The Final Year Show

The final year show took place on Thursday 19th and Friday 20th of May. It was a great way for us to showcase the projects that we put so much work into over the last year. We set up our stands to relate to our projects.

I went with an a2 poster as well as printing off my visual diary again and placing it around the wall. I bought various different garden items such as trellises and artificial grass. To relate to the character I purchased tennis balls, dog bones and a red bowl which all appear in the book on page 14.

I was very happy overall with the look of my stand. I have attached some images below.

Placing the Audio Book

I faced some initial difficulty with burning my audio to CD. I tried this around 4 times before I realised it needed to be set up for CD players. After watching some tutorials I then successfully burned onto the discs.

I contacted Reads of Nassau Street to see about getting CD stickers printed. I felt as though putting a regular CD at the back of the book would look less professional. They informed my that this could be done, so I set up my CD document for print and sent them the PDF. Setting up a document for stickers started at €15 which was quite a fair bit to pay for a couple of stickers, but I felt like it would make a huge difference to the look and feel of the book.

The next step was to find pockets for the CD’s to put at the back of the book. I thought that this would of been an easy thing to do. I went to several different office supply stores and couldn’t find them anywhere. Workers informed me that they are not in demand enough to supply anymore. I looked up numbers for different office supply stores in Dublin and rang around. I eventually got talking to a woman who ran a store in Malahide village who had a pack left in stock. After putting them on hold, I went to collect them and they were exactly what I had in mind. They were perfect. I made some small changes to each envelope for the reader to be able to access the CD as easy as possible. I cut off the flap and made a small cut-out where the finger will be able to remove the CD.

The next step was deciding what to stick them in with. I was thinking that glue might be too messy, especially on the paper  back books. I was also concerned that double sided tape would be easy to remove and could perhaps fall out, especially in the hands of a child. I then got in contact with a friend who owns a blinds company to see if they had high quality double-sided tape that I could borrow. They allowed me to use the tape and I was delighted with the outcome.

Arrival of the DPI Books

The books from Digital Printing Ireland arrived today, May 5th. The fast delivery of these books was excellent. I was delighted with the results. They actually gave me 10 books as opposed to the 3 that I had ordered. This was a huge bonus for me.

Gloss Cover and Interior

The laminated gloss books are really striking. I much rather them to the matte finish, which I had originally planned on using! The size is perfect. The 210 x 210mm is such a lovely size for the type of book it is. I am overall very happy with them.

Matte finish and interior

I was slightly let down by the matte finish books. I got the impression from them that they looked to be more like colouring books rather than an actual storybook. This type of book could of been better if I had of got the front cover gloss and left the matte pages inside. Getting the matte cover as well seemed to bring down the book in quality.

Overview

All in all, I am delighted that I ordered the books in two different finishes as the one that I had originally planned on using turned out to be the one that I dislike. I am now looking forward to receiving my Blurb hardback books to see what I think of them.

 

 

 

Audio Book

The last addition of the book which I decided upon, was that of making an accompanying audio CD. I thought that this would be a really nice touch and bring the book to life for the reader.

Examples of some excellent audio books for my target audience:

I began by looking for a reader. I sourced various different audio books both online and in the library and found that majority of the readers were either a man or woman generally of the age of mature age. After testing out 4 different readers, I settled on my chose voice.

Reaper Editing:

I used the software Reaper to edit my audio. I used various different background sounds and noises to enhance it. I got a lot of these sounds from sound bible and several others from YouTube videos and other audio websites. I used a total of 15 sounds altogether. This includes the narration, the day and night background sounds (garden sounds /thunderstorm and rain), woman gasping, Gonzo crying, a cat screeching, a warning sound that was narrowed down from several selections, purring, flapping wings and a couple more. I had not used reaper in over a year, so this was a good learning experience for me with regards to revising the software.

 

 

Printing with Digital Printing Ireland!

Digital Printing Ireland is the alternative printer that I chose, in order to have a selection of books to choose from. Digital Printing Ireland offer a larger size of 210 x 210mm which really interested me. Below are the selections for the first batch that I ordered from this site, which was the matte finish.

I then proceeded to do the same process except choosing all gloss options

I ordered 3 books of each which added up to €67 altogether including delivery, which was a lot better than the blurb cost. I am very excited to see the results.