Collaborative project idea

[The Wooksta!]

Take a list of contributors and articles, but make sure you've got the material in your hand first before committing to  a proper plan - people talk a good article but that's translated into hard copy in about a 3rd of cases.  If I were you, I'd make sure you have at least a third more than you'll actually need, half again better and twice ideal.  Then you can whittle it down to the ones that you think would fit best.  If it's your book then you have the final say.  
 
Deadlines and specifications.  Drum these into the contributors repeatedly. Then do it again.  And repeat - with a chisel if need be.  If they want to go in, it's *their* responsibility to get the modelling done, the words written and the photos done to the specs you need to get the product looking right.  Make sure your deadline is a good three months ahead of publication, so that if stuff falls through then you can replace it.  If you've the spare articles, then so much the better.

Get the base design work done well in advance.  Come up with several alternate layouts before deciding on the one you want.  Set them up as templates too.  More importantly, talk to someone with print experience (myself and Martin H are prime candidates) so that you don't have to fudge it or have to rework it to meet a printer's specifications.  In fact, get them first.

Make sure you know how long the articles have got to be.  Photos are all well and good but you need words to back them up. And talking about photos, I can't stress the importance of large high resolution photos highly enough.  Especially for printing on glossy paper.  72dpi keyring or cameraphone pix will turn to mush on the printed page.  Excrement in = excrement out.  I had a really hard time with John Baxter's Alternate Luftwaffe II because the resolution of some of the photos was so low and I had to do some really creative fudging to get them to look halfway decent.

One other point that may be hard for some to take.  If you're aiming for a professional book then the modelwork inside has got to be of a consistently good standard.  I appreciate that everyone models at different levels of competence but the buying public expect show stoppers, at the very least competence - models that look like they've been assembled by a child and painted with a toilet brush are likely to have them putting it back on the shelves, no matter how good the whiffing ideas behind them. I don't think anyone here is that bad but my prime example is the modelling to back up Friedrich Georg's books on the German Atomic bombs.  Nice ideas ruined by abysmal modelling.

And I speak from bitter experience.  It's a lot of hard work with little reward.

[deathjester]

Now that is good advice!  Cheers mate, I'll follow that...

[The Wooksta!]

One other point I forgot.  If contributors can submit their work electronically, it's a massive time saver.  It's a real pain scanning photos and as for rekeying hard copy or even worse hand written scrawl...  My lawyer advises me to remain silent at this point for fear of being banned for use of anglo saxon swear words.

Sounds like a lot of complaining, but as I said earlier, it's all gained through bitter experience.

[scooter]

One other point I forgot.  If contributors can submit their work electronically, it's a massive time saver.  It's a real pain scanning photos and as for rekeying hard copy or even worse hand written scrawl...  My lawyer advises me to remain silent at this point for fear of being banned for use of anglo saxon swear words.

Sounds like a lot of complaining, but as I said earlier, it's all gained through bitter experience.

Experience is, unfortunately, the best teacher.  And in this era of digital cameras everywhere and on almost everything, getting digital photos shouldn't be a problem.  Rekeying hard copy or deciphering chicken scratch?  That's a time killer, but not everyone's a typing genius.

[The Wooksta!]

If you've keyed it in to be able to print it, it's just as easy - if not more so - saving it to a format readable by most DTP packages.  Word .rtf files are the best.  Again, if the specs are impressed heavily enough on the contributors -  with the threat that if they can't submit their work in the correct format, then it doesn't go in - then most should fall into line.  If you've enough material, then it isn't a real problem.  The only exceptions I would make is if the work were real show stoppers, like what Nobby and Woody are doing with Ye Older Airfix kits over on Britmodeller.

When I was doing PC46, I didn't have those luxuries although working with John Baxter was a lot easier as everything was submitted electronically.  I did have to scan most of the photos for The Alternate RAAF but then I was building 50% of the models and didn't have a digital camera then.

[Weaver]

One other point I forgot.  If contributors can submit their work electronically, it's a massive time saver.  It's a real pain scanning photos and as for rekeying hard copy or even worse hand written scrawl...  My lawyer advises me to remain silent at this point for fear of being banned for use of anglo saxon swear words.

Sounds like a lot of complaining, but as I said earlier, it's all gained through bitter experience.

Experience is, unfortunately, the best teacher.  And in this era of digital cameras everywhere and on almost everything, getting digital photos shouldn't be a problem.  Rekeying hard copy or deciphering chicken scratch?  That's a time killer, but not everyone's a typing genius.

True, but there are digital cameras and serious digital cameras and only a small percentage of users who really know how to use either. What looks great posted on a website often falls to bits when you try to print it on paper in full colour, so being able to take and transmit the photos in the right format at the right resolution and knowing what standard to work to is critical and can't be taken for granted.

[The Wooksta!]

It depends on the specs for publication.  If the photo is BIG but low resolution, you can just about get away with it.  Small and low res,

The reason stuff that looks good on screen but prints mush is because the highest a monitor can handle is 72dpi.  Any higher is wasted.  Print minimum is 200dpi, 300dpi for glossy.

Like I said, determine your specs for publication and drum them into the contributors.  Repeatedly.  Anything that's not up to spec, bin it and tell them it's their responsibility to provide it correctly.