8.00am: On my office days, I commute from Southampton which doesn’t take nearly as long as it sounds, unless of course, the wrong types of leaves are on the line, or the wind is blowing in the wrong direction! I usually use this time to read. I’m currently reading Fintan O’ Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves, which is a very enjoyable and humorous history of Ireland.
9.30am: Once in the office, I usually go straight to my room and greet my colleagues. Some mornings we chat for a bit; others, our heads are immediately buried in work. I set myself up at my desk, then head straight for a lovely coffee from our barista, Rosa, with whom I make an attempt to practise my rapidly-dwindling Spanish. I’ll pop by the Postroom too and see if any advance copies of my books have been delivered. There’s nothing quite so rewarding as seeing the printed copies after all the hard work that everyone has put into them. Then it’s back to my desk to read the day’s emails and see if anything urgent needs attention or if any proofs have arrived that I need to send on to the editorial teams. I’ll also book in any titles going to press the following week with printers. This task is done on a Wednesday to allow printers time to send cover spine widths so that our designers can finalise the cover print files, while we finalise the text files.
10.00am Catch ups with editorial teams: Meetings start almost immediately. As I’m part time, and in the office one day a week, I plan many for Wednesdays, as I always prefer to have them in-person where I can. I look after the production of Bloomsbury’s Student Learning titles, as well as the Linguistics list. Today, I have a catch up with the Linguistics editorial team, which is also attended by the list’s cover designer. We work through a report of the titles I’ve prepared and distributed the previous day; discuss any problems, author queries and the progress of the covers, as well as the schedules and quirks of titles about to be put into production. We also celebrate successes where we’ve managed to get a problematic title to press just in time for its publication date, despite thinking it would never happen!
10.30am Proof checking: Back at my desk, I’ll settle down to check a book proof. I’m currently checking the proofs of two books in a series of developed, AS level (pre-university) titles. These are full of learning features, each one of which needs a specific colouring and treatment, and it requires a lot of focus to ensure that everything is consistent across each book. I really enjoy this aspect of my job, it’s incredibly satisfying to see a book improve with each subsequent proof – like all the pieces of the puzzle falling into place! For very complex proofs like these, I’ll often pop up to the relevant editor’s desk to discuss any issues or suggest improvements, which is often easier when we’re both looking at the proof together.
12.30pm Lunch: I’ll usually meet up with a colleague for lunch where we’ll wander to the shops to pick up some food and head back to the orangery (Bloomsbury’s lounge) for a catch up. I’ll often try to meet up with colleagues outside of my team too, who I don’t tend to interact with on a daily basis.
1.30pm Brief a book to a project manager: Back at my desk, I’ll prepare briefs for new titles that I need to send to our off-site project managers for production. I’ll ensure all of the details of the books are up to date in our database and transfer them onto a form that I can send to the project manager together with the manuscript, artwork, text design template and, for the more complex books, any relevant style guides. I’ll query any discrepancies with the editorial team, then I’ll send an email to the authors or volume editors to introduce myself and provide them with an outline of the production process for their book.
3.00pm Schedules workshop with the Student Learning editorial teams: Today I’ve organised a Q&A session to provide more clarity on our schedules for the Student Learning titles. As these titles have such narrow publishing windows, it’s often difficult to decide which schedule will work best for a particular title. There are lots of questions and discussion and it’s a very productive hour.
4.00pm: Towards the end of the day, I’ll take care of some smaller projects such as checking design samples and artproofs, updating my titles tracker, approving schedules and cast offs from project managers, requesting bespoke print quotes for costings or helping editors resolve costing issues in our database.
5.30pm: On office days, if the weather is dry, I’ll stroll back to Waterloo Station, resisting the temptation to visit old haunts that I used to frequent when I lived in London! I’ll jump on a train and be home just in time to see my 7 year old before she goes to bed.
Elizabeth Holmes is a Senior Production Editor for Bloomsbury’s Student Learning titles and Linguistics books.
If you’d like to find out more about what happens in a production department, or about working in publishing more generally, the 2024 edition of The Publishing Business: A Guide to Starting Out and Getting On is out now.
