People on a Stump(A history lesson) Back to William's Archives.
Book Publishing
The Wesoomi perspective
A while back, a local school person called and asked if I would like to come over and talk to her class on career day. The idea of that happening had never occurred to me and I panicked. I begged off, claiming critical deadlines, which was a bunch of bull. After some thought, I realized that I had missed a great chance to teach, and to recruit young people into publishing. I also blew a golden marketing opportunity. I vowed to never let that happen again. Then I wrote the following notes to serve as a handout and a starting point for talking to the youngsters. Not a set speech. Just a starting point for a dialogue.

In the beginning, was a person sitting on a stump in the woods, expounding. He was spewing forth words. Nearby, on another stump was a person listening to those words. This was primitive communication. It worked well, so long as the listener and speaker were in reasonable proximity.

This was how all communication was done at that time. On one side was a teacher, historian, or story teller. On the other were students and audiences. To be sure, at one time, there were a few monks in monasteries here and there scribing magnificently wrought lettering on parchment. Their work was hardly mainstream, however.

Now, onto this scene, around 1455 AD, comes an extraordinary person. A veritable giant.

Johann Gutenberg was the most important person in the history of man. More important than Hannibal with his elephants. More important than any general who ever lived. The development of moveable type was the most profound event in human history. It spawned the modern publishing industry and forever changed how we interact, as individuals and as nations.

Think of this. The teacher and the student can now be separated. Not only in space but in time as well. Dr. Einstein, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Newton are all deceased. Yet, they can still teach you. They can sit on that virtual stump next to you and speak. All you have to do is learn to read.

In our present time, instead of being in close proximity, the teacher/storyteller and the listener/student are usually separated by an enormous entity called the communications industry. One way to think of this industry is as having two distinctly different parts. These are the book publishing industry and the advertising industry. In this model, the telephone comes down as a tool of advertising although we also use it in personal communication.

The advertising industry breaks down further into newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the internet. In addition, there are minor, albeit annoying, parts like billboards, circulars, and telephone soliciting. They are somewhat different, but they all do the same thing. They bring information from the creator of the information to the user of the information. They bring this information, good or bad, for the purpose of selling products to the user. This is what differentiates the book publishing industry from the rest. Advertising provides information in order to sell products. In book publishing, the information is the product.

Let us examine the book publishing industry as a conduit of information between the author and the user. Although it's not as clean as the insiders would have us believe, there are three distinct functional entities to look at. In theory, these are the publishers, the distributors, and the booksellers. Now, when an industry giant like Barnes & Noble decides to have their own publishing label, then further moves to annex a major North American book distributor, we can wonder what they have in mind and how it will affect our freedom of choice. That is an issue for another day and perhaps for the Justice Department.

The booksellers are really just retailers like grocers or any other retailer. They bring the merchandise to the user. The distributors are just the classic middlemen who add cost to the product without adding value. This happens because booksellers prefer to deal with just a few provider/distributors rather than many smaller provider/publishers. In both cases, distributer and bookseller, most of their work is routine and clerical in nature. It consists mainly of bookkeeping.

The publishing house is the focus of the creative part of the publishing industry. Here, is where the creator/author delivers his masterpiece. Here also is where the book is designed and laid out. In addition, the publisher is responsible for cover design, the actual book manufacturing, and for marketing. The functions are, pre-press, manufacturing and marketing.

Once a decision is made to publish a book, it must be prepared for the manufacturing process. This preparation is called pre-press. It includes cover design, conversion of graphic material to electronic files, and book layout. All of this is done using a computer with a variety of software. There are also decisions on book dimensions and type face to consider. Much of what is done here has to do with marketing.

Cover design has everything to do with marketing and, sometimes, nothing to do with the contents of the book. Everyone has seen the garish covers with raised gold letters and brilliant color splashed all over the place. At Wesoomi, we believe that simple elegance is best for most covers. The most important things in cover design are the eyes and mind of the customer. Who is the book for and what do we want them to see? Again I say, simple is better, especially for thoughtful books.

The book layout is not dependent on the cover design and can proceed in parallel. Again, there is special software to do this task. This program is used to lay out the book and produce an output file in a special language called Postscript. Postscript is a proprietary product owned by Adobe Systems, Inc. It is a page definition language which is used almost exclusively in the publishing industry.

Look in most any book and you will discover there are usually three parts to it. The front of the book will contain title pages, perhaps a table of contents, a copyright page with disclaimers and an international standard book number (ISBN). Sometimes there will be a library of congress number. There can also be a blurb about the author. This first part could also contain a foreword about the book. If there are salutary quotes from reviews, they will go in the very front of the book.

The center of the book is the actual work of the author. This is laid out in chapters, pieces or sections as the form of the book dictates. The layout consists of making the book look nice and make sense. For example, graphics must be placed with the words they complement or emphasize. Chapter headings must be clear and stand out. Chapters usually start on new pages, preferably the right hand page. Sometimes pages may be left blank just to make this happen.

The third section of the book, if it exists, may contain advertising, references, and an index. It can also contain appendices of supplemental material. Sometimes there is nothing to justify a third section so we skip it.

Finally, when we think we have it right, a Postscript file is created and a proof copy of the book is printed on a desktop printer. If we are going to get a surprise, we want it now. We don't want to be surprised after the printing plates or negatives are made. That's a very expensive surprise.

When we are satisfied with the proof copy, we are ready to manufacture the book. This is where it starts to get expensive. Most publishers do not manufacture books. This step is usually done for the publisher by companies which specialize in printing and binding. There are many of these companies scattered about the country.

In addition to the traditional method, there are two new processes in book manufacturing called "Computer to Plate" (CTP) and "Print on Demand." Print on demand is very similar to what we do on the desktop. A printer uses the electronic files to print the book directly. There are no printing plates or negatives involved. This makes it possible to print one or a few books rather than the larger press runs which the big printing presses demand. The actual book binding is done in the traditional way. The cost per book is considerably higher than the traditional way, but warehousing and excess stock problems are eliminated. We do not have to predict the market.

Computer to plate is different in that it eliminates one step in the process. Here we will describe the traditional method and point out the difference in CTP.

To begin the manufacturing process, the Postscript files are read by a very expensive, high resolution device called an imagesetter. By expensive, I mean thousands, often hundreds of thousands, of dollars. This device uses laser imaging to convert the files into negative images of the defined pages. These negatives look exactly like very large black and white photo negatives. In practice, each negative will contain several pages, often sixteen. This is necessary because the big presses don't print one page at a time. They print sheets of pages either from rolls or large sheets of paper.

Once the negatives are approved, the printing plates can be made. Most printing plates are no longer metal. They are usually made of plastic. The negatives are used to expose the photosensitive coating of the plates and the coating is selectively etched away with chemical baths. When finished, the plates are washed to neutralize the chemicals. Thus printing plates are produced. They are then mounted on the rollers or beds of a printing press.

Here is the only difference between the traditional method and CTP. There is a new species of imagesetter which produce printing plates rather than negatives. The tedious, environmentally dirty, and very expensive film negative step is eliminated. Although much better environmentally, CTP plate material is quite expensive so there is no cost savings yet. In the future, we do expect the plate cost to decline which will make CTP the better choice.

At the same time the book is being made, the cover is going through the same process on different machinery. The cover is done separately because it's on different weight paper and it will have a special finish. It will also often have color requirements.

The modern printing plant is a fascinating world of machines with metal levers, rollers, plates, arms and fingers flying everywhere. You can watch a giant roll of paper unwinding so fast into a machine, you must wonder why it doesn't get shredded. I was told, in confidence, sometimes it does. Usually, though, the paper comes out the other end, neatly printed and folded into 32 page signatures.

The books are printed in sets of pages called signatures for economy of paper and handling. In most cases, the most economical signature is 32 pages. Remember the 16 page negative? One for each side of the paper. The detail of how proper page order is maintained is handled when the negatives are made. Meanwhile, the covers are being printed and cut on a separate press.

Binding is the final step in the book manufacturing process. Book binding machinery is every bit as fascinating as printing machinery. Although there are several options for binding, most of the books you will find at your local bookseller are perfect bound. The signatures are gathered together and clamped. The spine is milled off and the cover is glued on. The book is then trimmed on the three open sides. This is fine for most paperbacks. It has the disadvantage that it will not lay flat and will eventually come apart.

Some books, like cookbooks and journals must lie flat to be useful and there are other binding methods for this purpose. For authors with big egos, books can also be bound with hardboard bindings and embossed covers and all that stuff.

Now we have a book. How do we let people know about it? How do we get people to buy it? That is called marketing and distribution. The traditional method, would have the publisher offer the book to a distributor. The distributor would agree to offer the book to their customers, the booksellers. The booksellers would then offer the book to their customers, the readers.

The publisher and author would support this marketing effort through some traditional advertising, but mostly and most effectively through publicity. The advertising can occur in any of the normal advertising channels. Newspapers, magazines, etcetera. The publicity takes the form of press releases to reviewers and anyone else who will listen. In addition efforts are made to get the author on talk shows and the like. Along with this, promotional copies of the book are given to reviewers and influential people.

This is direct, brute force marketing and seems to work great for the big houses with big budgets and celebrity authors. The real fact is, the traditional model does not work at all well for small publishers with small budgets and unknown authors, no matter how great their work. It has nothing to do with excellence. At Wesoomi, we have learned this through hard experience.

The small publisher is met, at best, with a stone wall of silence on every front. Distributors and booksellers sneer or look away. Promotional copies are not even acknowledged. Phone calls are not returned. Reviewers will not respond. Press releases are trashed without even being opened. Put offs and evasions are the norm. Thus, the small publisher must be much more creative in his marketing effort.

Enter the great leveler! The internet! Anyone can have a web site. It is remarkably inexpensive. For about $50.00 per month, we can have a store front that anyone in the world can walk into. This is how we expect to bring the Wesoomi Publishing products to the attention of our potential customers. At Wesoomi we believe the internet will change the entire publishing model. Not just for the booksellers, but for everyone. The giants will no longer control what you are offered.

Any writer can become a publisher. Any publisher can use the web to go directly to his customers. Success will depend on just two things. On how creative the publisher is in getting the customers attention with his web site. And, on the quality of his products. Word of mouth is still the best advertisement we can have.

In this model, the booksellers and distributors become superfluous. We believe that the golden era of the small independent publisher is just beginning. The big publishers will loose their advantage. To be sure, the big houses and big sellers will retain the mass market by providing the twaddle it demands. They can have it! The small publishers will prosper in the cracks by providing the thoughtful titles for thinking people.

On the other side, small booksellers will continue to go the way of the buggy whip makers. They will disappear. They will have no value to add. They will have nothing to make them special. What began as a trickle of closings will become a cascade.

They have only themselves to blame. They could have formed an alliance with small publishers a decade ago. Instead they sneered along with the giants and counted on the distributors to take care of them. They did not have the time to look at or bother with the offerings of the small publishers. Now the giants are sitting on them, the distributors have nothing special to offer them, and the small publishers don't need them. Their niche as specialists has become imaginary.

At Wesoomi, as we develop our web presence and continue to provide entertaining and useful information, our credibility will grow. As we add new products, peoples choices will expand. Somewhere in the future lies critical mass. We have viable products. We believe in what we are doing. Hence, it is not a matter of if. It is only a matter of when. This will be true for all small publishers with viable products who remain awake. Meanwhile the giants will blunder along the orthodox path, dogmatically following the obsolete model.

I would dearly love to see the publishing industry liberated from the inept hands of these self congratulating, stodgy neanderthals who currently control it. Who better to do this than young men and women? Fresh outs, with no preconceived notions! Now is the time for young people to come in and take control. Come in! The door is wide open.
The next time I have an opportunity to speak to young folks, I will be there. Bet on that.
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