Fresh advance reader copies had their spines stretched one by one as Melissa signed first pages and gave copies away with her thanks to all the attendees, many of whom shared connections with the Asian elephants of Portland.
Collaboration
Odsburg: A Community Collaboration
By Marina Garcia
From the beginning, the goal for Odsburg was to make this book unique, successful, and as beautifully odd as the story it contained. We all had similar ideas about where this book should end up; getting there, however, was an entirely different matter.
XML Coding: Where Digital, Editorial, and Design Collide
By Kaitlin Barnes
During my time at Ooligan, I have been told by multiple people that XML coding is the portion of the Ooligan workflow that they are most unfamiliar with and therefore most anxious about volunteering for. It’s not hard to see why XML seems daunting or confusing: the work is done by the editorial department, but it requires coding tags one would expect to see in the digital department, and the product is used exclusively by the design department. It’s easy to get lost in all of that. If the work requires coding, why isn’t it done in the digital department? If the product is only used by the design department, why don’t they do the work? To help clarify, here’s a crash course in XML.
A Collaborative Process: Designing Books at Ooligan
By Julie Collins
Ooligan Press is mostly made up of students in either their first or second year of the master’s in book publishing program at PSU. This means that every student is working on a book project team or as a department manager in addition to taking another two or three classes. And who can find the time to create cover and interior designs as we juggle up to six books in development at once? The key is collaboration. By trusting each other as managers, creators, and book lovers with valuable feedback to give, we work toward a fully designed book that best reflects the essence of the final manuscript.
Too Many Cooks? Management at Ooligan Press
By Hazel Wright
Ooligan has several department managers who most closely correlate to positions you would find in a standard press, including a digital department lead, a design lead, a social media lead, a marketing lead, a copy chief, a managing editor, two acquisitions leads, and two publisher’s assistants. For anyone keeping track, that’s ten department managers. There are independent presses all over the country that operate with an entire staff of fewer than ten people, let alone ten managers. But the truth is, Ooligan doesn’t operate with ten managers: it operates with seventeen.
Is freelance editorial work right for you?
By Thomas Spoelhof @thomasspoelhof
As the publishing industry evolves, media and publishing independents have witnessed the dissolution of the full-time copy editor. Among magazine, news media, and book publishing entities, an in-house copy chief is often considered a luxury of days gone by. The expense of the full-time position is often too difficult to justify, and the responsibility of clean copy can fall on in-house production teams.