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About the Design of Our Books

You can judge a book by its design...

Our book design has evolved (and continues to evolve) under pressure from questions similar to those that shape our other designs…How can we improve our readers success rate with do-it-yourself systems? How can we deliver more, better information with less trees cut and less cost?

The layout and binding we use is inexpensive to print in short runs, and changes are inexpensive as well. This enables us to update the books frequently. Without a huge backlog of old-school books to sell, it is easier to pursue revolutionary new ideas with enthusiasm, and bring them to you fast (updates are posted on our web site as well, so people aren't left behind once they buy a book).
It may seem to you that there is as much information in our books as in other books that are two or three times as big. This is because it is true!

A lot of thought went into designing our books to conserve trees and the other resources used to make them. Each greywater book uses 2 ozs of non-post consumer pulp. If we had produced the book using industry standard specs, it would take 6 oz of virgin pulp per book!
The layout makes use of every space possible, stopping just short of crowding the eye. This saves about 20% the paper compared to a more conventional layout.

The inside paper itself is 100% recycled, 50% post-consumer. It is high quality and exceptionally high opacity, so thinner sheets can be used. Thin sheets trim another 25% of the weight off of this book, saving fuel for shipping as well as more trees. The cover paper is 100% recycled, 20% post-consumer.

Each batch of highest quality eco paper has been arduous to come by. To get the first batch of this paper, we had to loan the supplier money to buy a whole pallet of paper, even though we only needed a few cartons! Our printer Poor Richard's Press, has performed truly heroic feats to find good paper (by the way, these folks are EXCELLENT if you need anything printed).

Over the years, we've spent dozens of extra hours to conserve paper. However, our paper-conserving layout helps cover the higher cost of the more eco paper, and we've paid less shipping this whole time, so our effort has been an economic success as well as an environmental one.

Printed with soy ink

See also: Updates and errata—How different the recent editions of the books are from the old ones