Oral History Workshop – 15
Book engineering
Shahed Yazdan
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan
2023-3-14
The oral history website is going to provide the educational materials of some oral history workshops to the audience in written form. The present series has been prepared using the materials of one of these workshops. As you will see, many of the provided contents are not original or less said contents, but we have tried to provide categorized contents so that they can be used more.
***
Book engineering
Book engineering includes cases that should be considered in addition to text preparation. Although these cases that will be explained further, may seem small or unimportant, their collection will play a very prominent role in the success of the book. Paying attention to them makes the reader understand the value of the work more and more.
-Book's name
The first point regarding book engineering is its name. Just as it is not customary to use metaphorical names for scientific books, if an oral history book is viewed from the perspective of a scientific work, a direct name should be chosen for it. Even if the publisher wants to use metaphorical names to sell more books, you should resist this.
-Cover design
Cover design is an expert work and should be carried out by a professional designer. As the compiler, you can express your opinions about it, but you have to trust that expert and let him do it professionally.
Regarding the cover design, the point is that the designer needs to read your book in order to give you the best result, otherwise we can't expect a professional work.
-Publisher's introduction
The publisher also has the right to insert an introduction or foreword in the beginning of the book, up to a few pages.
- Book's publishing
The quality of book printing is one of the things that should be paid special attention to. Some printing houses may lower the printing costs with some tricks, but surely this low printing cost will lead to a decrease in the quality of the work.
If possible, the quality of printing and binding should not be sacrificed for the low cost of its production.
-
Dr. Mirshamseddin Adib Soltani has written a book titled "Guide to Preparing Books: For Authors, Translators, Editors, Media, Librarians, Publishers, Printing Houses and Book Lovers" in 1381 (2004), which was published by Scientific-Cultural Publications and with more than 1200 pages, it has provided detailed explanations about book engineering, including cover design, fonts, titles, size, etc.
Number of Visits: 633
The latest
Most visited
Pahlavi Political Prisons Encyclopedia
The entries were extracted from existing written and oral sources, and were listed in alphabetical order. All the entries are related to associated elements inside the prison and relying on the political prison. As stated in the preface, the entries have been used in at least two studied sources (written and oral) or one authentic source. A new entry has been created for the concepts or events and actions which did not have a written and explicit entry.Members of Combatant Clergy Association arrested
On one of the nights of the holy month of Ramadan in 1356 (1977), the Central Council of the Combatant Clergy Association held a meeting in the house of Mr. Sheikh Ali Asghar Morvarid, in western Tehran, and we decided to continue the meeting until dawn. Some twenty people including misters professor Motahari, Mahdavi Kani and Mousavi Ardebili and other well-known people were present in the meeting. From there, professor Motahari contacted with the holy Najaf byNaneh Ali
Naneh Ali is the narrative of Zahra Homayounis life, who is the mother of martyrs Amir and Ali Shahabadi, written by Morteza Asadi. In addition to the eloquent and readable content, the difference between the memoirs and other biographies of martyrs mothers, as well as using the method of retrospect, has added to the appeal of work. This book has 15 chapters which are: Goodbye Spring, Those Two Blue Eyes, The Sword of Zulfaghar, The Birth of a Butterfly, ...No gas for Tehran
On the night of 12th of Bahman 1357 (February 1, 1979), we started driving toward Tehran [amid the cold weather of the town of Abadeh] by a Paykan automobile that had no heater and had not been serviced during the recent days. We had not distanced so much from Abadeh that we got a flat tire. It was very difficult for us to fix a flat tire. Fortunately, I had a spare tire in the back of the car.
