Saturday, February 02, 2008

If not now, when?









Now! Now! Now! Yes - it's finally out.. the long awaited 1st ever KMP produced Coffee Table Book.. also known as "If not now, when?". This perfectly titled perfect book was conceptualised eons ago.. by one of the dinosaurs of KMP, Andee, who typed out Rinpoche's smses with two fingers. Jamie, Joe and i attempted to bring this one step further by compiling these quotes into a book of digital Dharma.. but as the smses went to his students, they were quite deep and we were not sure other people would understand them. The idea then evolved into getting quotes from Rinpoche's Dharma teachings, which had been published.

Then Shirley came up with a proposal to do a coffee table book of Rinpoche's quotes, which made Jamie and I scream Eureka! Shirley contributed a huge pile of lengthy quotes which Jamie and I added to our previous list of quotes. We then systematically went through and edited them down to bite-size morsels. Then we had the gargantuan task of choosing which quotes would be more easily illustrated. And which quotes to include! We loved every one of them, which made the whittling process even more difficult. We also fretted about an appropriate title, then Shirley came up with 'If not now, when?' which we all loved, loved, loved! And i still do. What better question should we all ask ourselves? And Joy and Justin's interpretation of the title on the cover design is fab.

Joy and Justin, our graphic designers extraordinaire, also came up with the wonderful graphics within. JJ, our 23 year old chicken, was the production manager and aged visibly by the end of the production phase.

Final artwork became not-really-final as we kept finding mistakes at each proofreading session. Were we blind?? Why didn't we see them the last round. And this was just the editors beating ourselves us! We won't even mention what the long suffering designers thought of us. Finally, JJ decided to take it off our grubby little hands and sent it off to the printers.

Anyway, finally, finally, finally - it's out! It's great! Rinpoche loves it! Andee, who is extremely critical about books, loves it! We love it! And we hope the whole world will too! If not now, when?????!

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