Book design, first prototype

I received the hardcover I ordered at ezbook the other day. I wanted to see what my drawings would look like in print. I guess it's a matter of taste, but I rather like the results.

I've succumbed to the temptation to start using text. At the beginning of the books there will now be one page where the story is summarized. I find you need to read the story twice otherwise because you get lost in the images. This way people actually get to follow the story on first reading. It's just one page of text... I want to keep it short, so only one language. This will mean the book will need to be translated if I want to release it in other countries. This wasn't necessary for the wordless books.

The idea behind using color is that this will be a costly high-quality print any way. Books as beautiful objects. People can already read the story for free online so if they buy the book they likely want it to look good and are (hopefully) willing to pay a small premium for that.

There will be redundance in the images. This can mean that I can add images in the book and leave them out of the digital version (or vice versa).

The process of creating these books will be very much like writing, I suspect. Each image is like a sentence. I can edit the book as if it was a text, replacing, adding or removing images.

I wanted the book to be pocket size so people can take it with them on the train. It is also modeled a bit after the woodcut novels from a century ago. You'd have one beautiful woodcut on the right page, the left page left blank. Beautiful books, really.

Any way, that's the theory. I'm sure I'll be changing my mind a million times. Experimenting along...