PRODUCTION

Learned to do production work in a tiny letterpress print shop in Madrid in the 1960s while working for a weekly magazine. Among the more important things I learned were how to:

• lay out a magazine as the pieces came in from the linotypist and photoengraver
• foresee and avoid most production problems while still in the editorial stage
• resolve all other problems on the fly

1962-69  Production editing of magazines for Guidepost Publications, an English-language tourist-oriented publishing company in Madrid. Also did freelance publishing work.

1966   Published my own book, Spanish Art Now.  Did the design, layout, some of the photos, and all of the production myself.

1968   Learned about offset printing while producing a magazine on one of the first offset presses to reach Spain.

1971   Began making mechanicals for ads for Arts Magazine in New York. Was Production Editor of the magazine in 1973-74. Did the design, layout, mechanicals, and other production work for Contemporary Spanish Art  (1975).

1974-82   Editor in the College Department of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Edited a number of complicated textbooks, some of which had hundreds of photos. Used my Madrid print-shop skills to head off design/production problems.

1982   Bought my first computer (an Apple II+) for freelance writing and editing projects—long before any book-publishing companies had them.

1984   Worked in the Columbia University Development Office. Used the IBM 5520 dedicated word-processing system to create documents. The office had just switched over from typewriters and was giving employees several months of training to get them on the system. Because I already understood the principles, I was able to begin using the system within an hour. I wrote an in-house manual on the 5520 for them.

1988   Taught myself WordPerfect 5.0, a word-processing program for MS-DOS computers. Wrote an in-house manual for a textbook publisher that explained how to begin using the program in a very short time. Wrote a section on how to use it for creating foreign-language textbooks.

1989   Bought a Macintosh IIci computer. Joined the New York MacUser Group (NYMUG) and began attending Special Interest Group meetings for Education and Publishing.

1992  Learned to use a number of Macintosh and MS-DOS programs, among them Microsoft Word, PageMaker, Photoshop, WordPerfect, Xywrite.

1993   Adapted a series of videotapes to videodiscs for Scholastic Inc for their Science Place primary-grade program.

1995-96   Directed a group of writers and editors who created teacher’s editions for high-school Spanish textbooks. I networked the computers and started using the Internet to obtain information and materials for the books. (My group was the only one in the company that did either of these things.)

1997   Learned HTML and began to create web pages. Published the first version of The Hypertext Guide to Prostate Cancer.

1998   Began to develop a more-accessible hypertext style for the visually impaired. Launched Voice in Off, my personal site.

2001   Added Spanish and Portuguese versions of the overview page of the Hypertext Guide.

2002   Taught a course for editors in New York City.