Final steps in the preparation of The New Sylva

The New Sylva dummy book on the Senior Editor’s book shelf at Bloomsbsury Publishing

This week Gabriel Hemery has been at Bloomsbury Publishing in London, going over the final proofreading markup. It was a great to see a dummy of the book, complete with a cover, on the book shelves of Senior Editor Natalie Bellos (nee Hunt) alongside other recently published Bloomsbury works.

A sampler has been produced, which is used to promote the book to the press, book reviewers and others. It includes a few selected sections from the book (Contents, To the Reader, Of the Willow, Of the Hazel, and The Authors), wrapped in the cover and printed at full scale. We hope to show you a copy here soon.

Meanwhile Sarah Simblet has been completing the last remaining drawings.  She will be soon meeting with reproduction specialists to oversee the precise printing specifications for every one of the 200 spreads (400 pages) to ensure that all the drawings are reproduced at the highest possible standard.

The decision has been made by Bloomsbury to print in Europe (Spain) rather than the Far East. Although a more expensive option this has provided a greater choice of paper in terms of quality and FSC grade, it will allow a closer personal oversight of the production by Bloomsbury staff, and, if needed in the future, will permit quicker reprint times. Finally, this decision has meant that the deadline for going to print has been moved back from December to mid January, allowing more time to complete remaining tasks. The publication date remains 10th April 2014.