Hey folks! I’ve been at UNC Press again today, looking at more FREE BOOKS (!!!!!) and also visiting with the Production and Marketing departments.

Production is where all of the copy-editing, cover and illustration design,  typesetting, and page proofing happens: all things that make sure that the final book looks polished!

Here’s an explanation of all the terms I threw into that sentence above:

Copy-editing is the process of editing “copy”, or writing, into something with correct grammar, spelling, and free of anachronisms or other inaccuracies. It’s different from “developmental editing”, which is the process of editing away errors in thinking or ideas, and different from “proofreading”, which is the process of editing again for things that copyediting might have missed.

Cover design is what it sounds like– but also the process of deciding what color the end papers (the paper glued to the “case” or hard cover of a book) are, what color the stitching is, whether the book will have a “printed cover” (where a printed paper is glued to the case of the book), whether the cover will be cloth, and  designing the “jacket”. Obviously, there’s lots of details that go into the design of the actual book!

Typesetting is the process of taking the text and deciding how the “interior” of the book will look– the inside, where people actually read the text. Most typesetting happens now in InDesign, which is the same program the CA Lit Mag uses to design its publications! The typesetter decides what font the book will be in, edits the font to get rid of any weird spacing issues, decides how big the font will be, and many other wonderful things that I don’t know about. One of the important things that happens here is that the number of pages should ideally be in multiples of thirty-two: because “signatures” or groupings of pages are least expensive when they are in groups of thirty-two. This is why books sometimes have blank pages at the end: because it is less expensive to print blank pages than it is to have signatures in groups other than thirty-two!

Page-proofing is the process of, once everything is typeset, making sure that everything looks good and that, once again, there are no inaccuracies or typos. This is one of the last steps before the book is sent to the printer: so it’s important that all of the errors are caught!

Finally, the page proofs are “folded and gathered” — turning them into books with “signatures” of 32 pages folded in half, “gathered” or sewn, and then finally checked yet again for problems.  This all happens on the paper that will be used for the book, which is always of higher quality than the paper that comes from your printer.  Sometimes a cover is also printed out to make sure that the spine is the right width for the number of signatures that goes into the book.

And then the book is sent to the printer and, magically, becomes a book!

After that we go to the magical world of marketing, where author events, blog posts, and other things that sell the book happen.

Overall, UNC Press has been a great place to work in the past two days! I’ve definitely learned a lot about what goes into making a book a book, rather than an unedited manuscript sitting on somebody’s desk. Super cool, right?

Check here later for news from Flyleaf Books and Quail Ridge Books!