Re-printed in different format/typesetting

Typesetting remains a costly process, despite no longer involving some bloke in a wool cap pounding away on a Linotype.

That means that a book is going to be set at most twice: once for mass-market paperback and once for hardcover/trade paperback - for those books that appear in those formats. Later printings will fix major typos, but in a way that confines the changes to one or a few lines [it's amazing what you can do with leading and kerning once you have the skills], so resetting isn't needed for that. As long as the original plates/files are available and the format can still be printed no publisher is going to go to the expense of resetting the book completely even in the unlikely event that it goes to a new printing after going out of print. The exceptions are if a book is picked up by a new publisher, or somebody decides to create some sort of commemorative or uniform edition in a format that just doesn't match the originals - both even less likely than a new print run unless the books manage to become classics.

nickk wrote:Hello there, firstly a thank you to Mr Weber for his work. I was introduced to the Honorverse series and after Basilisk Station grabbed all the other Honorverse and Safehold series as well as Saganami Island.

I've just finished reading Honor Among Enemies. My query really is related to the physical novels rather than their content - which is superb.

Among Enemies was very cramped, with text deep in the inside margin (against the spine) and a 5 - sometimes - 4mm bottom margin on the pages.

My query really is.. is there any consideration of a re-print of Mr Weber's work using the (increasingly common) 19.8 x 13cm / 8" x 5" formats, with much wider margins and spacing of text?

Thank you.

Louis R wrote:Typesetting remains a costly process, despite no longer involving some bloke in a wool cap pounding away on a Linotype.

May Etaoin Shrdlu rest in peace.

That means that a book is going to be set at most twice: once for mass-market paperback and once for hardcover/trade paperback - for those books that appear in those formats. Later printings will fix major typos, but in a way that confines the changes to one or a few lines [it's amazing what you can do with leading and kerning once you have the skills], so resetting isn't needed for that. As long as the original plates/files are available and the format can still be printed no publisher is going to go to the expense of resetting the book completely even in the unlikely event that it goes to a new printing after going out of print. The exceptions are if a book is picked up by a new publisher, or somebody decides to create some sort of commemorative or uniform edition in a format that just doesn't match the originals - both even less likely than a new print run unless the books manage to become classics.

I'd have expect mass-market paperbacks to be electronic these days. It isn't the case?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Louis R wrote:Typesetting remains a costly process, despite no longer involving some bloke in a wool cap pounding away on a Linotype.

May Etaoin Shrdlu rest in peace.

Louis R wrote:That means that a book is going to be set at most twice: once for mass-market paperback and once for hardcover/trade paperback - for those books that appear in those formats. Later printings will fix major typos, but in a way that confines the changes to one or a few lines [it's amazing what you can do with leading and kerning once you have the skills], so resetting isn't needed for that. As long as the original plates/files are available and the format can still be printed no publisher is going to go to the expense of resetting the book completely even in the unlikely event that it goes to a new printing after going out of print. The exceptions are if a book is picked up by a new publisher, or somebody decides to create some sort of commemorative or uniform edition in a format that just doesn't match the originals - both even less likely than a new print run unless the books manage to become classics.

I'd have expect mass-market paperbacks to be electronic these days. It isn't the case?

I would expect that it is all electronic, and just reformatted for the different page size. I think the days of retype setting are gone (except for artisan publisher who insist on doing it "the proper old-fashioned way - by hand setting the type, because that's how Gutenberg did it).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Louis R wrote:Typesetting remains a costly process, despite no longer involving some bloke in a wool cap pounding away on a Linotype.

May Etaoin Shrdlu rest in peace.

Louis R wrote:That means that a book is going to be set at most twice: once for mass-market paperback and once for hardcover/trade paperback - for those books that appear in those formats. Later printings will fix major typos, but in a way that confines the changes to one or a few lines [it's amazing what you can do with leading and kerning once you have the skills], so resetting isn't needed for that. As long as the original plates/files are available and the format can still be printed no publisher is going to go to the expense of resetting the book completely even in the unlikely event that it goes to a new printing after going out of print. The exceptions are if a book is picked up by a new publisher, or somebody decides to create some sort of commemorative or uniform edition in a format that just doesn't match the originals - both even less likely than a new print run unless the books manage to become classics.

I'd have expect mass-market paperbacks to be electronic these days. It isn't the case?

fallsfromtrees wrote:I would expect that it is all electronic, and just reformatted for the different page size. I think the days of retype setting are gone (except for artisan publisher who insist on doing it "the proper old-fashioned way - by hand setting the type, because that's how Gutenberg did it).

It has to be electronic. That was a painstaking process if you never took Graphics as an elective in HS. Those poor girls had to painstakingly set the type with tweezers like they were working with nitro. They cut words and letters out of old newspapers so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel. Like murderers who used cut out words to leave a clue. Then the press operator had to burn the image from the darkroom onto a thin aluminum plate then use chemicals to develop the image and then attach the plate to the press head, proceed to print out a small run of fifty to hundred copies until, hopefully, you get an acceptable product so you won't have to rinse and repeat. That process would kill the publishing needs of today. I suppose a few still exist in the corners of the world

I remember that old 1250 Multilith Printing Press quite well. And the fun in the dark room.

I will always remember the sounds of that baby.

cthia wrote:
It has to be electronic.

It is. The galley proof stage these days is an electronic file of the text formatted into the print master file to be delivered to the printer for printing. The page formatter gets the copy edited Word file and does all the formatting for the creation of the print master file. This is not a PDF or a Word doc. What's sent to me by Baen for final review is a .PRF file, but I don't know if that's what goes to the printer or if that's just what's used to send it to me for review.

(I just got one for a recent book. It's fresh in my mind. )

One of my wife's cousins used to work for 1st a major publshing house and then for a company that was printing Corporate annual reports and other stockholder related documents . Before he retired the "publising" of the reports had shifted primarily to sending the documenets electronicly to shareholders etc though they still had to have a certain level of hardcopy printed for distribution. Think something like Apple. Now think of much greater thatn 90 % of it's stockholders getting communication ONLY by email instead of even the fairly flimsey paper stock that formed the guts of most annual reports.
Same thing for shareholder communications such as mergers & acquisitions or prospectuses for new offering.
Yeah, printing has changed.

Oddly, not much is EVER heard these days about the supposidly positive impacts this shift from paper to electorns has had on the inviornment including cutting down trees, the chemicals used and then recycling (or landfilling) all that paper.

Funny. Almost like it didn't and still doesn't make any difference at all.

Brigade XO wrote:Oddly, not much is EVER heard these days about the supposidly positive impacts this shift from paper to electorns has had on the inviornment including cutting down trees, the chemicals used and then recycling (or landfilling) all that paper.

Funny. Almost like it didn't and still doesn't make any difference at all.

I don't know if we're reducing the amount of hardcopies that bureaucracies have to keep for legal reasons. Similarly for books, I don't know if the number is already down -- I doubt it ebooks have risen sufficiently to make a dent there. The number of print newspapers is definetily down and magazines are practically a thing of the past.

I'm doing my part. My Kindle library has 602 books bought over nearly 10 years, almost all of which read, plus all editions of Analog since 2014. I used to print out my travel itineraries and hotel reservations when I travelled; I haven't done that since 2013 or so either. The only paper book I've bought in these 10 years was one on Artificial Intelligence (non-fiction) I'm still making my way through.

The drawback of all of that is that I don't get to fill my bookshelf with books I've recently enjoyed.

I was watching an episode of The Brady Bunch several days ago and saw them carrying big bags of groceries, the old paper bags, and I thought, 'I wonder how many trees plastic has saved?'

At any rate, the old publishing method wasted lots of paper just trying to get the copy acceptable. Print runs, test runs.

cthia wrote:I was watching an episode of The Brady Bunch several days ago and saw them carrying big bags of groceries, the old paper bags, and I thought, 'I wonder how many trees plastic has saved?'.

Cloth bags are even better, but paper and plastic would be acceptable if they were recycled (I do not know what percentage do get recycled). My grocery store gave a bag credit for using cloth bags for several years, but stopped last year or so.