How Falling in print took me back

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on this blog, but part of the package if you self publish on Amazon, as I have with Falling, is a (somewhat) special price on a printed copy.

Kindle Direct Publishing wants you to think it’s easy to set up the file to offer your book in print rather than just an ebook, but the vagaries of applying ink to paper and binding leaves of it together has a raft of inherent knowledge not a lot of people know, and not a lot of it’s easy to grasp.

Thankfully, after a long career in the arts, media and publishing industries I knew enough about design, production and printing standards to do it all myself.

After a slightly annoying but not unexpected amount of niggles because of the strict guardrails around Amazon’s very-automated process (mostly to do with trying to keep it under a certain page count, over which they don’t guarantee the binding, and the page margins, outside which you’re not allowed to print so human fingers have somewhere to hold the book itself), the digitally printed edition of Falling was ready to buy.

(If you haven’t already done so, please do so here. Seriously, please. I still can’t convince anything to read this motherf#@ker for free, let alone buy it.)

Anyway, I duly bought a printed copy very early on and it’s sat on my bookshelf ever since where I regard it with a blend of pride at all the work that went into the writing and production and envy that it’s not on as many other bookshelves as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, How to Win Friends and Influence People or The Kite Runner.

Recently we got talking about it with a family member who wasn’t aware I’d acquired a printed copy, and when my wife exhorted me to show them and I did, I found myself flicking through it absentmindedly before I put it back on the shelf.

And as I did, it suddenly bought back a flood of memories – of the tactile feel of the paper and the font size and style of all the other books I really enjoyed years back. I still enjoy books now, but I don’t read as many novels nowadays and because technology has made the creation of alternative forms of printed matter so easy, you don’t see a real lot of the kind of pulp paperback style that was so in fashion (and the easiest to produce because of constraints in the technological process) back when I became a serious reader of fiction in the 80s.

This isn’t the place for a debate about printed books versus ebooks – a million think pieces early in the ebook era of the early 2010s concluded with the judgment that nobody wanted to curl up in bed with a computer, phone, tablet, etc. But I really felt the difference for a minute.

I read my share of ebooks nowadays and don’t see myself stopping any time soon. Unlike other book lovers, I don’t tend to fetishise the object itself for any inherent worth or philosophical beauty. I love books for what the content gives me (education, entertainment) and I move on. Out of probably close to 1,000 books I’ve read in my adult years, I’ve only kept about 40 or 50, and even then it usually isn’t for any particular love of the book itself as much as some further utility I can see it offering. Most of them go straight to the op shop after I’ve read them.

But standing there, flicking through the pages of Falling with its Garamond Regular font, 11 point text size on 12.5 point leading, justified right, bold and centred chapter titles, I was transported to a million moments on trains heading for work, laying in bed staying up way too late and places and times beyond them I’ve completely forgotten, and I was reminded of why I love the very form factor of the book.

I hope you do too. If you need reminding, may I wholeheartedly recommend you buy Falling for very competitive prices at the high quality stockists mentioned in the above link.