Episode 7 - Editorial Processes, Part 1: Past, Present and Future
Guest: Kat Mitchell
Publishing Services Manager, EMC Designs
Rosie Stewart:
Hi, and welcome to Westchester words , UK. I'm Rosie Stewart , editorial and pre-press director at river editorial. A division of Westchester publishing services UK. I am delighted to welcome my guest today, Kat Mitchell publishing services manager at EMC design. I had the pleasure of meeting KA recently at the independent publisher's Guild awards lunch, and there was so much more we wanted to discuss. So we thought we'd take this opportunity to extend our conversation. Thank you, Kat for joining me. Can you tell us a bit more about your background and your day to day role at EMC design?
Kat Mitchell:
Hi Rosie. Thanks for that intro. It's great. Being here, chatting with you today. A little bit of background for me, as you can probably tell from my voice I'm American <laugh> , but I've lived in the UK for over 10 years now. Pretty much since getting my MA in publishing at Oxford Brooks. I'm currently, as you said, the publishing services manager here at EMC, heading up the non-design side of the studio, and I've also worked in-house at OUP and Pearson , um, as well as about a year and a half freelance dedicated to freelance, although , um, still do the odd editorial thing on the side at the moment. Um , and project manager and sort of as far as day to day role , uh, given that EMC is at heart, a design studio, having specialized in design and typesetting for publishers for, you know, over three decades, our publishing services team supports the smooth running of the design side, sort of through proof checking, quality control, artwork, management, photo research, and licensing, and then more recently project management.
Rosie Stewart:
Mm-hmm, Great. So you've certainly got plenty going on then . <laugh> that doesn't sound that you have many quiet moments in your day. Absolutely. But it's great to hear all about your background and I've definitely learned a few things about you that I didn't know before. So thank you for sharing. Um, so River and Westchester work with EMC on projects that involve not only design, but also editorial services, which I know is your particular area. And you mentioned it a couple of times there in your intro. So can you tell me a bit more about the relationship between design and editorial at EMC? Yeah,
Kat Mitchell:
Yeah, sure. I think, you know, even without it being within EMC, there's a really symbiotic relationship going on between design and editorial. Um, quality is something that we take a huge pride in here. So as we grew the need for a sort of trained editorial, I grew alongside that. My first role here at EMC was pretty much straight out of the ma. So I was a proof checker carrying out QA checks and making sure the designers did everything they were asked to do by the editors. And when I started in that role, I sort of saw myself as a translator of sorts, sort of someone who could help the designers to interpret a particularly tricky markup. Yeah . And , and grasp what the editor was really trying to do or say mm-hmm <affirmative> , but also someone who could help the designers, you know, conversely explain to the editors why maybe something they wanted to have happen, couldn't. <Laugh>
Rosie Stewart:
Sure. Yeah.
Kat Mitchell:
Um, so we've now got four production editors to kind of help with that role. And they're all E editorially trained to help with the quality control checks. But at the same time, they've been trained to understand the way that the designers here work and how things get placed on the page, what can be done and what can't be done depending on how the page is set up and the templates used, et cetera. Um, so we get to see both sides of the workflow , which is really nice, both for the production editors here, but also for the designers to kind of have someone internally who can both be that translator, but also the sort of liaison of saying, Hey, you know, this is what they're trying to do. Why are they trying to do this? And we can say, oh , well, you know, from a grammar standpoint or from a, you know, curriculum standpoint, this needs to happen. And then the designer says, well, but it's not possible. <laugh> sure . Um , but it's kind of helping them word that properly so that the editorial team on the other end understands why. And yeah, as I mentioned before, that sort of has grown into project management. That liaison aspect , um, has really grown into project management, editorial management, which was sort of that organic response to the industry as a whole and the sort of need for more end to end services in one point of contact.
Rosie Stewart:
Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah. Thank you for that. I really particularly love that image you've given of seeing yourself as a translator, which I think is such a helpful comparison. Um, I've never really thought of it in those terms before, but , um, the proofreading symbols, which we're gonna talk about more later are really like a language in their own right. Definitely. And so translator is absolutely the right word for that. And that really resonates with the sort of work that I do for River Editorial in all the liaison between the different parts of the process. Um, so yeah, I'll definitely squirrel that away. It's a , an image to come back to <laugh> . So we've both been working in the publishing industry for quite a few years now. And in that time I've certainly noticed a lot of changes, particularly in editorial work. And the most noticeable is of course the change from hard copy to electronic proofs. So is this something that you've noticed as well?
Kat Mitchell:
I don't think anyone didn't notice.
Rosie Stewart:
< laugh> you're right! that's probably saying the obvious.
Kat Mitchell:
<laugh> Yeah. But I think I do o ften forget just how recent that shift was. Yeah. I mean, you know, people talk about in my lifetime, in my working lifetime < laugh> absolutely is when that really happened. M m-hmm < affirmative> a nd I don't know about you, but I can still really strongly remember that rush of trying to print out, you know, six levels of 1 36 page student books ready for the courier who was gonna arrive at five on the dot. And so they needed to be printed, packaged, bound, labeled < laugh> stick that, you know, the sort of c ompliments note in there. U m, a nd get it ready to go in that last half h our stretch right before the c ourier comes.
Rosie Stewart:
Yeah. And we used to buy paper by the boxload. Yes . You know, chucking it in and it comes out with the printer, all lovely and warm and fresh and ready to go.
Kat Mitchell:
Yeah, That smell of printed book, but not quite,
Rosie Stewart:
Yeah. Not quite there <laugh>
Kat Mitchell:
Without the bounding glue. Yeah. And sort of similarly, you know, that anticipation of opening a set of proofs from a client when it's come back, how many sticky notes are you gonna see? Is there gonna be, you know, pages of red or blue markup, what are the margins gonna look like? Are they gonna be full of freelancers asking questions and clients responding? Are there still gonna be questions outstanding that we then have to get in touch with anyone about?
Rosie Stewart:
Yeah. And I love like I love opening the, the packaging and then seeing what you might learn from the proofs in terms of maybe the odd coffee, stain <laugh> , um, and little , you know, little hints that there's actually a human on the other side, which is, it is quite nice in a way.
Kat Mitchell:
Absolutely. We enjoyed the sort of anticipatory. It's not anything nefarious. It is just my dinner last night on
Rosie Stewart:
The dog ate my homework type . Absolutely .
Kat Mitchell:
<laugh> in my case, it would be the toddler ate my homework,
Rosie Stewart:
The toddler, right . My homework
Kat Mitchell:
<laugh> anyway. So getting a little nostalgic here. I know. Um , and there's, there's definitely some financial and especially environmental advantages to, to the change from that to mainly PDF based . But I do think there's something that still gets a little bit lost when a set of proofs hasn't been printed out at some point during the process before going to press. And so we do try hard to do that here, at least once in the cycle. Okay. But yeah, gradually, you know , couriers came less frequently, request for PDFs grew. And I think that was around the time when sort of proofreading stamps came out. I know Louise Hornby did a lot of work , um, putting together some stamps that look just like the BSI stamps and you could just use them on a PDF. So when we were doing that, we had to make the PDFs, you know, wide enough with enough margin and, and top and tail to allow for those side notes still on a PDF. And then those marks were used on top, which I think helped a lot during the transition. And I know that from, from anecdotal evidence, at least we heard that a lot of the offshore typesetters really were keen to keep that going, because they'd learned, as we said, that that language, the BSI language they'd learned that. And so rather than having to learn a whole new language during the transition, it was just, Nope, just send us those BSI marks. Please keep it,
Rosie Stewart:
Keep it sort of forming a bridge between the two methods absolutely.
Kat Mitchell:
While , but thankfully that sort of transition was shortlived because those files were enormous. <laugh> true. Yeah. Definitely got very stuck with things and you'd still have to, I mean, a lot of times you'd still have to print them out anyway, because it just was easier. But after that, we kind of saw a few proofing platforms that a few people have tried, but nothing just really was as robust to beat out the likes of Adobe who can, you know , with Reader, they just keep trying to improve it and get more efficient with things. And it's really being able to use those tools, which is what they're there for and use them in, in a similar way to the BSI marks, but with the tools that are, that are there in Adobe.
Rosie Stewart:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And we we've definitely overcome quite a few of those problems, I would say. And we're reaching a point where the PDF markup is the , the normal way to work. Although some people do still like to print out. Um, it's definitely been a fantastic way of hugely reducing print output of proofs that ultimately just go straight into the recycling, cuz they're not used for anything else. So it's has huge environmental benefits. And so that's definitely something to hold onto as well as hopefully being well it's certainly it is more efficient and now that we are more used to it, but it's certainly been a journey mm-hmm <affirmative>. So I know that in EMC is a very fast moving environment in general. I know some of your turnaround times are very quick and River and Westchester. We're also always looking to be as efficient as we possibly can. So with this in mind, bearing in mind what we just discussed. Do you think that proofreaders should still be learning the traditional proof symbols? Or do you think that we've moved on from that now?
Kat Mitchell:
Yeah, it's something that I have to think about quite a lot. Cause I'm in a few forums where they ask these questions. Um , and obviously the new generation are very much of the opinion, Well, why do we need to, if we're never going to use it, whereas the older generation still understands the kind of reasonings behind it existing in the first place. And you know, as editors, we love to know the origins of words. Yeah. Why not, you know, apply that to processes. That's so true. So those traditional markups were, they were a language, they were a , an art form, a way to talk to typesetters and designers without having to use lots and lots of words. Um, you can talk clearly, you know, exactly what's necessary because of that, because of the marks and, and what you're trying to get across. And I think Acrobat and and PDFs have kind of made us a little bit lazy in that regard. Mm-hmm <affirmative> <laugh>
Rosie Stewart:
Yeah,
Kat Mitchell:
Not that anyone in the industry is lazy. We all work very hard <laugh> but in terms of making that concise , uh, description of what you want to get done happen, it's so much easier now to just kind of write paragraphs within one sticky note . Yeah . And then whoever is reading it or having to make the change has to read the entire paragraph.
Rosie Stewart:
Yeah, when you're scrolling within a comment, you know, that it , the comment is too long. <laugh>
Kat Mitchell:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and maybe there's, you know, only one salient bit of detail mm-hmm <affirmative> within that, that actually needs to occur. So, you know, that kind of thing just would never have been considered on printed markup mm-hmm <affirmative> , which I think, you know, in that sense, we've kind of lost that ability to be concise and efficient from that standpoint. And obviously we've also lost the difference between blue and red markup. So it's a bit more difficult to kind of track and analyze quality, you know, with a full set of traditionally marked proofs coming back in, you can tell, are they gonna be all blue? So was it, you know, just editorial changes or is it, you know, a bunch of red typesetters errors that we need to worry about the fact that something's gone wrong at the last proof stage? You know, we do obviously keep track of the number of comments. So opening the comments list is quite helpful to just see the number of comments that come through, but you still have to spend a bit more time kind of analyzing what are those comments were they marked up at the previous proof stage , um, kind of flicking back through different stages to just make sure that we are doing the best we can for our clients .
Rosie Stewart:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's such a helpful comparison to think of the proofreading symbols is , um, thinking about the origin of words. And in that we, we might not use those original versions anymore, but understanding them helps us to work better in the present day. So , um, I do, I completely agree that it's still worth learning those. And sometimes those symbols are the most simple way still to mark something. You're , you're marking it with a red pencil on screen, but it's still the same mark and there's no better way to express that. So I would absolutely encourage anybody who's, who's getting into proofreading now to still learn those symbols so that they can still refer to that language if it's, if it's the most appropriate way. But now we also have the benefit of having additional options , um, and sort of a hybrid approach, I guess, where you might write a comment, you might draw a symbol, you might use the drawing tools and you don't have to Tipp-ex it if you get it wrong, which is the major bonus, especially if you've done something
Kat Mitchell:
You across the page,
Rosie Stewart:
<laugh> trying to get tiny little Tipp-ex
Kat Mitchell:
Absolutely ,
Rosie Stewart:
Absolutely . That's great. And for anyone who's not familiar with the red and blue markup, this would traditionally have been done using colored ink. So you'd have a row of different Biros on your desk. And the red ink would be used for typesetter or design errors in the blue ink would be used for copyedit errors. So the proofs would be very colorful and you could immediately tell which was which, and there are some ways you can do that by changing the font color of comments or different colored sticky notes, but it it's a bit awkward, I would say, and it doesn't work quite as well. So that probably is one way in which actually the old system was, was maybe better. And I'm sure that we will come to develop different ways to manage that, but there definitely is still a place for those types of systems, I would say. So just to move on to a slightly different topic, at Westchester and River, we're increasingly being asked to provide digital publishing services and accessibility features and in this ever growing space of digital publishing and particularly platform-based learning, do you think there's still a place for traditional publishing stages and workflows?
Kat Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, you're probably gathering at this point that I'm pretty old fashioned . Not at all thing . <laugh> no , um, old fashioned, but still happy to use technology. <laugh>, you know, maybe we're just not seeing quite the, the tech side of it yet. Most probably, you know, 95% of what we do is, is still very much print-based. And although we are, we are seeing more of the impact of digital now and, and more of the impact of what publishers want to do with their printed books and then move them to digital. We are sort of seeing the impact of that on schedules and the way they want to approach the print side of things. It's still very much the traditional water flow workflow of trying to get the quality first, before trying to do anything technologically advanced with the material that they've got. So, you know, you've got a bit of this idea of, of at least our clients in publishing are , are very much all about quality over quantity and that content basis. So, you know, you've , you've technically got publishing that you can call Twitter, TikTok , Instagram, all of that is technically publishing. Um, and so they are sort of more digital first, but that element of quality control and going through the process of making sure it is exactly the right material that you want out there can't really happen. I don't think without a more traditional workflow or at least that a snippet of that within a more traditional workflow.
Rosie Stewart:
In order to ensure that you're still having the same levels of quality check and the development of the material mm-hmm <affirmative> . So just before we wrap up, it's been fantastic talking to you and I've certainly learned loads from this conversation, really enjoyed everything we've discussed. I've got one more question for you, which is what is one thing, you know, now that you wish you had known 10 years ago?
Kat Mitchell:
Ah , see, you've got the hard hitting questions at the end.
Rosie Stewart:
I'm I'm afraid. So
Kat Mitchell:
<laugh> supposed to be lofty one at the end <laugh> but I wish I'd known 10 years ago. Probably that there's wisdom in experience, obviously there is mm-hmm <affirmative> but that's, that's not to say that it's ever too late to sort of pause and try something different or new, if you think it might help make things more efficient or work better.
Rosie Stewart:
Yeah. Thank you. I love that. And I think that's a really good summary really of what we've discussed today, which is learning from our experience and from all the knowledge of the past, but also bringing it into the present and applying it and finding new innovations. So yeah. Thank you for that. That's great. As I said, it's been brilliant chatting with you and hearing all about your insights from the world of design. So thank you so much for joining me. For more podcasts from Westchester publishing services, UK, just search Westchester w ords on Spotify, Apple or Google podcasts or find us on our website.