What is an Art Program?

 

An area of confusion among many authors concerns the artwork in their book: How to submit it, what can be included, and what to call it.

 

It’s useful to provide a simple definition of terms, to avoid confusion on down the line.

 

Art: This is the collection of raw application files submitted by the author (usually to editorial staff). This can include images to be rendered or otherwise manipulated by an art studio: charts, graphs, line drawings, and photographs (i.e., halftones).  

 

There are many reasons for including art. In the case of line drawings, charts, or graphs, art can be useful to illustrate specific points raised in the text (such as technical data). Photos can be a great addition to simply portray whatever is described in the text. And not all art needs to be strictly within the text body of any given chapter. At Virtus, we recommend using an interior design with a chapter-opener spread.

 

This means that, say, a chapter will begin on a right-hand page, but the facing page (a left) will include an image related to that chapter. Selecting one image per chapter for this purpose can be an eye-catching addition that separates your book from what is, in reality, a very crowded field. (See our post “What Makes a Good Interior?”.)

 

Another potential use of art would be to include a frontispiece at the very beginning of the book. This is described in our post “What is Front Matter ? (Part 1).” A very traditional, old-school element, a frontispiece can really dress up the front matter of the book in an elegant way. An appropriate frontispiece generally captures the overall theme of the book.

 

Regarding any rendering, photo research, or manipulation that’s required, at Virtus, our digital artists can perform all of these tasks, as long as sufficient instructions are submitted. Line drawings don’t need to be “road ready.” See the post “What Size Should My Images Be?” for additional guidelines, including how files should be saved and submitted.

 

Important: Unless a title is slated to be produced in more than one color, all art files should be submitted by the author in one color (1/c or black and white) format.

 

Art manuscript: These are the extracted images referred to above, which should be collected in a separate folder as electronic files. Authors often embed individual art pieces in their manuscript, but these are considered “FPO” (For Position Only). The individual files should be numbered consecutively, by chapter. For example, the first piece of art in Chapter 1 should be named something like “Fig. 1-1.” You should use this numbering scheme regardless of whether the art will actually be numbered in the book. The numbering simply tells the page formatter where to place the image.

 

As a best practice, any changes or corrections are never be marked on the FPO version of the figure that is embedded in the text manuscript: Such changes will not be seen by the studio. The art manuscript is the only location where changes would be marked by the copy editor.

 

Art program: This the collective term for the images that will appear in the book. Our art studios generally use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create our art programs.

 

At Virtus, we provide authors with easy-to-follow guidelines for the submission of their art program.

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