The managing editorial and production departments oversee the production of your book: they supervise the transformation of your manuscript from a stack of loose pages or a great big computer file into a finished book. These departments are at the center of the publishing process.
Obviously, the people in the managing editorial and production departments are valuable resources to an author. We’ll tell you what each of them does, and we’ll help you to figure out what you need to know to work with them most effectively. Bear in mind that the process is slightly different at every publishing house, and that it may be a little different for each book.
Here at 21st Century Press, we edit, copyedit, proofread, and typeset on disk. So, let’s start at the very beginning.
The managing editor (who is sometimes also called the copy chief, or the chief copyeditor) supervises the production process.
The managing editor is involved from the beginning. As soon as you have a contract with us, the managing editor will assign your book an ISBN, or International Standard Book Number. This is a number unique to the book (unique to the edition, actually: the hardcover will have a different ISBN than the paperback). You can usually find the ISBN above the bar code on the back of a printed book, as well as on the copyright page, and you’ll notice that the publishers always have the same prefixes.
The managing editor is also consulted on the scheduling of the book, so if you get a contract on the basis of an outline and chapters, the book may be in the managing editor’s pipeline well before it’s written. When you’re done and your editor is satisfied with the book, she will pass it on to the managing editor’s office, where the disk of the unedited book is kept in safekeeping. At most print-book publishers, all changes to the manuscript take place on the hardcopy; the original disk is isolated to ensure version control. The managing editor takes the hardcopy of the manuscript and assigns it to a developmental editor or a production editor.
At 21st Century Press, we save a copy of your book in its unedited form (clearly marked, of course), and the whole production process takes place using the disk that you’ve provided. That’s why it’s so important that you supply us with a disk with your file in Microsoft Word: your disk is the source file for everything we do.
Whether the book goes through a developmental editor or not, the production editor(PE) is the next stop. The production editor is the in-house “shepherd” for your book. The PE manages the work of freelancers and keeps the book moving on schedule. The PE keeps a watchful eye to make sure that a consistent style is maintained for your book and is the one who will notice if your heroine’s name is misspelled on the cover copy.
The first thing the production editor does is assign the book to a copyeditor (nearly all copyediting of book-length works is done by out-of-house freelancers). The depth of the copyedit depends on the condition of the manuscript. The copyeditor will be looking to correct any errors of grammar, punctuation, chronology, fact, and logic and to prepare the manuscript for the typesetter or compositor. When the copyedited manuscript comes in, it is reviewed by the author, who approves the changes, answers queries, and makes any necessary changes, corrections, and additions. The changes usually go back to the production editor, who integrates them into the file.
At 21st Century Press, we copyedit onscreen, so the whole process takes place on disk. Every person who works on the manuscript uses a different color to indicate his or her changes, and the production editor collates them all. The copyeditor has to make sure that internal page references are expressed as links. So a cross-reference like “see the chart on page 232” becomes “click here to see a chart.”
Another important thing that the copyeditor does is tag any elements that need to be set in a different type or format than the body text. Then the elements themselves have to be checked for consistency.
The art department is responsible for the cover. The art director sees a tip sheet on the book and meets with the editor and the marketing and sales departments to find out what they’re thinking. The cover process begins early, often while the manuscript is being finished and edited. After the art department comes up with a concept and it’s approved by the various players, an artist is chosen to execute the concept. The book’s title and the name of the author may be sent out for hand-lettering, although this happened more often when art departments had fewer fonts available in-house. Most art directors now have thousands of fonts, and they can usually find something appropriate among them.
When the art comes back, the art director lays out the cover, incorporating the art and the typeface and various “effects,” such as lamination, foil, and embossing, that make a cover stand out on the shelves. An eBook cover designer will concentrate on manipulating an image so that it has maximum impact on screen, even when it’s reproduced on a very small scale.
The book then goes to the designer (although, in the case of a heavily illustrated or otherwise complicated book, it may have gone to the designer much earlier). The designer comes up with a design template for the inside of the book.
Many people, even “book people,” have never looked really carefully at the inside of a book. When you do, you realize that books look very different from each other, and that every single design decision directly affects the reading experience. The margins, the typeface and its size, the chapter headings, the dingbats (symbols) that signal a change of scene within the chapter, and even the page numbers directly affect the way a book looks and feels and reads.
Usually authors have very little to add to the discussion of the inside design, and that’s OK—their input is generally not solicited. If you do have something to say, you should let your editor know well before a designer is hired.
When the manuscript has been copyedited and all the illustrations and artwork are in, the manuscript will be sent to the typesetter, or the compositor.
The typesetter takes your disk and the copyedited manuscript and enters all the changes (if your copyeditor has made the changes on disk, this step is eliminated, obviously). She also cleans up the disk, among other things eliminating spaces where tabs should be used and getting rid of any incorrect formatting. She changes all the different elements (chapter heading, section break, body text, etc.) into the correct format, as indicated by the copyeditor’s marks, and she’ll flow the text into the designer’s template for the book. At 21st Century Press, text is flowed into Quark.
When the typesetter is done, your manuscript will look like a photocopied book. These pages are called first-pass proofs, rough pages, first pages, or rough proofs; they’re also still called galley pages, a term from the old days that refers to the long proof pages that came out of the steel trays (galleys) that used to hold the printer’s type.
The book will be made into a readable PDF file and emailed to you for your approval.
Meanwhile, the first-pass proofs go to the production editor, who has them proofread. In most cases you will get a set of page proofs for review. It is important that you not make any unnecessary alterations at this stage, as each one introduces the possibility for error and extends the time necessary to produce your book. Depending on your contract, you may be charged for Author’s Alterations in excess of a certain amount. Then the production editor collates your changes into the proofreader’s set and the proofs either go back to the typesetter to be corrected or the changes are made in-house, and the results are proofread again. For more information on proofreading.
If the book is serious nonfiction, it will need an index, so the production editor will also send the first-pass proofs to an indexer.
A good index is more than just a sequential listing of names and places that occur in the text: it’s really a complex condensation of the major concepts and proper names in the book, organized in a way that makes it easy for readers to find the information they are looking for. Knowing what to leave out is as important as knowing what to include. For instance, if all the people at a party are named in the text, it’s tempting to include them all in the index. But it’s possible that most of those names appear nowhere else in the book, and that a reader is unlikely to be looking for them in an index. And, most difficult of all, it’s essential that the concepts be presented in a way that the reader will find intuitive.
Although authors sometimes do their own indexes, indexing should be done by a professional. Authors who choose to index their first books rarely choose to do it again, and that should tell you something. If it doesn’t, this will: nine times out of ten, the publisher will send an author-indexed book out to be re-indexed by a pro.
When all of this is done, the production process comes to a close. In the case of a print book, the cover and the interior are sent to the printer as Quark or PDF. PDF files are smaller than Quark files, so they can be e-mailed more easily.
When proofs come back from the printer, they are checked for errors in the copy, the colors, and the effects. In the print world, sell (or solicitation) proofs are cover “flats” (copies of the cover) with sales information on the back, and the production department orders them so that the sales reps can have them for their kits.
When everyone is happy, the final proofs are sent to the printer.
The printer sends the publisher a mockup, called “digital proofs,” which looks like a bound book. It’s the last chance for the production editor to look at the inside of the book, the margins, the type, etc., and make any last-minute, panic-button changes. Nothing gets changed at this stage unless something has gone seriously wrong. Changing even a single character can be disastrously expensive if it causes a host of other things to change.
If everything is all right, and it usually is, the production manager will give the print order. Books are generally printed, bound, and shipped from the same place. Often, some very early copies, called bindery copies, will come to your editor from the printer, and you may get one or two of them.
The Cover
The purpose of a print book cover is to get consumers to buy the book, and to focus the reader’s attention on the book’s contents. The point is to give the potential reader an image to associate with the book. (Just so you know: The terms book cover and book jacket are used more or less interchangeably, although technically the jacket is the paper slipcover that covers a hardcover book, and the cover is the cover of a paperback book
The cover should be graphically arresting, and must translate the tone of the book into a visual image. As you may have noticed, hardcovers and paperbacks often have different covers. Sometimes a hardcover is published with a number of different covers — the same cover in different colors, for instance, or a different image in the same design. The ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are the same, but a new cover attracts the attention of the booksellers, and forces them to provide sufficient display space to show it off.
Sometimes a book is “rejacketed.” A book will often get a different or adapted cover as it goes from hardcover to paperback, for instance. Sometimes a new element will be added, or a cover will be redesigned to commemorate a milestone in the book’s history — a fiftieth anniversary, perhaps, or an award. If a book is made into a film, it is almost always repackaged to include art from the film, usually a still featuring the principal actors. The cover is also an essential ingredient in building a brand. The art director will try to give the works of an author or the books in a series a “look” in order to encourage readers who liked one of the books to buy the others. For example, because of the popularity of the Left Behind series a number of Tim LaHayes books have been reissued and are selling well. Often, if a company is making an effort to rejuvenate an author’s backlist titles, they will refresh the look so reprints of the older books can be launched with a new book, with thematic packaging that links them all. So what makes a great cover?
Obviously, there are no hard and fast rules for a successful cover. Because every book is published separately, there’s no way to know how successful a cover is, and since there are so many other factors in a book’s success, it’s hard to tell when a great cover has really “made” a book. If you can remember a book cover in some detail a couple of months after you’ve bought, read, and shelved the book, chances are the cover was a good one. Sometimes a cover succeeds because of a particularly beautiful illustration, or the right color combination. One thing is clear: when they do succeed, there are a host of imitators. In the print world, a publisher can signal its excitement about a title by incorporating fancy design elements into the cover design. Metallic foil, for instance, which you see on many mass-market paperbacks, is a shiny way to bring attention to the author’s name, the title, or an iconic image. Embossing, when the author’s name, the title, or an image appears raised, is another element that helps to direct consumer attention to a name or a title. A cutout on the cover (which is what it sounds like) usually reveals part of a painting on the step-back, which is a full piece of art on a page right behind the cover. The use of a matte or high-gloss paper (or some combination of the two) for the dust jacket on a hardcover also signals that a little more money and attention have gone into the design of a cover.
All book covers should be laminated before being bound. If you’re interested in participating in the design of your book’s cover, you should send us whatever ideas or images you have. Think of a central image in the text, whether it’s a flower, a sword, or a file cabinet. If you can think of a fresh take on the object, let us know that too. Please send them separately from the text; in other words, you don’t need to “design” the cover, complete with title and author name. Remember: if you do send us an image to use, you have to also send us a signed permission form from the copyright holder of that image.
Keep in mind that the copyright holder is the person who took the photograph or drew the sketch, not the person or creator of the object displayed in the image. Unless it’s a photograph of another work of art, in which case you will have to get permission from both the photographer and the copyright holder of the piece of art in the photograph. We can’t use your image unless we have a permission letter signed by the copyright holder.
Cover Copy
If the cover design is the first thing a reader sees when looking at your book with an eye to buying it, the cover copy is second; more often than not, it’s the thing that closes the sale. The writing of that copy is an enormously important part of the publishing process, one that incorporates editorial, design, and marketing elements. Metadata is the eBook equivalent of cover copy. Provided to online retailers by the publisher, metadata contains information about the book, including a short description and promotional material, to persuade the consumer to make a purchase. In both cases, the goal of the copywriter department is to capture as wide a market as possible. In the case of a printed book, the cover copy includes all the text on the front and back of the book, as well as on the inside covers and often the first few pages as well (known as “front sales”). It includes story copy (the short description of the book’s plot), quotes from reviews or endorsements, and any additional promotional material that might be needed (“Author of Five Muskrats Dancing” or a “National Bestseller” sticker, for instance). Similar elements are included in metadata. The first book covers were designed to protect the covers of clothbound books from dirt and damage. Now it’s not unusual for a careful reader to remove the colorful, beautiful dust jacket while reading in order to preserve it.
