In publishing, we’re always looking for ways to do things faster, better, and cheaper. The ability to work efficiently can have a direct impact on the bottom line. Our group of presenters will walk us through four different tools that can help with that quest.

Topics will include:

• Using Microsoft Word’s style templates to format manuscripts in preparation for typesetting and production.
• Using InDesign’s new feature to incorporate marked-up PDF changes.
• Using Airtable as a flexible project management tool.
• Using Pressbooks for increased book production.

Representing a variety of organizations, our presenters will share insights to make work more efficient across many areas of publishing—whether it’s editorial, production, publicity, or project management!

Amy Fitzgerald is an editorial director for Carolrhoda Books at Lerner Publishing Group in Minneapolis. She manages the imprint’s middle-grade and young adult novel lists, overseeing each book’s life cycle from acquisition through editing and production. She will be presenting on the benefits of Word’s style templates.

David Farr is ImageSmythe’s principal of graphic design and art direction. He brings more than thirty years of publishing experience to his design and production work. He founded ImageSmythe in 1986 to provide graphic art production services for the advertising, direct mail, magazine, and book publishing fields. Farr is also starting his twenty-sixth year as an adjunct professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where he now specializes in teaching the Adobe Creative Cloud applications. Having dealt with pixels for much of his professional career, he has returned to the darkroom to develop his landscape and street photography, shot using large-format cameras using traditional black-and-white film. He will be presenting on InDesign’s new capabilities for smoothly incorporating changes from a marked-up PDF.

Kat Sanborn is a Minnesota transplant with twenty years’ experience in the publishing industry—in sales, marketing, and publicity, sometimes combined! Llewellyn Worldwide is her professional base of operations as a senior publicist and public relations representative. She has served on publishing educational panels and given talks on book promotion both on her company’s behalf and as a publishing professional. In San Francisco, where she worked remotely for Llewellyn before making the move to Minnesota, she was the programs chair for the Book Promotion Forum, an organization devoted to education about the publicity, promotion, marketing, and distribution of books. She will be presenting on her use of the professional project management tool Airtable.

Layne Johnson is the senior project manager for the book imprints at 1517 Media here in Minneapolis. She has been working in book production for the past five years and has a passion for organization, communication, and schedules (think Gantt charts). Her attention to detail and drive to produce high-quality books in an efficient and effective manner is worked out through managing and using external resources such as Pressbooks. Her team uses traditional typesetting methods, along with Pressbooks, to achieve greater efficiency and increased output of books into the world.