Namaskara (hello) fellow traveler,

It is a blazing hot Aussie summer’s day. The brick paving is scorching and all living things are sheltering away from the heat.

I am listening to “Run it’s the Kid”, an Indian indie band that put out an album a decade ago and have only just resurfaced. Their laid back, chilled style, captures a lot that I love about India.

Try “Hourglass” recorded entirely while riding a scooter tandem or “Rubble” recorded while rowing a boat.

Over the past month I have been pretty laid back myself. Bella & Rami has advanced a little, but not a lot. So I thought I would tell you about some of the technical aspects of book production that I am getting to know.

After the developmental editing phase, Bella & Rami moved to proof reading. Mario was my proof reader. And, my goodness, he was thorough! I am not sure how many corrections to spelling and punctuation he suggested, but it was in the hundreds. He even fact checked a village name and suggested a correction. However, in this case, I I rejected his suggestion, as I meant Ramahalli, a fictional village, not Ramohalli, a real village that Mario had tracked down in a plausible location.

The above demonstrates the process that Atmosphere Press follows in book creation. While professionals can and will do amazing things, the author is responsible for sign-off at the completion of each stage.

After proof reading, Bella & Rami moved to Interior Design. This is an exciting stage whereby a manuscript magically becomes a recognizable book! I say magically, but really it takes a team of talented designers who understand publishing standards and are attentive to the particularities of the book that they are working on.

Bella & Rami is not a simple book from a design perspective, as it has a lot of letters, emails and messages intercut into the narrative. All of these elements require careful treatment.

While there are formatting conventions, some things are still fluid; the treatment of on-line messaging is a good example. J. K Rowling in The Ink Black Heart experiments with multiple columns to show contemporaneous on-line chat. By contrast, Sally Rooney, in Intermezzo, opts for an elegant grouping of messages by person.

In Bella & Rami  I have followed Rooney’s lead, but included date and time stamps. It is perhaps an unusual move, but time and its passage are important to the story.

Another aspect of Interior Design that shapes a book’s individual character is the choice of typography: the fonts and other design details. Ideally, the interior design should take its cue in part from the cover design.

In the case of Bella and Rami , the interior design  has advanced a bit faster than the cover design (my fault, I dithered), so it will take a couple more iterations to bring them into alignment.

I think that brings you up to date with all things bookish.

As always, thank you for coming with me on my writing journey.

Isobel

Photo by Roman Melnychuk on Unsplash