Book Production Circa 1992

When my publishing career began straight out of college in the late 1980s, book printing was at the dawn of a new era. Desktop publishing was in its infancy, however I was working for a small publisher where the catalog of publications and the books were still produced “the old way.”

An author delivered a paper manuscript typed on a typewriter. This was edited by the company’s editor with a red pencil and sent back to the author for revisions. When it was returned, the now “final” text was sent to a typesetting service. (Our typesetter was based in nearby Hanover, New Hampshire, so it was hand-delivered otherwise it would have gone via snail mail.) The book’s designer had selected a font, point size (the size of type), leading (the space between lines), and line length. The typesetter used a phototypesetter, basically an early word processor, which had the capacity to “type” book fonts that an ordinary typewriter could not. The operator “set” the text according to the designer’s specifications. The set text was then returned to us (the publisher) as “galleys,” usually on legal-size paper. Since the type had been set by a human reading from the typewritten pages there were likely typos, though remarkably few. One of my jobs was to proofread galleys. Errors were marked and returned to the typesetter—I was usually the one who drove them back to Hanover for corrections. At a small publisher any job that needed doing you did.

A typesetter at work on a phototypesetter, preparing a book manuscript to prescribed specifications.

When the galleys were correct, two copies came back to us. I would take one copy and literally use scissors to trim the extra paper away from the type, keeping the pieces of paper in the correct order for the next step. It seems remarkable to me now, but the designer sat at a table with “boards” (sheets of tag board) provided by the printer with guidelines showing the trim size of the book. The designer, armed with a wax roller, would take the pieces of galleys I had prepared and “wax them down” onto the boards, creating each page of what would become the book. An x-acto knife was a vital tool. At the end of each page the galley type needed to be cut to end a line on one page and begin on the next page. Remember how I mentioned that two sets of galleys came back to us? If an error was discovered in the layout process the designer had to cut out the type that was incorrect and take a correct letter or word from the spare galley and painstakingly wax it on the board in perfect alignment. Patience was a key attribute for book designers back in the day.

A wax roller—once a necessary tool in a book designer’s skill set.

Since our books were illustrated—with black-and-white photographs in my early years at the company—the space needed for a photo had to be planned for on each page—another time-consuming, hand-done process. Each photo hard-copy print was measured with a ruler, and then a proportional wheel was used to determine a correct percentage the photo could be reduced or enlarged to fit the allotted space. This was done repeatedly for every image in the book. The percentage was marked on the back of the photo print with a grease pencil, never a pen as that could damage the print. This was of huge importance because the original prints had to be sent to the printer to be photographed for use in reproduction.

A proportional wheel used to determine percentage sizes for book images.

Once the designer completed laying out the book on the boards, the boards were sent to the printer, accompanied by the photo prints with their percentages on the reverse sides. At the printer, the materials went to the pre-press department where a camera person photographed the boards and each photo print at the percentage indicated. These photos of photos were called “halftones” and were done through a halftone screen (a glass plate with a fine grid of lines) using a process camera (a large specialized form of camera used for the reproduction of graphic material) in a printer’s pre-press department. This camera converted the tones of the image into a pattern of variable-sized dots. This dot pattern was then transferred to a printing plate, which could be etched and inked to produce the photo on a printing press, with the dots appearing as a continuous tone.

Once film negatives were developed from the photography for both the boards and the photos, it went to a “stripper”—yes, really! The stripper joined all the negatives page-by-page. A “blueline proof” was created for the publisher to check that everything was perfectly in place. If errors were found, the correction had to be made then the page re-photographed and the film re-stripped. If the error was the publisher’s, it was called an “AA” (author’s alteration), and if it was the printer’s, a “PE” (printer’s error). If the former, and the errors added up, changes could get expensive! It was a big relief when desktop publishing came into our lives and errors caught late in the process could be corrected by a keystroke.

When the blueline proofs were approved. The film was used to make “plates,” a process where the film was “burned” onto a photo-sensitive printing plate that would be used on a printing press.

A sheetfed printing press.

The first time I visited a printing plant to see one of our books on-press, it was at the Book Press in Brattleboro, Vermont. An hour’s drive from my publishing company’s offices, it was an exciting experience. I had no idea what to expect. What I didn’t anticipate was how loud the process was. Once the press starts to roll, the machinery is nearly deafening. Watching the huge stacks of paper disappear into the press at a rapid rate, I fully understood the significance of the phrase, “Stop the press!”

Next time, I’ll write about the binding process.

—Martha