Production Process Overview

The process that will transform your manuscript into a printed and bound book is launched at what is called the transmittal meeting. At this meeting, the people who will be working diligently to shepherd your book successfully through the production process, including the editing supervisor (who is primarily responsible for the text, design, and schedule) and the production supervisor (who is primarily responsible for art, typesetting, and printing), discuss such matters as the kind of copy editing the manuscript needs, exactly how art should be handled, whether any essential items from the manuscript package are missing, and the design of the published book. Soon after the transmittal meeting the editing supervisor will contact you, in order to ask any questions we might still have about the manuscript and to tell you what the production schedule is going to be.

At this point the editing supervisor will have sent your manuscript to an experienced freelance copy editor, and will be closely monitoring her or his work. Depending on the extent of the editing changes, the swiftness of the schedule, and several other factors, you might receive a photocopy of the copy-edited manuscript to quickly review.

The next step in the production process is typesetting, which is done by either our in-house desktop publishing unit or an "outside" compositor. The resulting page proof, which will look pretty much like a published book, is sent to you for a thorough review, as well as to an experienced freelance proofreader. The proof will be shipped in batches, and you will have a week or two to scrutinize each batch.

You will return reviewed page proof to the editing supervisor, who will oversee the generation of revised proof, which will contain any changes you marked as well as typos and design errors discovered by the proofreader.

Just about the time we are finalizing the text proper of your book, you will get the page proof of the front matter (which includes the title page, Contents, and Preface) to review.

Within a few weeks of this, your completed book will be sent to the printer, and about a month later, printed and bound copies will start being shipped to our warehouse and thus will be available for purchase. You are now a published author. Congratulations!