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Production assistant invoice template for Facilities

so a lot of you really liked my day in the life  as a production assistant when i posted that   and that got i think that's like over a thousand  views at the moment so thank you it's like you   know what i'll do another one a bit of like an  updated one for 2021 so i've got a to-do list   and things i need to do so i'm just basically just  going to be going through each of those taking you   with me screen recording so you can see exactly  what i'm doing and hopefully you can find out a   bit more about what a production assistant might  do so just before i start this video just a quick   disclaimer everything i'm about to cover does not  contain any condensable confidential information   roles do vary at different publishing houses so  everything i'm about to cover isn't exclusively   what a production assistant would do in the  book publishing industry it's just my personal   experience i think is that what i need to  cover i think yeah okay let's get into it so if you find this useful make sure you like  comment subscribe share all that jazz your support   really does mean a lot to me so thank you so much  so one of the biggest responsibilities of my job   is reprints and that's self-explanatory it's  reprinting a title a book that's already been   published and we're just loan stock of it so what  i have to do for this is run the pnls festival so   the profit and loss reports to get the costing  see how many we need to print in order to make   up our margin our markups and to make sure that  we obviously make a profit on it because we are   a business then i'll probably do a bit of type  setting as well it's friday so i have to send my   titles to press today which means yes sending it  sending the files to the printer so they can get   start printing on it so i have sent those already  but i am waiting proof so when the digital proofs   come through from the printers i just have to  check it make sure they're okay and they can go   ahead on printing that so this is a link to one of  the digital proofs for the reprint that i'm going   to look at now so the priest looks slightly  different in terms of these like red lines   basically oh yeah so this is my work blog this is  where i track the reprints that i've been doing   so say like the title of it the isbn the important  date so when we're informing the printers that the   files are coming when we actually send them to  the printers and then when we want it in stock   then this is all like the specs of the book so  yeah whether it's paperback or hardback etc and   any additional information so for example this  one i sent to press earlier today it was going   from china to hong kong and  then going to america and then   uk because we needed in both our warehouses  so first things first we'll use the mish tool 198x129 yeah perfect that's a common tps  that's fine just make sure that they've got   the colorful in the right place and it's updated  and then on the imprint page just making sure   that the reprinted line has been updated that  we've got our addresses in there etc make sure   the isbns are correct i mean at this point you  would have done a lot of these checks when you're   sending the files off the type setting this is  just kind of making sure that the file looks   okay to be printed i mean if we scroll through  and the text was completely off center you'd   obviously know that perhaps there's been an issue  with creating this proof on the printer's end and   yeah just making sure that it's it's fine so  i mean from a rough look at it it looks fine and i have another one to look at midsummer  night stream when we were in the office we   used to have advanced copies come through and  we could check the color and the printing of   them then but obviously we're working from home  at the moment and so it's just digitally you'd   have to just check that the colors of them  look okay it's not too dark not too light etc   but yes that one looks okay okay i'm gonna hide  the prices there but um to just say that it's in   the text groups have been approved for these two  titles so type setting is what i'm going to be   doing next that's what we do for reprint so every  time a book is reprinted you have to change a   couple of things whether that's the reprinted line  in the copyright page or if it's like a correction   that's been noted by the author or the editorial  team we usually do that on monday but have quite   a few reprints this week so i'd rather just do  it on friday give the typesetters long enough   time to do it because we usually ask for it back  for the wednesday ready to send to the printers   on the friday so then the next titles to work  on they're going to press next week are these   ones here so how many are there there are 11 so  that means i have to do the type setting of those   ones kind of like today or monday ready to have  the text files back for wednesday unfortunately   for confidentiality reasons and when speaking  to the legal team at bloomsbury i can't show you   i can't tell you what systems we're using but i  mean if you happen to recognize any of them that   you use at your workplace and i'm just now going  to go on to our server that holds all of our files   so i've just downloaded the text file for one  of the titles i need to do type setting for so   it's this title called keywritings i've just  downloaded that from our internal server that   holds all of our files i've downloaded the print  text pdf because there's different types of pdfs   that you can have but this is print text because  self-explanatory is the one that's going to the   printers the one that eventually is going to  be printed when you're doing the type setting   a misconception is that we actually do the  type setting we don't as production assistants   we get sent off to external suppliers to do  it we just tell them what needs to be done   so first of all i measure it and make sure yes  this is what it's supposed to be and so compared   to my workload it's supposed to be 216x13a again  that's another common specification in inches   that's 5.5 times 8.5 inches so that's all fine  just check obviously if it is the right title   make sure that we've got the imprint the color  phone and the imprint page is the updated one if   it's like an old one we like to update them to  make sure that they're the newest possible then   this is what we change every time we reprint a  book so we change the reprinted line so i'm going   to say we've been to 2020 we're printed 2021 um we  also are missing our island address here um so i'm   just making a note there to add in our island  address because that's missing and for brexit   reasons etc we need that in there now checking  again that the isbns are correct et cetera and   then just generally looking if there were any  corrections as well that would be on our content   management system to say that yeah any corrections  need to be added in just from an oval look   everything centered um in terms of page numbers  well make sure that's correct so 240 14.239   i mean the thing is that you have to remember with  reprints is yes obviously do your checks on them   but they have been printed before this like this  is an original file from the first time that it   was printed that's the whole point of it being a  reprint so you know it was correct at one point so   there's not much that could go wrong as if you're  working on frontlist titles for new publications   that would be slightly different so yeah just  to make that clear that these are reprints so   all i'm doing now is using our content management  system to create a purchase for the typesetters and i'll save that to my files and then  send that to the type setters along with   the text file that's got all the commentary  on it on the changes that need to be made   and then ask for them to come back to me in a  few days time next week with the corrective file so this email that i've just come through now  what was happening with this is i sent a p l   for 75 copies of this book to be printed and  it wasn't making markup so that basically means   the percentage of how much we're selling it for  compared to how much we're spending on getting   it printed we weren't basically making enough  profit so the conversation was looking to see if   we could get costs for 100 copies instead to make  it see if that makes a difference we send them the   costs for 100 copies and then i sent them the p  l the profit and loss report for that as well and   it's just come through that we've approved 125  copies so we've gone up again so i'm just going   to add that on here now how to be a writer it's  going to be 125 copies and it has been approved   to print for a reprint to be 125 conference that's  not uncommon but it's quite low obviously the more   books you print the cheaper it will be in terms of  the unit cost so ideally you want to print as many   as possible but if you know that you're not making  that many sales on them there's obviously no point   keeping them in the warehouse and just hoping  that one day they'll sell if we compare it to   a one that i've just done this week the crucible  i think i studied that at school at gcc um but   this one we're printing ten thousand copies  so that just kind of shows how it can differ   i think the drama titles do sell more copies  because they go to schools etc as well   whereas some of our other titles so literary  studies history philosophy whatever it is   we perhaps won't sell as many of them because  because i work in academic a lot of our titles   go to universities or libraries or students  academics anything like that so not as many   people would be buying them if i were to work in  trade and work on like fiction titles the reprints   would be a lot higher so probably more like 20  to 30 000 depending on how popular the title is   i've been sent a few more pis as well so print  instructions from our inventory managers so that   means i basically just have to get costs so i'm  going to be doing a few of those today as well   usually when we're in the office and it's just  been our financial year end which is at the   end of february we usually clear out all of our  bookshelves rearrange them etcetera depending on   what's been published and reprinted that year  where we're not in the offices at the current   time of filming this we've just been advised  to do a bit of a digital clean up as well   if our folders you know deleting any files  that we no longer need to keep or anything   so i'll probably do that in the afternoon just as  like a more chill relaxing task yeah that's one   of the things that i'm going to aim to do today as  well i also work on s so that stands for new   and paperback print-on-demand titles so i sent  some text files off to the typesetters for some   corrections a few weeks ago so i'm going to now  just check those make sure that they're all in   order so i have a separate work blog for many pods  these are the ones that i'm working on etc so if   we go to the may ones it should be all of these  ones that have been corrected the original file   comes from the hardback file and then because now  that the paperback has come out it's usually 18   months after you would add in the paperback isbn  and then you would add in a line to say when this   paperback edition was published as well so in this  case it's 2021. so if we look at this one prem   i don't even know it's like prem raw white and  counter culture should be two three four by one   five six millimeters 248 pages and the corrections  were just the paid back line the paperback icn and   then the island address being added again so we  can scroll over here it's two three four four   one five six that's fine the difference between  these pod files and so pod because it's d   so it's still taking a pd file and print text  files if they don't have trim page lines so   if you just scroll down here that is the accurate  measurement fine so they've added in the island to   dress that's fab they've added in sentence that  says this paperback edition published in 2021   and then they've added in the payback i said i'm  just going gonna check that is correct as well so   it ends in four four eight and so this one ends  in four four eight as well so that's fine usually   with pod files and files the images will be  mono so black and white so just making sure that   if any of them were changed from color to black  and white that they look okay also for pod and   files there needs to be blank pages at the  end of the file um yeah it does and just the way   that it works about pod printers it it needs to  be there one or two blank pages at the end this   one happens there so that's fine so that file all  looks okay to me 24 page extent looks okay all the   questions have been made so i can go back to them  and say that that one's fine and they can upload   that to our system and then i will basically  just go through and do that for all of them now so this one is slightly different additional time  this actually needed a new imprint page so this   is an ibt title so ivy taurus is an imprint that  we acquired so although we're keeping it as the   ibt branding the colorful and the imprint pages  needed updating because it was an older version   so just checking that that's the newest one  and that's the imprint page is updated as well   yeah a lot of my job to be honest  is just checking text files whether   that's to the printers or pd files or  whatever it is it's a lot of checking   text files nine times out of ten even more than  that there's no issues there's no corrections etc then i really like to stick to kind of key dates  and we do have like a key date schedule that   gets sent around to us to basically say these  are the key dates that you need to stick to   in order for this book to make publication so  s although they are print onto one they   are technically new publications  because they're new and paperback   and so they have a pub date so these ones i'm  working on now they publish on the 20th of may   that's their pub date their publication date so  working back to backwards from that you want them   live for as soon as possible but you know a couple  months before so these textiles were due a couple   days ago and i did receive them a couple days ago  and then once i approved all the text files i'll   just mark in my workflow that they're all okay  and that i've received copy so i'll check with   the designers now to make sure that there's  no delays on that and the code will be ready   and then this column here is basically saying if  i've updated the metadata or not on our system   and then distribution so this is when i aim to  actually distribute the files so by that like   digitally just distributing file sending  it to the pod printers and then hopefully   um within sort of a month's time they will be able  to get that live and it's available for printing   ready for our pub date of may 20. may 20 may  20th so i'm going to cover some of this up but i   use on outlook the task systems here so you can  see that i put in kind of all the key dates here   so mainly for july for example is on the 6th of  may and that reflects what's in my workbook or   it should be there yeah i can basically just keep  on track of when things are due in because it can   be really hard when titles are all at different  stages they're all publishing in different months   and so i like just keep that there when whilst you  in like if the typesetters are late for example i   know when to chase them up because they're behind  unfortunately i don't have any covers to check at   the moment um but they things i would check on  that would be that the gps is correct that the   extent is correct because if you think about  it a higher extent to the number of pages in it   would be result in a thicker book and therefore  the spine would be thicker so making sure that   that's correct so that the cover the spine is  is the correct width checking that the colors   look okay checking that there are no changes to  the author affiliation in the book like the blurb   checking that the ibn's correct checking that  we have the specific kodi bar code on the back   checking obviously shit's the right book checking  just checking check and check in basically so when   i get those through from the design team i will  look at those so another responsibility of my job   is managing the author project management survey  and that's the server that we send out to authors   to get their feedback on things like proofreading  copy editing communication indexing etc based on   the service that our external project managers  typesetters provide for them and i manage that so   i will send out the surveys and then i'll collate  their results and then once i've kind of got   as many results as i can for all the titles that  have gone to press that month i share that with   our external team and wait for it to get approval  before sending it off to the project management   companies themselves so they can see how they've  been performing the whole idea of that is because   if they're consistently performing badly we will  give them what's called a black mark and if they   get three black marks then we will consider like  terminating our contracts with them basically so   it's it's basically just a way to make sure that  they're providing the best service that they can   because essentially they work on behalf of us  if that makes sense i won't have to show you   this properly but what this spreadsheet is is our  author project management survey sheet and it's   where i collate all the results from an author  and we have questions one to five and i'll put   in there what they scored for that question and  i can see what project management company were   working on that title as well so i can see who  i need to go back to if there's any issues etc i've just got a reminder to have some lunch sent  these emails from one of our design team that's   usually because they have uploaded a cover for me  so this one i know bunnies is a pod file and it's   oberon so we acquired oberon we have a priority  pod list at the moment so all the ones that we're   really low in stock in and we need to get um kodi  as soon as possible so people can start ordering   them and this is the design team basically  just saying that they have uploaded that to   our file server thingy so it's ready for me to  check this email here is almost like an automatic   feed from our content management system but the  person who's feeding it can add an extra note   so this is basically saying that this title  that i mentioned earlier for 125 copies it's   been approved to print basically just so that  it's in our system so that if anyone were to   query the status of it etc they can see that  it's now been approved to print i feel like   that's mainly it to be honest i don't really know  what else you can show the confidentiality reasons   but that's kind of it that's just another day in  the life as a production assistant there might be   a lot of reprints on s we'll look at that  author survey a bit later on as well do a bit of   a digital cleanup so i think that's basically all  i need to share today i hope that's useful for you   in knowing what a production assistant might do  in the book publishing industry let me know down   below if this was helpful or you have ideas for  future videos etc and thanks for watching bye