[This volume of SouthSide Chatter was distributed on 22/09/2023.]
Dear Friends,
The week after a long weekend is always a tough one. We hope yours was restful! Having resolved our chai issues, we at the office are now proofreading and page setting at top speed! Manuscripts are being passed around like colds among five-year-olds. All this so we can put out books to make your long weekends more memorable, so keep your eyes peeled! For the attentive few, the briefly mentioned biscuit shortage has been remedied by banana chips. Reader, what snacks keep you fired up?
"Stay there, and don't move!": Woman Growls at Laptop
Page Setting is the process by which we determine the boundaries of your story. It is the unseen editing that makes or breaks your reading experience. This is where the layout of the text is decided and the finishing touches are added to your books! Anybody who has done page setting knows that what it needs is a keen aesthetic sense, a forgiving nature, and mountains of patience. Actually, the experience may be more universal! Anybody who has made a PowerPoint presentation or put any effort into a Word Document knows the mysterious way time has of losing all meaning when you begin aligning a contents page. Conversations like this may be overheard:
"A space perhaps?"
"No, what about those dotted lines?"
"Absolutely not. It looks like a textbook."
"It's too empty!"
"It's to busy!"
This penultimate step is designed to test even the most tech-savvy. Occasionally an automated process produces stellar results. But trust it too much and it may do too good a job, leaving somebody to clean up overzealous additions to the "slug area". Not sure what that is? Well...
SLUG AREA (noun, publishing): Space around the borders of the print where the author's name, the book's title, and sometimes the page number perform a dance that mimics the creeping of a slug. This is so that someone, somewhere may say through gritted teeth, "I'm glad there are still some jobs only humans can do!"
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