Somebody has pinched Muckfoot's best hedgehog cheese, and the Bog Imp fair is only hours away. Muckfoot herds hedgehogs and turns their milk into pungent little cheeses that the verse swears are very nice with piccalilli. Where's My Cheese? is book four of the Irish Bog Imp Tales, written by Richard and painted by Kevin. On our presses it became a 210mm square paperback: 38 pages of 170gsm silk, glued into a cover of heavier 300gsm silk and sealed in matt lamination, the classic children's picture book build.
Muckfoot's trouble is a deadline. Ours was one too, of a less whiffy kind. Richard publishes from Northern Ireland and has told us he sells most of his books through his own website, where readers like to buy the whole set. Every box we send him crosses the Irish Sea, often by air, and on earlier orders a delayed flight had held his parcels back by a day. This one came off the bindery in a week that Mike warned Richard was full of transport chaos. Here is how book four was on a delivery van seven days after the files arrived.
Morning files, a lunchtime proof
Richard's artwork arrived on a Wednesday morning with a two line email asking us to print a new book. There was no quote to chase and no spec to agree, because every Bog Imp paperback shares one build. Before midday Mike had confirmed the order, sent the invoice and answered the title in kind: "Best cheese? ...I'm going Feta...or Stilton." Less than an hour later the proof link followed, with a dark blue line marking where each page would be trimmed.
The files made that pace possible. Kevin's paintings run off the edge of almost every page, so bleed matters, and the PDFs passed our checks without raising a single query. An author who returns with the same trim size and the same stock gives a printer nothing to second guess, which is why a proof can leave on the day the artwork lands.
Why a 38 page picture book on silk wanted a glued spine
Kevin paints with real texture. The cover is a swirl of violet and plum around three imps clinging to a cheese the size of a boulder, and inside there are brushy blue skies, grass in two greens and a yellow cheese with every hole ringed in black. Coated 170gsm silk holds that colour up on the surface of the sheet, so the purples stay rich instead of murky and the yellows keep their glow. Uncoated paper would soak the ink in and deepen those violets, while a lighter sheet could let a full bleed painting shadow through from the reverse. Our pack of paper samples lets you rub silk and uncoated between finger and thumb. The matt laminated 300gsm cover takes the glare off all that purple and survives jammy hands with a quick wipe.
The page count settled the binding. Stapled books are made from folded sheets nested inside one another, so the total, cover included, needs to split evenly into fours. Thirty eight inside pages plus a four page cover makes 42, which staples cannot take without adding or cutting two pages of story. Perfect binding glues single leaves into the cover, so any even count from 32 inside pages upwards works, and 32 is where the spine reaches 3mm. At 38 pages the book binds cleanly and matches the shape of the earlier titles on Richard's shelf. Pile up copies and each slim spine still carries a single line of white capitals, the title followed by the series name. Spine lettering normally wants about 5mm of width, so on a book this slim one modest line is the sensible limit. Our guide to staples, glue and hardback cases shows where each method starts.
A courier warning, then a van on time
Once Richard approved the proof, printing and binding followed, and the boxes went out on the Tuesday after. Mike told Richard plainly what to expect: possibly the next day, more likely Thursday, given the state of the transport network, and he promised to check the tracking first thing. He did, and on Wednesday morning wrote back with some surprise that the boxes were already on a van with a late morning delivery slot. From files to delivery van took one week.
Richard replied the same afternoon he heard the books were on their way.
"Thanks again for a quick turnaround."
Richard, author of the Irish Bog Imp Tales
If your readers, your launch or your stock sit across a stretch of water, add a day to every delivery estimate and have your printer watch the tracking. A cautious Thursday that turns into Wednesday beats the reverse.
The bog has more rogues than Muckfoot: see how we printed Titch Magee, another of Richard's square picture books, and browse our printing options for children's books. Planning the fourth outing for a character of your own? Share the page count with us early and we will say which binding suits it before the final spread is painted.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
