production and manufacturing l 8 ing. jiří Šnajdar 2015

Production and Manufacturing

L 8

Ing. Jiří Šnajdar 2015

The functions of design, production, and manufacturing are as much art as science, especially when one considers that both interior design and jacket/cover design are usually found under this heading.

In many large publishing companies, design, production, and manufacturing are separate; in smaller houses, they are usually combined.

Production and manufacturing cover a lot of ground. Not only are these functional areas responsible for the transformation of manuscript or disk to finished book, but they are also responsible for a major expenditure of money.

Design, production, and manufacturing, in many publishing houses, are not considered as glamorous as editorial or sales, and may be looked upon as secondary.

The design, production, and manufacturing functions demand increasingly technical knowledge of what printing presses run which sheets of paper most cost effectively;

Design, production, manufacturing are in the forefront of the computer revolution.

Production managers must now be able to converse knowledgeably about the use and application of digitized data—especially XML coding and conversion.

Production and manufacturing departments also must be experts in handling crisis situations. It’s critical to have strategic controls in place.

The Production Schedule

To produce a meaningful cash-flow chart, in addition to your budget and sales projections, you will have to create a Production Schedule.

The production schedule will tell you when that will happen, because it tracks the flow of the manuscript from the time it is fully edited to the time it leaves the printer.

That chart only focuses on the last moment of the production schedule.

The typesetting and page layout; the separation or digitization of photographs; the actual printing and binding all involve the use and flow of cash. One of the most important functions of your production manager or managing editor is to prioritize the work going through the production process.

To keep the flow of books on schedule, the production manager must maintain a tight rein on who’s doing what and in what order it’s being done.

It is basically a linear calendar of events that records the inflow and outflow of production material throughout the production process.

Make sure that your production schedule has two rows for entry: one for the estimated date something will happen; one for the actual date it happens.

Keep in mind one particular fact: the production department is all too often called upon to bail out a book that is late.

Management wants to get a return on its cash in the shortest possible time.

Editors should know exactly what’s expected of them, and when it’s expected.

Production departments get very little respect—and they deserve a lot.

Production Meetings

To facilitate the creation of the production schedule and maintain that schedule, the production department must meet at regular intervals.

The production of the book and the managing editor or person responsible for production and another weekly meeting between the managing editor and the rest of the production staff.

Editors, frankly, tend to be optimistic when it comes to production schedules and their own programs. It’s better to be realistic.

If an author will be late, let the production department know about it as early as possible so it can make adjustments to the schedules.

Production must be candid with the editors. Some changes are clearly unacceptable due to cost overages. Once the production people are informed by the editors of the weekly progress (or lack of progress) of their manuscripts, the production department must discuss the results among themselves to be sure everyone is aware of what is happening and how it impacts all the other books on the list.

Production Checklist

This is simply a checklist of every part of the book to ensure that all the copy and elements needed for the book are in and accounted for, including bar codes, CIP information, and other important material. These production checklists should be given to the editorial staff, so they can gather most of this information prior to its being needed by production. With the production schedule and the production checklist in hand, you can begin to push the production process forward with a good degree of assurance that you’ve got it under control.

Until the next crisis hits!

XMLXML stands for “eXtensible Markup Language. XML has become the de facto standard for digital formatting, because it allows and facilitates the conversion of digital content into a wide variety of formats including web, print, syndication, e-book, mobile phone, and others.

Clear descriptive tags within the text, and the location of those tags, create the basic XML vocabulary. And once coded, the text can be reshaped from one vocabulary to another. Schematically, it would look like:

Content - Defined Rules - New Formats

The key is that the defined rules allow for flexibility. If you want to change something, you change the rules, which then flows through to change the content to the new rule definition.

The key is to code your content with XML as close to the beginning of the editorial process as possible (ideally by having the author do it at the writing stage).

So become familiar with XML and begin to code your titles with it as you create those titles. Earlier is better when it comes to XML..

Costing and Estimating

The production function can be significant in terms of both incurring costs and saving money for your company.

With paper, printing, and binding (PPB) averaging approximately 50% of the total cost of goods, it is a sizable amount of money. If you can save 10 cents per copy, you can save $500—a meaningful amount of money, especially when multiplied by numerous titles.

How can you ensure that your manufacturing costs are reasonable?


The simple answer is to set up costing, or estimating, forms, “Request for Quote” forms, with the specifications for your job, and to send those sheets to a minimum of five manufacturers per job.

It is meaningless to solicit preliminary bids from printers and then change the specifications on the final product.

Not only will this cause confusion for you and the vendor, but it will waste time and effort.


Different printers and binders often have different printing and binding equipment.

Because of these differences, some printers and binders will be better suited to producing your particular book at lower prices than will others.

Additionally, different manufacturers have different work flows, with some being busy at certain times while others have less work.


The point is, if your product is to be produced at the lowest price, you have to capitalize on finding the vendor whose equipment is best suited to your job, who has the time to do it, and who offers you the most suitable payment terms.

As an example, one printer offers a 5% discount for work done in the first quarter of the new year.

The Request for Quote begins with the title of the book and the month the files will arrive at the manufacturer.


The date is important for the reason just stated: it may be a slow time for that printer. This could affect the price quoted to you.Following these details, the pertinent specifications of the book are listed:

• Size of print run• Trim size• Number of pages• Format: hardcover and/or paperback


• Type, weight, and bulk of paper required for text, endpapers, and jacket/cover (uncoated, coated, matte; white, blue, blue-white). Because paper constitutes about 50% of the PPB cost, different weights can have a major impact on the estimate you get.• Color of ink (i.e., just black; four-color)• Type of lamination on a paper cover or paper-over-board title• Preparation• Proofs desired (blues, matchprints, hard, soft, other)


• Type of press to be used• Type of binding (perfect, adhesive-notch, Smyth-sewn, flexible, etc.)• Packing requirements (including carton specifications, labeling, pallet size, banding, etc.)• Shipping and freight costs• Special requirements (head and/or footbands; shrink wrapping; thumb-notched index tabs; etc.)• Payment terms


Once you get your bid sheets returned from the vendors, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples. Vendors typically send bids out in their own formats, which may or may not coincide with the way you’ve asked for them and will undoubtedly be different from their competitors.

One manufacturer may, for instance, provide bids using its stock paper, which may be 50#. (In paper jargon, # is the symbol for pounds.) Another manufacturer might quote using 60# stock. If this happens, the price for the paper will most likely be different.


Often, different binders use different thicknesses and weights—which cost different amounts. If you are unclear about a part of the bid, ask for clarification.

Once the information in your cost sheets is comparable, you can usually eliminate one or two of your five bidders fairly quickly.

The other three may be competitive. If this is the case, I suggest you go back for another round of bids.


By being honest with the vendors, telling them you have an equal or lower bid and asking them if they’d like the chance to rebid the job. In most cases, you’ll get a reduced estimate.

The lowest price is not always the best.

There may be circumstances that warrant paying a bit more. Because of the size of manufacturing expense, the cash-flow demands of the production and manufacturing function are probably greater than any other in the company.


„ One piece of advice to smaller publishers in relation to production, it would be to rebid, rebid, rebid.“

Because production expense is so large, it behooves every publisher to use every trick in the book to save money on this expense.

Money-Saving Tips

1. Use a book manufacturer to print your books. 2. Use the manufacturer’s paper—don’t even think about buying and inventorying your own.


3. Standardize your book sizes. Most manufacturers have presses that create fairly standard-size books: 5 3⁄8"x 8"; 6"x 9"; 81⁄2”x 11"; etc. 4. Use notch or perfect binding rather than Smyth sewing. In the “old days,” Smyth sewing was the only way to go. 5. Reduce the paper weight. Because paper is such a large percentage of the manufacturing cost, in most cases, depending upon the grade being used, the less the weight, the less the cost.


6. Use ultraviolet (UV) coating instead of glossy film lamination. While you won’t get the same gloss as film lamination, UV lamination still protects the book from fingerprints and minor damage while saving a few cents per book. 7. Use “permeated” paper covers on hardcover books instead of cloth. 8. As an alternative to a full-cloth binding, or a permeated-paper case, use a three-piece case instead of full-cloth.


9.Don’t overweight your cartons. 10. Pack your books in standard carton counts, so each carton contains the same number of books.

11. Standardize your pallet counts. This way, the larger distribution centers can order pallet quantities and handle them, rather than multiple cartons.

Sales . . . and More Sales

Most of you entered the world of publishing because you had an idea, not because you wanted to sell your books.

So you’ve been somewhat familiar with the editorial side of the publishing world because it’s one in which you’ve taken an interest, whether as an author or publisher.

By now you’d better know how to sell and market your books.

What Sells Books and Who Buys Them?

If you ask people in the publishing business what sells books, they will give you a lot of answers:

reviews sell books, jackets sell books, publicity and promotion sell books, price is important, and on and on.

If you ask the general public what motivates them to buy books, the top two answers in every case are subject/topic and author’s reputation.

Over 44% of adults purchasing books base their decisions on subject and approximately 24% on author’s reputation.

Only 2% think price is important; 2% think cover art or endorsements are important; and less than 1% think having a book on the best-seller list.

What this tells us is simple: both editors and salespeople better have a good idea of what subjects are important to consumers and they must find books by authors with credentials and good reputations.

Distribution: Options and Issues

Your book’s been found, edited, and produced. Now what do you do with it? How can you move it from your warehouse (sometimes your garage or basement) into the wholesalers and retailers and ultimately from there to the consumer?

Sales and distribution are crucial to your survival as a publisher.

When reviewing your sales options, keep in mind that, however you ultimately choose to sell, every buyer to whom you or your distributor is selling will also see books from all of your competitors. With that in mind, let’s look at the question of distribution and the various options available to you to sell your book.

1. The best way to sell books is to have a sales staff completely dedicated to the demands of selling your books—with no other interference—and to sell those books directly to accounts.

2. A second method of distributing is to use your own reps, but use an outside fulfillment house. This enables you to maintain your sales contacts in-house, but eliminates the need to maintain a warehouse or to deal with accounts receivable collection. The fulfillment organization collects the money from the accounts and passes it along, minus the fulfillment fee, on a regular basis.

3. A third way to sell your books is to use commissioned sales reps. These are freelance reps who sell your books as well as those of other publishers.

4. A fourth way to sell is to use a distributor. A distributor is an organization that warehouses, sells, and fulfills orders for a number of publishers. The benefit for the publisher is that all of the sales, shipping, and fulfillment functions, including accounts receivable and collections, are in the lap of the distributor, not the Publisher.

5. Another method that smaller publishers use to sell books is to put books into the major wholesalers or key internet retailers, especially Amazon.com.

6. Another way of selling is on the Internet, whether through your own website or through an online bookstore. This is an excellent way of doing business, with little overhead attached to it.

The question that remains unanswered, however, is how many copies you’ll sell. The upside of Internet selling is that it is growing incredibly fast. Amazon.com, the largest of the online booksellers, had media sales of $5.3 billion in 2008, a 16% jump from 2007.

Given these sales options, which ones are reasonable for most smaller publishers?

„ using commissioned reps is feasible, as is using a distributor “

Although the decision of which sales channel is best is never a clear-cut one, a few timely questions may help you decide:

• How many people can your sales support now? • Is it more important to you to acquire more books or sell the smaller quantity you now have more effectively?

• Given your budgets, can you support more people?

• How do you like to spend your time? Acquiring, editing, or selling?

• Do you want to bother with warehousing and fulfillment?

• Do you want to assume the risk of bad debt?

• Can you afford to have your books and your money tied up if a distributor goes bankrupt?

Sales Budgets

In effect, this figure should accurately reflect the sales you expect from each book. However, quite often the sales environment changes between the time you establish your sales estimates and the time of your actual sales activity.

What can make such an impact on the estimate?

• The finished editorial product itself.• New trends in the market. A book takes time to write and produce.

Sales Budgets

• Cash flow. Throughout the year, your own budgets must remain flexible and reflect your company finances.• Industry changes. Those who have published between the 1970s and 2000s have seen enormous changes.

There has been a major decline in the number of booksellers (but an increase in the number of outlets) due to the emergence of the chains and online e-tailers.

Sales Budgets

What has this meant for publishers?

Both greater and lesser opportunities.

Greater, because the superstores carry a wider range of stock and therefore carry more titles from more publishers. (And greater because online e-tailers can sell significant numbers of books.)

Sales Budgets

Lesser, because the quantity of each title is less than might have been carried in the past. This has had a dramatic impact on publisher’s advance sales projections—which cascades down to marketing and sales budgets.

It has also had an enormous impact on unit costs per book as well as dramatically impacting printing technology.

Title Launch Meetings

As I noted in the editorial section, the sales function relies upon the acquisition and timely delivery of books it feels it can sell.

To establish an ongoing program that functions well throughout the publishing process, both editors and salespeople must be at ease with the acquisition selections coming through the pipeline.

Title Launch Meetings

The title launch meeting, usually held every six months, is for just this purpose. Here is the time and place for everyone involved with a book or a list to sit down together for the purpose of discussing various points about that book:• Purpose of publishing the title• Market niche• Title• Cover—both art and text• Sales points• Marketing thoughts and initial campaign outline• Sub-rights angles and needs• Production aspects

The title launch meeting is one at which the editorial staff takes the lead in presenting the books. But the editor’s real role is to simply talk a bit about each book before opening it up to other functional areas for comment.

The editor must be sure to answer all of the questions that arise in this meeting because they’re sure to come up again either from the firm’s own reps or the distributor’s reps or, more importantly, from buyers.

The most effective strategy for title launch meetings is to invite all participants to air all of their thoughts.

With the meeting’s comments in hand, the editors, salespeople, and everyone else should retire to consider what’s been said and to act on the information to:

• move forward quickly those points that work well• revise or reorient those areas that seem to be problematic• clarify positioning• define title marketing and sales budgets within the context of the entire new line• coordinate functional schedules for each title.

production and manufacturing l 8 ing. jiří Šnajdar 2015

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