If you picked the self-publishing fork in the road after the Line Edit Foothills, it’s time to split your book journey party. You’ve got multiple quest objectives, and you can accomplish some of them at the same time if you plan it right. Right now you need to do two things: polish your manuscript and put together the graphic design pieces that make your book visually delightful. [Read more…] about Split Your Book Journey Party
typesetting
What Is Typesetting?
I used to introduce myself as a book editor and typesetter, and people often asked me: What is typesetting? Though I now introduce myself as a book editor and designer, I’ve practiced delivering a simple answer.
Typesetting is the process of composing a text using fonts, sizes, line spacing, and other details that make it appropriate for a given audience and purpose. Professional typesetters pay particular attention to readability and strive to eliminate line breaks, paragraph breaks, hyphenation issues, and other typographic elements that can distract from the reading experience or impede a reader’s understanding.
Some professional definitions of typesetting include only the interior book design—selecting the fonts and styling to package your story—or finessing your book into a smooth ride for your reader. Here at Looseleaf, we do both, because one without the other is a little lame, and your book should never be lame. Below are some of the wrinkles Looseleaf irons out in a print layout after making the important design decisions for your book. [Read more…] about What Is Typesetting?
New Project: The Folklore Historian, Volume 29
My most recently completed editorial project isn’t technically a Looseleaf project—I’m the temporary managing editor for this one, not a freelancer, exactly—but I wanted to share it anyway. The last project was a novel, but this one was a scholarly journal focusing historical approaches to folklore (or folklore in a historical perspective). I present volume 29 of The Folklore Historian, a member of the American Folklore Society’s family of publications.
I didn’t do all the work on this issue. I took over at the beginning of the semester, so I proofread the final text, managed final revisions with the authors, laid the journal out in InDesign, designed the cover, and took the files to and checked the proofs from the press.
