A Speccy Man Has A Breakdown - day 123

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Yesterday, I pulled the oversized dust jackets off the first 90 copies of the book, to replace them with new ones in the right size.

They made quite a large heap:

I wonder what I’ll do with them all?

Then I started folding the new ones. It’s a painstaking process:

Folding them took a long time.

During the evening, while half-watching a match in the men’s soccer world cup, I numbered and signed each book. It took a lot of concentration to remember which number I was on at any given moment.

As I did this, I discovered that two of the 90 books rejoicing in a misprint on the back cover (shinging) were unusable: one had an upside-down cover, the other was smeared all over with dirty ink marks.

I added to the 88 shinging hardbacks the merely shining ones, and placed them together in neat piles of 30:

Good dust jackets now folded around the books that previously had bad ones.

***

Next, I cut up the sheets of ERRATUM slips I’d typed on my manual typewriter and slipped them into the books in the order they were typed.

“The oublisher regrets.” Mis-typed ERRATUM slip inside hardback number 18.

***

Something that worried me for a long time was: will the art prints fit neatly inside the hardbacks, so that they don’t get bent when I send them out together?

I was happy to find that they do:

Phew.

***

Drawing nearer to actually posting the books out, I raided the iceberg-like box of padded envelopes that I bought in (gosh, was it really as long ago as) April and handwrote a note of the book number alongside the name of the relevant buyer:

Then I wrapped each book-and-art-print in brown paper and shoved it into the envelope.

Now, time to start ordering postage…

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👉 If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a crisis line in your country. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123.

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