Edinburgh typesetting company Hewer Text has recently set up a self-publishing service for independent authors. The company has been in existence since 1980, but says that it now it offers a more bespoke service for those who want to make their works look as good as they possibly can.
There are various elements to the publishing process which Hewer Text can help with and authors can pick the parts that are most relevant to them, enabling them to keep costs within their own budget.
As well as books published in print they can also help with E-books, converting a typeset manuscript into EPUB and MOBI (kindle), so they can be accessed on all online platforms and devices.
Mathias Lord who joined the company in November last year has been charged with setting up the Indie Publishing section of the business which you can find here. He explained: “When you are formatting text there are a lot of choices that have to be made, such as the resolution that has to be used.
“There is also the question of whether you might want to emulate some other successful author in the same genre as you. But sometimes people only want certain services.
“A lot of people who are good writers don’t have the design skills and that is where we can help.
“Through our website or social media we will talk to the client and find out what they need. For some the publishing process is an unknown.
“In a self publishing project the author keeps control over the process. The designer will be in direct contact with the author and do whatever is needed to make the author happy with the outcome.
“People judge a book by its cover but there is more to it than that, like paper and typeface.”
Just about to move to new office premises at Edinburgh Park, a lot of the people who work for Hewer don’t ever come to the office as much of the work is done at a distance.
Lord continued: “We have tried to work with Scottish freelancers as much as possible especially in the pre-print phase. That is an interesting part of self-publishing, which for some reason has not taken off just as well here in Scotland.
“This is a smaller industry here. There are very good traditional publishing houses in Scotland who are incredibly invaluable to the Scottish literary scene.”
Explaining his own role in the business he said: “I was brought in to develop the self-publishing part of the business, setting up a newly designed website.
“My own background is that I studied English Literature at University of Edinburgh and then interned with a couple of traditional publishing houses here in Edinburgh.
“Our company has many big names as clients, who we do typesetting for, but there has been a shift to self-publishing and this is my emphasis.
“It has been very gratifying to see the website and have all the infrastructure in place to allow people to self-publish.
“And as for the future? Well it is important to me that people get to know about our business.
“I think we would like to be able to grow the book side of our business. We now have a platform which offers more than before, and the way forward will be to populate our blog with more advice and information on how self-publishing works.”
Mathias is half British and half Norwegian who came over from Oslo to study at university in Edinburgh. He concluded: “One of the things that is so refreshing is that there is so much writing here in Edinburgh. Oslo is a little more limited in that way, and Edinburgh has much more to offer!”
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