Posted by Brian Hotchkiss on Tue, May 25, 2010
Some publishing people dread a book's final pre-press phase—especially those book packagers who produce illustrated publications. While every book follows its own organic process step by step, it's this last phase where the carefully arranged dominos seem just to tremble in anticipation of tumbling into each other. A glance at the book development process helps understand why this phase can become frantic, and when late-stage rewriting enters the picture, all bets are off.
When we embark on a new project, the first step is the careful preparation of a timeline that entails each step of the process. Everything we can predict, we do—holidays, blocks of author downtime, the printer's availability, and lead time for ordering paper are just a few elements we consider. Because nearly every project begins with a fixed endpoint, we work backward to find the start date. With any luck, it is pretty close to when the author plans to complete the first-pass manuscript (MS).
A production schedule diagram resembles a funnel: The wider top develops because more time is needed up front (writing, MS development, editing, and creating the design concept). Once the editorial phase is complete, however, everything starts to speed up, and here's where compression usually occurs (i.e., the funnel tapers sharply). The ultimate deadline hasn't changed, but if the book is now two months behind where it needs to be, something's gotta give.
Typically, a book develops from idea to manuscript to layout before being transmitted to the printer. The writer's gestation and research period can last years. Once she begins writing, a minimum of several months and usually a year or more of intense work lay ahead of her. Next, the newborn first-draft receives editorial attention for anywhere from one or two months to half a year or longer.
Chances are the design concept is in progress during the editorial phase so the edited MS, once reviewed by its author, can quickly move along to typesetting. By this point, what began as a deceptively "leisurely" process has gained its own pace and inexorable momentum.
Production events occur fast and furious: The MS is typeset, then conveyed to the layout artist, who prepares each page, incorporating images in synch with design specs and complying with the panoply of standard publication requirements. The author and others review the layout while the proofreader reads it. Everyone's eagle eyes search for different problems and issues—typos, style points, factual and/or grammatical errors, accuracy of running heads and page numbers, consecutive page numbering, etc.
Then the author returns her marked-up layouts, and lo and behold they've sprouted all kinds of emendations: "move two ¶s from page 49 to page 37"; "insert these 3 new ¶s here"; "wrong picture, new one in mail"; "couldn't find reference, so cut entire passage." And on and on.
An editor sets about compiling all the participants' changes into a single set of proofs, making certain that no change skews the content or goes against style. The layout person uses the editor's compilation to make type changes, and the (now 40-percent new) layout goes off to the indexer, who has a ridiculously short time to whip together what must become the "authority" for locating names and subjects in the final book.
Gasp! Pant, pant.... Whew!
So, it should be quite evident why rewriting at laid-out-page stage is a bad idea. Not only does it mean more work for all involved, this is a crucial domino in the array, and its tipping causes a nasty chain reaction. Moving two paragraphs here or inserting a new picture there result in repagination for the balance of the chapter, if not the rest of the book. Cross references directing the reader elsewhere must be located and their page numbers corrected. A variant spelling requires global searches of each electronic layout file. A "simple" style-point revision can lead to changes in numerous passages throughout the book, not all of which are evident or easily located. It is particularly important to remember that each substantive change—the dreaded "aa," or author's alteration—racks up an additional charge for the client (as opposed to the author). This is never a "good thing."
Don't get me wrong! This by no means is a recommendation to do away with layout review, which is crucial for catching typos and errors and generally cleaning up unforeseen troubles. Scrutinizing the layout allows reconsideration of facts and figures; problems missed earlier during the MS work can be remedied. And I am the first to acknowledge that seeing laid-out type for the first time can completely change a person's perception of the text. But every contributor should understand that the time and place for reconsidering the book's broader strokes fell away a while ago, during the writing, editing, and reviewing phases.
(Photo of dominos © 2010 Sean Gwizdak. All rights reserved.)
Posted by Brian Hotchkiss on Mon, Oct 19, 2009
I recently completed work on a 14-chapter nonfiction book to which some 23 authors contributed (some essays were coauthored). While this was by no means my first—or most complicated—bout with a multiauthor MS, it impressed me as something of a paradigm for this type of editorial service. Why, I kept wondering, does a book written by several different writers require so much more time and care than a single-author work?
The obvious answer is consistency, of course. That one word alone explains perhaps as much as two thirds of the difficulty. On the macro scale, the editor must absorb and comprehend everything each author posits well enough to recognize when one contributor contradicts another. Say, for instance, a table included in chapter 2 points to the conclusion that, in measuring the worth of forest preservation, a particular dollar value may be assigned to restriction of carbon emissions. Then, in chapter 10, a different writer explains how one capably quantify the benefits of carbon credits monetarily. In other words, he comes to a conclusion at odds with his colleague's. First you must make certain not to fall prey to an apples/oranges argument; then, you are called on to find a way to describe the problem to both writers so they can arrive at a mutually acceptable resolution. This is not to suggest that a single-author book is exempt from having its very own conundrums, just that editorial recognition of them is usually much simpler.
On a micro level, not only is it crucial that every author spell toward without the s (or with it, if you prefer), each one must also refer accurately and identically to people, places, and things. For example, one essay in the recently completed book referred to British Columbia's "Great Bear Rainforest." A couple of chapters later, however, another author discussed the "Great Bear's Rain Forest"; and yet a third included a couple mentions of the "Great Bear rain forest." A Google search immediately yielded the Province of British Columbia's website, which cites this area as the Great Bear Rainforest. Over the course of the entire book, however, I had to adjust this name about seven times. Now factor in the twist that half of the essays in this book concern South American subjects with English-preferred acronyms for Spanish corporate names, and you begin to see how time consuming such verification becomes. You also will understand how I ended up with an 18-page style sheet, 90 percent of which is comprised of words and terms that required verification. When you factor in this sort of research, it will be apparent how important fact-checking—on the Internet, in the library—is when providing substantive editorial services.
Then there's the remaining one-third, which primarily consists of coping with what can be seen as almost the opposite of consistency—the delicate balancing of a number of authorial tones. In this regard, editing a single-author book is usually fairly straightforward: I become aware of, then comfortable with, the writer's voice and approach, then assure that they remain intact throughout the work, regardless of the changes I may suggest. With multiple authors, however, each has her or his distinctive voice, and I must always weigh to what extent one essay may (or should) reflect and/or differ from the others. The reader must not be put off by abrupt changes in voice from chapter to chapter, but each writer must be permitted to maintain a distinctive character. (By the way, this definitely is not the case for a fiction collection, where tonal differences are likely to be part of the point of the publication.) Now I am about to delve into another nonfiction book. This one has been written by two—and, in a couple of chapters, three—authors, all working together: writing by committee.
I wish I could recall my first multiauthor book from so many years ago. What must I have done?