The words are all written. The illustrations are all drawn. The photographs are all found. The layouts are all finished. It's time for the book to be printed.

My books are printed all over the world, in countries such as China, Singapore, Italy, Spain, and Belgium. 'Why aren't they printed here in Britain?' I hear you ask. Well, they could be printed here, of course, but the truth is it's cheaper to print them overseas, and that makes them less expensive for bookshops, for libraries, and for you.

Once the book is at the printer's, no more changes can be made to it. It's printed on big sheets of paper which are much bigger than the pages of the actual book. The You Wouldn't Want To Be A Victorian Schoolchild book has 32 pages, but it's made from just 2 sheets of paper.

The sheets are printed on both sides, and when the ink is dry, they are folded two or three times to make sections, or groups, of pages. Each section of the You Wouldn't Want To Be A Victorian Schoolchild book has 16 pages.

After the sections have been folded, they are gathered together (section 1 with pages 1 to 16, and section 2 with pages 17 to 32). They start to look like the finished book. A guillotine trims the edges to make the correct sized pages for the book.

Last of all, the trimmed sections are sent to the bindery, where the cover is bound, or joined, to them.
 

The sheet of paper for section 1 of You Wouldn't Want To Be A Victorian
Schoolchild. It measures 88.5cm (2ft 11in) long and 51.5cm (1ft 8in) wide.
It has 8 pages on this side, and 8 pages on the other. After folding, all
16 pages will be in the correct order, from page 1 to page 16.

The two sections are folded, gathered together, trimmed and
then sent to the bindery. Here, the sections are ready to be
glued to the cover for the paperback edition of You Wouldn't
Want To Be A Victorian Schoolchild.