Typesetting challenges at scientific publishing houses
"Neither the content of articles nor the way they are published are ever open to discussion."
👉 Production & Logistics Manager, Jean Verstraete, Brepols Publishers
Why Brepols Publishers chooses Crius Group
So as to address current and future challenges, Brepols Publishers decided to call on Crius Group for help. Because just between ourselves, the demands made of scientific publishing houses are increasing all the time. Neither the content of articles nor the way they are published are ever really open to discussion." Challenge accepted!
Stringent requirements and perfectionism as a basis for our cooperation
Brepols Publishers and Crius Group share the same characteristic: perfectionism. Quality needs to be high on the list of priorities. Owing to the diversity of their publisher’s list, at Brepols Publishers they set high standards for their typesetters.
Their titles often contain passages from ancient scripts that may be in Greek, Hebrew, Coptic, Cyrillic or Arabic. These languages often include characters and symbols that differ from our alphabet and from modern Greek or Hebrew. A small accent on a letter may seem trivial, but can be crucially important in the version of this particular language dating back centuries.
So the top priority is to make sure that the characters and sentences remain as the author intended them. In addition, the reading direction has to be taken into account in some languages. Arabic, for example, is read from right to left.
How our Crius Group team eased the pressure
This is a major challenge for Brepols Publishers and for our team. We tackle it together! If Brepols Publishers asks us a technical question, we give them an informed answer on which they can base their choice.
In turn, they prepare their manuscripts meticulously so that as little a possible can go wrong during the layout process. For example, they put hard spaces in places where two words have to stay together. At Brepols Publishers, they try to go the extra mile with this preparation.
The price? A fair agreement
“Costs matter to us, of course. But we have found the right balance. We appreciate that our content is not commonplace and needs to be handled by specialists.
By supplying our content in the right way, we have been able to agree on a price in line with the market that is acceptable to both of us,” explains Jean Verstraete of Brepols Publishers.
Future-oriented working at Crius Group
The future is not static. So both we and Brepols Publishers constantly have to hone our working method to be able to respond to developments and customer demand.
Furnishing digital platforms with our content often means having to supply material that is medium-neutral. By providing advice about the working method, we made sure that the Brepols Publishers team is also able to export to xml. Together, we have even developed a number of templates that simplify the layout from a structured file. Killing two birds with one stone!
So is Brepols Publishers totally future-proof?
“You’re never fully prepared. And you can never be sure that you have the best working method, either. But you can gear it to what you need as a company. And we definitely have the feeling that we are heading in the right direction.
Who knows, later on we may bypass MS Word and work directly with xml. In any case, in Crius Group we have a partner who can assist us with this”, so says Jean Verstraete.
About Brepols Publishers
Brepols Publishers is an international academic publisher in the humanities sector. Brepols Publishers’ mission is to publish works with an excellent academic reputation in fields relating to Europe’s cultural origin and sphere of influence. Such publications fall mainly within the disciplines of history and archaeology, language and literature, music, art and the history of architecture.
Is this story recognizable to you and do you also want to format books?
Our Sales Director Marcel Van Denken will be happy to drop by. ☕️
Contact Marcel or call us on +32 (0)15 750 750