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Re: real books

Subject: Re: real books
From: "WongWord -at- gmail -dot- com" <wongword -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "'TechWR-L'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 09:22:50 +1000

Sally

Go with the advice you are getting here.

But the arrangement must be that *before they start* the expert will supply you and marketing with a decent size sample of the styles and layout for the text, contents, introductory type pages and anything else that you might want.

While they may be an expert in the software and the subject matter they may not be good communicators. For example I have found that a lot of people do not allow enough leading in their text. Although this can be changed after it has been written, any changes would upset any careful paging arrangements that they might have made as they created content.

Leading is but one of the communication aspects you will want to check out first. We use certain typographical styles to enhance the readability. The font and spacing around headings the decisions about headers and footers and so on are the aspects about which you need to be satisfied with. They may want to put notes in the margin and once again you need to make sure they are not too small. And of course you will want a say in the justification of text. Also you may want to set standards about labelling graphs/tables/diagrams.

You do not want to get the finished text and then turn around and ask for all these design changes to be made. Of course they will use a style sheet and so they could be changed realtively easily. But as I said they may write to the design and paging as they go and such late changes may not be welcome.

The other advantage of asking for and then scrutinising samples is that you retain your communicators hat and respect for your competencies. This is quite important. I also see it as a convenient way of accepting that they are right using their technology but that you are in control of the publishing process.

Also marketing need to align the theme and design of the cover and may have some view on this as well.

Irene Wong


From: "Sally Derrick" <sjd1201 -at- gmail -dot- com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 7:16 AM
To: "Erika Yanovich" <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com>
Cc: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Subject: Re: real books

With all due respect, it doesn't sound like your problem is a technical
problem at all. I've felt bad before when a senior person chose to do a
task I didn't feel his pay grade should be doing, but it's his choice how to
spend his time. If that's what he wants to do, so be it. Move on to the
other 5K things on your to-do list. As for the editing, dealing with
opinionated writers who question every dot and comma is part of the job
description for an editor. It's never fun but a good editor can handle it
and I'm sure yours is one of those.

Sally


On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:

Julie,

Thanks for your thoughts, Appreciate it. My problem is not the tool to use
for formatting, it's more the thought of his time vs our time in terms of
costs. Obviously his time is much more expensive than ours and formatting
seems a rather 'mechanical' job once the template is set. I feel somewhat
guilty that he spends his time on a task that could be done by a DTP person
who makes much less, even though the author likes TeX and doesn't mind doing
his own formatting. So, actually the problem is more psychological in
nature. I'd like to tell him that we can do the same job with Word, but
apparently that is not the case.

We need to edit his files (general editing) and this really makes my editor
nervous, because the author is very opinionated and writes well. He will
question every dot and comma.

Thanks again,
Erika

<-----Original Message----->
<
I'm a bit confused as to why when dealing with an scientist who has
already written multiple textbooks, and is described as a "power user"
of TeX, anyone would want him to abandon a tool that Wikipedia
describes as "designed with two main goals in mind: to allow anybody
to produce high-quality books using a reasonable amount of effort, and
to provide a system that would give exactly the same results on all
computers, now and in the future."

As a scientist, he's going to want to have his formula laid out in a
particular manner, and he's using a tool designed to do just that.
He's already familiar with formatting, and wants to use a style guide.

So I guess I'm not seeing the problem here? Unless it's that he's not
using Word like the rest of the world, and instead is using a tool
that the scientific community specifically uses for book layout?

What is it that you need to do with his files? General editing?
Where is the advantage of forcing him into Word?
>
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Follow-Ups:

References:
real books: From: Erika Yanovich
Re: real books: From: Tony Chung
Re: real books: From: Julie Stickler
RE: real books: From: Erika Yanovich
Re: real books: From: Sally Derrick

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