The Running Head.

FAQs

What is a running head?

In the world of books these are what the world of computers calls ‘headers’ – the title of the book, or part title, or chapter, or author’s name, that appears on a single line near the top of the page. They are not to be confused with the more entertaining ‘running foot’ (ditto at the bottom of the page), nor – to draw on past proffered associations – the name of a pub, a Native American name (‘Big Chief Running Head’), the symptom of a common kind of illness, and so on. Harry Brockway’s wonderful wood engraving illustrates a running head in its native habitat.

I am the production manager of a book publishing company. How can you compete with prices from suppliers in India?

We have a very efficient workflow with very little bureaucracy. When we compete head-to- (running?) head we appear to be a little more expensive, but customers who actively understand that they have in-house costs and that these are variable know we save them substantial amounts of their time (and money). More than this, we add value by delivering superb quality that increases sales and builds our customers’ brand; authors feel good about their publisher when they effuse how much they enjoy working with us. In short: anyone can buy something cheaply, but it takes confidence, skill and judgement to know the true value of quality. Any good managing director (see later) should be happy to endorse this kind of initiative.

Do you supply XML?

Yes. We subcontract to much larger suppliers in India, who have a lot of experience in working with different publishers’ DTDs; they supply XML to an excellent standard. We have an ‘XML last’ workflow, so we will be unsuitable for the few projects where large-scale repurposing or manipulation of content is integral to the publishing idea.

Isn’t ‘project management’ [in publishing] just someone with a phone and a computer? We can do that in-house anyway.

Yes – that’s how it’s usually done. The typesetting still goes ‘out’, usually to India or Hong Kong, where they will do what they are told, no less and no more. In this case the project management route offers no difference in quality – actually it can add one more tier of management and ‘Chinese whispers’-type distortion/constriction of communication. In our case, where we typeset in-house, we have unrivalled control over quality and schedule. Computers are a brilliant tool for checking quality– what a waste not to use them properly! Communication with us is direct and precise. Multiskilling and excellent communication allows us to work accurately, generate creative input, and add value that is impossible otherwise. Isn’t that a better way to work?

Don’t you end up taking control away from us?

No. We never do this, because you know your business, we don’t. We’re confident we can help, but we also provide enough checking stages to make sure you are happy with our work. We believe in the virtues of good service for the same reason that we stay on budget and meet deadlines: if you like us and the things we do, you will use us again.

How many people work at The Running Head?

Currently four. We also have a wide range of experienced and skilled freelancers to whom we send out work (or who come in). Sometimes we have people in-house doing work experience.

What kind of backgrounds do you all have?

We all have at least first degrees and usually experience in working in book publishing companies. I (David) have a degree in English from Oxford, a management diploma, eight years working in-house in publishing production at Reader’s Digest and Pluto Press, 11 years freelancing in editorial and production, now 13 years MD of The Running Head.

I am an undergraduate/postgraduate interested in working in publishing. Do you offer work experience placements?

Yes. We are delighted to have new people come to our office and take an interest in what we do. Our previous work experience trainees have all said they had a good time with us and learned new skills to help them apply for jobs. We will get you to do all the different kinds of work round the office, from onscreen editing through to page make-up and index checking; we will talk to you about the publishing industry and show you how the company works. We are not being entirely altruistic because people do useful work on live jobs (under careful supervision). We also hope that anyone going on to work in publishing will remember they had a nice time with us and that we have high standards; they will perhaps then place work with us. Clearly we will be most useful if you are looking for jobs in the desk-editing or production side of publishing. Read (and look at our work on) Giles Clark and Angus Phillips’s Inside Book Publishing too.

The dates, duration and other arrangements are all negotiable. Send us your CV as a Word file – and make sure it is well written and spelled! Please note that despite the Google results for ‘Cambridge’ ‘book’ and ‘publishing’, we do not publish as such. We are like a standalone publishing production department with added typesetting and more interaction with authors.

I am an author. My publisher has told me my book has been subcontracted to The Running Head, and would like to know how you will be working with me.

The manager here assigned to work on your book will be in touch with you, explaining carefully what we do and how we do it; they will also discuss a schedule with you.

We will always work carefully, creatively and respectfully with you, so that your book expresses most communicatively – in its entirely new incarnation in the book medium and in the public sphere – what you would like it to say. We will consult with you and not make you do, say or have anything you do not want – subject, that is, to a brief from our customer, your publisher. We will work considerately and efficiently so that we do not waste your time or ours; we politely ask that you will work with us like this too. A small preliminary point about page proofs: because we nearly always show you the edited typescript and allow reasonable revision before we get to page proofs, we ask that the marking of alterations, ‘updates’ and ‘improvements’ (as opposed to outright errors) at this stage be kept to the minimum.

Many authors enjoy working with us because communications are unusually direct. (See also What people say.) Just one person onscreen edits, typesets, corrects the pages and edits the index of their book, so he or she will know it inside out and be able to check or change something important straight away – they do it themselves, they don’t e-mail someone in the front office of a huge company in (for example) Pondicherry.

We love working with authors – one of the nicest things about the publishing world – and feel proud to be part of the republic of letters.

I am the commissioning editor in a book publishing company. How can I benefit from working with you?

If you are generating new publishing concepts from scratch you need to work fast and to generate creative ideas, often bouncing off technical constraints. For example, some e-books might very usefully and easily have embedded video and soundclips – this sparks some very different publishing ideas. Not all production departments – for all their many other excellent skills – are set up to foster the kind of generative thinking/high-bandwidth interactivity that we are uniquely placed to offer. People routinely throw base metals at us and we try very hard to turn them into gold. You need be no more than curious to arrange a meeting; we can show you the kinds of work we have done and discuss possibilities. (See also Book packaging.)

I am the managing director of a book publishing company. Why should I commission The Running Head to work for us?

Short answer: we’re really good. Honestly. Give us a try – you will be pleasantly surprised, perhaps delighted.

Long answer: 25 years ago a page of typesetting cost about £4 and the annual salary of the production manager was about £12,000. Since then, one has halved and the other has more than doubled – plus its share of overheads allocation. Production departments have done a fantastic job in driving down prices and more than keeping pace with technical change, but now expensive (only compared to suppliers!) staff spend disproportionate time micro-managing, via phone and e-mail, the output of their suppliers. These suppliers (typesetters, for example) are usually discouraged from using their judgement and their computers to solve problems – even though computers are most suited to this kind of work. Understandably managers want to maintain control where perhaps language/communication is a problem. I merely note here that the drive for low out-of-house prices invisibly increases costs in-house – see later.

Clearly this work process has a specific character too; even though it is near-universal, it is not just transparent or neutral. An example: many authors feel anxious about or steamrollered by current production practice, simply because the communications bandwidth of overworked production staff/freelancers cannot cope with the volume of what authors think is important detail and meaningful. Quality is designed out of the process.

Perhaps the root cause is that publishers almost never measure in-house time and allocate its costs to specific titles. Probably there appears to be no alternative. But the lack of this information disguises the cost of different amounts of in-house time spent on different kinds of books. This distorts management decision-making. Consequently our substantial savings of your in-house time may appear to be indefinable and not comparable – unlike all the other services in a competitive world – with your existing costs.

All this is no one’s fault. It just happens to be the way things are usually done, probably because that is how they have always been done. We at The Running Head make no criticism of anyone, least of all production managers and their staff. We are not trying to change the world, nor replace anybody; we work day to day, respectfully and enjoyably, with our peers in production departments. We do believe, though, that we have invented something genuinely useful, with significant benefits for those who have the vision, courage and leadership to try something different and better. Do you?

How do you charge?

Our prices divide into two parts, to match your existing structures. I will quote on direct costs – the ones that usually appear in the production estimate and are out-of-house – to beat your existing suppliers of similar quality. Actually this is rather unfair, because our quality will always be better, so let us just say I will price to the market rate.

When we project manage or ‘package’ we are substituting for in-house time. As a rule of thumb guide, per book we will charge to beat substantially the cost of

(Equivalent production salaries + Share of annual overheads)

Number of new books published per year

Clearly there are plenty of percentages and variations that need to be discussed, but in essence I promise we will save you money and improve quality.

Why are these FAQs addressed to managing directors? Surely this is something for the production department.

Production staff usually only have a remit to look at out-of house costs. They usually have no brief to look at either in-house costs or overhead allocation, so charging for this is just not within their frame of reference. We are not looking to criticize or replace anyone – we just want to help solve publishers’ production problems. MDs are the only ones who can have the authority and leadership to take a wider view.

How can we start working with you?

Typically, some publishers might be overloaded and need help. Some books might be particularly tricky and need careful handling. Some publishers might just be curious how they can do things differently and better. Some publishers might feel like exploring how we can develop new products or save them money. Whatever the reason, please contact me.