The book, “A History of the Ottawa Folk Festival (1994-2012)“, has changed a lot since we first conceived of doing it. We started with about a hundred pages of text from Joyce MacPhee and the festival volunteers’ yearly efforts at writing the record along with about 20,000 images from the Photo Crew.
I remember that I priced it out and determined that we could make a $25 book if we kept the page count down to about 120 and that would allow for about three pictures per year.
Well, that didn’t last long! I believe the least number of pictures used in a chapter is seven and the most is twenty-three, with the page count, in the end, at 174 without the index.
The index is complete with sections for “Ottawa Folk” (organizers, emcees, festival supporters and kindred organizations), “Artists” (musicians and other performing artists and groups) and “Workshops” (there were about 600 conceived and named over the years!).
But the index is not being printed within the book. It will be available online (here, on this website) for download and as a separately-printed book. There are two reasons for that: One is that the book has gotten too large to be sold at $25 and an additional forty-two pages would just make it that much more expensive. The other, more important, reason is aesthetic: the printing company sets a limit of 180 pages when you have a cover that is printed on both sides. I, and everyone who has seen it, LOVES the display of festival program covers that we have designed into the inner front cover and first page. That would be lost or buried without that two-sided cover.
The index should be available online early next week and some printed copies will be available at the book release. Watch this space for an announcement.