Cover Color Conundrums

I've done only a few covers, but only one came out exactly as intended.

Taking advice I'd read a few times here and there, I initially decided to keep my covers simple. The first had no background color. That looked good until printed on high-gloss stock. Lots of white space on really a shiny cover is a bad idea. With fancy gold text, it might work out for a book about wedding planning; otherwise that's a mistake I won't make again.

I changed that cover for the better, with a background and images that are basically shades of what I'd call "khaki to olive drab" (RGB 141 130 84). The next proof came out a little more greenish than anticipated, but wasn't skewed so much that I needed to fix it. The background colors of some of the inserted images and graphics didn't exactly match, but I decided to leave well enough alone (mainly because I didn't know how to fix that anyway.)
The next attempt had a background which was gray with a slight tan cast (RGB 234 240 235). Again, the proof was a big disappointment. It came back not with my nice very light earth-tone gray, but with an unappetizing light greenish cast all over; about the shade of "light cyan1" (RGB 224 255 255).

I was using Lulu.Com to proof these books. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but the covers delivered looked a lot like the thumbnail images in the "cover art" section of the book's "Edit Content" page on lulu.com, which always seem to have a greenish cast. However, the "View press-ready PDF file" downloads never look any different than what I originally upload, and what always comes out of my old desktop ink jet looking just like they do on the screen.

I decided I need to learn about the basic issues, and spent a lot of time reading up on:

     • RGB vs. CMYK
     • spot vs. process color
     • color management systems
     • inconsistencies between printer color systems
     • paper characteristics (creme vs. white, matte vs. gloss)
     • etc.

So I then understood why the output of ColorCentric or LightingSource machines would not necessarily match what I see on my old CRT or new flat-panel monitors, or what comes out of my desktop printers (old HP and new Lexmark ink jets). Yet it didn't seem to make sense that each submission should be like "buying a pig in a poke."

There must be a "right" was to do this. Hmmmm ... What to do?

After reading a whole lot more about color management, sRGB vs. CMYK gamuts, and all that stuff, I decided the situation was impossible. For one thing, I didn't have software that could output CMYK color information, and even if I did, there was no guarantee that was I was seeing on the computer monitor would match what the printer's machine would produce. And then too, ColorCentric has one kind of machine, Xerox I suppose, and LightningSource has something else. So maybe I could beat my brains out trying to guarantee a result, but never achieve an exact match anyway.

For the above case, I solved my problem by loading up my original nice-looking cover layout, then clicking on my desktop to access my display driver setup and tweaking the color controls until it looked like the greenish version I'd gotten back from Lulu. I then went back into my cover layout program, readjusted the colors until the cover came back to the look I wanted, saved that as a new PDF and uploaded it to Lulu. What came back this second time around was exactly what I was shooting for the first time.

I don't know if this was just a coincidence, or if this is a useful work-around. Next time I have a problem with cover colors that don't come out, I'll try it again. Meanwhile, since you can get single proof copies of your book from Lulu at cost plus shipping, this is a cheap and dirty solution to an otherwise intractable problem.

Another thing I've learned is to not mix tools. For example, if there are graphic components on the cover, such as photographs, logos, and so on, the logical thing to do would be to prepare them in an image editor, then place them on the cover in a cover layout program. If the background of the imported graphic needs to match the cover background; good luck with that. It rarely ever will. Notice the background ghosting in the example shown here, which was taken from the second cover I ever did (check the link above for the first, which was "not so good.")

A better solution is to incorporate all the graphic components in a single image the size of the cover layout, then import that into the cover layout as a background - a opposed to establishing a background color in the cover layout program, then importing the individual graphics onto that and trying to match their backgrounds. Even if you get a good match on your monitor, the results from the printer will probably be disappointing.

The last cover I've done was easy - it was all grayscale on a black background.

That's another good way to solve color matching problems!

-=glw=-

Reunions and the Popcorn Years

I was never a fan of High School reunions. I was never sociable in my teenage years. As a strategy for staying away from home as much as possible, I worked all the time, and in jobs where I learned how to behave like an adult in order to interact successfully with adults. On returning to school each fall, I'd feel like a stranger in a foreign land. Coming back out of an adult world, I didn't share the usual teenage interests, so it was hard to relate to most of the other kids. They all seemed so ... childish. Their usual take on this was that I seemed so ... aloof. To me, other kids were mostly juvenile and boring; to them, I was a stuck up odd-ball. Hence, I made very few friends among my classmates - I thought.

What reason would there be for me to go to a class reunion?

This year was our 50th high school class reunion. I didn't participate. I had other obligations anyway, so that provided a convenient excuse. The real reason was the archaic feelings and perceptions left over from fifty years ago - all the awkward moments, the feelings of being different, of being on the outside looking in, of not really belonging or being accepted as part of the group. I never cared to revisit any of that. (More truthfully, I probably always feared that.)

But then, I got the bright idea of developing a class reunion website template and giving it away for free to promote a couple of my not-so-best-selling books. Part of that template was a "Remembrance" page. Building the prototype around my own high school class, I discovered that so far, forty-two of my former 270-some classmates have a spot on that page. Some I never knew, and others I barely knew.

But then there were the others.

I remembered Dawn, a flippant, flirty girl who often volunteered a teasing conversation with me in classes and hallways, in spite of my lowly place in the pecking order. Evidently, she saw something in me that I didn't know was there. I remember her as a fun person who frequently made me feel comfortable in that otherwise seemingly hostile environment.

Janice was a twin. I went all through school, beginning in the grades, with she and her look-alike sister. They were quiet. In the lower grades, when one became ill and vomited on her disk, so did the other. They were twins, after all.

Jim; good-looking and having an engaging way of always looking surprised and interested in what was going on. Peter, the son of some city fathers, and trying to carry on in that tradition. He married a girl I thought I was in love with in the Second Grade. Brent, the athlete, but crippled and doomed to never succeed in spite of credible athletic abilities. Then Perry; a rather strange and quiet boy who didn't seem to fit in - like me, maybe.

Then there was Albert, known as "Pug." I don't know why, except that his dad was also named Al. I knew him forever. As little boys we used to swap night-overs. His Dad took me to the first football game I'd ever seen. Sitting there on the side of the hill at Green Hill Field, I stupidly kept calling the guys in the black and white stripes "umpires." They thought that was funny. It turned out that I would know Al senior until the day he died. When we were operating our family manufacturing business, Pug's dad provided us with electrical maintenance supplies, and stopped by frequently. I think the last time I saw Pug was at my Dad's funeral. He was then called "Al."

Jane, William, Arlan - I really didn't know them at all. Dennis was almost a neighborhood kid, but lived just outside the boundaries of what we considered "our neighborhood," and inside the borders of a somewhat rougher territory. He seemed like a "boy's boy" who would grow up to be a "man's man." I think his parents were divorced, which was not a common thing then. Kids from "broken homes" were expected to be difficult. When I eventually got to know Denny a little better, I was surprised to discover that he was not all "tough kid." I liked him.

Sharon I was barely acquainted with; only knew her by name. Jerry stands out in my memory as an example of the perfect personality conflict. He and I somehow got along, although our ways of thinking about things were always different, and usually diametrically opposite. I don't know why, or why we got along in spite of that.

Jay; didn't know him. Always seemed like trouble, I don't know why. Then Bob - cripes! Bob is gone? I didn't know that. He was always a happy, highly personable type, as a kid and as an adult. I've passed him so many times in the past few years, usually at the Post Office, and that always left me with a good feeling - pleased that he'd recognize me with a smile and a greeting. After all, he was one of the "popular kids."

And on, and on, through Charles, my "smart kid" childhood playmate; Sig, who I really didn't know real well in high school, but who, years later, always somehow recognized me on the street, down to Durrell, another one who quietly slipped away; we often bumped into one another at the supermarket, and he'd always somewhat sheepishly say hello. He was like me; not one of the "popular kids."

These are all people whom I thought I didn't know - whom I thought I had little in common with. Going back through the forty-two pictures, I count twenty-one who were actually special to me in one way or another. Exactly half.

Somebody once wrote -

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven … For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I guess this is what he was talking about. These memories are indeed treasures - "golden" dividends of a person's investment in life. Opening this box to revisit one's treasures brings special feelings to the heart that somehow make life seem worth its trials and troubles after all. Meanwhile, if one does not dwell on the mud and lumps of coal, memories of unpleasant things inexorably sink deeper and deeper into the psyche, becoming ever more difficult to fetch back up.

What an ass I've been about class reunions!

Here's yet another example of the adage, "Ve get too soon olt, und too late schmardt!" Only now, at the twilight of my life, I've finally figured out what reunions are all about. I passed up fifty opportunities to polish some golden pieces of my life. Now many of those will have to remain as they are, perhaps somewhat tarnished with this new regret.

It took me a couple of days to put the Remembrance page together, using the class reunion's information, the SSDI (death index), and scanning portraits from the old high school yearbook. During that process, some very strong feelings about our human situation arose, bringing to mind from some corner of my memory the poignant truths of an old song written by Earl Wilson Jr:

We laugh, we cry, we live, we die;
And when we're gone, the world goes on.
We love, we hate, we learn too late;
How small we are, how little we know.

We hear, we touch, we talk too much,
Of things we have no knowledge of.
We see, we feel, yet can't conceal,
How small we are, how little we know.

See how the time moves swiftly by;
We don't know how, we don't know why.
We reach so high, and fall so low;
The more we learn, the less we know.

Too soon the time to go will come.
Too late the will to carry on.
And so we leave too much undone.
How small we are how little we know.

---

Then I got thinking about popcorn.

Somebody takes a handful of corn kernels and puts them into a bag. A little grease is added to facilitate the process, and a little flavoring, to improve the final product. This goes into the microwave for about four minutes. In a little while, there's a single pop, then a few moments later, another. During the first couple of minutes nothing much happens as that happy group of seeds turns round and round with the microwaves shining on them; just the occasional pop of the odd one, which for reasons unknown succumbs to the heat and pressure before all the rest. Then, in the third minute, all hell begins to break loose. Another pop, then another and another, popping in pairs, and finally an explosion of activity!

Then a few, a couple, a single pop or two - in four minutes, it's all over.

Classmates seem like a handful of humanity that, through happenstance, wind up in the same bag. We get a little upbringing and education in hopes of greasing our paths as we revel in the sunshine of life. Then there's the first pop. In our class that happened forty-eight years ago. A year after that came the second pop, then six years later yet another. Now, as my classmates and I are all pushing seventy, there are lots of pops. There will be lots of new pictures coming to my Remembrance page now; perhaps even my own.

In four score years, it'll be all over for us.

Is this aspect of life not like a bag of popcorn? Its duration is four score years, rather than four minutes, but its life story seems the same. I never could see why anyone would call these "The Golden Years."

I think "The Popcorn Years" is a caption more apt.

--=glw=-

A Simple Class Reunion Website Design – FREE

I’ve noticed that there aren’t a lot of high school class reunion websites. I suppose that’s because classes only have one reunion a year. Why bother with a website – and who’ll pay for it?

Nevertheless, since I graduated from Grand Haven High School, there have been fifty other graduating classes. You’d think someone in some of those classes would be interested in putting up a site and maintaining it just as a hobby. You can do that these days for less than the cost of dinner for two, or a tank of gas. And unlike those two pastimes, tinkering around with a Class Reunion website can provide hours of entertainment and fun. Besides that, as the “Class Webmaster,” (albeit self-appointed) you’d probably get a seat at the head table – right up there with the Class President, Secretary, and all those former “preppies” who snubbed you in the old days.

I hate ClassMates.Con (oops! – I meant “.Com,” of course). They keep sending me messages about all my old classmates who are eager to check out my profile and get together, with invitations to come to the site and see who they are. Then when I go there they meet me at my home page with their hand out – pimping their site with a “Choose Gold!” button. They’ll tell me who “Friend X” is and let us get together for $59 – their “best value.”

Best value? I’m dubious. I can do a lot better than that over on the corner of Hall and Division in Grand Rapids. And I’d even get to see the merchandise first. And, she’d probably even lie to me and tell me I was “hot” for an old guy.

So, I thought a good way to pimp my books might be to build a class reunion website template and give it away for free. The catch is that in order to go live with it, a person would be smart to read Chapter 9 of my book Solutions for Secretaries of Small NPO’s, but then, you can read that for free on Google if you can stand reading books on a screen. I don’t like to do that, and I hope others hate it too, and will therefore decide to pop for the price of the book (hint: it's discounted at amazon.com, barns&noble.com, etc.) Even if they don’t, they’ll maybe stumble across my author/publisher website, so my small but growing library might get a little exposure.

My class reunion website is Spartan and “user friendly.” Rather than cluck about all its virtues, I’ll just point you towards my real, live online example – www.ghhs58.org. Go there and browse around, and if that encourages you to put up a similar site for your class, the link to the freebie is at the bottom right-hand side of the GHHS58 home page. You’ll find the download in the SfS site’s “Examples/Downloads” area. Inside the downloaded ZIP file you’ll find a README text that’ll get you started and walk you thorough the process up to the point of launch.

C’mon – give it a shot. If you’re smart enough to get here and read this, you know all you have to know to handle the project. Quite whining and making excuses. Just do it!

-=glw=-

Book Helps Small Nonprofits Build Better Images

A guide for nonprofit corporate secretaries and administrative assistants. Learn how to build a first class image on a third rate budget.

GRAND HAVEN, MI--AUGUST 20, 2007-- A new comprehensive guidebook for volunteer secretaries of small nonprofit organizations provides solutions for the dilemma that often stymies small organizations; while little money can be allocated for administrative functions and image-building, weakness in these areas restrains success and growth by limiting volunteer interest and fundraising effectiveness.

Solutions for Secretaries of Small NPO's covers everything from how to form a nonprofit corporation and receive IRS recognition without expensive professional assistance, to governance and parliamentary best practices, fundraising, membership recruitment and retention, volunteer recruitment, and practical approaches to the development of low cost but highly effective desktop publishing and graphics arts capabilities.

The SfS guide is supported by a companion website, with an extensive collection of free downloads, including templates for documents and forms, layouts for desktop publishing projects such as newsletters, patterns for graphic arts projects, and even a fully developed membership database application. The website also hosts a forum where readers can discuss issues and share ideas with the author and each other.

Author Gene Warner has worked as a self-trained, self-employed electronics engineer/entrepreneur for over thirty years. Having also served on boards and committees of small nonprofit organizations, he lends his experience as a practical and resourceful innovator to show how these small groups can more effectively leverage their limited financial and experiential resources.

Solutions for Secretaries of Small NPO's
ISBN: 978-0-9797896-1-8
www.boysmindbooks.com/sfs/

Michigan's Historic Manitou Passage - Charming New Book Tells It's Story

An Indefinitive History of the Settlement of Northeast Lake Michigan

GRAND HAVEN, MI--AUGUST 20, 2007-- Learn about the natural and human history of the Manitou Passage, from glacier to National Park! This small book offers a light, sometimes romantic, conspectus written in the conversational style of the popular broadcast series, "Alistair Cooke's America."

Author Gene Warner began life in the Manitou Passage, on South Manitou Island, and ancestor of original settler immigrants. Husband, father, grandfather, engineer, business owner, author, and publisher, his works include visitor guides, historical sketches, nonprofit management guides, and practical self-improvement books.

The Manitou Passage Story - An Indefinitive History of the Settlement of Northeast Lake Michigan
ISBN: 978-0-9797896-0-1
www.boysmindbooks.com/tmps/

A Psychological Self-Improvement Book for Boys

Troubled boys become unsuccessful and unhappy men. Any boy can learn how to keep that from happening.

Grand Haven, MI -- July 30, 2008 -- Happiness and success in life depend on something nobody teaches a boy anything about - his mind. Most of the time brains just free-run, doing whatever they want with the inputs they receive, and taking us wherever they happen to drift, which often turns out to be places we would rather not be. Instead of letting an out-of-control brain be his master - a "monster" that constantly works against him - a boy can decide to take control, making his mind think rationally and constructively to provide a highly successful, abundantly happy and richly rewarding life.

That is the premise of the newly published "Mind Over Monster," a psychological self-improvement book intended for boys age ten and up. The book presents a practical approach to understanding what the mind is and how it works, how emotional and personality problems naturally result as a boy grows up, and how they can easily be overcome. It doesn't shy away from sensitive but important issues such as family, sex and religion, offering insights that might prove controversial among some factions, but which face up to the practical realities boys must deal with while becoming men in today's real world. Written in a conversational style, these frank conversations are liberally illustrated with real accounts from the author's own life experiences.

Author Gene Warner is a husband, father, grandfather, engineer, business owner, author, and publisher. His works include visitor guides, historical sketches, nonprofit management guides, and practical self-improvement books.

Mind Over Monster - Psychological Self-Improvement for Boys
ISBN: 978-0-9797896-2-5
www.boysmindbooks.com/mom/