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Learning to type: Adventures in publishing

Huh. Well, I’ve been meaning to post a recap of Scott McIntyre’s talk at last Tuesday’s Alcuin AGM, but I’ve been swamped with work and haven’t been able to get to it. The Alcuin Society has since uploaded the full video of his talk here.

I promise to post something soon—after I get through this crush of work. Next week I’ll be heading to Halifax for the Indexing Society of Canada and Editors’ Association of Canada conferences, and I’ll make my write-ups of the sessions I attend available when I manage to get to them.

Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders—the new site for Government of Canada contracting opportunities

On June 1, 2013, all Government of Canada tenders will move from MERX.com to Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders. Today I attended a webinar, hosted by Rene Latraverse of the digital engagement team at Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), about this transition.

Background

PWGSC consulted suppliers and government buyers about what they want to see in a procurement system; the clear response was that they’d like a single-access site to complete procurement information. The new Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site leverages technology (in particular searching and database technology) to benefit both suppliers and government buyers. The initiative is aligned with the Canadian Action Plan on Open Government, whose there pillars are open information, open data, and open dialogue. The hope is that the site’s increased transparency will help suppliers answer two main questions:

  • What can I sell?
  • How can I sell?

Benefits

  • Access to the new site is free, and there is no need to register. 
  • You can search for opportunities using plain language—you don’t need to know Goods and Services Identification Numbers (GSINs) for your good or service or be familiar with procurement language to search for available tenders that match what you would like to supply. 
  • You can narrow down search results by region.
  • Opportunities have a unique URL, which you can bookmark. The link gives you the current view of the opportunity. Opportunities are therefore easy to share via email or social media. You can also subscribe to the opportunity using RSS to get alerts about amendments or changes.
  • You can view contract history and find partnering opportunities.
  • You can easily customize your searches and then bookmark those searchers or subscribe to them via RSS for notices about new opportunities.
  • You can download search results as a spreadsheet.

Transition

The Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site launched on April 11 and has up until now primarily been a communication vehicle to provide general information about what will happen on June 1. As of June 1, 2013, Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders will be the official site for government tenders. Up until May 31, the official site is still MERX. If you follow any opportunities on MERX right now, the Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site has information about how you can continue to follow those through the transition to the new site.

Questions from webinar attendees

Will you be offering printing services?

The opportunities will be all electronic, so PWGSC is not offering any printing services. Opportunities are easy to download for printing if needed.

Should suppliers stay registered with MERX?

This decision is left to individual suppliers. The new Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders site will list Government of Canada opportunities but will not list provincial or territorial opportunities. (There will be no overlap between the two services.)

Will contracting authorities be able to see who has downloaded opportunities?

No. Since no registration is required, nobody will be able to see who has downloaded what opportunities. However, PWGSC encourages suppliers to communicate with and ask questions to the contracting authority.

Will downloading opportunities be free?

Yes.

Will there be integration with or cross-referencing to the ProServices database?

Not at this time. However, opportunities for professional services will be listed.

Will Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders list all Government of Canada opportunities, regardless of dollar value?

Those contracts subject to the dollar value threshold for trade agreements must appear on the site. Low-dollar buys may appear but are not mandatory.

For more information

PWGSC encourages anyone with questions about Buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders to contact them. Until June 1 they will be adding information to the site based on questions and feedback.

The good, the bad, and the “that could have gone better” about subcontracting

Patricia Anderson, PhD, runs an editing and literary and literary consulting business, Helping You Get Published, and has hired several editorial subcontractors over her company’s fourteen-year history. Amelia Gilliland holds an editing certificate from SFU and has worked in-house at Arsenal Pulp Press and Douglas & McIntyre; today she’s a freelance editor who occasionally subcontracts for the West Coast Editorial Associates. Eve Rickert is a Certified Professional Editor and founder of Talk Science to Me Communications Inc., which provides services including writing, editing, indexing, and design through a team of subcontractors. Anderson, Gilliland, and Rickert made up the panel on subcontracting at last week’s EAC-BC monthly meeting, moderated by Frances Peck. Peck asked the panellists questions to get the discussion going and also encouraged questions from audience members.

How did you get into subcontracting?

Rickert said that she started collaborating with others early on, mainly on big writing projects. When she took her first in-house position, she wanted to hang on to clients and began subcontracting to trusted associates. At a second in-house job, her responsibilities included a lot of project management, which she enjoyed. She integrated that element into her business when she struck out on her own to offer science communication services, and today she subcontracts to writers, editors, and designers.

Gilliland brought the perspective of someone who takes on subcontracting opportunities rather than offering them. She began subcontracting while she was still in school, working toward an editing certificate at Simon Fraser University. She asked Ruth Wilson, who was one of her instructors, to mentor her, and she began subcontracting for WCEA. “It was a great way to start,” she said. “When you’re that new to it, you don’t really know how to get into it.” She added that subcontracting gives you an opportunity to work on great projects if you’re working for people who’ve been in the business a long time and are trusted in the industry.

Anderson, who admits that she very much enjoys working on her own and always goes back to it, began subcontracting a year into taking her business online. “These were the early days of the Internet,” she said, “and after three weeks of being online I was so swamped my life was turned upside down.” She cobbled together a group of five subcontractors; the first subcontracting model she tried was to have a group of experts, each taking on one part of the business: marketing, proposals, literary consulting, etc. She said that the model worked, but because it was early in her business, she didn’t realize where the bulk of the business would be. As a result, she and her editor were overwhelmed with work.

The next model she tried was to have a combination of expert editors and some more junior subcontractors. The problem she encountered with that arrangement was that her subcontractors would regard her as an employer and would constantly expect her to give them more work. Anderson wasn’t fond of the pressure that expectation put on her and told us that if she tries other subcontracting models, she’ll emphasize that she’s offering freelance opportunities, not employment, and she’ll actively seek out entrepreneurial, proactive contractors.

Rickert hasn’t found the same kinds of expectations from her subcontractors; if anything, her problem has been the opposite, in that she’s lost a few freelancers who’ve sought out other opportunities.

Trust is a big issue in subcontracting. Those of us who are freelancers are used to doing our own work and answering for ourselves. With subcontracting you’re trusting someone else to work with your client. Did you have any initial fears about getting into subcontracting?

Gilliland responded, “I was terrified. I was new to the industry. I was terrified I was going to do something unbelievably stupid and scared that I wouldn’t represent [WCEA] well. That fear—that I wouldn’t do a good enough job—came with being new; I didn’t have the confidence. It’s different now. There’s always a bit of apprehension, but there’s less about my not representing well.”

Anderson joked that she was fearless because the business was so new she didn’t know what she was getting into. Rickert said that she started off the same way but, “I certainly have a lot of fears now. With a new subcontractor, there’s always wondering if their work is up to standard. And the relationship with clients—do I manage the relationship, or do I have subcontractors work with them directly?” She said that she eases into that arrangement with a new subcontractor; after she’s confident the subcontractor’s work is up to standard, she has them work directly with the client and keep her posted on milestones. She says she’s clear about accountability and who is responsible for what: “Subcontractors are working for me, not for my client. If my client has issues with performance, those can come to me.” Getting the right distance between the person requiring the work and the person doing the work is the balance she strives to achieve.

Both Rickert and Anderson mentioned that their business models involve a markup. Rickert described her work as trying to maintain a sweet spot—a balance between what subcontractors are paid and what clients are charged. At first she was reluctant to charge a markup, but she came to realize that she puts a lot of time into finding good people, managing projects, training, and building a brand. The subcontractor also gets value from being part of a managed project.

How much do you check up on their work? Do you rely on their background?

Rickert replied that it depends how well she knows their work. For newer subcontractors, she’ll usually work behind them and check their work, giving them feedback on areas for improvement. For more established editors, she may not have to do this.

Anderson added, “I analyze the project, decide what the major issues are and  what the best strategies are, and I convey this to the editor. I make myself available non-stop. I go through the project line by line.” It’s an intensive commitment, Anderson said, but she was quick to add, “There are junior editors who do certain things better than people with more experience,” suggesting we should play to people’s strengths and worry less about whether they are junior or senior.

Gilliland explained that when she first started out, she did have her work checked and asked for feedback, especially if she was in a situation where the editor hiring her was trying to maintain a client and just couldn’t take on a specific task. Today, most of the subcontracting work she does is when an editor isn’t interested in a project or doesn’t have time to take on the work and asks her if she wants it—in which case it’s more a referral and less a subcontract.

What is the difference between a subcontract and a referral?

Peck said, “We pride ourselves on being a collegial bunch of people; it’s not a cutthroat business and we’re often quite happy to hand off work. In a much earlier life, I was a real estate agent. In that world, you always received a referral fee that was 25 per cent of the commission. Should there be a fee for a referrals?”

“That’s a tough one,” said Gilliland. “It depends where it comes from.” She explained that the West Coast Editorial Associations, for instance, were sought out by clients and contacted because of the reputation they had built; she could understand paying a fee for projects they referred.

Rickert tries not to give referrals; she has a big enough team of subcontractors that she can usually keep projects in house. However, she does offer clients a referral bonus: if they refer new clients to her, she’ll offer a discount on the next project.

Anderson said, “I have strong feelings on this. I work hard on my websites. I put in hours and hours. If a potential new client comes to me, it’s still time invested. I’ve laid the groundwork, counselled the editor about a reasonable fee, and set the client up. I want 15 per cent. People say, ‘Why should I give you 15 per cent when I do all the work?’ Well, editing is work, but it’s not all the work in a business.”

Anderson told us that she was looking online to see who else had a referral model and discovered a site that purported to be a database of editors. In order to be listed in this database, you first have to pass an editing test—which you have to pay for. Once you’re in, the owner of the site charges you a monthly fee to remain listed. If you get work (which, according to some posted reviews of the site, may never happen), you pay 30 to 40 per cent of what you earn. We wondered whether any editing was actually going on, but the owner of the site claims to have some high-powered clients.

The last story raises a point about ethics. Have you ever encountered any concerns from the client’s point of view or concerns about ethics?

Gilliland said that she had a client who initially wasn’t comfortable with the idea that his project was being handed off to her from the editor he’d approached.  “I think his attitude was, ‘Well, why doesn’t she want to work with me?'” In the end, Gilliland met with him and gained his trust. The fact that the other editor expressed confidence in her work catalyzed that process.

Rickert said that she’s never had ethical issues because she is always responsible for the final quality of the work; she never takes herself out of the project.

Anderson takes a similar approach: “I come in at the beginning, so the client knows the work comes from me, with input and assistance from another editor.” She said she’d never pass off someone else’s work as her own.

A growing concern for Anderson is that she has so many return clients that she can barely handle them. “How do you hand off a loyal client?” she asked.

How do you decide on your markup?

Rickert explained that with established associates, her markup is 100 per cent, which is standard for the industry. For senior editors she brings in on occasional projects, the markups are lower, but they’re never less than 30 per cent.

Do you have formal contracts with subcontractors that specify editorial credit, and payment—or that stops subcontractors from absconding with your clients?

Rickert is adamant about having contracts with her subcontractors and contracts with her clients. She does have a non-soliciation clause that prevents her subcontractors from working independently with her clients for a certain period.

Anderson admitted to being a bit lax about contracts. She does have house rules and a general expectation of the level of work and editing, but she doesn’t have formal contracts.

Gilliland said that she usually has a contract directly with the client or author and has a separate contract with the editor who subcontracted the work.

What are the top one or two lessons you’ve learned through your subcontracting experiences?

Anderson said (only somewhat jokingly), “Consider not subcontracting. There’s a lot to be said for the one-person business. If you’ve got solid clients, you’re enjoying your work, and you’re able to handle it efficiently, why torture yourself?” A second lesson is that if you have to subcontract, make a plan. Decide on the kind of model that will work best for your business and the kinds of editors that will be the best fit. A last piece of advice for editors looking to subcontract is to think of themselves as independent professionals. “This is not being an employee. This is being a proactive professional fulfilling a freelance opportunity.”

Gilliland advised, “Only work for top-drawer people. Work with the best people you can, especially if you’re just starting out. They’ll be good examples, teach you, and offer you better work.”

Rickert’s advice: have a contract—with both client and subcontractor. Get a line of credit. She added, “Be clear that you’re still responsible for the work. You’re responsible to everyone: client and subcontractors. Don’t think you’re getting out of anything by subcontracting.”

PubPro 2013 recap

Managing editors and publication production managers from across BC gathered at SFU Harbour Centre on Saturday for the first ever PubPro unconference. We had representatives from educational publishers, trade book publishers, self-publishers, magazine publishers, journal publishers, technical publishers, course developers, communications departments, and more.

The day kicked off with session pitches: participants interested in presenting had a minute to pitch their topics to the crowd. Then, based on audience interest, our volunteers assigned each talk to one of our rooms. Yvonne Van Ruskenveld (West Coast Editorial Associates), Rob Clements (Ingram Content Group), Anne Brennan (Allegro Communications and EAC’s Certification Steering Committee), John Maxwell (SFU), and Jennifer Lyons (Influence Publishing) offered to present, and I  pitched my talk about the editorial wiki I built as an in-house editor.

After the presentations were added to the schedule, we still had several slots to fill, so I proposed four discussion topics and asked members of the audience to volunteer to lead them. Eve Rickert stepped up to lead the discussion about managing a team of editors and working with freelancers; Jesse Marchand led a discussion about digital workflow; Brian Scrivener chaired the roundtable on project management and workflow; and Lara Smith took on the managing editors’ wish list for production management software.

We planted a volunteer in each of our rooms to help the presenters set up and to keep the day on track. To make sure we captured the day’s main takeaways, we also had a volunteer in each room taking notes. I spent my day in the main event room helping the presenters there, so I didn’t get a chance to partake in what I’ve heard were lively and engaging discussions.  I look forward to reading our volunteers’ notes and catching up on what I missed; they will be compiling a full recap of the day for West Coast Editor, EAC-BC’s online newsletter, and I’ll post an update when the article appears.

Here’s a summary of what I did see:

Yvonne Van Ruskenveld—Interactive Editing: Big Project, Big Team, Tight Deadlines

West Coast Editorial Associates’ Yvonne Van Ruskenveld shared with us some of her wisdom gained from her experiences working in educational publishing, which can be vastly more complex than trade publishing owing to the sheer number of people involved. A project manager has to oversee the work of several writers, editors, artists, designers, picture researchers, and layout technicians, and when one phase of a project slips, the problem can cascade and put the entire project in jeopardy. In the planning phase, Van Ruskenveld said, it’s important to map out the whole project and consider issues such as how non-editors might be used to support substantive or developmental editors. Team members should receive an outline of the editorial process, a schedule, and a style sheet, as well what Van Ruskenveld calls a “project profile”—an annotated sample of a unit or chapter showing exactly what elements it has to contain.

A theme that ran throughout Van Ruskenveld’s talk was the importance of considering the social aspect of your team: a team functions more smoothly if members are encouraged to interact with one another and communicate freely. The project manager should set the tone for the group dynamics by being open, acknowledging receipt of messages, and responding promptly to team members. Most importantly, the project manager should be able to troubleshoot quickly and without pointing fingers. Once the project has wrapped up, the project manager should be sure to congratulate the team members and celebrate their contributions.

That said, Van Ruskenveld—and a few audience members—did acknowledge that some editors are just not suited to this kind of a project. Again, because educational publishing is so demanding, editors who can’t deliver on deadline should probably not be assigned to such a project, nor should editors who can’t work without a lot of guidance.

Rob Clements—Print on Demand for Editors

Rob Clements, now a sales manager at Ingram Content Group, began his publishing career at Regent College Publishing, where he eventually became the managing editor. There he helped revive out-of-print titles of Christian academic literature that had a small but enthusiastic readership by acquiring the rights to those books and printing small quantities. After hearing about Ingram’s Lightning Source print-on-demand service, he quickly became a big fan of the platform but expressed to Ingram his frustrations relating to the importation process of the print-on-demand copies. Ingram responded by offering him a job: Clements would be responsible for resolving some of the problems specific to Canadians who wanted to use Ingram’s services.

Lightning Source was founded in 1997 as a division of Ingram Content Group, and it provides digital and offset print services that help publishers sidestep the traditional supply chain, which is full of risk—risk that stock won’t arrive to a retailer in time to meet demand, risk that sell-in will be poor and that copies will sit in a warehouse, risk that sell-through will be poor and returns will have to be remaindered or pulped. Print-on-demand offers just-in-time delivery that not only eliminates this risk but also allows publishers to print in any market. Print-on-demand technology is well suited to Canadian publishing, which by definition is small-market publishing.

For editors, Clements said, opportunities lie in publishers’ and self-published authors’ desires to make reprint changes to their books. Since tweaks and adjustments are now so easy to implement—you need only wait until the next copy to be printed to see your changes made—editors will be called upon to manage and execute this process.

Anne Brennan—EAC Certification

Certification Steering Committee co-chair Anne Brennan spoke to the group about EAC’s certification program. The program was developed over the last two decades, Brennan explained, and is based on EAC’s Professional Editorial Standards. Candidates can write exams to become certified in proofreading, copy editing, stylistic editing, or structural editing—and if they pass all four, they earn the title of Certified Professional Editor. Brennan was quick to point out that not passing the certification tests doesn’t mean that you’re not a good editor, but becoming certified means that you’ve achieved the gold standard in editing.

The program’s advantages for freelancers are often touted: certification demonstrates an editor’s excellence to existing and potential clients, thus allowing that editor to gain confidence, bypass some requirements for certain contracts (e.g., some provincial government contracts allow certified editors to bid without submitting a portfolio), and maybe even raise his or her rates. But why should organizations and in-house editors care about certification? In-house editors who achieve certification are in a better position to ask for a raise or a promotion, Brennan noted, and if you’re looking for an editor, hiring someone who’s certified basically eliminates the need to test them. Opting for someone in the roster of certified editors means you’re hiring a professional who has proven that he or she can deliver excellent work. Organizations that encourage their employees to pursue certification are essentially publicly declaring their commitment to high editorial standards and clear, effective communication.

I added that I pursued certification while I was in house because I was responsible for giving editorial feedback to freelance and junior editors. Being certified gave me the confidence to go into those conversations confident and informed.

John Maxwell—Beyond Microsoft Word

Are we forever trapped in the clutches of Microsoft Word? John Maxwell explored some alternatives to the program in his talk, in which he argued that Word was really made for another time and isn’t well suited to the interactive editor–author relationship we can accommodate and have come to expect today. What are some of the other options out there?

Maxwell said right off the bat that he wouldn’t be talking about OpenOffice, which basically replicates the functionality of Microsoft Office and so isn’t an alternative to it at all. One class of true alternatives are word processors in the cloud, such as Google Docs or the ubiquitous Wysiwyg online editor on platforms like WordPress, although Maxwell did say that the next-generation HTML5 editors would likely overtake the latter very soon. Google Docs allows for collaborative authoring and editing—two people can simultaneously work on a document as long as they’re not making changes to the same paragraph—and you can see the revision history of a document, but it doesn’t really track the changes in a way that editors might want.

Another class of options includes simplified writing tools that allow you to focus on the words and not have to worry about document formatting; these include Scrivener and Editorially (in development). Part of this “back to the simple text editor” movement is the concept of markdown, a very lightweight markup language: gone are the intimidating tags that you see in XML; instead you use underscores to format text into italics, asterisks for boldface, etc.

For versioning and editorial workflow, Maxwell mentioned Git, a software tool that programmers use. It allows multiple people to edit a document at the same time and will flag editing conflicts when they arise. Although there’s a possibility it will creep into the mainstream, Maxwell thinks it will likely remain primarily a tool for the software development community. Other tools that allow versioning are wikis, which allow you to see a page’s revision history, and annotation tools that are used for peer review in scholarly publishing.

Finally, Maxwell gave us a demo of Poetica, which is being developed by a programmer and poet pair. Writers can upload or input plain text and ask for editorial input; an editor can then make suggestions, which appear as overlain editorial markup. The impressive demonstration elicited some oohs and aahs from the audience; as Maxwell later remarked to me, “You could feel the air pressure drop when everyone gasped.” He fielded several questions about what the software could and couldn’t do, and he suggested that people contact the developers for a chance play with it and send them comments about what kinds of features they’d like to see.

Iva Cheung—The Editorial Wiki: An indispensable communication and training tool

I’m glad I got to talk to the PubPro group about the remarkable usefulness of the editorial wiki that I built while I was editorial coordinator at D&M. I’ve covered all of the points in my talk in a previous post, so I won’t repeat them here, but I was so encouraged by the responsiveness of audience members to the idea. I hope some of them will decide to implement a wiki—or something like it—for their own organization, and I’m always available to consult on such a project if they go forward.

The sessions, each only forty minutes long, prompted incredibly interesting discussions that continued through the lunch break and at the afternoon’s networking tea, a completely unstructured session in which participants could grab a tea or coffee and keep the conversation going. We also invited pre-registered freelancers to join us for the tea, because we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put editors and indexers in the same room as those who might be interested in hiring them.

We wrapped up the day with a brief closing session, where we gave away two books, Adrian Bullock’s Book Production, which went to Lara Smith, and International Paper’s Pocket Pal, which went to Anne Brennan.

All in all, PubPro was an eye-opening, inspiring day. (Check out the Storify that EAC-BC compiled.) A million thanks to our amazing crew of volunteers, without whom the day would not have gone nearly as smoothly: Maria Jose Balbontin, Megan Brand, Lara Kordic, Jesse Marchand, Dee Noble, Claire Preston, Michelle van der Merwe, and Grace Yaginuma. Thanks also to EAC-BC (especially professional development co-chairs Tina Robinson and Eva van Emden) and the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing (particularly Rowly Lorimer, Suzanne Norman, and John Maxwell), as well as our event sponsors—Friesens, Hemlock, Ingram, and West Coast Editorial Associates. I’m elated by the positive feedback I’ve received so far from participants. We may have to do something like this again!

Derek Hayes wins inaugural Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize

Congratulations to Derek Hayes, whose British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas has picked up yet another honour! Hayes’s visually stunning opus has won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia, a new award from UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society. More details here.

The Alcuin Society honours Will Rueter and The Aliquando Press

The Alcuin Society gave its sixth annual Robert R. Reid Award and Medal for lifetime achievement in the book arts to Will Rueter—teacher, printmaker, bookbinder, graphic designer, one-time senior designer at the University of Toronto Press, and founder of The Aliquando Press, a private press based in Dundas, Ontario. To celebrate this honour, the Alcuin Society invited Rueter and fellow private press owner Rollin Milroy (of Heavenly Monkey) to sit down for an informal interview and chat.

To kick off the evening, Alcuin board member Ralph Stanton acknowledged Leah Gordon, who helped organize the event, as well as special guests in the audience—patron Yosef Wosk; Don McLeod, editor of The Devil’s Artisan magazine; Stan Bevington of Coach House Press; typographer Rod McDonald; Chester and Camilla Gryski of Toronto; and of course Will Rueter himself. Stanton introduced Rueter, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art and the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, who established The Aliquando Press in 1963 and has published over one hundred books and broadsheets, as well as interviewer Rollin Milroy, who, through Heavenly Monkey, has published about three dozen books, the archives of which are housed in Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC Library.

Milroy began his interview by asking Rueter about his background; as it turns out, Rueter’s family has a long history in the book arts. His grandfather’s brother was a Dutch artist who created patterned papers, some of which found its way into Rueter’s Majesty, Order and Beauty: Selections from the Journals of T.J. Cobden-Sanderson. Rueter’s father was a printmaker as well, although because his parents were divorced, Rueter never got a chance to see his father’s private press.

He travelled to Europe to meet his Dutch family in 1960, and he lived in London for ten months. “I had no money but was able to find a small job and soak up whatever I could,” he said. When he got the opportunity to see the Book of Kells, which was being exhibited at the Royal Academy on loan from Ireland, he became excited about the physical properties of the book.

Rueter returned to Canada, where he worked for while in a bookstore and discovered the work of Frank Newfeld. He became inspired to be a book designer and wanted to be able to do everything himself. The hurdle, Rueter explained, was that he knew nothing about making books.

Rueter bought a tabletop press and, under the mentorship of Stan Bevington, began to design and print. It was an exciting time for typography in Ontario, said Rueter: advertising design was strong, and that aesthetic seeped out into book design. Private presses were experimenting with exciting ways of presenting information, poetry, and essays. With the encouragement of designer and typographer Leslie (Sam) Smart, Rueter returned to Europe in 1968 and spent three months reading, looking at time, and visiting the Monotype Works. When he returned to Canada, he had no job, and he applied for a graphic design position at the University of Toronto Press.

Milroy asked if Rueter was interested in publishing generally or in academic publishing specifically. Rueter replied that he would have been happy with any job in publishing but he was lucky to have ended up at the University of Toronto Press, saying that his boss, Allan Fleming, gave him an awful lot of confidence. Rueter noted that scholarly publishing pushed him to find creative ways of tackling what he called “the minutiae of scholarly design”—the bits and pieces including footnotes, block quotes, tables, charts, and images—and he adapted many of those ideas to his work at The Aliquando Press, which occupied his evenings and weekends.

Rueter told us that he and Jim Rimmer shared a mentor in Paul Duensing. Duensing loved monotype machines and designed and cast his own type. He owned his own foundry and was in the unique position of being a one-man shop. Through Duensing, Rueter met Leonard Bahr of Adagio Press. Bahr, said Rueter, was a type-A personality—“He was once hospitalized because he found a typo in a book he’d just printed,” Rueter said, prompting raucous laughter. “He was totally passionate about type and books.” Bahr had wanted to write a book on private printing and even set some of it in type, but he never completed it. Miraculously, Rueter said, he’d kept Bahr’s galley proofs, and on the fiftieth anniversary of The Aliquando Press, Rueter printed Pressing Matters, a book in Bahr’s honour. Bahr’s first two chapters became the first two essays of the book; Bahr had written an outline for the subsequent chapters but hadn’t gotten any further. Pressing Matters also included correspondence from Paul Duensing and a contribution about the economics of the private press publishing from Rollin Milroy. Rueter contributed an afterword, “Printing Is Pleasure,” about the state of the private press today.

“What about the future?” Rollin Milroy asked. “I can’t make any prognostications,” Rueter answered, adding that he hopes the private press will continue to exist even if technological changes mean that the physical book may not exist at a commercial scale. “I can’t imagine not having a private press,” said Rueter, explaining that he feels he’s been able to hide behind the press—that the discipline of making books has forged his sense of self and has been a kind of salvation for him. He hopes that in the future we uphold “the importance of the text—always the text—because that’s what we work for.”

Milroy showed some examples of Rueter’s hand lettering, asking, “Do you think it’s important for people interested in the graphic arts to render letters by hand?”

“Absolutely,” answered Rueter. “It’s important to appreciate the subtlety of letterforms,” as well as the relationships between them. He mentioned that he’d tried to design his own typeface, but it was clunky and just didn’t work. “Letterforms are not necessarily type,” he elaborated. They have their own rules and disciplines when they become type.”

Rollin Milroy mentioned that he and Rueter both shared a strong interest in music, as well as a desire to express that interest through printing and books. “Why do you see these two media overlapping?” Rueter admitted that he has great difficulty with music and that he can’t read it. But he says he can’t print without music. “Letterpress printing and private printing have a kind of parallel relationship with early music,” he said. Whereas a piano is refined, he explained, earlier instruments such as harpsichords and lutes have a kind of tension; you get sour notes if they are not well tuned, much like a letterpress.

How, asked Milroy, does someone wanting to create their own press today get started? “Talk to anyone who’s actually printing,” said Rueter. “Read the classics.” He recommended several titles, including

  • D.B. Updike’s Printing Types
  • Just My Type by Simon Garfield
  • The Book in the Renaissance by Andrew Pettegree
  • Letterpress Now by Jessica White

“Be devoted to printing, want to learn,” said Rueter. “There is no money to be made, but you can have a lot of fun.” He added that one of the joys of letterpress these days is the flexibility to experiment offered by polymer plates.

Milroy asked Rueter which of his own books were his favourite. Rueter mentioned the following:

  • The Articulation of Time, a book he printed twenty years ago, “the first time I really became aware of my own mortality,” he said. The book features a lot of quotations and poetry that had meaning to him at the time.
  • Diary of an Amaryllis, which features colour reproductions of drawings by Rueter’s wife, who illustrated the life cycle of an amaryllis plant.
  • Majesty, Order and Beauty, the diary of T.J. Cobden-Sanderson. Rueter described Sanderson (1840–1922) as “one of the most complex people. He started life as a barrister but then became the best bookbinder of the nineteenth century. He wrote journals and was an important figure in the early fine-press movement.”

“Private printers do work in very strange ways,” Rueter said. He offered a quote from Henry James, saying “He’s talking about writing, but I think it says a lot about private printing and its frustrations: ‘We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we can… The rest is madness of art.”

The evening ended with a tribute from last year’s Robert R. Reid recipient, Stan Bevington, who said of Rueter’s work, “Every letter has been picked up by hand. And his choice of paper is exquisite… As a designer at the University of Toronto Press, the largest university press in Canada, Will Rueter made a great contribution to setting high standards for commercial printing.” At Aliquando, Bevington added, Rueter is involved in every aspect: selecting texts, editing, designing, writing, illustrating, setting type, and printing. He has come a long way from his first book, A Bach Fugue, which Rueter derided as having “derivative design and poor inking” to the impressive opus of Majesty, Order and Beauty, which was his hundredth publication.

Each of the audience members got to go home with a special keepsake—a gorgeously printed and incisive quote from Latin grammarian Terentianus: “Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli”—or “The fate of books depends on the capacity of the reader.”

A certificate in plain language

Katherine McManus, director of SFU’s Writing and Communications program, is the only North American representative on the project team of the International Consortium for Clear Communication (IC Clear), an organization spearheading a postgraduate certificate course in plain language. She spoke at the March EAC-BC meeting about the history of the project and how it’s shaping up.

Joining McManus on the project team are

  • Karine Nicolay, of Katholieke Hogeschool Kempen in Belgium;
  • Stefan Hampl and Martin Fossleitner of Austria’s Sigmund Freud University;
  • Katrin Hallik of the Institute for the Estonian Language; and
  • Sandra Fisher-Martins of the Instituto Superior de Educação e Ciências in Portugal.

They studied the feasibility of the project in 2009, investigating the potential of delivering blended face-to-face/online instruction in English and other languages. The team met (virtually) for the first time in 2010. By the end of that year they had completed a grant proposal and secured the funding from the European Union to go ahead with the course development. They established a diverse advisory board of clear communication experts, including

  • Christopher Balmford (Australia),
  • Robert Linsky (U.S.).
  • Deborah Bosley (U.S.).
  • Karen Schriver (U.S.).
  • Frances Gordon (South Africa),
  • Ginny Reddish (U.S.),
  • Joe Kimble (U.S.), and
  • Karel van der Waarde (Netherlands).

The team also developed and distributed a needs analysis survey and created the IC Clear website. McManus explained the challenges of working with others in such far-flung locations; although they have had the occasional face-to-face meeting, such as one in Stockholm in 2011, most of the work has been done without seeing one another. The team is working toward a 2014 deadline to have the course launched.

The IC Clear course will consist of an introduction and orientation, followed by classes in four modules:

  • project management
  • user analysis and testing
  • clear writing
  • information design and media

McManus explained that candidates have the option to challenge the entire course; they may also challenge individual modules.  After candidates have gone through the course work, they will have the opportunity to do some practical work and collaborate in teams for further learning. Assessment will be through exams and probably an e-portfolio.

Additionally, there may be optional modules, although these have yet to be developed. For example, although the core classes focus on written communication, one of the optional modules may focus on spoken language.

Although neither PLAIN (Plain Language Association International) nor Clarity International has agreed to adopt the IC Clear program as a gold standard, Katherine McManus knows that the education will be valuable. The team plans to market the course to government employees, editors, professional business communicators, lawyers, and people in science and medicine, among other groups. In many cases, these professionals have good understanding of writing but poor understanding of usability.

Plain language and clear communication, said McManus, can be a very politically charged issue. Not only are people often resistant to simplifying language because they think of it as dumbing it down—which is absolutely not the case—some are deliberately unclear because they want to exclude through complication.  The issue of plain language is critical in Portugal, according to team member Sandra Fisher-Martins, because the education and literacy levels in that country are low, and there’s a great need for people to be able to create documents in plain language. Theresa Best, in the audience, told us that Sandra Fisher-Martins has given a TED talk on the topic.

The IC Clear team has a lot of work to do in the coming months as they try to complete the core course offerings by 2014. They hope to pilot the course at the PLAIN2013 conference, which is coming to Vancouver October 10 to 13. The early-bird registration deadline for that conference is April 15.

If you’re interested either in being a guinea pig for the pilot course or in volunteering for PLAIN2013, Katherine McManus encourages you to contact her.