Why Desktop Publishing

Posted by Simone Preuss Jan 4, 2009

Followers of the Book Publishing topic will have noticed that many recently published articles revolve around desktop publishing. This is because desktop publishing is such an integral part of publishing, and book publishing in particular. In fact, it has revolutionized the way books are published today.

With that, I don’t mean that anyone who has a DTP software package can go ahead and start publishing books. It still takes more to publishing books than just putting words into print (more about that in a future blog entry). No, I am referring to the processes required to publish a book. Those got broken down and therefore have made the lives of many professionals simpler.

Take a manuscript, for example. Let’s say author X got his non-fiction book on bead work ready. He’s got his text neatly in one file and all illustrations demonstrating different beading techniques in one folder; photos of finished beaded objects are in another folder. All the materials are stored on one or more CDs. Excellent. Now, throughout the writing process, author X has also employed the services of a book doctor, someone who told him how to write in an appealing way, how to put the chapters together so that the order makes sense and how to format and arrange the material for submission.

As author X also had strong ideas about layout, he and the book doctor played around with potential book designs that make it easy for the reader to follow techniques throughout the book. Sample pages of the best page layout designs go into the proposal package, which also includes a to-the-point summary of the book, an excerpt, an author bio and some photographs.

So, with the help of a desktop publishing program and some expertise with it, the author put together an attractive proposal package that can go places. Think a few decades back when manuscript proposals were untidy piles of handwritten or typed pages of text that agents or publishers had to go through.

This is not where the advantages of desktop publishing for book publishing ends though. The better the manuscript preparation, the faster it can get processed in production, namely get copyedited, proofread and typeset. An author who knows the terminology will also be of more assistance and can get his or her point across much better than one who is vague.

In the production department itself, production editors today can take care of (or pass on to freelancers) tasks that had to be done at the printing or typesetting stage. Here, again, the more the production editor understands of related processes like binding, typesetting and printing, the easier and faster it will be to move that manuscript through production. A crucial step here is file conversion and understanding which file formats work for Web purposes and which ones for print.

Last but not least, a professional proposal, an informed author and a book that moves through production fast will also help sales and marketing to gather the material needed to promote the book and get it into libraries, bookstores and other sales outlets fast.

For those who want to read up on desktop publishing, here’s an overview of the (growing list of) desktop publishing articles:

1. An introduction: What is Desktop Publishing?
2. What desktop publishers do exactly: Working as a Desktop Publisher
3. Desktop Publishing Software – a comparison of the most popular professional and consumer programs
4. Understanding DTP lingo: Desktop Publishing Terms and Definitions
5. And related, working with graphics editors: Image Editing Terminology
6. Producing promotional material requires knowledge of DTP Paper Terms and Folding Styles
7. Desktop publishers also work closely with printers, therefore knowing Essential Printing Terminology is helpful.
8. Knowledge of Typesetting Terminology is a must.
9. Finally, ten common Desktop Publishing Myths.

Related articles:

• The Book Production Process – What steps does a book undergo from manuscript to finished book?
• What Publishers Do from Concept to Feedback – How publishers interact at every stage of the process from the author’s idea to readers’ feedback about the published book.
• Publishing 101 – essential publishing terms and definitions