By A-R Editions
Most of our readers and volume editors have probably never met Anne Miller, the production-end project manager for all of our Recent Researches in Music series. Yet she is one of the prime movers of every volume that we publish, working closely with both house editors and engravers to supervise all aspects of typesetting, engraving, and production (and keeping us all on our toes in the process!). She sat down with us to share some insights about her job, the Recent Researches production process, its various ups and downs, and what she does outside her work at A-R.
Q. How did you end up working at A-R?
A. Well, I came here straight out of college, saw an ad in the classifieds back then…
Q. I remember those!
A. See, this gets complicated, because I’ve worked here three separate times! The first time was right out of college, in 1989, and I worked here just about four months. I was looking for a job, with a liberal arts degree; I have a bachelor’s in communication, and a minor in vocal music, from St. Norbert College, and was looking for something to do with that. And I’m like, “what’s a music compositor? I don’t know,” so I went for the interview and decided it sounded good.
I worked here just about four months, but in that time, I had also thought about doing some other things, so I left and went to grad school at UW Madison and got my master’s in library studies. I was a children’s librarian for about six years, at two different libraries, one in Watertown and one up in the Fox Valley with a couple branches.
And then, after doing that for a while, I decided I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue on that path, and I wanted to move back to Madison, where more of my family is near. A-R had another opening, so I applied and came back. This time I was there about three years, before I left briefly—I was hired as a copyeditor for a children’s publisher in Milwaukee, and I was there maybe three months; the company was not in good shape and things weren’t working out the way I had hoped. Pat [Patrick Wall, CEO of A-R] had told me if I ever wanted to come back, I was welcome, so I called him, and he took me back, and it was like I never left! That was October 1997, and I’ve been here ever since, so coming up on twenty-five years.
Q. Wonderful! That was one of the next things I was going to ask, how many years that works out to.
A. It’ll be twenty-five years this October.
Q. A quarter of a century! What do you like best about working here?
A. I like having to figure out how to accomplish things on the page. And I especially like figuring out page layout for a piece. I’m a detail-oriented person, so I like the minutiae, and I also like that I get a variety of things: I get to proofread, I get to set jobs up, I get to engrave, and I kind of like being able to do a little bit of all of that—and the people I work with are great! It’s enjoyable. It’s a challenge, but it’s calming—doing the engraving is like a Zen thing for me.
Q. What are some of the challenges of working here, some of the obstacles that you’ve had to surmount?
A. Sometimes bumping into a problem of how to accomplish a weird symbol or whatever, but I’ve learned a lot along the way, which is good. I’ve learned how to stumble my way through Fontographer to create new characters when we need them. Software issues aren’t my strong point, but we did a whole new Finale upgrade recently, and I made it through that. I was kind of in charge at this point, so that felt like an accomplishment for me.
Q. And I bet you have the help of good colleagues.
A. I have the help of a great team that have also worked here for quite some time. People have come and gone, but the production team we have now is really solid and good, and I enjoy working with them.
Q. Yeah, you really are a great bunch! Tell us about your usual process for shepherding a project through, in a nutshell.
A. I get the manuscript from the editors, and I look things over thoroughly. I pull the templates and the specs that I need for the job, and I get the music file set up. I look through everything they’re going to need for the manuscript, and I get a template set up and fine-tuned, one that’s particular for that job. I assign an engraver, I make up a schedule, I write additional instructions, I get the music off so the engraver can get started. Then I look through the text and do kind of a similar thing for the typesetter. We use a freelance typesetter now, so I get her the schedule and give her everything she needs. And then I’m just there to offer support as they’re working along, if they have any questions.
We do samples, we do first proofs, with a couple of internal rounds in between. I’m the one doing the music proofreading—another team member proofreads the text—and then I do general quality control checks on both music and text. I’m the liaison to the editors, so I get things back and forth, make sure questions get asked and answered. And then as the job proceeds, we get everything cleaned up and send out first proofs. When things come back from the author and the editor, I get things finalized—I send the proofs back to the engraver and typesetter to do corrections, and we do our rounds back and forth, as well as with the editors. Then I do the final printer prep, sometimes in coordination and with help from others, and we get things sent off to the printer.
Q. As they say in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, “the mediator between head and hands must be the heart,” and it sounds like, in a lot of ways, you are indeed the heart that comes between the head and the hands. What do you think about being in the middle as the liaison? It sounds like that’s a big part of your job.
A. I like that, and I feel like my background in communication has helped with that, because I help interpret what some of the issues are, and I try to ask the questions up front so that we’re not bothering an editor every few minutes along the way—or getting things answered when the engraver or the typesetter stumbles into a problem that they’re not understanding or misinterpreting or just not sure of how to proceed. So, I feel like I’m doing okay, and I’ve learned a lot through the years and gotten better at it, I would hope to think—on learning to just communicate back and forth and get the result that everybody wants.
Q. What do you wish more people knew about the kind of work that you do, about the production side of publishing?
A. It’s kind of an art. We look at the manuscript very differently than the author and the editors do, I think, because we’re concerned about the logistics of, how are we going to accomplish this, and what are the rules? There are set rules, but then there are a lot of rules that are open to interpretation. So, we have our house style, but sometimes there are rules that conflict, and so you have to make judgment calls: which rules do you follow? Which is the lesser of two evils to ignore, and which one do you follow? There’s a lot of interpretation involved—including people’s handwriting on the markup instructions! It’s kind of an art to get everything on the page and looking beautiful.
Q. So there aren’t necessarily hard and fast rules; sometimes you just have to go with the flow and make a call.
A. Right. Sometimes you have to interpret, and that’s where we ask the editor to set out guidelines so that we can interpret some of those things, but following what your wishes are. It’s more of an art form than I think people realize, and there’s a more subjective component to it. We’re also experts at manipulating the music software and deciding the best way or the most efficient way to accomplish what we need.
Q. Right. I think that’s something people don’t often realize; they feel like the engravers and typesetters are like the monkeys hammering on the keyboard, but you’re actually using your brains and hearts, too.
A. And even with the text, there’s a lot of rules to follow with typesetting, but there’s a lot left open to interpretation, and in the long run we all just want it to look beautiful.
Q. Oh, it does! I mean, you guys are the best in the world at what you do! I don’t think that’s an exaggeration, either.
A. Thank you.
Q. Do you have any stories or anecdotes from your work here at A-R that you’d like to share, funny or poignant? Or something you feel was a major success story for you in your time here? Or even a book you’re very proud of, a particular project you’re very proud of? Anything of that sort.
A. I really enjoyed the Laura’s Music books, because I’m a children’s librarian—so that was kind of fun for me, doing the all the folk songs that went into those. Anytime we have unusual fonts or characters, like when we’ve done books in Chinese or in Hebrew, they’re kind of a challenge when you’re going through them and can cause a lot of headaches. But in the end, they end up looking really nice.
Q. I’m now thinking of all of the wonderful other alphabets that we’ve seen crop up—there’s Chinese (OT008, OT013), Sanskrit (OT013), Hebrew (OT004, OT010), Arabic (OT010)—we had Coptic in one book (also OT010)—and of course plenty of Cyrillic for Russian and the like (C109, N067).
A. They’re really a challenge to do, but they come out okay!
Q. Oh, they come out gorgeous! They definitely do. To wrap up, why don’t you share three little known facts about yourself.
A. Let’s see. I love to swim, and I do water aerobics three times a week, and I’ve done that for, like, thirty years—helps my arthritis.
I’m an avid reader of mystery novels.
Q. Who are some of your favorite authors?
I always blank on things when people ask me my favorite! What have I read lately… well, one of my favorites is Louise Penny; she writes the Inspector Gamache books, and she’s a Canadian author. I really like that series a lot.
I’m the youngest of seven children, and I’m very close with all my siblings, and all my nieces and nephews. Since my parents died, I’m sort of the central hub for everybody, so they come to my house for the big family parties, and I love that.
Q. That’s lovely! Thank you so much, Anne!
A. Thank you!