Tom Mayer

They're actually printed in these large sheets that then get folded down into one page size sheet and then cut.

So you have these things called signatures, which are 16 pages at once.

So you would actually have to have 16 pages of actual U.S.

currency paper.

I mean, logistically, very challenging to achieve Alex Goldmark's vision.

I mean, we took the idea really seriously.

Julia is like Q from James Bond.

You go to her and you're like, I want to do this crazy thing.

And she's like, okay, let me go work on it.

And she knows every printer and she knows all of the tricks of the trade and she knows how to get books done on time and under budget and is just really, really smart.

And like she comes back three weeks later and she's like, okay, I've solved it, but it'll cost you.

Turns out the smell of money is very specific, and you know it when you smell it.

And what we were scratching and sniffing here was not it.

Some of them weren't expensive.

Some of them were like, well, that's going to add a quarter to the unit cost.

And some of them were like, that's going to add a dollar to the unit cost.

And that would have major downstream effects on what the actual cost to the customer would be.

That could negatively impact how many people are going to buy the book.

So you have to really weigh those things.

Parkinson's Law is as ubiquitous in publishing as gravity is to Earth.