Actual example: say I’m working on books 7-9 of an ongoing series. Books 1-6 are in print, but I don’t have a clean copy (my own files were subsequently copy-edited and typeset). I want an exact searchable indexed copy of the first 6 books, as published (actually as published in 3 re-edited omnibus editions this summer), for my own purposes, to make it easier to cross-reference stuff in the new series. What am I to do?
(Luckily in my case books 1-6 were published by Tor, and are available DRM-free. Which makes life a whole lot easier.)
FYI, as an editorial assistant and book designer who has worked for academic publishers and large trades: I have NEVER heard of any publishing house giving an electronic layout (that is, a print-ready PDF or Indesign layout etc.) to another company, directly or via the author.
Sometimes authors get PDF proofs. They often get PDF ebooks - which are totally and completely different than something that’s press-ready and probably weighs in at several hundred megs or, in the case of a biology textbook full of illustrations and photographs, as much as 50gb.
This is not new. It’s been practice at every publisher since forever, and it’s a good way to keep designers employed. I would certainly not be hired to ever design an American or Canadian edition of a book if the UK-based publishing house simply gave a press-ready PDF to the American publisher. Thank god for that, because we’d all lose a lot of work if this was the case.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the author or editor, and everything to do with the art department. ADs have insisted on this since time immemorial.
(Paper costs a couple of hundred bucks a ton, and printing is cheap. If you work through all the steps in book production outlined in that link, you’ll note that ebooks and paper books have all but 3 – of 17 – steps in common.)
An important point here is that Penguin also refuses to distribute electronic ARCs at the author’s request. Writers are expected to help promote their books, but Penguin is asking them to do so without giving them books to do it with, even though these review copies cost the publisher nothing.
Even more perverse, if an author has good layout chops and is fluent in all the arcana of InDesign, you’d think the publisher would welcome receiving print-ready DTP files. You’d think that, but of course you’d be mistaken. Instead, the publisher will take the DTP files, print them to paper, then hand the paper to their own crack team of layout experts and re-code the whole damn thing themselves, introducing dozens of errors that have to be wrung out, and often doing a lazier job of it. Keeps their layout people employed, I guess.
That I have not seen. Many publishers are happy to work with author/packagers who bring in clean files, although I’ve spent months reworking “clean” files that came in using non-professional type with awful H&Js and strange embedded images, and in most of those cases it would have been much easier to just start from scratch.
I can tell you that Chronicle, Routledge, many of the Random House imprints and most university publishers are quite elated to get packaged clean files that are typeset competently. Such files are very rare, as it’s infrequent that a gifted author is also a gifted typographer, but when they materialize they are oohed and aahed over by excited ADs and TDs like a cute baby.
I didn’t say that the earlier steps were nothing,
I said that not having the costs for printing, trucking, warehousing amounts to SOMETHING.
That they aren’t as negligible as the article, especially the quote, is making them out to be.
I worked at a newspaper for 30 years. Printing isn’t THAT cheap. Twenty years ago was the first time I heard the statement that the subscription costs don’t pay for the blank newsprint.
More than half the employees at the paper worked in printing, production (assembling the paper with inserts, etc), moving it around and getting it to the trucks, or delivery.
BTW, Halting State is one of my all-time favorite books. Thank you.
Because the author isn’t buying a “copy” of the book, he or she is purchasing a file that will be reproduced and distributed/sold by other parties. A file that Penguin has invested time and resources in, even if it’s just the editing and not any kind of styling, so it makes sense to me that they would not just give the file away for free. It’s not really Penguin’s job to provide the author with a copy that he or she can distribute at will.
Please go back and read my comment.
I never said zero cost. I never even said LOW cost.
I said the difference between the cost of producing an e-book is not “nearly as much” as the cost of producing a printed book.
A publisher has invested nearly as much in the production of the eBook as in the printed version, the cost of a print run is a minor part in the whole process.
You are missing the point of a galley edition. These are promo copies that are sent to promote the book before publication. Charging the author, let alone someone you are trying to interest in buying more copies is ridiculous and counterproductive.
prob cos the photo is often from a library, or they have commissioned it from a freelancer, and both will have contracts with rights for territories, the publisher will be contractually at fault for allowing mis-use, even by the author and their agent.
not saying it is right, but it is the reason why this happens.
