The Production Phase of the Pipeline

Last week, we went through the steps it takes to submit your manuscript to Xulon Press. This week, we will be looking at what you, as an author, can expect throughout the duration of the Production phase.

Once your book is considered “In Production,” the Xulon Press team will go to work to turn your manuscript into a beautiful professional-bound book. First, we will send it to our typesetters, who will set the text according to the specifications of our printer. The text will be typeset in a standard Times New Roman 12-pt. font—unless an author informs their Author Services Representative otherwise prior to typeset—and in full justification.

Our professional designers will immediately begin crafting a beautiful glossy cover to fit your book. The award-winning Xulon Press design team has generated more than 8,000 covers for authors in the past, and their meticulous work is done with a fine eye for detail—and an ear for your needs. Simply send your suggestions through your representative, and our designers will be able to take it from there.

Once your typeset manuscript and cover design are ready, they will be made available for your review online—or via hard copy for a fee. If you are dissatisfied with the work that has been rendered, you can then notify your representative that you would like corrections to be made.

If the author has no additional corrections, they will simply continue on into the next phase of production. Here, the BCC text—a 300-word block of text that appears on the back cover of a book—will be created and typeset, and then an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) will be assigned to your book by Xulon. Once all of these files have been signed off on by the author, the book will then be uploaded to the printer and made available for order.

Because Xulon Press is a print-on-demand (POD) publisher, no copies of the book will be warehoused anywhere. Instead, the book will be printed only as it is ordered. As soon as it has uploaded to the printer, the book will be listed on our affiliates, Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, where it is orderable through a simple click of the button. Once the order is made and then processed, our affiliates will notify our printer, which can print an 800-page book in less than one minute, in any quantity, even one book at a time, fulfilling orders fast.

If you have any questions at all during this part of the process, don’t worry; once we assign you an Author Services Representative, you will have someone to help you every step of the way. You will be able to communicate with them by phone or through Author Center, a tool that has allowed for a much more effective, streamlined mode of communication between authors and their service representatives. What Author Center allows our representatives to do is push more useful information to our authors so that they have it directly at their fingertips.

Next week, we will take a look at what happens once your book has been made orderable and begins to earn royalties.