Situation #4: From time to time, you wonder what your company’s strategic plan is in these transformative times. You would like to be ahead of the game and prepared for changes. What do you do?
Goldstein’s approach is to maintain an interest in the granular as well as the strategic in book manufacturing. When it comes to quality control, production managers today are relieved of agonizing over the lights and darks in press checks, for example. Computer-to-plate has “leveled the playing field,” Goldstein observed, and those issues are largely unheard of. At the same time, he can still look at a stack of hardbound trade books and tell you, without touching the book, which bindery they probably came from, simply by observing the shape and snugness in the making of the hinge.
- People:
- Howard Goldstein
Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.