The unsung role of production in book publishing
Publishing is experiencing a burnout crisis — this is obvious — but there are aspects to this “great resignation” that seem unique to the publishing industry, where it’s not uncommon to receive a resignation letter that starts with an employee expressing their passion for what they do, their love for the people they work with and the books they have helped create, and yet they just can’t push anymore.
We had originally proposed this interview as a way to introduce the role and responsibilities of a production editor after seeing a high number of open positions on publishing job boards. We have two members on our team with experience in this role, so we figured we could shine a light on a side of publishing which rarely gets that kind of attention and seems to be seeing a growth in demand, but the more we talked about these shared experiences the more we came to see a common thread between them and the conversations about burnout. This common thread had to do with the visibility (or invisibility, as the case may be) of labor.
Q1: Can you describe what role a production editor typically plays in the life of a book? When does the book pass over into your hands, what do you do with it, and where does it go when you are done?
John: I think it’s hard to say what a typical scenario is, not least of all because publishing doesn’t really provide a lot of learning or networking opportunities around production editing, but for me, my role in the life of a book has typically been part project manager, part copy editor, and part book designer, with a bunch of epub and metadata tasks thrown in for good (?) measure.
Production would usually get a book from our acquisitions department when acquisitions decides it is ready to be turned over to production. “Ready” is of course in the eye of the beholder, and often ready can mean “it’s overdue and needs to get off my desk,” but most of the major pieces of the finished product — text, figures, references — should be in place. Typically, the managing production editor would do the initial comp and styling of the manuscript needed to get a castoff, and from there, they’d pass the styled document on to individual PEs. (Nowadays, we’re having the manuscripts cast off and styled out of house.)
Once I get the styled file, I work with a freelance copyeditor and the author to address any issues in the manuscript. The luckiest scenario is: A relatively clean manuscript, a highly competent and judicious copyeditor, and a responsive and thorough author. And you can sort of modify the preceding adjectives, Mad Libs-style, to arrive at the various less lucky and unlucky scenarios that I have often found myself in. After an author has reviewed the edits, I go through and resolve queries, make any necessary final edits or corrections, and accept or reject changes to the file to get a “clean” manuscript, ready for typesetting. With typeset pages, we go through a round of proofreading by the author and a proofreader, which usually turns up at least a couple of tricky problems to solve, and we get an index created by an indexer. After some final back and forth with both author and compositor, we get our final pages, which I then send off to the printer and an ebook conversion house. Starting in the fall, our compositor will be taking on ebook creation, so that should streamline the last steps quite a bit.
The luckiest scenario is: A relatively clean manuscript, a highly competent and judicious copyeditor, and a responsive and thorough author. And you can sort of modify the preceding adjectives, Mad Libs-style, to arrive at the various less lucky and unlucky scenarios that I have often found myself in.
Nellie: I’ll follow John’s lead here and say that I suspect the role differs slightly at every organization. When I was a production editor at O’Reilly, I typically managed everything between the initial reformatting of the Word manuscript file to sending it to the printer/distribution. So, the author would turn their manuscript over to their editor, and the manuscript would immediately go off for some formatting in Word (applying our internal tags, initial copyedit). Then the book would come to me, and I would handle creating a schedule to get the book to print, and then herding the book through that schedule. This includes initial layout (aka “comp”), proofreading, a couple rounds of review by editors, authors, etc., entering corrections into the layout files, preparing the final print files (and sometimes EPUB as well), and then sending those files to the distribution team who would then send them into the world.
I also did sometimes send files directly to the printer. I was responsible for doing the proofread myself in most cases, and back in those days we still worked on paper, so I spent many hours with a red pen, a book of post-it flags, and a stack of paper. I would also FedEx stacks of paper to the authors and editors to do their review, and they’d either FedEx their changed pages back to me, or send me scans. I would then be responsible for reviewing those changes, and if I approved of a change, updating the layout files accordingly (these were FrameMaker, InDesign, or XML files), of course making sure those changes didn’t cascade into other major changes in the rest of the layout (I’m thinking specifically of the dreaded “reflow”, where a change to some text causes the line breaks and page breaks to all change and reflow throughout the book, meaning we’d have to re-proofread and re-QA the whole book). Once the layout was finalized, I’d run the files through some validation and preflight programs to make sure there weren’t any possible errors that the printer or ebook retailers might flag, and then I’d send them on their way!
Q2: It seems like some job descriptions firmly place production editors on the editorial team while others tend to have them somewhere between design and editorial, like a go-between. What has your experience been, and where have you felt you belong within the organization?
John: I definitely have never felt like a part of the “editorial” team, for sure, and the design of most of the books I work on is pretty straightforward, with the majority of it now being done (sigh) out of house, which was not the case up until recently. I think I am firmly a go-between with an eye for editorial and design concerns. I like the idea of getting my authors and readers the highest quality product the manuscript will support when all is said and done, but that sometimes means calling an author or editor out when something’s in need of upgrade. Miraculously, we almost always find a way to make it better in the end, or at least I look at it enough times that I convince myself it’s all good. “This is fine.”
Nellie: I think I always felt more like a go-between — sometimes closer to the Design team, sometimes closer to Editorial, but never really belonging to either. I often felt invisible, to be honest, which can be hard at times when you’re doing a mountain of work and putting in long hours to make sure a book stays on schedule and doesn’t have any errors or weirdness in the text or layout. But also, as an introvert who has historically liked to hover behind the scenes, I was mostly ok with it. It also meant I had a lot of freedom to do things the way I liked, try my hand at new tasks, and learn new things — when you’re invisible, there are few eyes watching for anything beyond just getting the files to press on time ;) That’s kind of how I ended up doing computer programming, to be honest — seeing if I could come up with ways to streamline my own workflow. All that said, one time (1!) in my production editor career, I got a thank you card from an author, and it made me feel seen and appreciated in a way that I rarely got to feel, and I’m still thankful for that author.
I often felt invisible, to be honest, which can be hard at times when you’re doing a mountain of work and putting in long hours to make sure a book stays on schedule and doesn’t have any errors or weirdness in the text or layout.
Q3: Can you tell us a story that you feel represents your experience as a production editor?
John: Early on, when I sort of didn’t know “my place,” I got really involved in the editorial and design side of a particular book that marketing folks thought would be a low seller but which I (and the author) thought had the potential to make a bigger splash (it did, relatively speaking). I think I thought of myself as really bonding with the author and sort of saving them from some close calls — things that would not look great in a final product. After the book was completed, we did a launch event that I attended at the publicist’s urging, and it felt like the author was kind of unsettled by my presence. An odd feeling. I relayed this to the publicist, who had worked in production, and her response was basically, “you’ve seen too much and they know it.”
Production editors see the raw, uncooked, behind-the-scenes version, which is often at odds with the final, shiny, packaged version of a thing. Understanding that helped me understand the nature of the production editing role. It is and always will be an “unsung” role, and part of that is because we know where the bodies are buried.
Production editors see the raw, uncooked, behind-the-scenes version, which is often at odds with the final, shiny, packaged version of a thing.
Q4: What have been some of the highs and lows of the job for you? Where have you found the most joy? And what has caused the most burnout?
Nellie: I think the greatest joy for me was in having the opportunity to try out new things within the context of my role. I don’t mean having more and more tasks assigned to me, but rather those little one-off things that pop-up. I remember I was working on a book once that needed some fake iPhone screenshots created in PhotoShop, and I decided to see if I could do it myself. There was a little learning curve, but I got it done and they looked great. (I do sometimes worry that I did my team members or younger generations a disservice by doing this kind of “higher-skilled” labor without being compensated accordingly, but at the time all I saw was an opportunity for some fun). We also had a credits page in most of our books and it was always nice to see my name there in print. Also, honestly, just seeing a book that I worked on in print was a source of joy — all the invisible work that I did, the perfect line breaks and page breaks, the things no one but me would ever notice but would be missed if they weren’t there, coming together to make this lovely little object.
I think the biggest source of burnout was just the pressure to make sure every book kept its print date as much as possible. It seemed like there were times when nearly every book fell behind in the editorial schedule, but they were all tied to a very firm print date, so it was on me to make sure we met that date by working harder and putting in more hours. I even worked on the weekends sometimes, which I look back on in horror and is something I have done my very best to protect my employees from as I’ve leveled-up in my career.
John: I want to echo something Nellie has said — being invisible has its advantages. I’ve been able to develop in areas that were not strictly my “beat” — similar to Nellie, I pushed into programming and technology, although she clearly got farther along the path ;) But I have really enjoyed learning, for example, VBA and formulas in Excel to automate obnoxious spreadsheet tasks, and JavaScript for InDesign to automate certain tricky layout tasks, such as adjusting type styles to fit an estimated page count, or to pull elements out of the main text into sidebars and textboxes. All stuff I have really enjoyed…privately! Because no one asked me to do them and just a few really get the impact. And when your book is 2 weeks late no one wants to hear that you’ve halved the time cost of the ebook metadata workflow script ;) So that’s my source of joy and my source of burnout all at once — developing invisible skills for an audience of 1 or 2 people. And now that typesetting has gone out of house, some of those skills have become obsolete. But I’m working on ways (Hederis, other projects) to put some of that orphaned (widowed?) production tech knowledge to good use.
…when your book is 2 weeks late no one wants to hear that you’ve halved the time cost of the ebook metadata workflow script ;) So that’s my source of joy and my source of burnout all at once — developing invisible skills for an audience of 1 or 2 people.
Q5: Did you find that the presses you have worked for had specific technology that they required you to learn to use, and what was your experience like with that technology? How involved have you typically been in choosing which tools you use as part of your job?
Nellie: I vividly remember my first couple of days at O’Reilly Media, sitting next to one of the developers and learning how to use the command line and the “subversion” version control system. O’Reilly had both “traditional” workflows (using InDesign etc.), and XML typesetting (check out my old blog post about what this means, if you’re curious), and nearly all of their workflows included some aspect of scripting. Production editors had to run these scripts as part of their jobs, and use version control on all their files. I’d had a small amount of experience with coding at that point (making edits to HTML, mostly, and some LaTex — a special math coding language — knowledge due to starting my career at a math journal publisher), but this was still a big hurdle for me. At some point during my first week on the job, I ended up crying in the bathroom, wondering if I’d bitten off more than I could chew. (Of course it turns out that not only had I NOT bitten off more than I could chew, but in fact that I had found “my calling.”) We couldn’t really change the primary tools — InDesign for layout, certain XML programs for the books in the XML typesetting workflow, our centralized CMS tool, etc. — but my managers were pretty receptive to suggestions for new tools or scripts to plug in the cracks (and I even started writing my own scripts to streamline my work). And then of course I myself became a manager, and got to have more say in what tools we used and changes to technology (for example, I helped switch us from XML typesetting to HTML typesetting), and I couldn’t have gotten there without the intimate understanding of our current workflows and tools that I gained as a production editor.
John: We never made it to an in-house XML-based workflow, except for with our print catalogs, which take an XML feed from the database. When we were doing most of the typesetting in house, we had a pretty reliable workflow mapping Word styles to InDesign styles, and learning that was something I’ve been able to put to good use in my freelance design work time and again. In the past, I’ve had the freedom to bring new ideas to the table, set up calls with vendors, go to conferences, and get my team to try certain tools and workflows, but honestly, I don’t find myself pushing for these things as much these days because my slate of books and kids and the world in general are just a lot.
In the past, I’ve had the freedom to bring new ideas to the table, set up calls with vendors, go to conferences, and get my team to try certain tools and workflows, but honestly, I don’t find myself pushing for these things as much these days because my slate of books and kids and the world in general are just a lot.
Q6: Lately, book publishing has been experiencing its own Great Resignation. Many publishing professionals have written in recent months about their reasons for leaving a job, press, or team they were really passionate about because their roles and responsibilities were expanding beyond what their titles, paychecks, and work hours could maintain. As both of you have experience with a role that seems at times hard to define (I know Nellie has talked about it being a kind of “dumping ground for the publishing process”) in what ways have presses supported your work to avoid similar types of burnout?
Nellie: I don’t know if this goes towards avoiding burnout, but feeling seen and appreciated was always a huge boost for my morale. That one time an author sent me a thank-you note, or when an author sent a thank-you goodie box to the editor and the editor shared half those treats with me. I also always appreciated being given opportunities to learn new things — for example, I was able to begin learning computer programming, try my hand at doing comp, and be part of the ebook design process for books that needed “special handling” — tasks that helped keep my brain alive, so to speak. Being able to take time off has always been essential for me — scheduling a day off after I got a rush book off to press, and knowing that I had other team members who could track down files if any problems arose while I was out. O’Reilly had a very clean and centralized CMS, so there was rarely confusion about where to find the latest files for something. I suppose that means that companies investing in the right technology also helped a lot — made it possible for me to take time off when I needed, or get help from team members. Also having the freedom to work from home when I needed to just put my head down and get something done (I remember working on a proofread outside on my patio one beautiful summer day, and how much more peaceful it felt than if I were in my sad windowless cubicle in the office).
Being able to take time off has always been essential for me — scheduling a day off after I got a rush book off to press, and knowing that I had other team members who could track down files if any problems arose while I was out.
John: I think I’ve been happy to get time (and money) to go to professional development events and get outside my bubble a little bit. I honestly miss BookExpo and in-person meetings in general because they gave me that sense of a community and a publishing “scene.” I was a scenester around underground music and art in a former life, and I get a kick out of seeing a really inspiring talk or going to a fun publishing party or hearing about a really creative new startup that’s not all that different from the feeling I got from being at a really good art or music show. I think some of that is coming back, and I really hope I can get out to some good stuff this year — that has helped me stay energized over the years.
If you would like to stay up-to-date on our latest interviews and articles, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter!
