Making a Book Step Four: Off to the Printer

The Read’s fourth in a series suggested by a bookseller, who told Booksellers New Zealand: “I'd like to see a series of articles about how a book is made.”

The book – be it fiction, illustrated non-fiction, a text, a picture flat or someone’s tell-all memoir – has finished the writing, editing and design processes.

For some publishers, a production manager or controller takes over at this stage, at other publishing houses the production editor follows on the editing/design stage by then dealing with printers.

Printers are horses for courses: some specialise in multi colour massively illustrated books, others deal with less complicated printed processes. Some black and white fiction interiors get printed in New Zealand or Australia, but the bulk of local publishing goes off shore to Asia.

This is not a new development. Back in the sixties Ray Richards at AH and AW Reed started using printers in Japan for complex colour work – think quality tourist pictorial books on New Zealand and art books of Peter McIntyre’s work.

Back to the present, the production people know which print houses specialise in what, and what is needed for particular books. Ever cautious, they get at least three different print houses to quote on a book; all will be capable, but the multiple quotes mean the keenest price is usually the choice.

Pre press usually happens in New Zealand with one of the companies who offer pre press services. Using colour accurate printers, they produce high-quality proofs that the production person and/or designer can then check. Colour adjustments sometimes need to be made (by the designer or the prepress company) and the files are re-proofed.

Sending files to the printers is electronic; print-ready PDF files are uploaded onto the printer’s FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. As a failsafe, the proofs produced here are couriered up to the printers so that they can be matched exactly.

If there is a problem with a colour or other print issue – and there rarely is, The Read has been told – it can be fixed at this stage. Maybe someone notices a text error that wasn’t previously caught. The local publisher corrects it and sends up a new PDF of that page to be dropped in.

The printers can also draw the publisher’s attention to anything they think is inconsistent (for example, the picture captions all have left margins except for one which is centred), and that can be fixed.

When the press rolls, waiting for the book becomes a time and schedule issue. The advice of one production person is always to leave a bit of fat in the schedule! The print run itself is only about a week, following the okaying of proofs. Shipping time is two to three weeks. Adding a week or two to the overall schedule is the guide – if extra time is needed it is usually taken up in the proofing process.

Occasionally there may have been a more major time hiccup on the way: it has been known for book carrying containers stowed on deck to fall off ships. A more curious tale is the one of malodorous books. Booksellers complained that a certain title was very smelly, and detective work finally revealed that a MAF spray on arrival had a bad reaction with the ink used.

Customs is usually straight forward, and the distributor’s warehouse always notifies the production person the moment the stock arrives.

“Finally seeing the book in the flesh is something I never tire of,” says Jane Hingston, Managing Editor of Hachette NZ. “What has been a concept for so long is now an actual book, and that’s fantastic.”

And then the book is distributed, but while it has been printing, the sales and marketing and publicity teams have done their jobs, which is next week’s topic.