Desk-top publishing offers low-cost option

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May, 1986

Desk-top publishing offers low-cost option

The staff at Northwest Sailboard consists of Pete Fotheringham, the publisher; Bill McGown, the art director; and Carol York, the part-time editor. With virtually no outside help other than contributing writers, the staff writes, edits, typesets and lays out the entire magazine in-house.

Illustrating the most basic form of the new and increasingly popular "desk-top' or "personal' publishing approach, Northwest Sailboard is one of a growing number of small magazines that produces camera-ready pages inhouse with only the help of personal computers, special software and small laser printers.

John Runnette, publisher and one half of the two-man staff of Installation News, says of desk-top publishing: "It's a matter of time, it's a matter of money and, more important, it gives you complete control of the page.'

Tony Bove, publisher of Desktop Publishing, a bimonthly with a circulation of 25,000 that serves users of these systems, says desk-top publishing is attractive to small publishers because production costs take such a large bite out of their total budget. Large publishers, he adds, may delay scrapping their big phototypesetting systems until the equipment is paid off, but they are also looking into personal computers as a way to boost efficiency.

Desk-top publishing got its big boost early in 1985 when Apple Computer's Laserwriter plain paper printers were made available and then received further impetus a few months later when Aldus introduced its Apple Macintosh-compatible Pagemaker software. Other manufacturers, such as Xerox, are now introducing desk-top publishing hardware of their own. The market for this equipment includes small newspapers, newsletters and corporate offices as well as magazines.

The compactness of the equipment gave desk-top publishing its name, of course. More important, however, an entire desk-top setup--personal computer, software, hard disk drive and a basic laser printer--can be purchased for about $11,000, or tens of thousands of dollars less than the cost of a traditional phototypesetting machine.

What about quality?

The users of laser printing equipment say that, for their money, the quality of laser-generated type is satisfactory.

Fotheringham admits that he doesn't get "typesetter quality' out of his laser printer, but maintains that the average reader doesn't notice the serrations that mark low-cost laser type. "By the time it's on the 50-pound book stock we use, it's not noticeable to the untrained eye,' he contends.

Fotheringham had his type produced at a typesetter when he first started Northwest Sailboard four years ago. He switched to an in-house laser printer for the bimonthly because of the delays involved in sending out materials, waiting for them to come back from the typesetter, and often having to send them out again to be redone.

When Installation News, a trade magazine for installers of car stereos and alarms, was launched two and a half years ago, manuscript pages were sent to a typesetter, according to Runnette. Later, copy prepared on a personal computer was transmitted via a modem to the typesetter.

The magazine got involved in desk-top publishing after it began using an Apple Macintosh to prepare technical illustrations. Now Bob Lee, a freelance art director and copy editor, uses the personal computer to prepare both copy and graphics. Full pages are displayed on the screen and proofs are made on a Laserwriter. Lee then takes a floppy disk to a graphics firm that uses an Allied Linotronic 300 laser typesetter which produces a better quality type than a Laserwriter, but is too expensive for the magazine to purchase.

Different route for big publishers

Will personal publishing infiltrate the realm of large publishing companies? Experts predict that it will, but in a modified form. Publishers of large-circulation magazines wouldn't be satisfied with the 300 dots per inch resolution produced by a Laserwriter. But they are taking a look at more sophisticated laser printers that have true typeset quality, but pricetags that are still significantly lower than those associated with traditional phototypesetting equipment.

Frank Romano, a consultant in publishing and typesetting and copublisher of Typeworld, maintains that the tools of personal publishing will see wider use, but he adds that one-machine, one-person setups will be confined to the smallest magazines. Typesetting will tend to come in-house as publishers find they can afford the top quality laser printers, but at most magazines, publishing is too complex an operation for one person. Editors, designers, typesetters and production staff will require computer programs tailored to their individual needs.

Bove at Desktop Publishing agrees with Romano's view, and he notes that another technological advance--local area networks (LANs)--will be useful at big companies. LANs will allow editors, typesetters and designers to use their owner programs, then transfer text and graphics over the network.