The section below describes the services I provide for book and magazine projects. I have been taking on more Web site design work, although that is still not the main focus of my consultancy. I will advise you on the Internet's major and still-expanding role in marketing your product or service, and can particularly help you with print projects that have the Internet as a nexus. However, if you only want Web site design for, say, a straightforward, database-driven e-commerce business, I would probably refer you to someone who does just that particular work. Still, we can always talk about where you're going and the best way to get there. Call me at 786-551-0207 with any questions.
The printing press and movable type sounded the first trumpet blasts in the publishing revolution, without which a modern world would never have developed. Ideas can only have consequences, pace Richard Weaver, when they are disseminated, and the greatest means for the dissemination of ideas — even in today's world of nonstop television and Internet and iTunes and YouTube — is still the printed word.
Ah, but printed where? Essentially, you are looking at a printed word right now, although it is printed on a cathode ray tube or LCD array or plasma screen or other type of computer monitor. Unless someone printed this document to an inkjet or laser printer because you don't have a net-connected computer (or, mirabile dictu, any computer at all), then you too are part of the ongoing publishing revolution. And that revolution has been coming at you nonstop since the Chinese and Koreans started the ball rolling with movable type in the 11th century, and Johann Gutenberg perfected a more efficient system in the late 1440s.
Today, publishing means a lot more than it did even a decade ago. The basics are still the same and, if we use book publishing as our example, the process starts with an author who writes the prose (or verse); continues with an editor, whose job it is to ensure that the writing has the greatest possible clarity, efficacy, and impact; proceeds to the proofreader, who picks any nits on the "micro" level that the editor may have missed while working on the "macro" level (although editors pick 'em, too); then it's on to a designer, who will choose an appropriate typeface for the piece, do a page design for the book to be "poured" into, and possibly create the cover, as well; and finally, following that, the finished book goes through another final proofing step — for words and images and every other component — until the process produces finished, print-ready computer files.
Now the decision is made whether to publish in print, print in pixels, or both. Today, authors can see their work printed and bound in a traditional manner, or output one copy at a time in a digital on-demand system; they can use the same files, slightly "repurposed" and tweaked, to produce e-books or PDF (Portable Document Format, an Adobe Systems invention) that can be displayed and/or downloaded, free or otherwise, worldwide over the Internet; they can have audiobooks recorded in a variety of sound formats for distribution on tape, CD, mp3 files, and so on; and they can take the proverbial "all of the above" (or any combination) and collect them all for production on a CD or DVD for a multimedia release.
Self-publishing has become all the rage because of these very advances, but it is still no place for neophytes or dilettantes — unless they masochistically enjoy wasting time, energy, and money.
As a publishing professional with experience and expertise in every step, process, and procedure of the publishing process, I really am the one person to call when you need about four or five pros on your team. I can edit, rewrite, and proofread your copy; do your typesetting and page design; design and produce your book cover; prepare your computer files in any of the leading Macintosh and/or PC page-layout programs (QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign and Acrobat, Corel Ventura, Deneba Canvas); manage the pre-press and print production steps; and ensure delivery of first-class books, e-books, Web pages, multimedia CDs, and any ancillary products.
Call me at 786-551-0207. As I said at the end of my writing and editorial services page, ask me something, tell me something, let me brainstorm with you for a few minutes. If I believe I can do what you need done (which I usually do), and can do it for the budget and in the timeframe that you are willing to commit to (ditto), then we can make a simple, straightforward agreement and get right to work. That's how I like to do things. It works for me. And I guarantee it will work for you, too.
