[Woodcarver] Book publishing specifications.

Mon May 24 09:09:28 EDT 2004

Hi Bill,

I'm learning about the specifications needed for book publishing as I
prepare a ms for publication. The working title is Relief Carved History
Mantels and we plan to have it available in the fall of 2006 or before. I'm
thinking that it'll take me a year to write the ms and it takes the
publisher a year to get it to market. The publisher, at least in our type of
market, targets two seasons for book releases, spring and fall.

With color digital photos a 300 dpi, RGB, in a tif format, Mac or PC. You
need to have 300 pixels per inch of published picture. If you are printing a
4" X 3" photo at 300 pixels per inch, the camera needs to create file size
of (4-inches times 300 pixels) times (3-inches time 300 pixels) time 3
colors (RGB) = 3.240 Mega pixels. That's just under a 3.5 Mega pixel camera.
It will not help to increase the file size in the computer, it has to be the
original camera size. As you edit, rotate, change file format etc, the file
sizes can be reduced so the publishers would rather do all the photo editing
themselves.

I've got about $1,000 wrapped up in a Sony Cyber-shot 5.0 Mega Pixel camera
with a fine Carl Zeiss lens. The camera was about $700 and the case, extra
battery and larger memory chip brought the total just shy of $1,000. This
5.0 Mega-pixel camera is still not good enough to shoot a publishable color
photo 6" X 4". A 6 X 4 requires (6-inch time 300 pixels) time (4-inch times
300 pixels) times 3 color (RGB) = 6.480 Mega-pixels or 6.5 Mega-pixel after
cropping. My Sony Cyber-shot 5.0 Mega-Pixel camera shoots and prints a
wonderful 8 X 10 color photo of the grandchildren, with such detail that the
smallest hairs are crisp, but it is still not good enough for publish
quality of a 6 X 4 photo.

Digital photos are the way to go but bracketed (changing f-stop or exposure)
35mm slides are still the more economical method for photos over 6 X 4-inch.

The specification for submitting the manuscript are, unless you are
experienced in working with Quark, Xpress or Adobe InDesign, you should not
try and format your ms.. If you are using a modern word processing program
like Microsoft Word or Word Perfect they are not print quality and the
publisher would like no formatting, no imbedded files or photos, no indents,
no bold or italics, no centering headings or use of tabs, begin each heading
with a Capital letter but please do not type IN ALL CAPS, and either Courier
or Times New Roman font. Double or single space is ok.

The number of pages is based on how many pages are yielded from a signature.
There are 8 sheets of paper (16 printed pages) from a signature for an 8 ½"
by 11-inch size page. That seems to be the standard even for smaller size
pages. Production costs can be held down if you can limit the 4-color work
(black, RGB) to one or two signatures, however remember the pages of a
signature must be grouped together for binding. The number of words per page
will vary depending on the size of your page.

This is what I've been learning over the last few weeks as I begin this new
venture.

I would like to hear from those of you who have had books published and
discuss questions like how many words will fit on what size page, font and
font size, type of binding, techniques for holding down production costs,
when do you use color photos and when will black and white be acceptable and
other things of interest in the book publishing world.

Joe Dillett
The Carving Shop
645 E. LaSalle St. Suite 3
Somonauk, IL. 60552
(815) 498-9290 phone
(815) 498-9249 fax
http://www.thecarvingshop.com
jdillett at thecarvingshop.com
http://www.carvingmagazine.com Carving Magazine web site and Readers Forum
**************************************************

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Judt" <bjudt at sasktel.net>
To: "WML Woodcarver Mailing List" <Woodcarver at six.pairlist.net>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 12:28 AM
Subject: [Woodcarver] Visit wit Jim Cline, Edmonton

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> Gentle Subscribers:
>
> I had the pleasure of visiting with Jim Cline, in Edmonton Alberta,
> this weekend, which the wife and I were visiting friends. He gave me a
> tour of his studio and of the carvings he has done. Especially
> interesting are the carvings he is doing for his first book. I tell
> you, he has some really neat relief carving projects. You better hope
> that Fox Chapel accepts his book proposal.
>
> We spend the afternoon brainstorming about the structure of books and
> the requirements for publishing. I am trying to convince jim to invest
> the time getting acquainted with digital photography and computer
> applications for the preparation of book manuscripts. I think I have
> him hooked on the idea of electronic documents.
>
> BTW, Jim's wife, Pat, make a wonderful German stew, with rye bread and
> salad on the side. Delicious. Thanks,Pat.
>
> More about Jim later...
>
> Bill
> List Owner
>
> W.F. Judt,
> 46 Harvard Cres,
> Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,
> S7H3R1
> PH: 306-373-6649
> Email: bjudt at sasktel.net
> Website: http://www.wwwoodcarver.com
>
> Bill
>
> W.F. Judt,
> 46 Harvard Cres,
> Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,
> S7H3R1
> PH: 306-373-6649
> Email: bjudt at sasktel.net
> Website: http://www.wwwoodcarver.com
>

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