Today I was at Quail Ridge, a somewhat famous regional independent bookstore known for music, literary fiction, and good Southern writing! I spent a lot of time talking with the store’s owners and employees about what goes into book ordering, point-of-sale systems, and shelving. I also got to talk with their children’s manager, Nancy, about the store’s Teen Advisory Board: a group of teens who review and read YA titles, meet YA authors, and do all sorts of cool stuff!

I spent the day at Flyleaf Books today, where I got to hang out with their awesome children’s director Johanna Albrecht, read books, and talk about LGBT YA lit! I also got to see Matthew Quick talk this evening about his new book, counseling troubled teens,  old books, and Silver Linings Playbook.

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!

 

 

 

 

Today I’ve been at UNC Press, learning what exactly goes into publishing works of academia and scholarly writing.

Academia is very different from what goes on at Algonquin or other fiction presses: UNC Press publishes about 100 books a year, as opposed to Algonquin’s 20. It also spends less time on what they call “developmental editing”, which is where an author and an editor have a dialogue over what will go into the book. It’s much more a process of receiving the manuscript, approving it, copy editing, and then typesetting rather than the back-and-forth which happens with fiction.

UNC Press is also undergoing renovations next week, which means that they have a lot of free books they’re trying to get rid of!!! I’m taking home quite a pile of academic summer reading. 🙂

After getting a slow start yesterday sleeping in and reading some great books, I’ve made it to my first publishing house: Algonquin Books in Chapel Hill, NC! Working with them has been great– I have learned everything from what a “deckled edge” is to a “galley” to a “frontlist”.

I also got to see inside the office of one of the main editors for Water For Elephants, who told me that the painting above his desk was done by an elephant and given to him by the author of the book!

He also showed me the piles of manuscripts that he, sadly, has to write rejection letters for:

Algonquin Books publishes only twenty titles a year– something which makes the work of the editors, marketing, and everyone else much more important: every book that they publish has to be successful.

See y’all tomorrow for more updates from Algonquin!