Turning over a project has never been so worry free. Our highly motivated agents operate independently while maintaining constant, open communications with clients. We help bring the author’s vision to fruition without compromising the publisher’s practical economic considerations. We’ve never seen a schedule that we can’t keep, drive, make or beat.

Whether you need us to do the whole shaboozle or just manage composition or the editorial process, we will assign the best team to your book. In addition, we manage print buying and delivery, assess aspects of the job such as art quality and manuscript readiness, and match the right copyeditor, proofer, and indexer for the job.

The switchboard operators at Happenstance HQ review and route the design and pages to proof and back again, making sure your e(lectronic) and p(rint) get d(one) and d(elivered).

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!

Proofreading

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

Copyediting

Working with highlight changes turned on, our dedicated team of experienced professionals read line by line, ensuring correct spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation consistently throughout the work.

Developmental Editing

Whether a manuscript is afflicted with technical errors or wheezing from organizational blunders, our agents are fully trained in CPR for damaged copy. No matter how complicated the subject, the explanation should be concise. If you don’t understand it, chances are no one else will either. Our powerful, analytical beams will zap that turgid mass into publishable form in no time.

Style/Tag/Code

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.

We love books. We are book nerds. In fact, we are award-winning book nerds. We have designed books that have won James Beard awards and appeared on the New York Times best seller list. So much so that many of our agents hand bind books just for the hell of it and can actually lock up a text block of hot metal type. We know that We live, eat and breathe books. We know books. No, we mean we really know books. Signatures, white space, margins, head space, leading, font choice, serifs or not, history of our favorite typographers, horsey avoidance,

We know that 10 point type on 13 point leading is bad for an illustrated kids story book but is great for a compact, authoritative medical journal. Whimsical ligatures add charm to a pastry cookbook, while a technology book declares its sincerity with sturdy sans serif headings. The pages of a trade paperback are airy, and easy to devour on a commuter train, while a teachers manual is packed with useful tidbits in sidebars, and colorful hints to keep the students attention from wandering.

We know that Helvetica, while fantastic, is not the only sans serif font in the world (and Helvetica Neue doesn’t count) and that Times New Roman is best left on the front page.

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.

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.