Andrew Greene

A quick followup on my "market research" post from a couple of weeks ago about my siddur.

Posting here on LJ and on FaceBook got me expressions of interest from about a dozen people, about half of whom I don't know. (And some good questions which prompted me to add an FAQ page.)

After that traffic settled down, I sent the same basic message to the "announcements" list from Zamir. That drove another 20 people to sign up, most of whom I know. (And some more interesting feedback, about which more later.)

After that traffic settled down, I sent the message to my synagogue. Now I'd previously gotten a little interest from LJ friends, almost none from Zamir, and a lot from people at shul. And from the shul people...

... exactly two have signed up.

Several of you have expressed interest in getting a copy of my siddur, if I ever publish it. I've been looking into short-run print prices, and they've come down enough that this is actually a possibility. (Thanks to Eric Berlin for pointing out Kickstarter, which would be a good way to actually get people to pre-order.)

So, the question is whether I should go ahead and get this thing press-ready. To gauge interest, I've created a page at www.greenehouse.com/a/siddur which includes (1) a summary of the project, (2) a link to a Picasa album of sample pages, and (3) a link to a Google survey of how much people are willing to pay. If enough people are willing to pay that it brings the price down to what they're willing to pay, I'll go ahead.

Please feel free to signal-boost this as appropriate.

Inspired by Eric's looming success with Kickstarter, I started to work on what I hope will be the final push to get my siddur (paryerbook) to the point where I could see whether enough people would be willing to buy a copy for it to be worth my ordering some.

( Technical details cut for length. )

This is not acceptable.

So now I'm stuck seeing how quickly I can write a program that will do just enough typesetting and image placement to reconstruct my 172-page book so that I can actually, you know, print the silly thing. This is not a wheel that I really have time to re-invent right now.

I'm seeking a description of differences between the German and Polish Jewish liturgies. The big one that I recently found out about (and that started me on this research path) is that the Germans say Sim Shalom and not Shalom Rav at Minchah if there's a Torah reading. I haven't stumbled on the right Google search terms, or maybe no one has created a web page explaining the differences (I doubt that!) but I figure someone here would either have better Google-fu (Fugle?) or would know or would know someone who knows.... Thanks!

To create the covers for my self-published siddur (prayer book), I've purchased a home silkscreening kit. So now I actually have to decide what the cover should look like. :-)

Help me brainstorm? The title is "סידור הידור תפילה" Siddur Hiddur Tefillah, which means "A prayer book for enhancing the beauty of prayer." Two of the main ideas behind the project are enhancing both the beauty of the printed page (through typographic styling) and of the music (by including transcribed incipits of the nusach (cantillation)).

So: What should be on the cover? I can do a simple typographic treatment of the title, but I'd like to have something as beautiful on the outside as on the inside. Perhaps I need a geometric border, or some appropriate clip art? (Maybe a kinor (small harp)?) Maybe I should brush up (so to speak) on my calligraphy skills?

Thanks for your ideas.

No pictures yet, but prototype three is constructed. A few glitches along the way -- I need to study better how the hinges work because I ended up with the front endpaper gapping when the book is open. But it feels good in the hand and overall I'm pleased with the appearance.

In related news, I have finally after many years (and at the urging of Andrew Wiener of Catering by Andrew) made up Hoshana cards -- that is, the words of all the hoshanot prayers on a 4"-wide 11"-tall card that can be conveniently held while also holding the arba minim and marching around the shul. These are two-up; print the file double-sided, cut it in half lengthwise, and laminate if you wish. Please let me know if you find any errors and feel free to forward the link to anyone else you think would want it.

I finished stitching the text block while in NYC, and Monday night I glued mesh over the spine and added head bands. I also cut and glued the boards and cloth for the cover, but I'm unhappy with how that turned out --- the spine is about 1/8" too narrow --- so I'm going to save that cover for some other project and try again tonight. I still hope to have time to finish before this Shabbat. (If I am successful with tonight's cover, I can glue the text block in tomorrow night and I'll be fine.)

I had hoped to have prototype 3 of my siddur (prayer book) bound before this Shabbat. That's not going to happen at this point. I've hit a few snags and I am now at the point that all the pages are printed and folded. It's too late tonight to start stitching, and that means that there's just no way that I'll be able to complete assembly by Shabbat.

But on the positive side, I should be able to have the stitching done by the end of the weekend, so I should have it completely bound by next Shabbat, when we enter the most liturgically challenging month of the year. And I'm really pleased with my layouts for the piyutim.

I'm making progress on my siddur (prayer book) project, but I'm frustrated by how it's grown.

The first prototype was 94 pages. Since one of my goals was to have it be lightweight, that was wonderful.

But it's pointless to have a siddur that, for example, optimizes the layout of the common prayers for the holidays but lacks the special prayers for each holiday (such as B'rach Dodi), so now I've been adding all the once-a-year (or so) stuff. The Torah readings for weekday mornings, each of which is read thrice a year, take 20 pages. The hoshanot for Hoshanah Rabah, which is recited once a year, are 8 pages. For comparison, the single optimized Amidah, which is recited almost 2,000 times each year, is 20 pages.

So prototype three will be about 180 pages. Which is still less than one-fifth the page count of the Artscroll siddur, but it's a bit less sleek. And all those new pages need typographic care and feeding.

I spent nearly two hours tonight trying to figure out ( how to get Acrobat Reader and my new HP printer to correctly produce protoype 2 of my book )

So now, 2:30 later than I'd planned, I have a printed and folded text block. I had planned to punch the holes tonight as well and maybe even start sewing it together.... I still hope to have "prototype 2" ready for use by Tuesday night.

I think I'm ready for yesterday's Byron Walden puzzle --- that should be easy and relaxing by comparison!

( Hebrew grammar question that most of you won't care about )

Here are the pictures I promised you: ( Cut for size and bandwidth )

Shabbat morning, I was asked to be sh'liach tzibbur (prayer leader) and I was delighted to use my siddur for the first time in that capacity. I did feel that the beauty of the page inspired me to beauty in my singing.

Having the musical notation worked exactly as I had hoped in two spots. When we reached the piyyut (song) "El Adon," I blanked on a melody, so I simply picked #4 in the book and started singing. It was a melody that I like but that I can never come up with under the pressure of the moment. Perfect. And between Sh'ma and Amidah I often have trouble getting back into the Shabbat morning nusach (prayer modes) from chanting the Sh'ma using the Torah cantillation. Again, I just glanced at the musical notes to remind my brain of where it was supposed to be and I recovered.

I haven't yet gotten the chance to add the musical notation to the Hallel, and I actually blanked at Hodu Lashem Ki Tov --- but by that point I was riding high and simply improvised a new responsive tune. The congregation was enough in my groove that they handled the de novo call-and-response just fine, and I felt that unique elation that comes from leading the joyous singing of the Hallel.

When I set the siddur down while carrying the Torah scroll around, my rabbi picked it up and started leafing through it. His assessment: "This is really coming along nicely. You should publish it commercially when it's done." That was just the icing on the cake. (The chrein on the gefilte fish?)

The whole experience convinced me that I'm on the right track with this project. It made my tefillot (prayers) more beautiful and more spiritually satisfying. It made me a more effective sh'liach tzibbur (prayer leader). And although I started off trying to create something for myself, I seem to have stumbled on something that other people value as well.

Small disappointment first: As I feared, the text block didn't go in quite right. When the book is closed, the front cover is slightly raised; when the book is open, there's some sort of torsion going on that skews the text block by about five degrees. Had this been the "real" one I'd be furious; since this is the trial one, I'm simply taking notes.

But overall, I'm really really pleased. It looks like a real book. It feels like a real book. It's attractive, comfortable to hold and to leaf through, and a successful "proof of concept." I'll use it for a few weeks, doing "usability testing" and figuring out what else I need to do differently for the next one.

Pictures to follow.

It looks like a real book! (A real book wrapped in wax paper sitting under heavy weights, at the moment, but nonetheless....)

The text block (i.e., the signatures all stitched together) looked and felt exactly like the text block from a professionally produced hardcover when I was done stitching it. The cover (boards glued to fabric) that I made this morning was just the right size for the text block -- actually a smidge too large, which is fine.

The only thing that I may be unhappy with is that I may have glued the text block a little too close to the spine; the book closes but it feels a little springier than it did when I was doing a dry runthrough. The "Yes!" brand adhesive that I'm using is not very forgiving -- you basically get about five seconds to line things up and then they are never going to separate again.

But, then again, this is the one on which it's ok to make mistakes.

So, it's going to sit under weights overnight, and we'll see what it's like in the morning. I'm not going to put the title on the exterior until Sunday at the earliest, but I did take pictures before assembling it tonight and I hope to post some of them over the weekend.

I think bookbinidng is going to turn into a very gratifying hobby.

So I've started to work on creating a properly bound draft of my siddur (prayer book) project. This is the one to find out what's going to go wrong. (So far, I've learned that if you have a one-bit-deep color image embedded in a PDF, Acrobat Reader 8 renders it correctly onscreen but as black and white to the printer. Ouch.)

Last night I printed and folded all the signatures (that took about two hours for a 128p codex). This morning I cut the boards and cloth for the cover and glued them together. I hope to stitch the signatures today and do the final assembly tonight, so it can dry for a day and be usable by Shabbat.

It brings back fond memories of the book-repair table in the library office at HCHS. JH was the book-repair master -- he could fix anything and I think he's the only person ever to log over 1,000 hours volunteering at the library. I never qualified to fix anything significant; mostly I did accession paperwork and worked front desk. But looking back on it, the library clique was the coolest nerd thing about high school. (I didn't realize we were a clique until just now.)

So my siddur project -- typesetting my own edition of the standard Jewish prayer book -- is almost near the "beta" milestone, and I need to pick a title. While I undertook this project for my own personal use, enough other people have asked me about it at shul (I guess I'm a little obvious davenning out of a three-ring binder) and expressed interest in seeing it when I'm ready to share that I think I should have a real title soon.

My working title has been Siddur Hiddur Tefillah ("The Prayer Book of Making Prayers More Beautiful," if you'll permit an awkward translation) but I'm not sure if I like it.

I'm open to other suggestions.

( details )