At 5:02 AM -0400 11/1/07, dhbailey wrote:
Richard Smith wrote:2. Should publishers publishers out source engraving work as needed or is in house engraving a better choice?That also depends on the nature of the publishers. There have always been small niche-market publishers as well as huge publishing houses who can sign the big names in composing, and for the different sized publishers there need to be different answers. Warner Brothers (well, actually, Alfred, since they bought the Warner Brothers print music division) and Hal Leonard will always need to have in-house engravers in addition to their freelance external engravers, while small publishers don't need to have anybody on-staff to do engraving.
I can add a little to David's observation based on my experience of working for Disney for a little over a year. They had many, many house employees on contract, including artists, designers, engineers, musicians, choreographers, etc. But when they needed something done specifically for a relatively short time, they "rented" what they needed, whether it was a vocal or instrumental arranger, a choreographer, a certain designer, or a show director (or anything else!). When I was hired for the summer to direct and supervise the All American College Singers & Showband show, they rented an apartment for me and my family, rented furniture and fixtures for the apartment, rented a car for our use, and basically rented my services for the summer. Yes, in the short term that cost them more than if they had all those things readily available in-house, because someone else was making a profit on all those rentals, but in the long run they could simply walk away when they no longer needed those things and not have to worry about keeping people busy, maintenance, upkeep and repair, or storage of "stuff." Believe me, their accountants knew exactly what they were doing!
So David is absolutely right: it depends on the nature of the publishers. Contract with freelancers until such time as it makes sense to hire someone in-house at a lower overall cost. Then use freelancers to cover any temporary overloads.
3. Do e-mails and attachments (along with occasional phone calls) make long distance (even international) work practical.Definitely -- PublisherA located in San Francisco can use EngraverB living in Dubai if they choose with communication expenses zero (above their internet connectivity expenses) as well as data exchange being instantaneous. No longer does there have to be any face-to-face contact.
I recall reading one of Arthur C. Clarke's novels, and in the back, where they sometimes use a blank page to list what fonts and what kind of paper had been used, his commenting that the entire novel had been sent to his publisher from his home in Sri Lanka on a single floppy disk. Today we no longer need the disk!!!
4. Should publishers who want to do editing and final engraving in house be reasonably expected to have software and engravers for both Sibelius and Finale?
One of our faculty composers is published by Southern Music. (In fact his was the deciding recommendation that we adopt Mosaic as a department back in the early '90s.) Southern wanted Finale files, but he worked out an accommodation with them under which he sent them a MIDI file plus a paper printout of his page layout, and they finished it as they pleased in-house. (This particular composer adopted computers early, and was teaching a course in Music and Microcomputers as early as '79, after getting a grant to purchase an Apple IIe. Remember those?!!!)
John -- John R. Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
