Happenstance Type-O-Rama » SERVICES

Workflow Solutions

admin — Tue, 23 May 2023 23:41:30 +0000

We know you’ve heard it before. You might have spent a lot on a supposed solution. Any workflow solution needs to be customized and tailored to your publishing program and needs. Our experience is what makes us different from other book packagers. We cut our teeth on the hardest books (bibles, dictionaries and encyclopedias) in nascent database publishing, and then applied this experience to our work with other publishers, honing our process, staying ahead of the curve as publishing evolved. Today we can offer a complete workflow system that’s efficient without sacrificing design or craft for any publisher large, medium, small, or nano.

Maintaining cost, speed and quality, without sacrificing one for the other, is hard to achieve. We show you how to optimize what you already do to get where you need to go. Word is the word. Or AsciiDOC, or Markdown, or DocBook can be the word. Quill and ink may take a little time, but we will figure it out. We give you the power?control of your content?and partner with you to get the most out of what you already have.

Do you have an InDesign file that needs to become a clean Word file? Do you have a production file that needs to become HTML? Do you get nervous when someone starts speaking in XML? Never fear.

The advantage of our system on the front end is scalable, reliable output to any file format on the backend. Your InDesign file becomes an accessible ePub3-compliant ebook and an XML archive (that you might not even know you need). Your InDesign file becomes a clean, accurately styled Word file reflecting all changes made during production. We can magically transform files from one format to another faster than you can say Type-O-Rama!

Graphic Design

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:56:15 +0000

William Morris could have picked up a few pointers from us. Our graphic design experts meld text and graphics to create the perfect visual interpretation of the message you want to convey to your customers. We design it all? book covers, brochures, letterhead stationery, advertisements, logos, catalogs, business cards, promotional pieces, bathroom tissue, and breath mints.

Digital and eBook Conversion

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:55:47 +0000

Your content should be king, not the court jester. Your digital products need not look completely foreign to the pdf sent out for conversion. Our process provides accuracy and quick delivery from your original content files. From a myriad of input formats, we can deliver ePub3, Mobi, HTML, XML, and any other digital product that might be invented.

The complaint we hear most often about ebook conversions is that they come back from conversion looking terrible, often riddled with mistakes and not reflecting the printed product. Having coded ebooks since before the Kindle launched, we’ve seen enough to know why and how to avoid the ugly pitfalls. We know what works, but more importantly what won’t. Our agents are committed to honoring your investment in design into your book’s digital evolution.

Whether it’s a custom CSS or one CSS to rule them all, fixed or reflowable layout, fun fonts or no fonts at all, your agent will deliver an ebook that reflects the latest ebook specs and the most current accessibility standards.

Style/Tag/Code

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:55:32 +0000

We create clean, easy-to-use, authoring templates to tame even the most complicated or rangy manuscripts. We use Word, Openoffice, Docbook, or any other authoring tool you are comfortable with. If you already have a template, we can style, tag, or code the document for you.

Indexing

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:55:15 +0000

It may be the last thing you do, but it certainly isn’t the least important. Sure, no one has ever complimented your perfect index, but you still get emails about that bad one. Our meticulous agents swiftly search, verify, and sort useful indexes into essential components of your books. No book is too big or too complicated for us to index thoroughly, accurately, and right on time.

Proofreading

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:54:58 +0000

It?s a dirty, miserable, thankless job, but some of us love it. We carefully proof every word, every comma, and every line space to ensure accuracy and consistency from cover to cover.

Editorial Services

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:54:38 +0000

All beautiful books start with beautiful manuscripts. Send your copy on a spa day and work the shabby out of that shabby chic manuscript. Our editorial team, fluent in Chicago, MLA, APA, and AP, has experience developing, copyediting and proofing a wide variety of genres including technical, poetry, cookbooks, trade, architecture, fiction, educational, how-to, scientific and more.

Art Services

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:54:22 +0000

Whether technical or whimsical, artistic or plain, Cubist abstraction or dogs playing poker, our artists have the chops to create or manipulate the images you need. If you can imagine it, we can make it or find it. We can batch your blotches and curve your levels. CMYK to RGB, TIFF to PNG to EPS, your files will ready for the press or the screen.

Composition

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:54:06 +0000

What some might call layout, we call composition (but only because nobody knows what typesetting means anymore). We use picas and points, know our verso from our recto, and can recognize a hair space from a thin space at 20 paces. If you ask for print-ready, 4-color files, you will get print-ready, 4-color files. We don’t like stacks unless they are pancakes or rivers unless we are rafting down them. Our compassion for widows and orphans ends when we open a book.

We combine traditional production practices with cutting-edge mark-up, programming and automation. Our efficient import system allows us all the time we need to make your book beautiful.

Our agents are experienced. You won’t have to explain what a separation or a signature is or the difference between a spot color and a process color. We are the publishing problem pros. Just ask our clients (no, please really, just ask them): we have seen it all, we have fixed it all, we have set it all. And we will never outsource or move your job offshore.

Template Creation

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:53:47 +0000

Whether you need a new authoring template or production template, we can create a clean, easy-to-use template in Word, a matching production template in InDesign (or just about any other layout or editing program you can dream of), and the CSS to finish the whole thing off. Even the most complicated or rangy manuscript can be tamed with our templates.