Diary of a Publishing Wannabe

Posted on March 6, 2009 in Uncategorized

 January is rarely the happiest of months in this part of the world. In the far-off days of my Australian childhood, January meant sun block, boogie boarding and the wonderfully intoxicating smell of brand new textbooks for the new school year. Alas, the past really is a foreign country and they definitely do things differently there.

 In London, the beginning of the New Year is characterised by – let’s be honest – depression. My gym is rife with guilt-ridden victims of the previous month’s feeding-frenzy, the tube is rife with victims and soon-to-be victims of the ferocious winter germs, and – to make things even worse – all that wonderful festive extravagance is replaced by empty purses and miserly misery.

 There are, for me at least, some upsides to this. Having fled the family nest, I am no longer subject to my mother’s infamous germ-killing fruit juice concoctions, and having had no money in the first place, I don’t feel the post-Christmas pinch.
 
 The third upside is that the beginning of the second term also sees the annual MA course day-trip to Cambridge University Press (or ‘CUP’, now I’m an in-the-know publisher).

 Although I’ve done some work experience at a few publishing houses, I’ve never been to one with such history (CUP is the world’s oldest continuously operating publisher, having started in 1584), or to one with its very own printing press.

 Sadly our eagerly anticipated trip to Cambridge was preceded by the news that around 130 jobs are now under threat at the press. It was – and still is – a sensitive time at CUP, which meant we had to keep our usual levels of boisterousness down to a minimum. Despite this unfortunate turn of affairs, however, we were still very keen to see for ourselves how books are actually made.

 The morning began with the usual chaos – torrential rain, broken umbrellas, tube delays and even a bit of life-saving, as I caught a woman who was tumbling down the escalator at King’s Cross. Nonetheless, we all managed to assemble in Cambridge on time and subsequently made our way through the puddles, past some particularly unattractive 1960s architecture, to the expansive CUP building.

 Before the day of our tour, we all had to sign confidentiality agreements, promising not to reveal the secrets hidden within the Press’s cavernous buildings and warehouses. This may sound rather dramatic and James Bond-like, but such measures were necessary as the Press was in the middle of printing this year’s school exam papers, the contents of which are famously in demand from less scrupulous individuals. For this reason I thought it best not to push my luck by whipping out my camera at every turn, and so the only photo I have is an exterior shot.

 Dried off, signed in, divided up and with nametags attached, we finally began our tour of the various departments and buildings. Lasting around six hours, our tour comprised of visits to the actual printing house, with its various sub-sections, along with the formidable warehouse and the slightly cosier customer services office. Preceding and following these excursions were talks given by various members of the CUP publishing elite.

 Despite an awareness that printing technology has moved on from the days of Gutenberg, I was not the only one that had vague expectations/hopes of finding ink-stained metal type being stamped onto paper, preferably by equally ink-stained spectacle-wearing Oompa-Loompas. What we found instead were what can only be described as truly huge photocopiers, sleek and electronic, constantly running and housed in special humidified rooms.

 We were shown machine after impressive machine. Some printed the type, some printed the colour, some creased and folded the sheets of paper, some added the binding glue and some trimmed the finished pages. All were huge, slick and constantly whirring. After questioning our tour guide, it turned out that the only part of the process that isn’t fully automated is the placing of dust jackets onto hardback books. This is done by hand, and – in my mind – by employees not entirely unlike the grannies in the Shreddies advert.

 The only thing more impressive than the printing house itself was the huge warehouse nearby, which was so enormous that I was unable to stifle a loud gasp as we entered through the door. It was an Alice-in-Wonderland moment – one minute I was an average 5′7′′, the next I was a tiny dwarf staring up at mountainous bookshelves that reached dizzying heights. It came as no surprise when we where told that all the employees are fully qualified abseilers. Not a job for me, then.

 The best part of the entire day was the moment a copy of The Merchant of Venice, truly hot off the press, travelled down the conveyor belt and into my hands. Immaculate white pages, sharp un-bent corners, a crease-free spine and – best of all – that intoxicating new-book smell. It was incredible to think that what were recently just some stacks of white paper were now a real physical book, still warm from the glue used to attach the cover, and ready to enchant, amuse and educate some lucky reader somewhere.

 Britain may not have 33ºC sunshine and pristine white beaches, but it does have books, which I am truly thankful for. Whether freshly printed or endearingly dog-eared, there is nothing quite like a book to escape from our current gloomy surroundings. If – by becoming a publisher – I can contribute to the world of reading, then I’ll know that I’ll have made someone’s grey January day just that little bit sunnier – which sounds like the best job there could be.