Following on from last week’s update, this week is more of a status report. I decided posting nothing at all might be a slippery slope to abandoning what I find to be a useful discipline, so instead I’m just going to say a little about what I’m up to. Think of it as a kind of realtime version of my three part walkthrough of the publishing process.
To anyone who missed last week’s update, we currently have our first project: Eden’s Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937-38 by Malcolm Murfett in house. We’re very much mired in the production stage at the moment. We’ve copy-edited the manuscript and we’re onto our second proof, after implementing some high level layout changes from the first proof. I’ll be spending much of today proof reading and will be getting an author’s proof to Malcolm before the end of the week.
After that, three major elements remain. The index, the cover, and the metadata. I’ll say a little about each of these as they’re all things I get asked about fairly frequently
Index
I wrote a little about indexing here a while ago, but an actual example might be interesting. In this case, Malcolm has supplied me with a list of terms to be indexed. Once we’ve finalised the proof — and thus can be confident that none of the page numbers will change — I’ll create a spreadsheet of these search terms. I’ll then stand (probably) at my desk with the spreadsheet on one screen and the proofs on the other and ctrl-F my way through each search term in turn, adding each page reference to the spreadsheet. It takes a little time, but requires relatively little concentration and so can be quite relaxing when accompanied by some music.
It’s then a relatively simple job to convert the spreadsheet into a Word document list of terms with their page references, and then upload that into the typesetting software. There’ll then be a bit of formatting to tweak et voila, we have an Index!
Cover
I’ve written a bit about covers in my third piece on images (and the problems they cause) here. For this particular book, as is often the case with history, one of the challenges we have is that contemporary photos are comparatively scarce, and also typically poor in resolution. As it happens I do have quite a nice image that I think will work well, albeit it is a bit grainy. The next thing I will need to do is play around with frames, colours, fonts and so on to lay it out nicely, enhancing the impact of the image, while catching the eye and giving a sense of emotion. This will take a certain amount of trial and error, it’s one of those things that we could do quite rapidly, but doing it well will take time.
You’ll know when we’re done with this stage, of course, because as soon as we have finalised the cover, we’ll be very keen to show it off!
Metadata
One of the things publishers do in the background is try and ensure all the necessary metadata is present and correct relating to the book in sales and library systems. Sales systems are relatively straight-forward, as they can be entered into directly from the publishing platform we use to produce our books, the two are intrinsically intertwined. Library cataloguing is a little more complex, and we have to file for a record with (in our case) the British Library, to ensure our book is correctly filed and made available accordingly. This means both that the book is discoverable in library systems, and that any payments due for the book being leant by libraries are directed to us and on to our authors as appropriate.
There really is no need to get into the detail of this here, but it basically means filling in some forms, supplying some packets of data, and making the arrangements for copies of the book to be sent to copyright libraries once it is published.
Right, I need to get back to proofreading, so I’ll wrap up here. I have a more thematic update brewing away at the moment and I’ll hopefully have time to write that up for next week or the week after. In the meantime I will use these updates as a way to keep you posted on where we are with our books, and to keep myself committed to my own deadlines!
If reading about the nuts and bolts of publishing has inspired you to write your own book, do drop me a line at proposals@tbarnpress.com.
