of uploading it because you hate either Gillian, or myself, or the book - well. I think we'd both much prefer to get a personal hate mail to this, or even better some constructive criticism on what we could do better, but I guess there is not much I can do to keep you from making us suffer in this way.

And if you're a scammy baiter... well. Probably nothing I can say here will change your mind anyway. If you are indeed offering our book as ebook and not just pretending.