When you bring your manuscript and art to a book designer and producer, you have technically entered the pre-press process.
What does pre-press involve?
- PrePress is what turns all your work into a computer file that can go straight into the printer's presses and emerge as a book ready for reading. Of course it has to pass careful technical checks at the printers - the final process in prePress.
- After you have decided on the "look" you want for your book, your designer sets up the book layout in specialist software, imports all your text and sorts it roughly into chapters. Reliable fonts have to be used and every line of type and each character in your book has to belong to one of a range of paragraph and character style sheets that have to be set up if the book is going to print problem-free and also be potentially convertible to e-book. This is meticulous work.
- Book "front matter" has to be sorted out and formatted. Title page, copyright page, Table of Contents, ISBN numbers, introductions, prologues, prefaces, endorsements. End matters - references, bibliographies, index, and everything between: page numbering, footnotes, running headers etc...
- Art and photos need to converted to correct printing resolutions using the correct file formats. Often photos will need photo editing and restoration.
- A cover will need to be designed to the millimetre and the spine width calcuated (that will change depending on stocks used).
- Through the process, the designer will be sending the author prepress progress reports in the form if PDFs for feedback.
- After the author has approved the final PDFs of the book it can be transferred to the printers in the form of a printer's PDF that will be thoroughly checked to make sure it will print.
- The next step will be the delivery of a printed proof that will look exactly like the finished book. It's then the author's (and designer's) task to check everything for errors. Corrections can be made by the designer and revised files sent to the printer.
