Services

Book design and production

BBR has been combining great content with great design since 1984. Whether for our own projects or commissions from other publishers, we apply ruthless attention to both detail and structure. Our work is bold, refined, deceptively simple.

Sample spread from Birds of the Cotswolds
Sample spread from Birds of the Cotswolds
Sample spread from SP07
Sample spread from SP07 conference proceedings
Sample spread from The Herculaneum Pottery: Liverpool’s Forgotten Glory
Sample spread from The Herculaneum Pottery: Liverpool’s Forgotten Glory
Sample spread from Anne Hunter: Haydn’s Tuneful Voice
Sample spread from Anne Hunter: Haydn’s Tuneful Voice
Sample spread from Underground Writing
Sample spread from Underground Writing
Sample spread from Poetics of the Poster
Sample spread from Poetics of the Poster

If you’re publishing books, journals, conference proceedings or research reports, involve BBR at any point in your production process. We provide a full range of editorial, design and production services in-house that can be tailored to your individual requirements, or we can project manage titles all the way from typescript to finished book.

Page design and make-up

We’re passionate about typography, and have a reputation for creating clean and elegant layouts in both mono and full colour. Use us for contract work or bespoke projects: we’re comfortable with anything from simple single-column bookwork to 700-page engineering conference proceedings, or wildlife atlases with hundreds of maps, photos and diagrams. We work in InDesign, and use AppleScript and Unix shell scripts for task automation.

Proofreading and copy-editing

If you’re a pedant for apostrophes, or you cringe at crap hyphenation, then we’d like to work for you. When it comes to preparing manuscripts for publication, we tackle anything from simple proofreading through to substantive and technical editing. We can use your established house style, work with you to create a new one, or take the Chicago Manual and Shorter Oxford as default. A detailed before/after report via BBR TextCompare provides a character-level audit trail for all on-screen edits.

We work from first principles of clarity and consistency, making us perfect for knocking multi-author volumes into shape, or bringing the best out of inexperienced writers. Our UK-based editorial staff are educated to degree level or higher, and recent projects have seen us working in fields as diverse as history, materials processing, English literature, healthcare, gerontology, Korean studies and natural history.

What clients say

“BBR’s organisation and professionalism was greatly appreciated by our authors. We were able to delegate the entire production process to BBR, and all we had to do was sign the print order at the end. An excellent service.”

“I am especially grateful to Chris Reed and Amanda Thompson at BBR for their meticulous attention to the text and images and for making so many wise suggestions.”

“The interior design of the book is brilliant: assertive without being too butch. The kind of thing that wins design prizes.”

“At BBR, Chris Reed and Amanda Thompson again did wonderful work on the book design, typesetting and layout, building on our earlier collaborations.”

“I am impressed with the end product and find the cover especially appealing. Thank you for all the hard work that was clearly involved in transforming the typescript, maps and photographs into such an attractive book.”

“We benefited greatly from expert advice and painstaking attention to detail.”

“I developed a strong sense of trust in yourselves. This is essential. The friendly quality of the relationship is also crucial to me.”

“We are extremely grateful […] to Chris Reed and Amanda Thompson at BBR for their efficiency and dedication in ensuring that the papers were all successfully typeset and bound in time for the conference.”

“Some of my encounters with independent editors have verged on the astonishing: BBR’s Chris Reed is fastidious, repeatedly urging me to hone a story until it was perfect.”