Gordon Woolf's Blog

Give your Printing Problems the Binary Chop!

The Binary Chop isn't a new form of karate. It reverses the power of the computer by calculating using two digits, the equivalent of on and off, just as the computer does.

There are many problems with printing — in fact as a consultant, I have more calls about printing problems than any other aspect of desktop publishing — but the most common problem can easily be solved using the Binary Chop.

This problem is that a file just refuses to print.

Firstly, check that a known good file will still print. If it does, then it is almost certain that the problem is with the non-printing file, and not with your printer or network. You could also try creating a PDF of the file. And, if that works, try printing from the PDF.

Here are a series of other steps to take:

1. Make a copy of the file under a new name and check whether this prints (sometimes the process of re-ordering and compression in file size which occurs from a Save as… command will solve the problem).
2. If you are on a network, try printing the file from the computer to which the printer is attached (which may also enable you to check whether the printer begins to accept information and whether this continues for some time before the printer returns to Idle mode. You can also check this on networks by following the progress of the job from your computer using the network software).
3. Using the copy of the file, try printing without graphics by using the Omit graphics selection under print Options if this exists. If the file prints then selectively delete and restore graphics files until you isolate the one causing the problem.
4. If the file has multiple pages, send half the pages, then the other half. This is the first application of the Binary Chop; by halving the non-printing pages each time, until you can isolate, hopefully, a single non-printing page. If you have more than one non-printing page, look for typefaces or graphics which they have in common.
5. Take one non printing page and cut and paste half the objects to a new file. Try both halves. If one half prints, you know your problem is almost certainly in the other half. Either way, continue halving the number of objects until you isolate a single object which will not print. See below for a solution if both halves print but not the whole.
6. If everything else prints, go back to the original page, make another copy, delete just the offending item, and, hopefully, your page will print.
7. Replace the offending object, which may be a graphic or a piece of type.

Errors in newspapers: there should be fewer

Much as I enjoy stories of errors in newspapers (one of the best I've seen was out local newspaper which had "headline in here" in 144pt - 2" - type, an error that I caused to be seen on TV and in the book Type & Layout), they are not happening *just* because of new systems. They have happened even in manual days because of the rush to get the first edition on the streets.

It has always been one of the benefits of living in a country area or one distant from the production point. (The UK newspaper the Guardian became known as "The Grauniad" by Private Eye because of all the spelling errors there was no time to fix.) What should be noted is that most such errors are soon fixed and the vast majority of the readership will have seen nothing odd.

When I was a subeditor on one of Murdoch's newspapers I recall the deputy editor looking at the first edition and shouting at the copy desk: "Well we got it out, now let's turn it into a newspaper". And that was in hot metal days.

The normal setup for newspaper staffing is that galleys, or their equivalent, are read either in printed proof form or on screen, originally by proofreaders, now more likely as part of the copyediting process.

At this stage the copyeditor should take out rude words in the slug because they too often get through to print. The slug is the abbreviated text used to identify a story, originally one word, now more often a kind of suggested headline. As a newspaper editor and chief of staff I banned this kind of dummy head; even if the person writing it would not want it to be the final one it should be something which makes sense and helps clarify what the main point is of the story. If the writer can't write any kind of headline, then it often idicates that the writer is confused.

The headline itself is usually added on the page layout so may be seen only by the person doing the layout of the page. In the past, errors and questionable headlines were often picked up by the compositors, i.e. those who put the page together in metal or phototypesetting, but those people no longer exist. It is therefore most likely the end of the compositor which leads to more errors getting through -- they'd even take a hammer to the plate on the press if necessary since it was sometimes preferable to ensure that no one could read it rather than let an error go through. You can't effectively take a hammer to a digital press, though I'm sure there are many who would have liked to.

The proofreaders who were reading the page proofs might still have been reading the proofs when the press started. On a newspaper with a large or growing circulation, the plate with those changes might then sit by the press until there was a paper break and the press had to be stopped unless there was some danger of legal action. There were trucks, trains, buses and sometimes even aircraft waiting for the newspaper bundles. A little embarrassment for a journalist or editor was not a consideration.

We may actually see fewer errors as newsrooms change over from a print first attitude to one of web first, so the more carefully researched and probably longer print version would have already appeared in two or three versions on the web. Any errors which get through to print will have happened in the final rewrite stage.

The future of news stories is seen in a quote from the consultant brought in by Vance Publishing chief Peggy Waker (even though that's a magazine group): "Instead of researching and writing a lengthy print article, then repurposing it for the Web, the new process would run in reverse: posting a first take of breaking news at 200 words, following with an update at 400 words, then producing a longer second-day story, which would subsequently be repurposed for the print publication." See http://bit.ly/3dDiBU

Ms Walker also tells of expecting an outcry when the web and press editing teams were merged, and not just for single publications but for the whole group. Unexpectedly the large open editorial room was popular -- as it used to be when most publishers were like that.

I'm also pleased to see that computers are now significantly quieter. When I first changed from paper editing the increase in noise level and the size of the monitors meant there was a massive divide between editors. No longer could you read out a questionable phrase to no one in particular, confident that if something was wrong you'd get a shout from a fellow editor nearby. I suspect that as editors get physically closer once more, those co-operative days which caught so many errors will be back.

A real reason to publish it yourself

Some people publish their own book because that's the way they want to do it -- to retain control, regardless of the effect that has on sales.

But take a look at this blog interview with someone who has seen both sides. (And with 25 books published, mostly by big publishers, he has major experience!) In 10 years, and with new editions as needed, John Bear sold more than 200,000 copies of his guide to distance learning for degrees; then it was taken up by a major publisher . . . which just did not do as well as he continued to do with his own edition which, through a stroke of luck in contract wording, he was able to continue to sell direct.

Such direct comparisons are rare, but it shows what a small publisher can achieve with a book that fills a need. I quote:

"It's so easy to get carried away, as I was, by the heady feeling of being published by someone big and famous. Perhaps that ego boost is reason enough. It is fine to hope for big sales, but one should not hold one's breath."

He adds:

"Even with more than 25 books published by the big guys (Ten Speed, Time Life, McGraw-Hill, Harcourt, Price/Stern/Sloan, Career Press, Prometheus), the most fun I had, and, by far, the biggest profits I had, were from the self-published, self-promoted books. While Bear's Guide was the most enduring, the most successful (over the short term) was one I bet you don't know about: Mailing from Mexico. Boy, talk about finding a niche. This was a 64-page 'manual' with information you couldn't get anywhere else, so my co-author and I sold it for $100, and we sold 1,000 of them from just two ads in Entrepreneur Magazine."

And that is also an important point: books are information and their possible sale price is related to the value the prospective buyer will put on them. In a book store books tend to be compared, even subconciously, with other books: why does this one cost $70 and that one, which is bigger, only $30? By mail and email and internet order you are selling the information. If you can find that niche, it becomes less a book and more a study guide, a manual, and some may prefer to put it out in a report format.

With one of my books, an early version of the one on PageMaker, I put out two versions: the normal book and the same information as a looseleaf manual for several times the price. Why I didn't stick to that format is anyone's guess. The numbers sold were smaller, but the profit per sale was very high and there were no middle men; every copy sold directly to a newspaper somewhere in the world.

Incidentally, that interview is on the Small Press Blog, run by Thomas Nixon, and though he now posts infrequently, it is still a good site for information on the small publisher world. And note that Mr Nixon calls it the "small press" blog with the subtitle "Your guide to independent publishing". There are mentions there of the dreaded term "self-publishing" but presumably they are to give the important keywords which will bring those who think it is the right term to his sites.

My own book on publishing your own book is Publish Your Book and though it is available from a publisher, Worsley Press, that is the publishing firm which I started and where I first produced that book on a copier, bound it myself, guillotined it to size and packed copies to mail out.

Magalog or catazine - good idea but not a new one

There's nothing new under the sun. That was my reaction when I read a US Postal Service blog suggesting the latest trend was the "Magalog" or the "Catazine", a hybrid of catalog and magazine. My reaction was thus because this is how one major category of magazines, the trade magazine or trade journal, started a couple of hundred years ago.

The Morgan brothers, who ran a business which combined the categories of druggists and hardware sellers, decided back then that they'd get more readers and more committed readers for their catalogs and thus more customers if they included news and information. And that meant news etc that was not just puffery for their products.

In the 1960s I worked in London for the firm of publishers which had been, a century earlier, that firm of chemists. Those catalogs became the world's first trade magazines, The Chemist and Druggist and The Ironmonger. As they became successful in their own right, they split from the chemicals company (which became Morgan Crucible) and the one which became Morgan Brothers Publishers (and subsequently the Morgan-Grampian Group, now part of Fleet Holdings).

When I started work for the descendants of the Morgan Brothers (Sir Charles Morgan Hudson was the chairman) I worked on The Ironmonger and they were approaching their centenary year as publishers. They set a high standard with an editorial staff of around ten on that magazine alone, a supplements department with two or three (I worked for that section for a while and wrote a 64-page guide to glues and adhesives - exciting stuff!) and an inquiry department with 5 people fulltime answering phone and mail questions from subscribers.

It was definitely profitable and as a young reporter I was sent UK-wide reporting on the meetings of hardware retailers and ironmongers. When John Betjeman (later appointed Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth II and following on previous appointees to that position such as Tennyson, Wordsworth and John Masefield) called for some information in order to write his speech to open an exhibition of Opercula (perhaps better known as "coal hole covers" those often ornate cast iron plates set in footpaths in front of houses above the coal cellars) I was told to find the booklet on that subject we had published long before, try to find some updated information and arrange to meet him before the event and then report on the opening. It took many hours and resulted in about a 6-inch story.

But that was the way things were in those profitable days. Maybe some of the "new" catalogues with news will do as well. As long as they follow the basic rule that the Morgan Brothers followed, that there must be no puffery. Readers had to be respected.

I'd suggest that a good start might be not to call the new publication a "Magalog" or the "Catazine".