ARTWORKING AND TYPESETTING | OPERATIONS | EBOOK & DIGITAL PRODUCTION | WORKFLOW TOOLS
This is a guest post from Emily and Nic Gibson. They are both directors of Corbas Consulting Ltd and each have over 15 years’ publishing experience, mostly in editorial, print and digital production.
Knowledge is everything they say. To help you get ahead, here are the five things they know about XML that you don’t.
This is a guest post from Emma Barnes. Emma is co-founder of General Products, and indie publisher Snowbooks. General Products is the company behind FutureBook-award-winning Bibliocloud, the web-based all-in-one publishing management system.
Did you go into publishing so that you could spend your days copying and pasting ever-changing metadata from spreadsheets, emails and databases into InDesign? You did? Great. No need to read on.
This is a guest post from Thomas Bohm. Thomas studied graphic communication, and now works for book publishers and businesses, whilst running User design a graphic communication design, illustration and production service. Thomas writes, researches and occasionally publishes. He wrote Punctuation..? (2nd edition, User design, 2012) a fun and fully illustrated book on punctuation. Has won awards from the following competitions: British Book Design and Production Awards, 3×3 Magazine and European Design Awards.
Here are 10 tips for improving book designs, they come from my own practical experience and observations. There are many parts, processes and people involved in the production of a book, decisions are usually not down to one person alone, but a group of people each with their own requirements, understandings and style preferences. Subsequently a successful and open minded editorial/designer/client relationship is essential for good results.
Text in books is often hampered by the arch of the open book and falls into the gutter, which causes text which is hard to read and annoys readers because the text on the inner right side and inner left side bends into the gutter. One reason why this happens, is because the designer has failed to make the gutter wide enough.
This is an interview with Blanca Rosa Roca, speaker at BookMachine Barcelona on 26th February. Blanca (@RocaEditorial) is the founder and director of Roca Editorial, set up in 2003, by five professionals with substantial experience of publishing. Here Maria Cardona (@mmcardona) finds out more about the publishing house.
Like other Spanish publishers, we have been affected by the recession. However, although sales of print books are down, we have witnessed double-digit year-on-year growth in digital revenues.
This is a guest post from Ricardo Fayet. Ricardo is an avid reader and startup enthusiast who has been studying the publishing industry with interest for several years. He co-founded Reedsy, to help authors collaborate with publishing professionals.
The latest AuthorEarnings reports from indie author Hugh Howey and his collaborator “data guy” unleashed a new debate in the publishing industry, this time focused on ISBNs for eBooks. “30% of the ebooks being purchased in the U.S. do not use ISBN numbers,” writes Howey–a statistic that forces us to question the validity of all data that comes out of ISBN tracking. He goes on to say that “the ISBN is dead. It’s just not buried yet.” Is it really time for each of us to grab a shovel?
This is a guest post from Emma Barnes and Rob Jones. Emma and Rob are co-founders of General Products Ltd, and indie publisher Snowbooks. General Products is the company behind FutureBook-award-winning Bibliocloud, the web-based all-in-one publishing management system. Here is an edited extract from The Bibliocloud Book: read more at http://bibliodocs.com/manual
About XML
XML is one of those boring ideas that can make business run more smoothly, like ISBN numbers or barcodes. Really it’s just some general rules for how to write down information so that computers as well as people can read it – mainly computers, though. It’s not even a full set of rules; it’s just enough to help people make a start on designing their own formats for sharing information.
This is a guest post from Suzanne Collier, who is described as THE person to see if you want to get ahead in book publishing. With over 30 years’ experience of publishing, in both trade and academic, she founded bookcareers.com alongside her sales and marketing role within the business. Fully qualified in Careers Guidance she sees private clients from Managing Director level downwards (@suzannecollier | @bookcareers).
No doubt, like many others, you’ve read the results of the bookcareers.com salary survey and you think now is the time to go in all guns blazing and negotiate a pay rise. Hold on, don’t go blustering in straight away and ask for more money because the ‘survey says so’. The survey figures are only part of the picture, do some research first.
This is a guest post from Carl Pappenheim, owner of Spineless Classics about Working in Publishing
Publishing is comfortably the most glamorous and educational industry going (well, after tech support of course) but working with text can be a trial. Whether it’s a poorly formatted lengthy terms-of-business from a bureaucratic behemoth who want to give you a license, or just a poorly transcribed manuscript that was typed up by somebody’s myopic aunty on a Wordstar electric typewriter, at some point you’re going to be tearing at your elegantly coiffed hair with frustration at all the time you’re wasting filling in missing full-stops instead of getting into an event early enough to complain about the free wine. I personally find such misuses of my time very trying, so in a generous attempt to lessen the misery for others I present to you three things that have greatly reduced my stress of working in publishing over the past few years.
Host of November’s BookMachine NYC, Bree Weber, talks to speaker on the night Miral Sattar, founder of BiblioCrunch.
Grab your tickets for BookMachine NYC here.
1. What’s your background and how did you get involved in the publishing industry?
I’m an engineer by background, love to write and publish, and also love help other people publish. So, obviously, a natural fit for me would be to combine all three into my own company.
This week sees the launch of Advance Editions, a platform for crowdsourced editing allowing readers early access to soon-to-be-published books in the hope that they’ll spot any previously missed errors – factual, linguistic or otherwise – or be able to provide any other suggestions on how to improve. The idea is that, having already been professionally edited, books will be uploaded to the site for three months ahead of their official release, with the site’s users able to download either the first half for free or the complete book for a 60% discount on the RRP. Readers can then suggest changes through the site for the authors to make prior to final publication.
Many design companies, like us here at HL Studios, come from a print or web-based background and have had to do some serious upgrading (of software, equipment and especially skills) to keep up with the multitude of digital devices available on the market today. Designing for these devices is quite complex, as each device has different characteristics that impact on the user experience.
David Bann has worked in production at Penguin, Rainbird and, most recently, Michael O’Mara Books. Here he takes a look back at the dramatic changes that have taken place in the way books are produced, since the 1960s.
This is a guest post from Nicola Esson of HL Studios, sponsors of BookMachine Oxford, happening this Thursday 6th September at the Ashmolean Dining Room.
Picture the technology available when you were a child… I dont know about you but, I dont consider myself to be that old (30’s ahem) and things were pretty shabby. 2D graphics with the only movement in a game being left to right, phone boxes (and calling the operator for a reverse charge call to your mum) no internet and a computer room at school where you could sit in front of a giant box and grow an electronic sunflower in double science (anyone remember that gem?!).
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