How to Be a Funnel and Not a Bottleneck

Building an Effective Production Team

Why Our Environment Demands New Ways of Working

Like all businesses, publishing has been impacted by growth and change, especially that driven by more technology and less time to market. This environment has created an even greater need for effective teams to embrace an uncertain future.

Getting titles to market in shorter amounts of time still requires that publishing standards are met. Added to that, publishers are making ever more complex, market-
oriented books to meet the competition. We can accommodate these competing demands by building an effective team and doing as much preliminary work as possible.

In-house departments are not the only groups affected by these changes. As publishers need to meet shortened schedules, management has turned to outside services for help, and the team has spread out into the community at large. Naomi noted that outside suppliers need to focus on these changes and take advantage of new technology to meet publishers' needs.

The Scope of the Production Editor

The launch of a book by the acquisitions editor presents the goals, competition, and manuscript review. After that, the production editor is responsible for making the book happen. This team leader should bring a high level of expertise, even though he or she may not be doing the actual copyediting, proofreading, paging, or prepress. It is critical that the production editor understand how the parts of the process dovetail to guide the team effectively. The production editor also needs to be comfortable with a leadership role and have the authority to fulfill that role.

The production editor does a project analysis, then defines the roles of the team members, and sets out expectations about how everyone will work together. Once the team is selected, the production editor keeps the process moving, realizing that there will be unexpected issues along the way. What happens if the cover is approved by the production editor and manufacturing buyer, but marketing says no? You need to agree about who will be involved in approval of what aspects of the book. For example, even though manufacturing is most often responsible for paper/printing/binding (PPB), and production is usually responsible for development costs (plant), a good production editor will also consider the effect of PPB when putting the development plan together.

Project Analysis

The key to effective management is project analysis. Most book production used to follow a set pattern. Now, each project is different and must be analyzed differently. Where manuscripts were complete, books are now often handled on a chapter by chapter basis.

Consider the following steps as you analyze a new manuscript:

• determine the manuscript's strengths and weaknesses
• read parts to see if the author writes well
• look at every page to see what the manuscript is about and what has to be done to turn it into a book
• note issues for the author, copyeditor, and publisher (did they really want only one figure in the first nine chapters and twenty in the last?)
• create a design-elements checklist
• create a list of people needed for the team
• decide if the manuscript is ready for production

Building a Production Team

Different projects require different teams. Include the appropriate members based on the needs of the book; more complex books will generally require a larger team. Teams are now commonly composed of in-house and outside members. The roles below are a good starting point for developing a core production group.

• production editor (the leader)
• acquisitions editor
• copyeditor
• proofreader
• designer
• art editor/artist/illustrator
• compositor/separator
• indexer
• manufacturing/buyer
• permissions editor
• photo researcher

It's wise to build a large pool of people to draw from so that you have plenty of resources readily available. You don't need the same kind of team for every project-a permissions editor may be needed for one job and not for another-but a project analysis will guide you. When you select a team, you need to be confident of each individual's capabilities and know what to expect of them. Don't start a new project will all new team members. Try one new person on a project, but not in a critical area. A freelance production editor may choose to work with a copyeditor who is already familiar with the publisher's style.

Communication as a Core Competency

The panel emphasized the need to set up good communication to avoid problems. Communication needs to be both verbal and written and incudes such items as a design memo, written expectations, house style manual, and status reports-these written reports also allow for a feedback loop. It's important to have a game plan from the beginning, but remember that it will change (you can generally rely on that). Treat team members as long-term partners. Provide them with constructive feedback and an opportunity to improve; often problems occur simply because expectations are not clear. Good communication skills can be learned from experience and formal training.

With an in-house group, you can get away with less defined roles, but when outside sources are involved, inefficiencies can result from heavier back-and-forth communication. When the outside production manager is in one state, the publisher in another, the color house in yet another, the burden is on the production editor to be the central, clear communicator, so freelancers don't get one instruction from editorial, another from design, and yet a different one from manufacturing!

As one of the panelists noted, "coping with the new realities . . . is not a spectator sport." Get in there, analyze your project, pull together your team, and make some books!