Behind the Scenes: Production

My name is Nicole Moulaison and I’m a Production Manager for Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. I work on the Feiwel & Friends and Square Fish imprints; they make nearly every kind of book a kid could possibly want: picture books, chapter books, middle-grade and teen fiction, and even some really impressive non-fiction like Lincoln Shot and For Boys Only.

Essentially, I manage manufacturing budgets and coordinate the schedules for all the bits and pieces that go into physically making a book. However, that’s only a brief (and boring-sounding) description of the many, many small steps that go into every single book I work on. I’m responsible for making sure manuscripts are typeset, art is reviewed and corrected, and finished books get bound and delivered on time. I also print the sales materials for each of my books. One of the most important, and most challenging, parts of my job is maintaining the delicate balance between the cost of a book and the quality and integrity of the book. 

I love the days when I receive a new batch of original paintings or illustrations for a picture book. It’s always exciting to open the package and look at each piece. When I get the artwork, I usually haven’t read the story yet. It’s fun to imagine what the story might be just by seeing what the art looks like. But I can’t just enjoy the look and feel of the art; I also have to think about any potential problems with the art. Are there a lot of very, very bright colors that we might have trouble matching? Will the paper we intend to print on properly represent the artist’s work? After reviewing the art, I send it off to be scanned. When it comes back, it’s my job to review the proofs that come in against the original art and request corrections when they don’t match up. I go through several rounds of this “color-correcting” until the art as close as possible to a perfect match. After many, many months the books are ready to be printed and I coordinate a schedule with the printer to make the finished books.

Picture books are fun to work on, but I get just as much joy from working on novels. As with the picture books, it’s my job to usher the novels through the production process, making sure that materials (manuscripts, typeset pages, covers and jacket mechanicals, and proofs, etc.) come and go on schedule.

Since it’s my job to coordinate the printing and binding, I am the lucky one who gets to see the first printed and bound copies of our books. It takes a long time from the arrival of a manuscript to printing the final book, so it’s always a great feeling when the finished books arrive.

In the end, I can sum up my job by saying that I simply shepherd books through a process in which my very talented co-workers (editors, managing editors, and designers) spend their days making them enjoyable to read and to look at.

Here’s a closer look at what goes into color-correcting a picture book: specifically one of our upcoming fall books: Cooking with Henry and Elliebelly.

This is the original art

And here’s the cover.

The full cover. 

And here are the cover color corrections.

Then: interior corrections. 

And here’s another upcoming book: Miss Lina’s Ballerinas. 

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