Book Production – The 7 Deadly Things

“Publishing a book is like stuffing a note in a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown and some come safe to land.” So said Margaret Atwood, the celebrated Canadian author of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.” She was of course referring to the uncertainty of knowing where your readers might be found, but she could equally well have been addressing the lengthy process of producing a book, and the challenge in predicting when it would emerge for the world to consume.

Book production is fraught with potential traps and delays. And it is even more complex today, where multiple formats are the norm, translations for foreign cultures are common, and the number of internal and external contributors is considerable.

It is NOT a Sprint

It is certainly a prolonged process. Depending on the book and the market, once a manuscript is received from the author it can take anything from nine months to over two years, and sometimes much longer. Eighteen months is a good average. And even that is subject to established seasonal patterns for Fall and Spring releases, and Award and Festival events can affect the project further.

After receiving the manuscript, the first step for the publisher is typically Editing and Revision. The author and the senior acquisitions editor conduct a collaborative and structural review of the whole manuscript that may take several months. It sometimes involves a significant re-write, which will take longer.

Following that, the Design and Production processes begin. We should note that many of these activities are often conducted concurrently, and one of the more important tasks for production planners is to define the critical path that highlights those events and milestones that must not be allowed to slip if the publication date is to be met. The production processes include designing the content layout and the exterior of the book, and this is where many of the external resources, and consequently, many of the complexities are involved. The Distribution processes follow and will clearly vary depending on the formats (print, digital and audio) to be prepared.

It is increasingly common to release all formats of a book (print, digital and audio) at the same time, and this drives a series of coordinated steps to successfully meet the publication date. Publishers often set the planned publication date in the author’s contract, but due to the challenges of managing and scheduling the substantial number of dependent events, things may not always go to plan. This usually means there is pressure to push dates back, although publishers sometimes need to move dates forward for financial reasons such as moving revenues into an otherwise poor quarter.

Reiterative Process

The process of juggling the availability of internal and external resources and the delivery of necessary materials requires a reiterative process of calculation and recalculation, involving both forward scheduling events from a start data, and alternatively backwards scheduling events from the publication date when circumstances change as they inevitably do. And it requires extraordinary collaboration with suppliers – and their systems. This process has long been beyond the capabilities of manual calculations and requires sophisticated, integrated software that calculates labor and material costs and availability, to produce a viable plan that meets both budget and time constraints.

The 7 Deadly Things

The 7 steps that the editorial and production system must include to avoid serious delays are:

1. Editing content: This includes the initial acquisition editing but subsequently copy editing (for style, grammar etc.) and proof-reading to catch final corrections (typos and spelling errors).
2. Creation and maintenance of the production plan from a rough initial milestone plan to a more detailed chart of all activities in a visual timeline. This shows the critical path along with all other events and contingencies for all contributors, and vendor’s materials and services. This plan is central to the project’s management and as noted above, is often re-run based on changing information over the life of the project. Sophisticated publishing-specific software is required, which includes or is integrated to, event management software, purchasing, rights and royalties/contract management, and metadata management software, among others. Flexibility in the software is essential to adjust to a constant stream of changes and updates. Version control is helpful.
3. Placing of purchase orders with printer and paper suppliers, but also with the many providers of specialist services that are too numerous to mention in detail, including services like cover design, illustrations and photographs, blurb writers, proofreaders, and publicists, all of which must be reviewed to meet the quality standards and plan requirements.
4. Copyright Clearance: Involving the laborious task of checking rights and permissions, and any other legal requirements.
5. Marketing and Promotions: A continuous campaign of building awareness including social media interaction and promotions, enriched metadata creation and, at the final stages, author tours and book launch events. Again, all these activities need to be managed in a central data warehouse that is accessible by (and secured to) all parties involved, including communications with authors and agents on project progress.
6. Typesetting and Layout depending on the formats required.
7. Printing, Binding and Distribution: Mostly outsourced to specialist providers (frequently off-shore in the case of printers) and distributors, such as Print-On-Demand (POD) providers.

In summary, because of the considerable number of time-sensitive activities and events in the book production process, many of which are outsourced, the publisher’s editorial and production software must provide a centralized communications and control capability with real-time functionality for collaborating with partners, internal contributors, suppliers, and authors. It includes facilities for transmitting PO’s POD files, and ONIX data for example. And functionality such as reminder alerts for upcoming deadlines and workflow templates for scheduling and costing, all serve to keep the project on track and within budget. As a result, the system allows the publisher to focus on their own core competencies of acquiring, curating, and marketing great content.