Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Claudie wrote:So I saved my money, and bought a 9 inch, touchscreen computer, along with a program that allows me to write on PDFs. The screen can be flipped and closed over the keyboard, which transforms it into a tablet. The end result is that I can do everything I could with paper, but now it's on screen, so I don't waste any paper or ink. I also have 5.5 hours of battery, and it fits in my purse even better than 8x11 sheets.

A budget equivalent of this is a graphic tablet. Mine is a Wacom Bamboo Fun 6x8"(http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/bamboo_fun.php). About 130€ (with a little discount). Then you pair it with a program like Xournal (http://xournal.sourceforge.net ; it's for Linux, I don't know if there's a Windows version), and you can load a PDF and mark, circle, write, paint and draw over it like over a normal paper.

I don't do editing, but I've used it in similar circumstances and it works like a charm.

Along with driving as few miles as possible, not printing a lot is a little thing I can do to help the planet. Not like it's a hardship, though, I'm comfortable editing on the screen. I like it. I probably will print out once near the end of this current project, just because, yeah, it'll give a different look on it.

Quill wrote:Along with driving as few miles as possible, not printing a lot is a little thing I can do to help the planet. Not like it's a hardship, though, I'm comfortable editing on the screen. I like it. I probably will print out once near the end of this current project, just because, yeah, it'll give a different look on it.

Ever calculated your carbon footprint? Mine ranges between 2 and 3 tons, far below the U.S. national average 20 or so tons and this state's 16 tons or so average. "You load sixteen tons, what d'you get? Another day older and deeper in debt." "Sixteen Tons," coal miner's song, Merle Travis, 1946.

Great topic! I was actually thinking about this the other day...

I'm planning on doing a round of edits on the computer before a major print off, but I have a question for you guys, too. Do you usually print it off yourself? Or do you print it somewhere else? (like...Kinkos or whatever; they do that, right?) And have you ever had it spiral bound or anything?

I have a place I can print it off, I think. But I'm debating on what I should do, especially for the binding. Just don't know the costs.

Definitely checking out that paper, Margo!

I edit on screen. I find it easier to play with sentences then. I only printed off my final draft so my husband and I could both separately catch any last typos and work from the same print. I read first then pass the pages to him.

As we both have good eyesight I printed two pages to a page and changed the spacing to 1.5 which was fine for small edits and easy enough to read.

I now use the back of the pages as scrap paper for research on my next project.

heyimkt wrote:Great topic! I was actually thinking about this the other day...

I'm planning on doing a round of edits on the computer before a major print off, but I have a question for you guys, too. Do you usually print it off yourself? Or do you print it somewhere else? (like...Kinkos or whatever; they do that, right?) And have you ever had it spiral bound or anything?

I have a place I can print it off, I think. But I'm debating on what I should do, especially for the binding. Just don't know the costs.

Definitely checking out that paper, Margo!

For awhile I would actually freak about how to print everything off because I didn't have a car or a printer and didn't want to go to the school printers and print off a 280 page novel. So, I got a car and then I got a printer.

I don't know about places to get something printed or even bound, I'm just leaving mine loose leaf and going to get a giant rubber band and clippie.

Kinkos is now FedEx Office. They have full service printing and a range of other services, like online POD book manufacturing comparable to Lulu and CreateSpace. A writer without a printer nor a nearby office services business can upload a print job to the FedEx Office site and have it delivered printed as quickly as overnight. Costly though.

My el-cheapo printer costs me about $0.10 per full page of text duplex printed. I've noted a cost tradeoff in ink and paper. Compressing or condensing printing onto fewer leaves of paper increases ink consumption per page. I prefer hardcopy editing at full Standard Manuscript Format size, Courier New typeface, double line space so there's plenty of white space for markup.

By the way, the practice of one-sided printing began because typing papers weren't fully opaque back in the mid Twentieth century. Photocopying reproduced both sides. The idea was saving postage costs from two-sided printing and using light weight onion skin paper, about 12 pound, darned near transparent to a photocopier.

I'm not inclined toward binding a copyedit copy, even spiral binding, for cost and hassle reasons. Spiral binding is a relatively inexpensive binding method compared to perfection binding. Stitch stapling is less expensive but limited by book block thickness. I prefer loose leaves in a plain manila folder stuffed into a reused document envelope like the ones FedEx, UPS, and USPS letter packages come in. For shipping, a standard letter-sized paper shipping box available at office supply stores. The boxes come in several sizes, 100-page, half ream, full ream.

Office bindery services offer several other binding styles: presentation cover and board cover. Theses are usually bound in presentation covers and business plans in board covers.

Though I have a homemade home shop bindery I use when I do want to bind small quantities of books. When I want to bind just one copy I use two small boards as a padding press and C-clamps to hold the book block and press boards together during gluing. The boards have notches spaced a quarter-inch apart for letting a backsaw scuff and cut the binding edge to receive glue for perfection binding. I use white glue and lay it on thick in several brushed coats. I also have a bindery stapler, a book trimmer, an antique book press, a homemade padding press, and a cover laminator. Books from my home bindery shop are comparable to those done by POD manufacturers in quality and cost. Anymore, the hassle and cost lean me toward going with a POD company except for one or a few copy output.

I prefer recycled paper for more than environmentally conscious reasons. It's cheaper first of all. I prefer the coarser finish, the antique, bamboo white finish of recycled paper for less eyes strain than the slick bright white papers' garish day-glo glare, which are best for graphics and color printing. Frankly, I don't see the value in ever whiter paper for text printing any more than I see the value in ever whiter baking flour chemically stripped of its nutritional value. When I read from paper I like a light newsprint brown paper and an 8 to 9 on a 10 gray scale ink because that combination is easy on my eyes, about like book printing, in fact.

I do not print out any of my drafts. I prefer to make all my edits and comments on screen, but I use a great program (Liquid Story Binder) for writing and it has line editing tools that make my life oh so good. I don't like doing edits by hand. I feel way more comfortable with my laptop and mouse. I like being able to pop around my manuscript in an instant rather than flipping pages and looking manually.

I am also a bit of a tech addict. I hand write things so infrequently that my handwriting has become completely useless. I feel like a character out of a YA futuretech/dystopian novel. I used to lament the loss of traditional communication mediums, but I'm just better with a gadget in hand.

Of course that means when/if modern civilization collapses I'm next to the last person you want on your survivor team. My only saving grace is I know how to grow a vegetable garden.

On the flip side, my husband is incredibly anti-tech. Last month he asked me to write a check to pay our gutter cleaning guy and I asked, innocently, "A check? Is there an app for that?"

He was so not amused.

heyimkt wrote:Do you usually print it off yourself? Or do you print it somewhere else? (like...Kinkos or whatever; they do that, right?) And have you ever had it spiral bound or anything?

I have a place I can print it off, I think. But I'm debating on what I should do, especially for the binding. Just don't know the costs.

I print it off myself. I wouldn't go to the expense of binding for an edit copy, and agents don't like bindings on submissions. Binding would also seriously get in the way of me shuffling the pages by tossing it over the bannister of the staircase. I'm not joking. Editing pages out of order can be a great exercise.

I don't feel bad because I know it's going to be kept forever. I only feel bad about using paper that would be wasted.

And tonerisn't really ink. It's charged particals of poisonous chemicals. :3

polymath wrote:Kinkos is now FedEx Office. They have full service printing and a range of other services, like online POD book manufacturing comparable to Lulu and CreateSpace. A writer without a printer nor a nearby office services business can upload a print job to the FedEx Office site and have it delivered printed as quickly as overnight. Costly though.

My el-cheapo printer costs me about $0.10 per full page of text duplex printed. I've noted a cost tradeoff in ink and paper. Compressing or condensing printing onto fewer leaves of paper increases ink consumption per page. I prefer hardcopy editing at full Standard Manuscript Format size, Courier New typeface, double line space so there's plenty of white space for markup.

By the way, the practice of one-sided printing began because typing papers weren't fully opaque back in the mid Twentieth century. Photocopying reproduced both sides. The idea was saving postage costs from two-sided printing and using light weight onion skin paper, about 12 pound, darned near transparent to a photocopier.

I'm not inclined toward binding a copyedit copy, even spiral binding, for cost and hassle reasons. Spiral binding is a relatively inexpensive binding method compared to perfection binding. Stitch stapling is less expensive but limited by book block thickness. I prefer loose leaves in a plain manila folder stuffed into a reused document envelope like the ones FedEx, UPS, and USPS letter packages come in. For shipping, a standard letter-sized paper shipping box available at office supply stores. The boxes come in several sizes, 100-page, half ream, full ream.

Office bindery services offer several other binding styles: presentation cover and board cover. Theses are usually bound in presentation covers and business plans in board covers.

Though I have a homemade home shop bindery I use when I do want to bind small quantities of books. When I want to bind just one copy I use two small boards as a padding press and C-clamps to hold the book block and press boards together during gluing. The boards have notches spaced a quarter-inch apart for letting a backsaw scuff and cut the binding edge to receive glue for perfection binding. I use white glue and lay it on thick in several brushed coats. I also have a bindery stapler, a book trimmer, an antique book press, a homemade padding press, and a cover laminator. Books from my home bindery shop are comparable to those done by POD manufacturers in quality and cost. Anymore, the hassle and cost lean me toward going with a POD company except for one or a few copy output.

Thanks, polymath! Sounds like you've got an awesome homemade system. I would print mine myself...but my printer's an idiot. Trust me.

Margo wrote: I print it off myself. I wouldn't go to the expense of binding for an edit copy, and agents don't like bindings on submissions. Binding would also seriously get in the way of me shuffling the pages by tossing it over the bannister of the staircase. I'm not joking. Editing pages out of order can be a great exercise.

Hahah, oh, man. I believe you. Great stress reliever, I bet. Or I'd hope. And yeah, I wouldn't use the binded copy for submitting, just for myself. I sort of need everything together, and I just like having a clean, put-together draft. We'll see how far I go with the hassle and cost of printing/binding...haha

heyimkt wrote:And yeah, I wouldn't use the binded copy for submitting, just for myself. I sort of need everything together, and I just like having a clean, put-together draft. We'll see how far I go with the hassle and cost of printing/binding...haha

If it's mostly for the sake of organization, I'm thinking it would be simpler and cheaper to print it on hole-punched paper and put it in a three-ring binder. Office supply stores would probably have several options for self-binding otherwise loose-leaf items like reports. I'm wondering now if they have the ones with the front and back covers and the little metal prongs that you poke through the holes in the paper and then bend over to hold the pages in place, only for bigger projects.

No, it looks like the report covers only hold a half inch of paper. A 400-page novel would take up about twice that, depending somewhat on paper.

Poly pockets,Margo? They may be called something different in the US. They're transparent plastic, can hold a few A4-sized pages, and have holes along the side for binder rings. Reusable and the fastest way I know to produce what is effectively a book. A big book, it's true, but easy to read, and easy to edit by adding or replacing pages or pockets.

I do print hard copy backups of all my books once a year (double sided, in tiny print - the important thing is that it's THERE). Then I keep them at someone else's house. I also back up whatever I'm working on in my own email account at least once a day.

Scariest movie ever: "Little Women". Because a manuscript was lost.