We've been busy translating and font picking and layoutting and printer meeting and paper-company visiting over here these past three weeks. Bruce and Yuko have completed the translations and we're in the final editorial phase before layout.

We're scheduled to drop off files at the printers on the 20th, which is next Friday. We have a week to finish everything up — not impossible but no room for lollygaggin'.

For those of you who may be wondering what's happening during these final crunch days, here's a quick, edited rundown:

Editorial:

• Final translation checks
• Final edits / cuts
• Copy to layout
• Post layout cutting / copy fitting / trimming to hit our desired book size — a frantic back and forth between (mainly) Bruce and me
• Prelim editing (TOC, copyright page, quote, dedication, etc)
• Back blurb copy

Design:

• Text block size tweaking
• Body text layout, chapter headings / starts, page numbering, page headers
• Material checks on Dummy Book
• Cleaning up cover-artwork (from roughs to finals)
• Endpaper artwork cleanup
• Tobira artwork cleanup
• Prelims design — copyright page, half-title, title, tobira, TOC
• Spine design
• Back case emboss design
• Vertical back cover blurbs, etc

And then .. once all that's done we need to jump on getting the Goodbye Madame Butterfly companion website up and running as soon as possible. Plans to have it live by the end of the month. Then the PR push.

We'll have galleys ready mid-next week, so anyone who wants a review copy please contact us here.