35+ Tips for Quality and Streamlined E-Book Production
Sourcebooks outsources its titles that are most complex from a design standpoint. "It's important the vendor be well-versed in how to convert those designs to digital format," Cardillo says.
Backlist conversion can be a formidable logistical challenge, whatever the publisher's size. Gollancz, an imprint of London-based Orion Books, recently announced its digitization of a huge cache of 5,000 out-of-print science fiction novels (titles it previously owned as well as those it has recently acquired the rights to) as part of its SF Gateway project. "To bring entire backlists back into print using traditional publishing mechanisms is simply not feasible, but the rapid developments in digital publishing have allowed us to do just that: to rescue authors' entire backlists and republish them … as e-books," says Darren Nash, Gollancz's digital publisher.