workflow

Meet the Instructor: Jennifer Landels

Written by Carl Rosenberg; copy edited by Maggie Clark

This photo depicts Jennifer Landels in her swordplay outfit with both hands holding onto the sword, making it point downwards.

On Saturday, January 27, Editors BC presents a seminar, “From Slush Pile to Newsstand: Workshopping the Magazine Workflow,” by long-time editor Jennifer Landels. This full-day seminar will walk participants through the typical workflow of a literary magazine, giving an overview of the production flow and various editorial stages, and giving participants hands-on experience in each of them. This seminar will be particularly helpful for editors looking to improve their workflow processes, change roles within their publications, or expand their publishing expertise.

Jennifer is a founding editor and managing editor of Pulp Literature Press. Prior to starting the press, she worked as a freelance editor, writer, and designer.

Carl Rosenberg, a volunteer on Editors BC’s communications and social media committee, spoke to Jennifer about her work and advice on magazine editing.

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Rows of desks face a projection screen in a classroom-like environment.
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January 27, 2018: From Slush Pile to Newsstand: Workshopping the Magazine Workflow

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What: Editors BC professional development seminar
When: Saturday, January 27, 2018, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: Room 420, 4th floor, BCIT Downtown Campus, 555 Seymour Street, Vancouver | map
Cost: $165 for Editors Canada members ($135 early bird), $230 for non-members ($200 early bird), and $100 for student affiliates. Advance registration required. Registration closes January 23; early-bird rates are in effect through January 12.

Magazine production is deadline heavy, with tight turnarounds and last-minute changes. To stay on schedule, many contributors and editors need to work in sync, like the parts of a well-oiled machine. In this six-hour seminar, Jennifer Landels, managing editor of Pulp Literature magazine, will walk us through the typical workflow of a literary magazine, from submissions to final proofing.

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PubPro 2016: Event Recap and Session Summaries (Part 1)

PubPro2016_scheduleIntroduction by Iva Cheung, PubPro facilitator

The fourth annual PubPro unconference for managing editors and publication production professionals welcomed participants from across Canada and the U.S., as it was, for the first time, offered as a workshop immediately before the Editors Canada national conference. Although not as many attendees came prepared with talks, all participants came prepared to talk, many of them stepping up to lead discussions on different aspects of publication project management. PubPro volunteers Connie Behl, Ellen Michelle Koehler, and Yvonne Robertson took notes and have summarized the sessions. Continue reading →

PubPro: Retakes & workflows

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Reprints, Revisions & Print on Demand
by Megan Brand; discussion led by Jo Blackmore

Reprints are straight printings, ideally featuring corrections to any errata in the first run. Publishers may use colour inserts in offset reprints or print them on the digital press as black and white photo sections on regular stock, which don’t have to be tipped in. Friesens was said to be perfecting its digital colour-printing technology. Economies of scale for offset reprints kick in at five hundred units, whereas it’s cheaper to print lower runs digitally. According to Library and Archives Canada guidelines, “a work is considered to be a ‘new’ publication if there is a relevant edition statement, if there has been a change in title or a change of publisher, or if additional information appears in the work.” Therefore, they may require a whole new edit, proofreading and index. Commonly used print on demand (POD) and fulfillment providers include Lightning Source (Ingram), which was thought to be user unfriendly; BookMobile (Itasca), with good customer service; and CreateSpace (Amazon), which offers higher revenue per unit.

 

The Flying Narwhal: Single-Source Workflows for Small Magazine Publishers
by Lana Okerlund; presented by Shed Simas

With tongue in cheek, Master of Publishing (MPub) student Shed Simas pitched his presentation to PubPro participants by explaining the origin of his project’s name, The Flying Narwhal: “a hybrid that’s part real, part magic, part myth”—not unlike the project’s vision of single-source multi-platform publishing.

“The Flying Narwhal puts a bunch of components together in a way that is affordable, robust and accessible for multiple people in multiple locations,” Simas said. In essence, the system he and fellow MPub collaborators Kaitlyn Till and Velma Larkai designed would allow small magazine publishers to accept submissions from contributors, access the system from multiple computers, share files between staff and authors for collaboration on edits and revisions and manage version control. Once editorial is complete, documents flow into a hub, from which they can be output into multiple platforms: InDesign for print, a PDF digital edition, Padify for a digital magazine and a WordPress website.

With a rather dizzying list of other technologies involved in the solution—Submittable, Google Drive, Dropbox, cloudHQ, Neutron Drive and pandoc—the presentation revealed a truism in publishing (and editing) today: it’s an increasingly high-tech business. While not all publication professionals will feel comfortable with all the moving parts behind the scenes, more and more of us may soon be users of new solutions like The Flying Narwhal to do our everyday jobs.

PubPro: Workflow systems and digital shifts

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In Short: Workflow Systems for Managing Large Projects with Multiple People

by Megan Brand; discussion led by Eve Rickert

Google Drive: Gantt chart-like workflow spreadsheet, task lists, timelines, and revision histories. Wiki-esque: great for real-time collaboration but not for version control.

Teamwork: More automated than Basecamp and can set up dependencies. Cloud-based with messaging systems and task lists, but time-tracking feature can’t do time estimates for entire projects, just tasks.

Smartsheet: Gantt-based, cloud-based, and allows for multiple contributors. Can send it out to users and assign them to different tasks. Would ideally create a snapshot showing users’ black-out periods. Free up to a certain amount of tabs.

SharePoint: Website document repository using Excel for tracking and MS Project for scheduling. Source documents populate timelines, with Gantt charts and dependency and reporting features, but it’s not user-friendly.

JIRA: Sophisticated code repository and project-management and collaboration tool. Sets up contingencies and updates continuously.

Tom’s Planner: Online Gantt charts for workload management. Fast, easy, and free (except for printing), it shows freelancers’ schedules. Doesn’t require programming like Excel but needs constant management and updating.

 

The Shift to Digital at MEC
by Lana Okerlund; presented by Merran Fahlman

In 2009, MEC (or Mountain Equipment Co-op) published four print catalogues annually and one CSR (corporate social responsibility) report biannually, updated its website monthly and sent emails to customers weekly. Fast-forward to 2014, when 100% of its published content appears in digital-only formats, including the MEC website, a WordPress blog, a journal microsite, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and emails. The company has shifted from centralized to decentralized contributions, and while still relying on a core group of two writers and two editors, as well as freelancers and subject expert contributors, the team now includes a social community manager responsible for content curation and a brand engagement manager to help ensure that all that content upholds the MEC brand.

The company’s publishing environment has changed so much that managing editor Merran Fahlman wonders if her title shouldn’t be altered as well. “I’m more like brand engagement or content strategy manager now than a managing editor,” she said.

The shift to all-digital publishing has come with challenges, Fahlman said, including potentially unbalanced content themes, difficulties with overall planning, hard-to-access tone and style standards and the need for flexible quality standards. On the last point, no one reads tweets, for example. “We edit blog posts and site content, but there’s a whole lot of content that no one reviews,” Fahlman said.

As one PubPro participant pointed out, these challenges are “all about the change from push to pull. All of these issues have to do with loss of control. The customer is ultimately shaping the information, telling us in the moment what is important.” That may be so, but if you’re a managing editor used to editorial checklists and doing all you can to put out (you hope) perfect content, and what you’re now consumed with are Google Analytics, webmaster tools and HootSuite, it’s a brave new digital publishing world indeed.