Good illustrator but how good for layout?

It was another common question: The illustrator for my book is a talented artist, but should I ask him about doing the book layout?

The first question should be to ask whether he has any experience and whether he wants to do the work. Then the publisher, or self-publisher, should ask himself or herself if they have time to cope with problems.

In this case the artist was being honest, and could have been prepared to put the time in (at his cost) in finding out all the technical information he needs to know. However, there should be at least one person who has the professional knowledge of what makes a good book layout in the team.

The danger is that book layout and file preparation for printing is detailed, systematic work, and the skills for that are seldom those needed to be an artist and illustrator.

There are a few who manage to combine both skills but they are a minority and deserve every cent they can command. They will, for example, know that the uses of a book cover for thumbnails on the web or in catalogues and ads and possibly for posters as well as for the cover itself, puts severe restrictions on artistic talent.

More common are those who can take other people's illustrations and turn them into good looking and good working covers and produce files which will print without problems. The person who creates good book files and the illustrator and graphic artist may use much of the same software, but they tend to use it in vastly different ways.

The kind of questions one could ask someone who may be able to do this work could be whether he or she knows the common standards for relative margin widths, on the differences in specifications for different binding methods, and, as this is presumably an all color book, the maximum ink levels according to printing process and paper stock.

He may not know the detailed answers but if he knows what you are talking about (even if you do not) then (if there is time to go elsewhere if necessary), by all means give him a go.

Giving your password away

"I wouldn't do that" would probably be your answer to the suggestion that you could be giving your password away.

But think about it. Do you have passwords on scraps of paper? Do you use the same password for many sites on the web where you have to log in?

As someone involved in publishing, have you ever given out your password for someone to upload a file to your website or FTP site? Maybe you can change that afterwards, but does it bear any similarity to the password you use for online banking?

There have been many warnings that you should never believe the phone caller who says they are from your bank or some other payment processing service, but it continues to happen, and this week TechWeb reported how a security firm has used official-looking pollsters in New York's Central Park to ask questions from the mundane -- "Is this your first visit to New York City?" -- to the personal -- "What's your mother's maiden name?"

More than 70 percent of those polled gave up their mother's maiden name -- a potential goldmine, since it's often used to confirm identities or demanded in a password reset -- while over 90 percent handed over their place and date of birth. More than half told the pollsters how they come up with online passwords.

I should add that I have always wondered about why banks use that mother's maiden name question. But then I've lived in small towns where everyone would know the family name of just about everyone else's mother. "George Smith? Oh, yes, he married the girl of Green!"

How many of the readers of this use as all or part of password their place of birth, favorite sports team, pet's name, spouse's petname or name for you. Or used any of those words backwards? How easily would you give that information in an answer to a phone or street poll? Especially if you were promised a gift or discount of some kind.

Whether you do or not, it may be a good time to change your password.

What good is a blog?

A lot of publishers think about having blogs. And I was asked recently what the benefit is of The Worsley Blog?

To at least some extent it is an indulgence. The return from the Google ads at the top of this page is a hundred or two a year and it does produce some directly attributable sales of Worsley Press books, plus getting some good listings in the search engines which improve the general business image.

Most of the blog items I write start out as comments I make on the various email lists I subscribe to, or as answers to people who email questions to The Worsley Press (often via the comments form on the web site), so very little specific time is spent on creating the blog. I also have it set up so that a blog item can be created by sending an email to a "secret" email address, so little time is wasted and even so I only create 3 or 4 items a month. I should do better.

I subscribe to a lot of blogs via their rss feeds using SharpReader and my finger is hovering over the delete key in the newreader, so the first half dozen words are all it takes for a decision to bring my finger down. I hope the first half dozen words of this blog were good enough to get you this far.

The blogs I receive which are from the CEOs or owners of larger businesses tend to be irregular and exist because the people writing them look on them as a more personal contact than a company newsletter -- sometimes they seem to try out ideas on the blog before they make it to the newsletter or to official policy.

I cannot see many successful blogs which are just sales blurbs. As an advertising medium, I'd rate it very low. But if you have someone who wants to do it, has the freedom to say what they want, and it is not a directly attributable wages cost, it could just possibly give one of the best returns. Just possibly.