Further book stories: Pragati printers

I'd love to do a longer post, but I simply do not have the time. The extremely short version is I went to Pragati press is Hyderabad to start the printing process. These guys know what they are doing, they are good at it and extremely professional and great to work with. They have a great reputation and I can see why. I would recommend them very very strongly to anyone wanting to get anything printed in India. And if the prices are competitive, think about them even if you are not in India!

The print isn't done, but the proofing is mostly done. Colour corrections, etc through. Print when the payment gets made. Which might take some time, since IISc needs to go through the entire bureaucratic process.

Here are just a few shots from the proofs, which were gorgeous!

Secret Lives, the book

Repost
I've pulled up and put upfront one of my old book posts since many of you are going to be arriving here from the various sources that have been talking about my forthcoming book. (Many thanks to everyone who linked here!) There's also an older post that this one links to, do have a look. Especially on the book structure.

And as a bonus, at the end of the post, the current working cover...(umm, all those who voted, please don't kill me!)

Somewhere along the line, I felt that I had to do something with the huge collection of photographs I had racked up with my obsessive shooting. I'd met someone who had been a photographer once, stopped, moved here from another country, was working software. And was nonetheless planning and pulling off a book on the Kaveri.

A seed for a book was planted. Shooting got focussed and was ratcheted up a fair bit. Then I pulled together what I thought was a decent structure for it, first the chapters and their scope. Then I tried the first tentative layout, showed it around, got my fair share of gentle criticism, redid it a few times before settling on a structure. I wrote and laid out two entire chapters. And then the truly hard part began.

I had to find someone to publish it. The book was going to be about the biodiversity in IISc. So the obvious choice was to take it to IISc, especially since the centenary years around the bend. So began a long process of negotiation. In many ways, very difficult and exhausting, made so partly by my own inexperience and partly by just how things are this end of the world. I had a lot of help and thanks to the folks who helped me along each of the steps of my own negotiation. It made photography look easy and I truly admire people who do this for a living!

The good news is that the negotiation is done!. We've decided on terms, a schedule for meeting them and things have begun to move. Chapters have been submitted and hopefully have gone out for review. (We're scientists, we believe in review. I, for one, am quite grateful for the once over.) All things should be finished sometime middle of this year. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a book on the way!

That there on the top is the current cover, it's changed, and it can again. If you have a favorite that you absolutely think should be the one on the cover, lemme know. May the wisdom of the crowds prevail!

Little more info on book structure here. Sneak peek of opening pages here.