Easypress has partnered with Rebecca Souster the COO at LUME Books (https://www.lumebooks.co.uk/) a progressive publisher, to showcase how an improved and automated workflow can provide smart and low cost solutions to your publishing process.

The challenge was to produce 43 backlist titles to meet the year-end demand, quickly and cost effectively for POD distribution via Ingram Lighting Source. The brief was to produce both print and digital formats in the shortest possible time.

Rebecca Souster explained “LUME Books wanted to exploit, as quickly as possible, its new POD channels provided by the trusted distribution of Ingram Content Group, to ensure a fast and reliable route to market.

The titles comprised 21 trade fiction and 22 trade non-fiction which, as they had been previously published, didn’t require significant proofing, or copy-edit changes.

The process employed differed slightly between the fiction and non-fiction titles:

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Fiction

• Manuscripts existed in an approved style, as Microsoft Word files.
• Typesetting was completed as an automated function, using Adobe InDesign, using standard LUME Book’s templates.
• Then composited into the approved running order with front and back matter added for each title.
• Scheduled to allow final sign off by LUME  
• Each title was then laid out to produce a print-ready PDF and EPUB eBook distribution via Ingram, each with a different eBook ISBN and cover image.
  

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Non-Fiction

The trade non-fiction books featured images and had on average 260 footnotes and endnotes. The end-matter included appendices, notes, bibliographies and glossaries.

• Software automatically lays out footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies & glossaries
• LUME Books to provide any late stage edits
• LUME Books to provide any corrections to end-matter
• Scheduled to allow minor edits and sign-off by LUME as requested- facilitated by Easypress’ remote publishing workflow
• Each title was then laid out to produce a print-ready PDF and EPUB eBook  for distribution via Ingram, each with a different eBook ISBN and cover image
  

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Resourcing

• Easypress was responsible for using its publishing software to style, typeset, composite and produce print ready PDFs and eBook. This was managed by 1 x Senior Editor, and time spent amounted 14 elapse days over a period of 28 days
• LUME appointed one of their Editorial team to oversee this and to make the minor amends and final sign-off. The time spent was four elapse days over a period of 28 days.
  

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The success story

• All 43 POD titles were produced within a month
• Staff absence or clashing priorities did not disrupt this automated workflow
• This automated service runs seamlessly in the background
• Minimal editorial resource needed, allowing staff to focus on new publishing, commissioning and revenue generating activity
• This agile workflow enabled an additional 43 titles to market
• 11,568 pages were handled, averaging over two print and eBooks Books per day!
• Competitive all-in pricing, no hidden extras
• The price to produce the finished Hi Res Book PDF was 16.7p per page
• EPUBs produced for 43 titles in under seven hours at an additional 4.5p per page.
  

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What of the experience for LUME Books? Rebecca Souster commented “working with the Easypress publishing platform was super-easy and Easypress’ production team and software did all the hard work producing the POD titles”, commenting further “the speed with which titles were turned around from shipping manuscripts to receiving back print-ready PDFs was incredibly quick, which was a blessing as LUME Books was flat out during the run into Christmas”.

When summing up LUME Books’ experience Rebecca Souster said, “working with Easypress has taken the stress out of my deadlines, resourcing challenges and ultimately as I’m also responsible for the publication production budgets, what extremely cost-effective.

Easypress believes that greater automation and integration of workflows with fewer manual interventions is at the core to improving business performance and efficiencies.

Easypress’ CEO James Macfarlane replied, “Working for LUME Books on the project has been a valid test of what can be achieved in a short space of time and with a very tight budget”, in conclusion he said “Easypress’ goal is to provide a flexible, open software platform which wraps around our client’s workflow and production schedules. For me, this project proves how well our software performs under live conditions and is a real support to Publishers in getting content to market.  I’m always delighted when the publisher says they’re happy with our service and pricing.”