Monday, September 14, 2009

ridiculous expectations

I came across this job post with incredulity:
Established instructional-book publisher seeks full-time Production Coordinator.

This entry-level position is perfect for a recent college graduate who is starting their career in the publishing field. It offers variety in your work and the opportunity to interact closely with editors, designers, photographers, and a variety of manufacturers in a casual, team-oriented environment.

Your primary responsibility is to help produce your assigned books and ancillary products, including prepping images, gathering digital materials, facilitating editorial changes, and quality checking proofs, while meeting deadlines and maintaining a high level of quality for all work.

Your secondary responsibility is to create video book trailers Possible work opportunities include assisting with our blog, wikis, and website. The ideal candidate will be detail oriented, an excellent team player, and creative. Must manage deadlines and excel at working independently.

Salary Range is $11 to $12 an hour, plus benefits including health care, vacation days, 401k.

Systems requirement: Mac OS
Applications requirement: InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop
Familiar with: Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, Quark
A plus: CSS, html, Word Press, Code Editor (Coda), website design


Job Description Production Coordinator

• Work in a team environment to help produce books, ancillary products, and consumable products.
• Work with the Developmental Editor and Photo Studio in the QC and prepping of subject images. This involves, QCing image taking by author, sending color tests for digital proof, printing out contact sheets of images for meetings.
• Gather digital materials (images, illustration, manuscript) to combine in a pre-layout of books and product designs. This involves creating low-res versions of images, using InDesign and the bookmap to combine manuscript and images, using scripts to insert images in layout.
• Work with Production Editor and Designer in the quality checking and editing of design rounds.
This involves working with an Indesign/InCopy workflow, photoshopping images as necessary, updating layout in Indesign, prepping layout for Designer, QC designed layout for consistency, prepping project for printer, sending project to printer, checking color proofs from printer, archiving materials.
• Creating multiple forms of content, including eBooks, Print on Demand, ePubs, etc. Also involves working with backlist titles.
• Create video book trailers using still image and video.

• Attend meetings as necessary.

• Help with extra projects as they arise.

$11-$12 per hour for all this production capacity? Who the f*ck are you kidding? Clearly this is an expression of trying to take advantage of "someone who doesn't know any better" created by someone who "really doesn't know any better." Next posting, please.