Workflow
Please excuse the speeded-up ‘Summarize Proust Competition’ analysis. My 30 seconds starts now …
The impact of techne on our perceptions of the world (and of ourselves in it) is surely profoundly important but also somehow oddly and powerfully resistant to analysis. Marx wrote of such obliviousness that ‘The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life-process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness.’ More specifically to the case of publishing, Marshall McLuhan’s life’s work was to make us see how media obscure their own making and render invisible the resulting changes in the field of human perception.
By extension, I would argue that in the small world of book production, the customary division of labour – specifically where typesetting is separate from editing and production management – has become so familiar we can no longer see it. I also believe that there are substantive, qualitative and deleterious consequences to the communication of meaning to the reader, simply because a Tayloristic organization of production delivers a different (worse) book than a post-Fordist one. This is not a value-judgement but a recognition that books are indeed craft- rather than mass-produced objects.
Typical symptoms of worst-case Tayloristic dys-organization include:
- de-skilling of typesetting to a technical non-communicative function, where the effectiveness of computers (and their operators) for checking text is outside existing control systems and therefore not considered appropriate
- micro-management of low-value suppliers by high-value managers
- emphasis on cost-cutting (perhaps too conveniently measurable) in opposition to creating value (where decisions are perhaps too conveniently non-measurable)
- stress from overworked production staff finding they have too much to do on books they haven’t got time to know much about
- overloading of low-bandwidth communication channels (phone, e-mail) to suppliers in reaction to high-variety input from authors, ‘creative people’ and commissioning editors. Their requests may get categorized as a ‘nuisance’ and eliminated tout court. Authors sometimes choose to do battle over this, which is stressful for everyone, not least because often (for the best of collective reasons) production people have to back down
- production staff may end up demonized as stern control/efficiency figures, editors as the obverse – such polarization is damaging for collaborative/creative communication and sustainable working relationships.
By contrast, our workflow is designed so that one multiskilled person does as much as possible on each job, including all liaison with authors and customers, including typesetting. We are integrative, multidisciplinary and high bandwidth; we are efficient, effective and creative. We work carefully and professionally to pre-define boundaries, for example on acceptable/unacceptable levels of changes at different stages in production. This helps everyone by reducing or containing anxiety/stress – an all-too common experience. I am convinced that our many approving authors’ and publishers’ comments are related to an excellent workflow design.
I am not trying to convert anyone, though, to work in a different way from the one you are used to. I am simply saying why we do a good job. If any potential customers are interested enough to have read the theory this far, please contact me to find out what we are like in practice.