Book Production

Adrian Bullock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136508448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The digital revolution has brought with it a wider range of options for creating and producing print on paper products than ever seen before. With the growing demand for skills and knowledge with which to exploit the potential of digital technology, comes the need for a comprehensive book that not only makes it possible for production staff, editors, and designers to understand how the technology affects the industry they work in, but also provides them with the skills and competencies they need to work in it smartly and effectively. This book is designed to satisfy this need.

Book Production falls into two parts:

• The first part deals with the increasingly important role of production as project managers, a role which has not been adequately written about in any of the recent literature on publishing.
• The second part deals with the processes and raw materials used in developing and manufacturing print on paper products. Case studies are used to illustrate why and how some processes or raw materials may or may not be appropriate for a particular job.

With expert opinions and case studies, and a consideration of the practices and issues involved, this offers a comprehensive overview of book production for anyone working, or training to work in or in conjunction with the books industry.

Part I
Production and project management

1
Project management

Project management is about planning, organising, monitoring and controlling the use of mechanisms and resources to produce a specific outcome. The aim of this chapter is to introduce the essentials of project management and to show how they are used in publishing.

Before starting, I would like to make it clear that although I talk about departments, publishers and organisations, what appears in this chapter and throughout the book is as relevant to a large transnational organisation as it is to a person producing their first book on their own. This is because production, like editing or design, is a publishing function just as much as it is a department. If you are that person producing your first book on your own, you will be as involved in editing, production or design issues as your counterparts in a big publishing company. The only real difference is one of scale.

We need to start with some definitions in order to understand what a project is, and the similarities between project and production management.

What is a project?

It is actually quite hard to produce a single definition of what a project is, as definitions vary with the nature and size of the project, from large ones like building a school to small, personal ones like organising a holiday.

Nevertheless, projects do share a set of common characteristics that make them different from everyday work. A project:

• is a process made up of a series of specified activities (or tasks) used to convert inputs into outputs in order to produce the final outcome, or product
• has a defined lifespan, with a beginning, middle and end
• is usually a one-off effort, and concerned with creating something new
• operates under a set of constraints
• needs mechanisms and resources to achieve its outcome.

The constraints are:

• money
• time
• quality
• skills
• equipment
• legal
• logic
• environmental.

The mechanisms and resources are:

• people with skills, knowledge and expertise
• tools, equipment and technology
• money and time.

A project as related to publishing and production

Activities and tasks

In a publishing project the specified activities include the entire publishing process: upstream, from authorship through editing, design, sales, marketing, promotion, to downstream with distribution, and the final outcome being the publication of a book. Activities are broken down into tasks, which need to be allocated to members of the project team.

How the book will be edited and what it will look like in terms of size, number of pages, use of colour, whether it is to be a hardback or paperback, sewn or unsewn will already have been decided by editorial working closely with marketing.

Production is usually much more involved in the mid- and downstream activities of:

• product specification and quality management
• scheduling and time management
• estimating and money management
• supplier selection and management
• raw materials selection.

Though, as will be seen, production is effectively involved to some degree or other throughout the publishing process carrying out tasks associated with authors, editors, designers, finance, sales, marketing, rights, warehousing and distribution.

Inputs and outputs

The inputs range from: text files, image files, raw materials such as paper, ink and board; and the output is generally a printed product. The outputs are the product of a process; for example, paper is the input to the printing process, and printed sheets are the output. Inputs and their outputs are the building blocks of the project all contributing to the final outcome.

The project outcome

The project outcome, as far as production is concerned, is punctual delivery to the warehouse of finished stock, produced at an agreed price, to an agreed standard, and in the correct quantity.

Project lifespan

In simple terms, a project starts when the author contract is signed, and it ends when the product is launched on publication day. For production, the start of a project varies according to how involved production is with the upstream activities of authoring, editorial, and design, providing advice, information and rough estimates; and the end comes when delivery of stock has been accepted by the warehouse.

Effort

One characteristic of publishing is that it puts a lot of effort into creating its products, most of which are new, one-off, micro-products (there are, of course, reprints and new editions as well); and most people in production find themselves managing more than one project at a time.

Constraints

The constraints for a publishing project are the same as those which appear in the list. However, the big difference between a publishing project and, say, building a school, is that publishing projects are usually carried out in a highly competitive, commercial environment, where there is an unremitting drive to produce new products and a premium on bringing them to market as speedily and cheaply as possible, working in the knowledge that someone else might get there before you, and produce a better or cheaper product into the bargain.

In this kind of environment time becomes speed, money becomes price, and quality can become relative. Skills, equipment and project logic are all co-ordinated to make the project move faster and cost less than one’s competitors can.

Good project management understands and takes these constraints into account, working with them to minimise any braking effect on the project, and thereby gaining competitive advantage over the competition. To the victor the spoils!

Mechanisms and resources

For the project to work successfully it needs people with the necessary skills, knowledge and expertise to carry out their specified tasks competently, quickly, efficiently and effectively. They will also need the necessary equipment, tools and technology to help them with this; and, of course, production’s choice of suppliers is a critical element in the success, or otherwise, of the project.

Then there is, of course, the need for adequate financial resources, without which the project’s wheels will not be able to turn properly or, at worst, not be able to turn at all; and, finally, there is the need for the right of amount of time in which to carry out all these activities.

Project management: the theory

Project management is essentially a business process, and involves the following.

• Defining and planning a project in terms of its intended outcome, how and when this will be achieved, and at what price, in light of identified constraints and available resources and mechanisms.
• Taking the external constraints and managing them by turning them intointernal procedures, policies, and objectives, which people in the organisation know about, understand and work to. So, for example, money can be managed through budgets, estimates and cashflow forecasts; time can be managed through schedules
• Making sure that mechanisms and resources are available.
• Co-ordinating the activities – authorship, editing, design, marketing, manufacturing – needed to transform inputs into outputs and, ultimately, into the finished product.

The project manager is responsible for the overall management of the project, and this involves:

• fining the project in terms of:
  • inputs
  • processes
  • outputs
  • procedures
  • policies
  • objectives
• reducing the project to a specified set of activities and tasks
• ensuring that the necessary resources are available as and when needed
• planning the work to be done and allocating resources to activities and tasks
• implementing, monitoring, and controlling the project
• reporting progress and problems
• closing down the project when it has been completed
• carrying out a review to establish what lessons have been learned, and how this information can be used to improve the way future projects are managed.

Figure 1.1 Project lifespan

Project management in practice: defining the project

So far we have been looking at what happens in theory. It is now time to see how things work in practice. Defining the project in terms of its activities, inputs, processes and outputs is relatively simple. The author has produced a text (input) that needs to be edited and designed (activities), printed and bound (processes) as a book (output).

However, each project is unique, and as can be seen from the two case studies that follow, the way a project is defined, and the way it works, is influenced by the nature of the inputs, the people involved, the processes, the resources and mechanisms, and the final output. The more information can be drawn together, the more nuanced and granular that information, and the more you understand what it is telling you, the easier it is to run the project.

Case study 1.1

This case study involves producing 350 copies in paperback of a 96-page collection of poems by a well-known poet. It was decided to publish the book to coincide with the celebration of the author’s 75th birthday. Since this was a collection of the poet’s work, all of the poems in the book had already been published elsewhere. Most of the text was submitted as a Word file. However, ten poems were submitted as printed copies from the publication in which they had first appeared, and needed to be converted into a digital form, either through optical character recognition (OCR) reading and scanning, or through rekeying before they could be used. There were no illustrations, and the cover was a 2-colour typographic design. As the poems had already been published, editorial inputs were limited to some light-touch copy-editing for house style and consistency, but not much more. Because the book was part of the company’s poetry series and followed a series style, design inputs were light. The one major input was the cover design, as this was specific to the book. However, there was a strong brand style to follow, so inputs were fairly minimal.

The text and the cover were sent out to a freelance designer, who had been dealing with the other books in the series, and was used to handling poetry setting, which can be quite complex and, therefore, slower and more demanding than novel or biography setting. The designer submitted page and cover proofs for approval and, once these had been passed for press, supplied the printer with a Portable Document Format (PDF – see Chapter 4 for a fuller coverage of this). The author, who lived in the UK, had asked for page and cover proofs to be sent to her as printed copies, as she was not connected to the internet and was unable to receive or read digital proofs. So, time had to be allowed for proofs to travel in both directions by post. Given the light editing and the fact that the poems had already appeared elsewhere, there were only a few corrections, and only one round of proofs was required.

With only 350 copies to print on the first run, the book was an ideal candidate for short-run digital printing. However, marketing was keen for the book to be printed on a 100gsm bulky ivory-coloured paper, and to be section sewn, in keeping with other books in the series, which ruled out digital printing. (If these terms are new to you, please go to the relevant chapter in the book, where they are explained in full in their context – Chapter 5: Raw materials; and Chapter 7: Binding and finishing.)

In view of these requirements, it was decided to print the text lithographically, the cover digitally, and to bind it section sewn.

This case study appears at first sight to be reasonably simple in t...