We have met our deadline of typesetting the whole book, less Index, by today. However, the printers took a month to deliver to us the sixteen-page ‘print trial’ of text with images embedded in it. They emailed that the images had ‘printed well but we have noticed some faint lines on some of the halftones…we can rectify this on the main run so please don’t worry’. I’m not so sure. The pages only arrived yesterday, after endless hassles, and some images are far better than others. We are going to have to look carefully at them, and possibly take expert advice, before we can decide whether to go ahead and embed them in the text. Until the images and captions have been incorporated in the text (or not) and the whole book repaginated, I can’t complete the Index, or even give the cover designer a spine width. The inordinate delay in getting the trial pages to us means that we may fall behind our own production schedule.
An acquaintance who writes beautiful, slim, best selling books on horticultural history recently complained to me that publishers have become more and more aggressive about her meeting their deadlines, and about the penalties if she doesn’t. ‘Yet,’ she added, ‘once they have got my finished manuscript they take a year to publish it. Why? Authors can get a book out themselves in six months!’ I have heard the latter so often from authors that I adopted it as my own timescale for George Calderon: Edwardian Genius…only to get my arithmetic wrong and allow myself five months (4 June 2018) in which to do it.
Now that I understand how much time and effort are involved in publishing a single hardback, commercial publishers almost rise in my estimation. I seem to have been working flat out since 7 January on the design of the printed text, choice of paper, typesetting, index, insertion of new material, budgeting, accounting, illustrations, ISBN, British Library CIP data, FSC logo, ‘case’ (board and covering, colour and material), ‘foiling’ (spine lettering), choice of jacket material, cover design, 150th anniversary bellyband, blurb, author’s photograph, author’s biography, endorsements, copyright lines, bar code… Of course, a ‘real’ publisher has a team of people who specialise in all these things, who are not doing them for the first time.
What we are trying to do is produce a hardback of about 500 pages that is as good as one produced by a commercial publisher and worth every penny of £30. I would be the first to admit now that it isn’t easy. Of course, we are doing our darndest, we are modelling ourselves on the very best examples, and of three recent commercially published biographies lying on my table two were printed by the printers we have chosen. But, with the exception of our cover designer, we are not trained and experienced book designers, typesetters, blurb-writers etc etc etc. Given the large number of variables, it is statistically unlikely, even impossible, that we will get it all right.
Nevertheless, try we must! It would be considerably easier to produce the book in paperback, but I feel it is something of a magnum opus and deserves to start off, at least, in a limited hardback edition. If, God forbid, it has the odd amateurish touch, let’s hope that enhances its charm and eventual rarity value. And let’s be frank: commercially published biographies aren’t always perfect in their design or execution, either.
The last books I published myself were printed by offset litho, so I have had to learn the ways of today’s digital presses. I am very grateful to all my friends who have run small presses recently for sharing their experience with me so generously. In particular, I wish to pay tribute to the experience, advice and help of John Dewey, who in 2010 published Mirror of the Soul: A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev, and Harvey Pitcher, who in the same year published Responding to Chekhov: The Journey of a Lifetime.
Patrick: I am open-mouthed with admiration at your energy. (This is quite convenient, as I am also brushing my teeth). I do not wish to waste any more of your precious time…
Damian, thank you (once more). But you surely know that, like matter, time is infinitely (?) compressible and expandable? Keep the communications coming!