Outsourcing of design, editorial, and production services offers for many publishers an avenue to complement their staffs’ capacities when extraordinary demand is placed upon them by unanticipated publishing opportunities. Some publishers may wish to outsource to increase their current list and profit potential without incurring long-term overhead.

We offer the “cafeteria plan.” You can select as many or as few of our services as you need to get the job done. If you wish to outsource several titles in a given time period, we will create a project management plan to meet your special requirements.

The services offered by Book Production Resources (BPR) include:

• Project Planning and Management
  
  BPR serves small publishers who may publish only two or three key books each year, as well as large publishers who may produce 50 to 300 titles a year. Regardless of the size of the company, a BPR project manager (PM) will oversee, implement, and coordinate the design, editorial, and production processes for your manuscripts.

  Based on the publisher’s input for the book, the project manager will create a cost analysis and a complete schedule. If both are approved, the plan is implemented. The project manager will coordinate the work of all of the operatives. With weekly project status reports, the PM tracks the schedule and keeps the publisher informed at all stages. The project manager will carefully select a designer and editor with appropriate backgrounds to work on each manuscript. The PM instructs the author as to general responsibilities and schedule requirements. Because typesetting alterations are generally very expensive, the PM emphasizes to the author the importance of carefully reviewing the copyedited manuscript and making all changes at this stage.

  This approach has consistently minimized the cost of alterations on books which we manage. The project manager is available to the author and the publisher from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each weekday.
  

• Interior Book Design & Cover / Jacket Design
  Interiors

  BPR uses leading designers throughout the U.S. to create both functionality and marketability in our products. In most cases, we furnish the interior designer with the unedited disk files so that appropriate material will be used in creating a design for all of the textual apparatus. Extensive specifications and a large selection of the frontmatter, chapter openers, facing spreads showing tables, illustrations, and sub-heads, plus backmatter are presented to the publisher for evaluation. If the book is to be casebound, stamping die repros (or disk file) will be included along with the selection of case materials.

  In order to create books to serve specific marketing plans, the publisher should furnish basic information for the trim size, desired page count, press run, and desired unit cost. Copies of pages from other books are very helpful to show the layout and design which the publisher finds appropriate for the manuscript under consideration.

  The Model Book Program

  For a number of clients with larger lists, BPR offers our model book program. A basic design with typeset samples for all textual apparatus is created, accompanied by full typographic specifications and standard generic codes. Used over even a short period of time, the model book program can reduce a publisher’s interior book design cost to just pennies per book. A one-time charge is made for the model book, and it is exclusively the property of the publisher.

  Each design is available in three type families offering low, median, and high CPP values to increase the model’s future use. For a very nominal charge, the designer of your model will apply that design to any appropriate manuscript which you select. The application will deal with any ideosyncracies of the manuscript not covered by the selected model book design. The application fee includes the design of a unique title page and modifications to chapter openers and sub-heads as needed. Case design and stamping die art for the spine and front panel are included in the application .

  Cover and Jacket

  Cover and jacket designs from BPRCover and jacket designs from BPR range from cost-efficient two-color jobs to sophisticated four- to six-color creations with embossing and foil stamping. Almost all of our covers and jackets are designed with layflat film lamination. Original art, photo research and procurement, and studio photography are offered. Food photography for cookbooks is a speciality. Please view our gallery of book covers from completed projects.

• Art Program Development
  BPR offers a wide range of services including original art (pen&ink, watercolor, acrylic, oil), charts and graphs, electronic art, b/w and color photography, photo research, and stock photography. We supply the appropriate resources to meet your needs and requirements.
• Editorial Evaluation
  For those who have made the decision to self-publish, you may find it invaluable to have an unbiased editorial evaluation of your manuscript. A reviewer with extensive knowledge in your field will be retained to critique your manuscript with regard to content, argument, support, bibliography, and contribution. An editor will offer an evaluation focusing on grammar, syntax, writing style, bibliography and notes, idiosyncrasies, and paragraph structure.
• Copyediting, Substantive Editing, Proofreading
  It is rare that the work of a good author cannot be improved by a good copyeditor. The guidance provided by a skilled editor often pushes a book over the threshold of success. At Book Production Resources, we have been very fortunate in finding talented editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders. They continually receive accolades from both the publishers and the authors.

  Publishers appreciate very much the estimating and billing system which we use for editorial services. To charge consistently, we estimated the number of “standard manuscript pages” in an unedited manuscript. A std mss page is approximately 270 words and represents a “billable unit.” Each category of editing service includes an on-screen edit (or mss edit if no files are available), a print-out of the edited manuscript, author liaison, entering the author’s changes to the edited manuscript files, and reprinting any affected pages. With the publisher’s input, we rate a manuscript for a (1) light, (2) medium, or a (3) heavy edit. The number of standard manuscript pages is established before the editing process begins as well as the final bill. There is never an open-ended bill based on the number of hours logged by the copyeditor or editor.

  A light edit provides all of the usual housekeeping activities (stylesheet, illustration log, verifying cross-references, checking callouts against corresponding notes and illustrations, attribution and permission checks, etc.) with copyediting generally focusing on grammar, syntax, bibliographic and notes style, and author idiosyncrasies.
  avy edit covers housekeeping issues and all of the above, plus the liberty to deal with paragraph structure and placement as well as substantive rewriting.

  When a manuscript is submitted to BPR for editing, it is suggested that the publisher in the transmittal letter recommend the level of editing that (s)he anticipates. BPR’s copyeditor will immediately edit approximately 30 pages of the manuscript and fax or overnight it to the publisher to assure that all expectations are being met.

  Manuscript per page editing rates include:

  1. Editing done on screen with or without electronic editorial tracing
  2. A print-out of the edited files for the author and publisher to review;
  3. The entering of author/publisher changes to the previously edited file;
  4. A revised print-out and accompanying disk file for the typesetter;
  5. Editor contact with the author via fax and/or E-mail (occasional phone calls included; extensive phone conferencing will be made “collect” to the author or charged to the final invoice).
  6. The editor will create for the typesetter a list of generic codes found in the files, and a stylesheet for the publisher and the author. Editorial protocols follow The Chicago Manual of Style or the Publication Guide of the American Psychological Association (usually referred to as the APA Manual), as well as the publisher’s house style.
• Composition and Prepress Services
  Book Production Resources offers in-house composition produced with Apple Macintosh technology using InDesign CS software and Adobe fonts. We employ skilled typesetters, proofreaders, and support personnel. For highly technical and multi-level equations, we outsource to a company that uses TEX (pronounced ‘tech’) software.

  Prepress Services include the creation of charts, graphs, and other illustrative materials. If you opt to work with BPR’s model book program, we will archive for future use the formats for producing those designs, as well as storing a complete set of sample pages for each design, a duplicate of which will be held by you the publisher.

• Author Liaison and Relations
  Once the publisher selects BPR for project management and informs the author regarding our role, we will manage the author’s experience and involvement in both the editorial and production processes to achieve the best possible product. Depending on the author’s previous experience in publishing, we perceive our role as that of teacher of the book production process; coach, referee, and advisor in the editorial process; and the friendly “hurry-upper” in the keeping of schedules. It is a matter of commitment and pride to make the publishing process for the author a very pleasant one.
• Indexing
  While most publishers make the index the responsibility of the author, we have found that authors often loathe the task or simply do not know how to go about it. While sending the Chicago MOS indexing guide may help some, to most it is like reading the bicycle assembly manual on Christmas Eve. For those who attempt to do it, we employ an experienced technical editor to comb the form and style until it is in good shape. For those who decline to try, we have several good indexers who are familiar with most disciplines. But we always request that the author supply a key list of subjects, issues, and contexts to include, and then review the manuscript before we typeset it.
• Placement and Supervision of Printing/Binding Production

  Qualifications

  The management of Book Production Resources stays current with printing and binding technology by frequently visiting plants which specialize in nearly every type of technology for the production of books. The founder of BPR has been in book production since 1964 and personally writes most of the specifications for bids to print and bind the titles which we supervise.

  Services Offered

  If publishers have printing and contracts already in place, we will extend our service to check bluelines, press proofs, F&Gs, sample cases, jacket or cover proofs, and a final sampling of books before shipment. If a publisher is not sure how a book should be manufactured or which printer should be selected, we will establish specifications and criteria and find a qualified company to produce the book. We are experienced in producing titles to print in black only or in four color process. We have project managed books with almost any type of binding available today.

  Multi-Year Contracts

  If a publisher wishes to develop a multi-year volume contract with a printer in order to obtain the best possible prices, we can review your current and planned titles, write specifications, and develop an award basis for the contract.

• Shipping and Distribution
  A number of independent companies provide warehousing and distribution services for publishers who do not wish to incur the overhead or be involved in the daily problems of warehousing and order fulfillment. We will be happy to recommend and put you in contact with suppliers.

  We do manage the mailing of book and journals directly from the printer or a distribution/mailing service.