Feature: Inside the E-Book Production Process
As the e‑book market evolves, so do publishers' internal processes for producing them. Book Business asked several book publishers to pull back the curtain on how they handle e‑book workflows, from editorial and design through conversion, formatting, proofreading and distribution. The answers are varied, but all demonstrate an ability to make the best use of existing internal talent while strategically investing in additional or outside resources to create e‑books expertly and efficiently.
Baker Publishing
IN A NUTSHELL: Baker Publishing begins its e‑book production process with contracts and rights consideration (i.e., do they have electronic rights for a particular title?). Conversion is done internally by the design department, and files are sent to the sales team for metadata tagging and distribution.
In the early days of e‑books, Baker enlisted a third-party service provider to convert titles in response to requests from the sales team, according to David Lewis, executive vice president of sales and marketing. "As e‑book sales began to become more significant, and as demand for more content grew," Davis explained, "we enlisted more of the company."
Once the "easily convertible" portion of the front list had been turned into e‑books (those works for which the company held or could easily secure all digital rights), the editorial team set the priority for which backlist works would be converted, and in what order. At this point, staff was hired to bring some of the conversion in-house, and to manage outsourced work.
With front list titles, Mark Highman, Baker's ePub conversion technician, gets notification from the production department that a book is ready to be sent to press, at which point he knows to add the book to the conversion queue. "I use a couple of different softwares to convert that [book] to ePub," he says. "I check [the] ePub on a few different devices—Kindle, Nook and the iPad—so I can evaluate our coding and how things are looking there."
Once the books are approved as being converted correctly, they are sent back to editorial, where they are reviewed on a computer for glitches or other concerns, and further adjustments are made. After a final approval from editorial, the book moves to sales.
The sales team does its own distribution of ePub files and metadata (via Oynx) to retailers, says Brian Brunsting, a designer and typesetter at Baker Publishing. "We have personnel in the sales department who have the skills that make that possible."
Some backlist titles require extra editorial intervention, such as stripping out images or quotes for which the company does not hold digital rights, before they can be converted, Brunsting says. Another challenge is languages that read right to left (such as Hebrew)—these books must be handled by third parties.
Several innovations have been introduced along the way to speed up the production process. Baker closely monitors software changes and updates coding accordingly. To ensure one ePub file will work on all platforms, Highman makes sure to test on the most challenging device—the "lowest common denominator …," he says, "and if it works there, it works everywhere else."
Highman has put together a checklist for editors, which he says helps speed the process and prevent misunderstandings or confusion. Communication, he says, is key: "For me to communicate why something they are requesting will not work takes a little extra time on my part on the front end of things … [but] understanding the problems behind that helps them to do their job more effectively."
Other front-end efficiencies are created by using template files for some books, and by thinking in terms of ePub as far back as the print-production stage. "One thing we try to do in our design department is talk about how we can style our print books in such a way that when we get them, I don't have to redo the work," Highman says. "That's very helpful that we're thinking about ePub from the word 'go.'"
Finally, having a key person in a strategic role (Highman) to oversee cross-platform design was critical. "At first, in the design department, we piled responsibility for e‑book conversion onto designers," Brunsting says. "That did not work as well because we had too many people trying to keep up. But with Mark coming on, he has been the only person responsible for it, which has helped us quite a lot."
Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
IN A NUTSHELL: Harlequin maintains several parallel production processes based on platform and editorial specialty. Digital-only, backlist and print-to-digital titles go through different processes, with files entering the digital stream at different points. All eventually emerge as ePub files and see distribution through the same channels.
When asked how Harlequin handles e‑books, Jenny Bullough, manager of digital content, can only say, "depends." E‑books created from previously published or about-to-be published print books start with a final, print-ready PDF file, which is converted to ePub. Digital-first or digital-only titles are converted to ePub from formatted Word documents.
To smooth transitions between and within workflows, Harlequin is transitioning to an XML-first workflow. "The final Word document actually gets some basic coding applied to it, so that we … have that on file—because, should we choose to produce those [digital-first files] in a print format later on, then we will have that XML-coded document [ready] to be translated into an InDesign file for the purposes of creating a PDF."
XML conversion also eventually will allow Harlequin to speed the parallel print and digital process, producing PDF and ePub files of the same title concurrently, Bullough says. With 110 to 120 print books published every month, "that's a much larger ship to turn around," she says. "But [XML] is something we are aware of, and we are looking at [it] very closely."
Digital-only titles are sometimes overseen by editors who also produce print books, in those cases where the digital products are related to or an offspring of a print imprint. Harlequin's historical fiction line, for instance, includes digital-only novellas written by the same authors who produce print fiction in the genre. Books published by Harlequin's digital-only Carina Press, however, are managed by a separate team of editors.
By the time a book has been rendered in PDF form, it has been checked and re-checked several times; still, ePubs are subjected to a separate quality control process to catch formatting errors or typos. Communication is such that any errors caught are also corrected on the original PDF file before it is sent to the printer. "Our goal at all times is to make sure the e‑book matches the print book, or is better than," Bullough says. All e‑book quality control is handled in-house, but separate from previous copyediting and proofreading, "so you have a more objective eye looking at the final ePub."
Nearly all front-list print books are converted in house, she says, and digital-first titles are outsourced, though Harlequin plans to bring that process in-house eventually. Backlist conversion also is outsourced. In the early days of e‑books, Harlequin did its metadata tagging in-house, but has since handed that job over to an outside vendor, which set up an Onyx feed to deliver all titles to retailers.
"We started off doing a lot of things internally that we now outsource, and we started off outsourcing lot of things that we now do internally," Bullough says. "So it's really just a matter of building our expertise and deciding where the best fit is in order to deliver the most [content], to have more seamless distribution to the retailer and to the end consumer, and offer the best quality to them."
Bringing front-list conversion back in-house helped offset the cost of converting increasing numbers of backlist books. The publisher chooses to convert front list books internally because of the relative ease of producing series romance fiction; still, "you can't just press a button on your keyboard and create an ePub," she notes. "So we did make some investments to make sure that workflow was integrated into our production process internally."
EPub standardization, including Amazon accepting ePub for conversion to its proprietary Mobipocket platform, has made things much easier, she says, as has the Book Industry Study Group's work to standardize metadata requirements.
"If you find anyone doing the exact same digital workflow as anyone else, I would be actually kind of surprised," she says. "What I've found is every publisher is trying to figure out what works best for them at this exact point in time, and what … works for us now, that probably is going to change in three months, and definitely will change in six months."
Hackett Publishing Co.
IN A NUTSHELL: Small trade publisher Hackett Publishing Co. outsources its e‑book conversion—but that doesn't mean it can take its eye off the ball. Prepping files and most proofreading are handled in house, and are essential to creating a quality product. So is clear communication with vendor partners.
Once source files have been chosen for conversion, meetings are held to strategize the process. "Source files … are located and assessed for any potential complications or formatting problems," Liz Wilson, senior project editor and e‑book production manager at Hackett, says. "Meetings are held with marketing, editorial and production to discuss these potential problems and come up with compromises as needed."
From there, source materials are prepped and special instructions written for the conversion partner. Each book presents its own challenges, and identifying potential problems ahead of time helps to smooth the process later on. "First pass" conversions are proofread in-house or by a trusted freelancer, depending on in-house workloads, the length of the book and type of source material, Wilson says. The files undergo as many revisions as needed to ensure a quality product before being uploaded to distributors.
Wilson says dividing conversion into batches of 10 to 15 books, four times a year, has made internal workloads more manageable. Hackett quickly learned not to "overdesign" e‑books, aiming to develop simple files that could easily be rendered on all devices and platforms. Written into their vendor contract is a clause that files be tested on several different e‑reader devices.
"Always proofread. Everything," Wilson stresses. "... We've always realized the need for proofreading conversions, and that has been a part of our process since day one. We're still working on improving relaying special instructions to the vendor." BB