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How Books Are Made

A podcast about the art and science of making books. Arthur Attwell speaks to book-making leaders about design, production, marketing, distribution, and technology. These are conversations for book lovers and publishing decision makers, whether you’re crafting books at a big company or a boutique publisher.

Arthur Attwell

If you’re writing and self-publishing a book, where should you start? And who do you need on your team?This episode, we’re changing up our usual format with a short, practical answer to a common publishing question. In a whirlwind tour through writing, design, publication and promotion, Arthur explains how a writing coach, editor, proofreader, designer, and distributor can help your book do its job – and what it means to be the centre of your fan community.Links from the show:Arthur’s list of writing coaches recommended by trusted sourcesElectric Book Works

To self-publish well, whose help do you need?

The allure of crowdfunding is that you can sell your book before it costs you any money. But that’s harder than it looks!To find out what it takes to run a crowdfunding campaign properly, Arthur speaks to Aaron A. Reed, who has successfully crowdfunded several books, including one of the most well-funded non-fiction books on Kickstarter. Aaron is a writer and a game developer, and the author of 50 Years of Text Games. Right now, he’s in the middle of another crowdfunding campaign, for his role-playing-game kit Downcrawl 2e.Links from the show:50 Years of Text Games50 Years of Text Games Kickstarter campaignDowncrawl 2E on BackerkitSubcutaneanAaron A. Reed’s websiteElectric Book Works

What does it take to crowdfund a book? – with Aaron A. Reed

Children's publisher Book Dash makes beautiful books in a single day, then gives them away. And their method is catching on around the world.Book Dash believes every child should own a hundred books by the age of five. They gather creative professionals who volunteer to create new storybooks that anyone can freely translate, print and distribute. Then they work with partners to get those books to preschool children and their families to own.In this episode, Arthur wears his Book Dash co-founder hat, and speaks to its outgoing Executive Director Julia Norrish about how and why their ambitious approach to book-making actually works.Links from the show:Book DashResearch on the difference that books make in children’s homesBook Dash’s latest event in JohannesburgBook Dash’s event in BolognaElectric Book Works

How Book Dash makes beautiful books in a single day – with Julia Norrish

At the heart of everything book-like is a printer, standing at a hand-powered press, turning paper into pages.When you hold a book that’s been typeset in metal, printed by hand on fine paper, bound and sewn with board and cloth, you realise with a visceral whoosh just how much a book can be a work of art.In this episode, Arthur speaks with Graham Moss, the founder of Incline Press in Oldham, near Manchester in England. Incline Press works with poets and artists to make limited-edition books with hand-set, metal type on vintage machines. This year, Graham was awarded the prestigious Cobden Sanderson Award from the Society of Bookbinders for his work in hand printing and publishing.Graham’s deep knowledge and rich story-telling is a joy to learn from, and reminds us that, no matter the technology we use, book-making has always been about people, love, and dedication.Links from the show:Incline PressIncline Press on InstagramVideo: Graham Moss on the Arab PressNew Borders: the working life of Elizabeth Friedländer in the University of Victoria vault libraryElizabeth Friedländer’s ‘Elisabeth’ typeface on Bauer TypesVideo: Graham Moss on Memento Mori : Memento VivereVideo: Page-by-page review of Memento Mori : Memento Vivere by Ubiquitous BooksThe launch of Punch & JudyLiverpool Book Art exhibition, October 2024Electric Book Works

The fine-press printer’s art of not forgetting – with Graham Moss

Everything we read is coloured by its typeface. And humans read a lot, so font choices probably affect more people than any other field of design.In our daily lives, we rarely appreciate how much work goes into good type decisions, and how much energy we spend accommodating bad ones.Every day, by choice or otherwise, we read messages, posters, menus, documents, web pages, and, of course, books. Not only did someone design their layout, but someone designed the fonts in that layout. Every single letter was painstakingly designed. And every letterform has a personality: it’s trying to make you feel something, just like Comic Sans feels like silliness, and Times New Roman feels like school.In this episode, Arthur talks to type designer Thomas Jockin. Thomas is the founder of TypeThursday, a worldwide community of type designers, and a lecturer in design and philosophy. They discuss how type decisions are made, how type designers work on new and existing typefaces, how fonts can make it easier for people to understand what they read, and what technological advances mean for type design, for reading, and for society.Links from the show:The End of Print: the Graphic Design of David Carson by Lewis BlackwellLexendReadex Pro on Google FontsQuicksand on Google FontsTypeThursdayExploring Hangul with Aaron BellDigital Transformation in Design: Processes and Practices, edited by Laura S. ScherlingElectric Book Works

Fine lines in type design – with Thomas Jockin

There is no place more universally loved than a good bookstore. For its owner, achieving that is not as simple as it seems.The best book shops are much more than books on shelves and a coffee bar. Behind the tranquillity, its tiny team is buzzing for twelve hours a day, liaising with publishers, distributors, authors, literacy projects, landlords, even local government, trying to build a community of people who’ll buy books and help others to buy books.No one exemplifies this energy and broad-mindedness better than Griffin Shea, our guest in this episode. Born in Louisiana, USA, and once a journalist with AFP, Griffin now runs Bridge Books in Johannesburg, and the incredible African Book Trust, a non-profit that gives African books to libraries and schools across South Africa. He and Arthur talk about sourcing and pricing books, working across languages, connecting booksellers, the highs and lows of running a business in the inner city, and judging South Africa’s most prestigious non-fiction award.Links from the show:Bridge BooksThe Golden Rhino by Griffin SheaBridge Books Underground Booksellers Walking TourThe African Book Trust on forgoodGriffin Shea and Ekow Duker in the Sunday Times, on chairing the judging panels at the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Award‘“Star Wars” locations that actually exist’ by Griffin Shea for CNN, annotated by Mark HamillElectric Book Works

Risk, reward, and reality for indie bookstores – with Griffin Shea

Behind every great author is a host of unsung editors. By convention, they don’t get their names on books. What are they doing behind the scenes?A good book needs hundreds of decisions made and pieces organised. For this there are commissioning editors, development editors, production editors, copy editors, permissions editors, assistant editors, and proofreaders. Many books have ghostwriters, too. They’re all focused on making books better.Arthur speaks to editor and writer Tim Phillips about what editors do, and how they work with authors and publishers. We also get an insider’s view on the world of ghostwriting, and Tim’s advice for making your own writing clear and effective.Links from the show:Tim Phillips’ websiteCORE EconThe EconomyEconomics for the Common GoodTalk NormalElectric Book Works

How editors and ghostwriters make books better – with Tim Phillips

Creative communities can be a powerful force for good. Online, they grow around tools that let people be creative together. What comes first, the tools or the community?Two acclaimed book-making platforms with vibrant communities are LibriVox and Pressbooks, both created by Hugh McGuire. On LibriVox, thousands of people have helped to create audiobooks that anyone can download. On Pressbooks, teachers around the world are producing open textbooks for colleges and universities. In this episode, Arthur finds out how they came to be, and what we can learn from Hugh’s experience. What does it take to build tools that creative people will gather around?Links from the show:PressbooksLibriVoxRebus FoundationRebus CommunityElectric Book Works

Building tools for creative communities – with Hugh McGuire

We take for granted that books contain no mistakes, but the absence of mistakes is no small achievement. It takes care, commitment, and very, very good processes.In publishing, even a small mistake can spell disaster. Luckily, there are people who spend careers helping us avoid those disasters, by giving us the words and the tools to care about the details. Their work is not glamorous, but it is fascinating. Much of that work is about metadata: the information about books that makes up the circulatory system of the book industry.In this episode, Arthur talks to one of the smartest people in the field: Emma Barnes, the founder of the publishing-management system Consonance, and the managing director of indie publisher Snowbooks. She’s also a university lecturer, and the creator of the online platform Make Our Book, which schools use for their kids to make beautiful books from their own stories.Links from the show:ConsonanceSnowbooksMake Our BookA video of Emma Barnes speaking about publishing a thousand children’s stories on Make Our Book, innovation in the publishing industry, and the future of publishing.Book Machine’s interview with Emma Barnes, where she speaks about ‘not working for the man’.Article on Publishing Perspectives about Emma’s journey in coding and publishing.Electric Book Works

Managing metadata for drama-free publishing – with Emma Barnes

Would you believe that the entire ebook marketplace – including Kindle, iBooks, and thousands of ebook stores – depends on the volunteer work of about a dozen people?There are millions of ebooks for sale online, and thousands more every day. How could any human bookseller check that they even work, and that they don’t contain malicious code? The ebook marketplace can only exist because there are rules for how an ebook is made, and an official, automatic way to check that it follows them.The people who create those rules, called standards, are volunteers. Dave Cramer is one of them. He’s been contributing to web and ebook standards, making books, and designing software that makes books, for over thirty years, mostly at Hachette USA. He talks to Arthur about creating standards, how ebooks are made, using CSS for print layout, and the ongoing push and pull between digital-first and InDesign-based publishing.Links from the show:‘Wiring for Change’, Dave’s talk with Brian O’Leary at the BISG in March 2024The EPUB 3.3 specificationEPUBCheckThe W3C CSS Working GroupAce by DAISY, for checking epub accessibilityElectric Book Works

How do ebooks work at all? – with Dave Cramer

Why are book clubs so transformative, and can they change the world?When we read a book we love, no matter how outlandish or challenging it is, we recognise in it the way we believe the world works. And that is profoundly affirming. It reassures you that your life has a place, no matter what mangled shape it’s in. And if you can share that with others, and talk about what that book means for each of you, you step back into the real world a little renewed, a little stronger, and a little more equipped to change it.Arthur’s guest in this episode has seen this often, first-hand, as bibliotherapy: Dr Anderson P. Smith works with book clubs and writers who are in or have been in prison, and has studied the profound effect that reading circles can have on people who are rebuilding their lives. And his insights on reading, reflection, and action extend to anyone in the business of making books or changing minds.

'Books beg to be discussed' – with Anderson P. Smith

Good agents are the fairy grandparents of page and screen. They get writers; and they get writers paid.Most jobs in publishing are done by humans flying solo – writers and freelancers working from home, running their own show. That can be lonely work. Especially as a writer, it's just not possible, on your own, to know everything and everyone you need to know to turn your talent into a viable business. For that, most writers need an agent. What does an agent do? And how do you get one?Aoife Lennon-Ritchie is the founder of the Lennon-Ritchie Agency, which works in commercial book publishing, and the managing director of Torchwood, which represents writers in film and TV. She joins Arthur to talk about being and getting an agent, negotiating contracts, and writing for TV and film.Links from the show:The Lennon-Ritchie AgencyTorchwood Literary & Scouting AgencyScreen Daily article about the launch of Torchwood.Publisher’s Weekly article on the 2022 Sharjah Book Fair, quoting Aoife.Sharjah International Book Fair‘Behind the Scenes: African Filmmakers and Writers on Interplay and Adaptation’ – a panel discussion including Aoife.

What is an agent and how do I get one? – with Aoife Lennon-Ritchie

Open-access publishing models are so ubiquitous today that we forget they had to be invented first – by bold, generous publishers.In this episode, Arthur talks to one of those inventors: Frances Pinter has been pioneering for decades, running her own academic publishing company for over twenty years, and then leading publishing programmes in Eastern Europe for the Open Society Institute. She’s been the founding publisher at Bloomsbury Academic, the CEO of Manchester University Press, a fellow at the LSE and the University of London, and founded the groundbreaking organisation Knowledge Unlatched. Today, she’s the Executive Chair of the Central European University Press.Frances and Arthur talk about Knowledge Unlatched, her work in Eastern Europe, maintaining quality in publishing, the impact of open-access publishing on COVID research, and what it takes to start a new publishing business today.Links from the show:TOC 2010: Frances Pinter, "Rethinking the Role and Funding of Academic Book Publishing"Knowledge UnlatchedOpen Society FoundationsCentral European University PressOpen Climate CampaignPaperight

Innovation and impact in open-access publishing – with Frances Pinter

There are so many interesting people in book-making; people who cross boundaries and live for the thrill of making art with other people. People like Andrés Barragán: rock guitarist, engineer, writer, agent, and founder of Colombian publishing company Puntoaparte Editores.For nearly 20 years, Andrés has been creating beautiful, infographic books for many of the world’s leading brands and organisations, winning multiple awards, and publishing his own books too. Before starting Puntoaparte, he was the lead guitarist for the influential hardcore band Ultrageno, and studied literature and industrial engineering. He has co-founded a literary agency, and is the author of Biblioperrito, a children’s book about a dog who loves books.In this in-depth conversation, Andrés talks about his journey from musician to publisher, how his team makes infographic books, and what is changing about the way books are written and distributed.Links from the show:Puntoaparte EditoresWEF BiodiverCities reportPuntoaparte’s BiodiverCities book (free PDF download)Palaeontology book Hace Tiempo (free PDF download)Handbook for tourism guides in ColombiaBiblioperrito, the children’s bookRolling Stone, ‘50 great Colombian albums of the 21st century’Rolling Stone Colombia’s ‘25 great national albums’ republished by Polen RecordsUltrageno - La juega (music video on YouTube)

Making infographic books with love – with Andrés Barragán

The biggest decision in publishing is ‘who gets published?’ Whose ideas, world views, and idioms get added to the great library?Anasuya Sengupta is the Co-founder and Co-Director of Whose Knowledge?, a global campaign to center the knowledge of marginalized communities on the Internet. Before that, she was Chief Grantmaking Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, and a program director at the Global Fund for Women. She is a thoughtful, pragmatic leader whose work continually inspires and effects change – not least at Wikipedia, one of the world’s most prominent publications.In this in-depth conversation, Arthur and Anasuya discuss the bigger picture: where book publishing fits into the universe of human knowledge, and what that means for our decisions as book-makers.Links from the show:Whose Knowledge?Whose Voices?, the Whose Knowledge podcastAkka MahadeviBraiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall KimmererPeople are Knowledge, a film by Achal Prabhala#visiblewikiwomen on Whose Knowledge

Who gets published? – with Anasuya Sengupta

When we create machines to handle the drudgery of book-making, we free up our brains for more creative work. Fiction publisher Canelo has just been shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards. They have a small, thriving team and sell millions of copies a year. They have repeatedly shown that sensible innovations in how you commission, make, and market books, and how you pay authors, can completely change the publishing game. Nick Barreto is Canelo's co-founder and Operations Director, and a self-taught book-making automator. In this episode, we hear how he built Canelo’s hyper-efficient workflow, and what it has helped them achieve.Links from the show:Nick on LinkedInNick on TwitterCaneloSnow BooksConsonancePandocAtavistLaTeX

Creative publishing with smart tools – with Nick Barreto

Few people have helped to publish as many children’s books, in as many different ways, as Alisha Niehaus Berger.Her career has spanned New York publishing, the Girl Scouts of America, and publishing programmes in over a dozen countries. As we find out in this conversation, she’s seen that there are many, many ways to make a children’s book. And many ways to define ‘quality’. What matters most is that each book has a purpose; and that, as book-makers, our jobs get richer and more rewarding when we know and love what our books will do in the world.Links from the show:Alisha on LinkedInRoom to ReadThe Peace and Equality CollectionLiteracy CloudSavvy by Ingrid LawThe Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick BurdAlisha’s ‘A Small Miracle’ postAlisha on the power of globally diverse children’s booksWe Need Diverse BooksPeople of Color in PublishingBetter World BooksPete the Cat

Publishing with purpose – with Alisha Niehaus Berger

The pandemic has accelerated digitization in publishing to warp speed, and every book-maker in the world is wondering what that means for their business.Some innovative publishers were going digital long ago, of course. Even three-generation family businesses like EBC (formerly the Eastern Book Company). As we hear in this episode with its director Raghunandan Malik, they’ve stayed ahead of the curve because they prioritise constant learning and an entrepreneurial mindset, and also because they’ve long known that ‘books’ are not the reason they exist. Rather, they provide information, and books are one smart way to do that.Links from the show:Raghunandan Malik on LinkedInEBCEBC ReaderEBC Learning

Going digital at hyperspeed – with Raghunandan Malik

When we really need to get a book written and published quickly, and can rally a dedicated team around it, how fast can we move?Book Sprints are the leaders in rapid book production. Their CEO and Lead Facilitator, Barbara Rühling, regularly leads her clients’ teams from zero to book in just five days. Arthur and Barbara talk about how she and her team work, and what other book-makers can learn from it.Links from the show:Barbara RühlingBook SprintsEditoriaThe Construction of Authorship edited by Martha WoodmanseeTen Years of Book Sprints, a post on its origins by Adam Hyde

How to make a book in five days – with Barbara Rühling

We all love libraries, but maybe we could love them a little more. Some money-minded publishing folk even wonder: what effect do libraries have on book sales? Luckily, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez can help answer that question, and many others.Guy is Chief Content Officer at LibraryPass, and till recently ran the Panorama Project, which measures the impact that public libraries have on reading and on book sales. Before that, he worked in a range of senior publishing and marketing roles, and ran a wonderful book-making conference called Digital Book World. He has a sharp eye for lazy thinking, and that rare ability to grasp both the big picture and the tiny details that make it up.Links from the show:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez on LinkedInLibraryPassPanorama ProjectAbout the Library Marketing Valuation ToolkitGuy’s talk at DBW in 2010 after the iPad announcementOpen Road Media and Jane FriedmanPrince’s memoir, The Beautiful OnesParasite: A Graphic Novel in Storyboards

Publishers, libraries, sales, and community – with Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Even in our digital world, despite the insight of editors and the wonders of design, printing is really where the book-making magic culminates. In this episode, Arthur speaks to Mike Jason, a long-time book-printing expert.Mike Jason is the director of Academic Press, which prints books for educational publishers across southern Africa.He takes us through the book-printing process, and discusses the differences between offset and digital printing, where book paper comes from, and the economics of book printing. And he and Arthur revisit a magnificent art-book project from twenty years ago.

Plates, paper, perfecting—print! – with Mike Jason

Arthur speaks to Andrew Rhomberg, the founder of Jellybooks, about how publishers use smart ebooks to measure what readers think of a new publication, and to figure out whether it could be a bestseller.It is one of the marvellously crazy things about publishing that most books are published long before you have any idea whether they’ll be popular. Publishers will spend small fortunes on advances, editing, design, digitization, printing, and marketing before knowing whether a book will sell more than a few hundred copies. Perhaps early reader data can help solve that problem – something Andrew and his team have been working on for ten years.Andrew has a broad, global perspective, coming to publishing from chemistry, telecoms, and music, and having lived and worked in Denmark, Austria, Italy, the USA, the Netherlands, Russia, and the UK.Links from the show:JellybooksSee Andrew’s presentations on LinkedIn

Measuring reading for smart marketing – with Andrew Rhomberg

Arthur meets up with an old friend, Ramy Habeeb, to share some fascinating, hilarious book-making stories. And he discovers that his friend has a whole other life, and pseudonym, as a successful novelist.Ramy’s ventures are a great example of how invention flourishes at the intersections of language, culture, and disciplines. Born in Egypt, he grew up in Bahrain and Canada, taught in Japan, and has worked in Egypt, England and Scotland, collecting accolades along the way. He is the founder of Kotobarabia, the first Arabic-language ebook publishing company in the Middle East.Links from the show:KotobarabiaAtama-ii BooksRamy Vance on Amazon

Ebooks, Arabic, lions, vampires – with Ramy Habeeb

For many of us, the role of ‘The Publisher’ is almost mythical: a distant, unknowable keeper of dreams. Somehow, we grant publishers enormous cultural cachet, but they are just people, and hopefully conversations like this one can help us better understand the kinds of decisions and trade-offs they make.In this episode, Arthur talks to Jeremy Boraine, the publishing director at Jonathan Ball Publishers, one of South Africa’s biggest publishers of general-interest books, and now parent company to Icon Books in London. They talk about what it’s like to be a publisher, balancing predictable bestsellers with new voices, about audiobooks, and about acquiring Icon. They also reflect on the challenge of diversity in publishing, and the recent fallout over an unauthorised biography of Siya Kolisi.Links from the show:Jonathan Ball PublishersIcon BooksMark Gevisser on The Book Lounge’s podcast

International excellence, local twist  – with Jeremy Boraine

Books are enormously complex creations, and clearing them of errors takes the immense, repeated effort of editors and proofreaders. Proofreaders are unsung heroes, who often work best with pencil and coloured pens, and a stack of publishing reference books. Today, they’re often asked to mark up corrections on screen in PDF – but is that really best? In this episode, Arthur talks about that with editor and entrepreneur John Pettigrew, the founder of Futureproofs. How can we innovate in this part of the publishing process? And what lessons can we learn here about innovation in publishing more broadly?Links from the show:FutureproofsBook MachineThe Chicago Manual of StyleNew Oxford Style ManualButcher’s Copy-editingThe Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst

Pages, proofs, and possibilities – with John Pettigrew

Arthur and his colleague Klara Skinner describe the entire book-making process in forty-five minutes. This is an episode especially for process junkies: a whirlwind tour through planning, commissioning, tools, writing and review, manuscript development and editing, design, permissions, typesetting, digitisation, artwork, stylesheets, software development, page refinement, proofreading, indexing, testing, deployment, publication, and those inevitable reprint corrections. Whew!Links from the show:A visual overview of the modern production processBasecamp for project managementFutureproofs for collaborating on page proofs virtuallySeth Godin’s blog post and conference talk on the ‘lizard brain’.

The book-production process, a whirlwind tour – with Klara Skinner

Since 2014, children’s book publisher Book Dash has printed over a million free books for children, including tens of thousands illustrated by Jess Jardim-Wedepohl – which makes her one of the most widely distributed children’s book illustrators in the country. Jess makes the monumental task of illustrating an entire book in a day seem perfectly normal. In this episode, Arthur and Jess talk about Book Dash, how she approaches book design and illustration, what it’s like to work under pressure, and what she reckons are important skills for young designers and illustrators who want to make books.Links from the show:Jess Jardim-Wedepohl’s websiteBook DashJess’s books on Book DashSnapplify classics coversKrita open source painting programGimp image editorProcreate illustration app for iPadBlender 3D creation software

Children's illustration, skills, and tools – with Jess Jardim-Wedepohl

People who can build book brands and inspire fans are rare and amazing, even more so when they write their books, too. One of those people is Sam Beckbessinger, the bestselling author of Manage Your Money Like a F—ing Grownup, which is a book, a website, and a growing brand in several countries. She also writes for hugely popular kids’ TV shows, and was one of the writers on Serial Box and Marvel’s serialized novel Jessica Jones: Playing With Fire. She is irrepressibly joyful and optimistic, which is something we all need a dose of right now.Links from the show:Sam Beckbessinger’s websiteLike a F—ing Grownup (contains explicit language)Jessica Jones on Serial BoxHippo Wants to DanceUlysses writing appScrivener writing appDale Halvorsen, aka Joey Hifi

Marketing, collaboration, and creative freedom – with Sam Beckbessinger

How Books Are Made is a podcast about the art and science of making books. It’s for book lovers who believe that details matter, on paper and on screen: from the feel of the paper to the shapes of the ligatures, from hyperlinks to accessibility. If you want more intriguing book-making nerdery, subscribe in your podcast player to get the next episode, and see what you think.In this short trailer, Arthur Attwell describes some of his favourite books, not for their content but for the way they have been physically made: an enormous production from 1902, a marketing marvel, a Wonderland ebook, and the book that nearly injured his mother to get him married. Links from the show:The Home Hand-Book of Domestic Hygiene and Rational Medicine by JH KelloggPenguin 60sAlice for the iPad