The Small Things

Of the many reasons that I've enjoyed my internship at FiT so much this summer, one of the most important  is that I've learned so much about various details and intricacies of the publishing world. There are numerous small facets of publishing a book that few people realize.

For example, copyright is an often time-consuming part of publishing. One task that I was given was to complete copyright agreement forms to send to the authors of a book of articles. The agreements basically said that copyright for the articles and the book itself would belong to FiT, and that the authors would receive an honorarium for their articles. It seems like it would be tedious to fill out forms for 20 different authors, but it required some level of concentration to make sure, for legal purposes, that the names were spelled correctly and that the correct article name was matched with each author. Some of the best moments of my days at FiT are when I catch something that someone else in my position may have overlooked. I'm a procrastinator, but when I do work, I'm very thorough and meticulous, so this happens often. In this case, I noticed a section almost at the end of the copyright agreements as I was skimming through it to make sure that no blanks were left unfilled. It was a section about possible future electronic versions of the publication, and when I brought it to Matt's attention, it turned out that he had no idea that it was in the document. I ended up deleting the entire section and adjusting the section numbers on the agreements, feeling great about catching something potentially important.

Not only the authors have to worry about copyright, however. I'm in the process of trying to get information about a figure being published in one of FiT's new books. The figure is from a book published originally by Human Kinetics, and I had to fill out a copyright request form online to obtain permissions from them to republish the figure. However, the page number where the original figure appeared in the HK publication was unknown, so I had to email the author to ask, but he's out of town and can't find the information until Thursday. The HK representative is being very patient, but it's still a little stressful to have to wait, knowing that the book is so close to being published. I've been keeping this issue in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now so that it isn't overlooked. I'm not sure how much it could cost a publishing company that infringes upon copyright in that way, but I also don't want to find out from experience.

Another facet of publishing that people don't often think about is the physical properties of a book. Should it be small or large? Printed on pure white paper or slightly darker or with a yellow tinge? Should the paper be thin and delicate or thick and sturdy? Should there be color anywhere within the book? Should the cover be matte or glossy? What font should be used for the cover and the actual text of the book? I had a conversation with Matt about all these issues that I had never really considered before. Some of the decisions made about these details are practically made, like choosing a glossy cover for a particular textbook because scratches show less on that type of material, and the books are likely to be carried frequently and damaged. Other times, a decision is made for aesthetic purposes, like to contribute to the overall 'feel' of the book--for instance, one sport coach biography that FiT published was meant to have an antiquated feel, so the paper selected had an old-time tan color. I love these small details because they contribute so much to the finished product without being obvious to most people.

The third often-overlooked detail of publishing that I've learned about is ISBN codes. Everyone always sees these codes on everything they purchase, including books, but few people wonder how each code is kept unique and about the challenges that publishers face when dealing with them. The codes are purchased for something like $1 each from a company that is responsible for all of the United States' ISBN codes. Publishers buy them in bulk, maybe 50 or 100 at a time, and receive a sheet with each ISBN and a blank next to it for the title of the book that goes with the code. Sometimes the title of a book changes halfway through publication, which can create confusion when sorting through ISBNs to see whether a code has been assigned to the book yet. Another issue that publishers face is printing the ISBNs directly onto the back cover of books. If the ISBN code is left off, or if there is a problem with it and the bookstore has to place ISBN stickers on the books, it can be very costly to the publisher. For example, if FiT sent 1000 copies of a publication to a bookstore and there was a problem with the ISBN, the bookstore would charge FiT for each ISBN sticker that had to be placed on the books before they could be sold. This can cost thousands of dollars, depending on how much the bookstore charges (sometimes a dollar per sticker) and how many copies the store was sent.

While the publishing world is hectic and often disorganized, I'm surprised to say that I really love it. I always thought that having a thousand details floating around in the air at any given time would be annoying, but it just adds to the excitement of working at a publishing company. It's great to follow a book through the lengthy publication process, then finally hold the finished product and know that I was part of creating it. I'm finding that I can't wait for the rest of my career to unfold.

Major Projects

My time at FiT since my last post has been hectic and full of exciting new tasks and projects. I finished the blog post that I mentioned in my last entry here, and it's been posted to the FiT blog. Writing the post helped me to understand journalistic writing and how it differs from other styles. I've never taken a journalism class (unless we're counting Yearbook in high school), so it's a challenge to switch to a less formal style. I'm not entirely satisfied with the first post, but I had a chance to try again with a new post, and I'm much happier with the results. The second post I wrote is called "The Moneyball Revolution." It deals with the new sports movie, Moneyball, which is being released soon. It's based on a book about the sabermetric approach to sports recruiting and how the approach contributed to the success of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. I feel that this post is much more 'journalistic' in tone than the first one, although I would still like to improve with the next one that I write. I also like this post more because it required much less editing, and I posted it myself, including the video and photo. I was also able to learn about WordPress, which I'd never used before.

This time has also been exciting because I was given my first few 'major' projects, one of which is now completed. I was asked to write an index for a new book, Boomercise: Exercising as You Age. I'd never worked on an index before, so Matt and I had a conversation about the basics, and I read the Chicago Manual chapter on indexing before I started the project. I've used a lot of indexes, but I never appreciated how challenging it can be to compose one. There are so many things to take into consideration: When a particular term is mentioned in the text, is it discussed at enough length to warrant mentioning in the index? What terms will the intended audience be most likely to look up--the official term or a more informal term? What subjects will the intended audience want to quickly reference? I actually liked the project more than I thought I would. It took a long time to complete, but it was fun to learn about the formatting of an index, which is surprisingly specific. There are more ways to format one than I knew about, and I enjoyed learning about FiT's style. The most interesting tip I learned was that using too many tabs can create problems for the typesetter because they have to delete excessive spaces and tabs to make sure that everything lines up when the book is printed.

I'm currently proofreading a book on sport financing, a compilation of 28 articles on the subject. I'm about 100 pages into the 400-page manuscript, and when I finish proofreading it, I'll begin creating its index. The entire project has to be finished by the end of this month, but I hope to have it finished within the next couple of weeks so that I can make some progress on the third project, a 460-page book that needs to be copy edited. I'm definitely looking forward to continuing my work on both of these projects--this internship is continuously confirming to me that this career path was the perfect choice.

I'll write more about the smaller, but equally valuable projects that I've been working on, as well as some fun information I've learned about the publishing process.

~Rachel