Technology in Traditional Book Manufacture

So most people don’t actually know what is involved in manufacturing a book. It is assumed that “it’s just done on computer” and yes a computer is very much part of the process.

Books today appear in two media: the first one is paper and I think most of us agree that this should be called a “book.” The second one appears on glass or plastic and tends to be known as an ebook.

However looking at the traditional format or as a friend of mine likes to call it, “the dead wood version” most of the process of production has indeed become digital.

Authors often write their manuscripts in Word, and typesetters lay them out in InDesign. The final PDF is sent to the printer, where the pages are imposed for production and, in an offset workflow, output to printing plates.

Alternatively the book is created as a digital ebook.

However when printing a traditional book, the first time that the words actually hit paper is when they are actually printed…

Well almost.

You see one bit that I missed out was the editing of the manuscript. Now editing goes through various stages of line editing, copy editing and proofreading (there are different systems) and most of this is done in Word before typesetting.

However after typesetting there is a dispute. As a typesetter with multiple displays (yes four of them!) I prefer to receive a marked-up PDF. The advantage of this is that I receive the PDF from the client immediately (the postal service can take a few weeks to deliver a manuscript) and Acrobat nicely displays all the corrections that I can tick off once complete. A “how-to” is on my site [here].

However, some proofreaders find paper more comfortable than a screen, particularly with the smaller, lower-resolution displays common when this article was written. One compromise is to read and correct on paper, then transfer the corrections to the PDF. The best reading setup depends on the person and the equipment.

It occurred to me in 2014, when I wrote this post, that the iPad might offer a solution. The Adobe Reader version I tested on my iPad 3 improved some annotation tools, but text selection was awkward and I could not use the insertion and replacement workflow I needed. That is a report of that particular version and setup, not a description of today’s tablet apps.

Oh well Adobe at least you are trying.

If there are any editors or proofreaders out there using their tablets to do their job I would love to hear from you!

If you have a book that needs typesetting, then please feel free to get in touch with us to discuss your requirements.