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Composition & Graphics

February 18, 2011 publishing
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No matter how limited a job we undertake, it nearly always includes composing the manuscript into camera-ready pages. Both type and graphics are placed on the printed page proof. While authors and technical editors may capture computer screen shots for the figures in a book, the compositor is often responsible for processing the final graphics, line art, and screen shots. Sometimes an illustrator is brought on for special line art or cover designs. We produce black-and-white, spot-colour, and four-colour process books, and even high-fidelity colour (using up to seven process colours) is possible.
Proofreading

Page layout requires proofreading. While clients can do their own proofreading, tight schedules usually require that the page compositor works closely with one of our proofreaders. While the client and author review the page proofs for accuracy of content, the proofreader is skilled in the quality details of the book: its spelling, grammar, and adherence to the design specifications. We take proofreading very seriously: Nothing can be more distracting to the reader and embarrassing to the client than a book riddled with typographical errors, missing or mislabelled figures, or cross references and index entries pointing to the wrong pages. The proofreader is the book’s last defence against serious, even costly errors.
Indexing

A good technical book deserves a good index. A professional indexer makes the book a true reference by ensuring the reader can find the information he or she seeks. The quality of a book’s index is often examined by book reviewers and can affect its overall ranking. It is also possible to have the author create the index, sometimes by keying index terms into the manuscript while writing. This index can be used as the final one or as an aid to a professional indexer’s thorough reading of the book.
Translation and Localization

Computer software, hardware, and documentation are increasingly global commodities. Both computer companies and book publishers want to penetrate the international market. Localization is the preferred term to translation, because it emphasizes bringing a product into the milieu of a foreign culture, not just providing a literal translation. This requires a quality linguistic and technical translation of the book, art labels and captions, menus, and help files. We offer localization as an adjunct to our book composition services, depending on the availability of translators for the language required. We specialize in English, Japanese, Spanish, and German localization.
Electronic Media

Book publishing is quickly expanding to include the production of electronic versions for publishing on CD-ROMs, corporate intra-nets, and the Internet. New software tools are expediting the process by enabling us to convert the print publication to an electronic format without having to recreate it from scratch. This reduces costs and permits nearly simultaneous production of both the print and electronic versions.
Every Project is Unique

While we’ve described our services as simply as possible, we realize that each client and project is unique, and we’re eager to tailor our services to the needs of the publisher.

publishing

February 18, 2011 publishing
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a consortium of experienced freelance publishing professionals who offer their skills to computer companies and computer book publishers to produce trade books, textbooks, and computer documentation. Our experience covers all facets of computer book production: editing, design, layout, proofreading, indexing, and language localization. We may be hired to perform all facets of a publishing project, or just the services the client needs.

Our clients are nationally recognized book publishers and computer companies who hire us when their in-house staff are too busy on other projects, when our production experience is needed, or when we can produce the job more quickly or inexpensively.

While it is a sole proprietorship registered in California, we describe ourselves as a consortium because we comprise an experienced team of freelance professionals who work from our own offices in close coordination to produce quality publications. Our core group of professionals have each worked for more than a decade in the computer publishing field and produced scores of books; collectively we’ve produced hundreds of books amounting to tens of thousands of pages.

We work for a national clientele with our core staff located in the San Francisco Bay Area where we take full advantage of San Francisco’s publishing professionals and the Silicon Valley’s technical experts. Additional staff is drawn from around the country, and abroad, as needed.

Our freelancers are skilled in the best software and hardware tools of the trade, and unlike businesses facing the costs and burdens of upgrading thousands of computer stations, our freelancers can quickly adopt the latest stable release of a desktop publishing or graphics program and run it on a state-of-the art machine.

We do away with office overhead, fixed salaries, commuting downtime, and narrow nine-to-five workdays by distributing the job to freelancers working longer hours more efficiently from their own offices. However, the client always has a single contact person for the job, the project manager. The project manager coordinates the work of team members, overseeing its quality and  making sure the project schedule is maintained. Any part of a job is within a day’s delivery to the client or another team member via overnight messenger, and increasingly the virtual job moves from stage to stage by email and fax within just minutes.

Our goal is to produce a quality job at a reasonable cost while achieving the tight deadlines typical in the computer publishing field. We are pleasant to work with, we are professional, and we take pride in our work.