Embarrassing Errors In Printed Matter Go to the Book Doc
Dunn & Co. Replaces Pages,
Redoes Bindings by Hand,
One Tome at a Time
CLINTON, Mass. -- A publisher misspelled the word "Massachusetts" in the title of a guidebook, rendering it "Massatusetts." A bindery glue in a nursing handbook failed to hold, and the pages fell out. Thousands of copies of a quilting book printed overseas developed an awful smell while sitting in the hold of a ship during a dockworker's strike. A Chinese printer transformed "Grow Your Own Trees" into "Grow Your Own Tres."
All of these casualties found their way to a former cotton mill in this old industrial town, where a little business called Dunn & Co. has carved out an unusual niche it calls "book trauma."
Modern book publishers have high-tech distribution and just-in-time warehouses, but their wares remain old-fashioned products that roll off big printing presses. In writing and editing, mistakes can be taken care of with the click of a mouse, but books with problems must be fixed by hand, one at a time.
It is labor-intensive work few want to do. Some manufacturers and binderies do small repair jobs, but primarily as a courtesy to their customers. "I can't think of any other companies that do what [Dunn does]," says John Edwards, chief executive officer of Edwards Brothers Inc., a book manufacturer in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"If a book isn't ready for prime time, you call Dunn to fix it," says Andrew Weber, senior vice president of operations and technology at Bertelsmann AG's Random House Inc.
Dunn's caseload offers a window into a world of books gone wrong. A few years ago, John Wiley & Sons Inc. slipped up by providing the wrong academic credentials for an author on the title page of a new college textbook. "We put the books on hold at the warehouse, called Dunn and asked how fast they could pick them up, rip out the title pages, and tip in new ones," says Elizabeth Doble, vice president of production and manufacturing. Dunn fixed the problem by manually removing each title page with a sharp blade, and then inserting a newly printed, corrected page.
When the spine of a book called "Heaven & Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye" wouldn't tear off, Dunn bought cans of compacted air, turned them upside down, and used the cold accelerant to freeze the glue so the spine would be easy to remove.
Esther Margolis, president of a small, independent New York publisher called Newmarket Press, a unit of Newmarket Publishing & Communications Corp., says she relied on Dunn to remove a printed exchange between an editor and an author that was inadvertently included in a finished book. "It was cheaper than reprinting, and quicker," she says. Dunn removed the page, printed a new one, and glued it in by hand. "Readers were never able to tell," says Ms. Margolis.
A salesman for a Buffalo, N.Y., phone book sold a full-page ad to an escort service, and it was printed in nearly 800,000 copies of the directory. Dunn was enlisted to replace the offending pages, which it did by hand. Dunn did the same service for a medical textbook that labeled a cancerous tumor benign.
Sometimes Dunn rescues publishers from their own miscalculations about how many books to publish. In October 2002, Random House's Villard imprint published "Mysterious Stranger" by magician David Blaine. The stacks that didn't sell were sent to Dunn, which converted them into paperbacks by tearing off the spine and hardcover "boards" and then gluing on a new cover. Every month Dunn transforms an estimated 600,000 hardcover books that way.
Founded in 1976 by David Dunn, a former book manufacturing executive, the company originally focused on book binding. In 1983, after several accounts went out of business, Mr. Dunn began targeting publishers' mistakes. The company employs about 125 people full time, including three of Mr. Dunn's nephews, a brother-in-law, Mr. Dunn's sister, his wife, his three daughters and their three husbands. The business generates about $7 million in revenue and grows an estimated 5% annually.
Its Web site features a hospital door with the words "Emergency Entrance" emblazoned on it. Viewers who click on the doors are then directed to a menu of specialists described as "book physicians." The list includes Head Book Nurse, Head Book Trauma Surgeon and Medical Book Billing.
It performed one operation earlier this year when Syracuse University Press sent 800 copies of Ghada Samman's novel "The Night of the First Billion" to Dunn. The problem: The last line of the book was inadvertently left out. "Nobody caught the mistake until it was too late," says Mary Peterson Moore, the press's manager of design and production. Inside Dunn's factory, a skilled worker used a blade to cut out the offending page. She then ran a line of glue to the area where the page had been excised. The new page was then set into the glue, and the book closed. The operation left no scar.
书籍修复中心
一家出版社将一本旅游指南书名上马萨诸塞州的英文名字“Massachusetts”拼成了“Massatusetts”；某装订厂装订的一本有关护理的书脱了胶，书整个散了架；因为赶上了码头工人罢工，数千册从海外运来的介绍缝纫技巧的书捂在船舱里发了霉。一家中国印刷厂把“Grow Your Own Trees”（意为自己种树）的书名印成了“Grow Your Own Tres”──自己配三副药！。
不过，所有这些遭遇灾难的书籍最后都在马萨诸塞州工业老镇克林顿的一家前棉纺厂里得到了拯救。这家名为Dunn & Co.的公司虽然只是家小企业，但它在被其称为“书籍修复市场”的领域里却独步天下。
现代化的书籍出版社都采用高技术分销网络和及时化(just-in-time)仓储管理，但书籍的制作过程仍采用老式大型印刷机。人们在用电脑写作和编辑时，发现错误可以很容易地轻点鼠标加以解决。但印刷出来的书里如果发现问题就只能手工解决了，而且必须一本一本地处理。
这种差事非常繁琐，没什么人愿意干。一些书籍制作公司和印刷、装订厂有少量的书籍修补业务，但也只是为客户提供的免费售后服务，并非主业。位于密歇根州安阿伯的书籍制作公司Edwards Brothers Inc.的首席执行长艾德华兹(John Edwards)说，就他所知，没有什么其他公司从事与Dunn一样的业务。
贝塔斯曼公司(Bertelsmann AG)旗下兰登书屋(Random House Inc.)的高级副总裁韦伯(Andrew Weber)说，如果有书籍品相不好了，可以找Dunn帮你修复。
从Dunn公司书籍修复业务的繁忙中可以看出市面上有瑕疵书籍的量是多么大。几年前，John Wiley & Sons Inc.在一本大学新教材的扉页上不慎将一位作者的学历搞错了。该公司负责书籍制作的副总裁多伯(Elizabeth Doble)回忆说，“我们只好把书先压在仓库里，然后打电话给Dunn的人，问他们最快需要多长时间能解决问题。Dunn的人用很锋利的刀片把有错的扉页一张张裁下来，然后换上重新印刷的扉页。”
在处理《天空和大地：肉眼看不到的世界》(Heaven & Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye)这本书时，书脊很不容易撕下来，于是Dunn的工人买来罐装压缩空气，将它们开口朝下用作冷凝剂让胶水冻结脆化，这样书脊就容易撕下来了。
纽约Newmarket Publishing & Communications Corp.旗下小型出版商Newmarket Press的总裁玛戈利斯(Esther Margolis)说，她就是请Dunn帮他们处理了一本不慎夹进了作者和编辑所签协议的书。她说，这比重新印刷更便宜，也更快。Dunn会撤掉有问题的书页，重新印刷新书页，然后人工粘贴到书里。读者根本看不出来。
一名纽约布法罗市电话簿营销人员向一家提供陪同服务的机构兜售出了一整页广告版面，于是该机构的广告被印在了将近800,000本电话簿上。后来，Dunn被找去清理这些电话簿上有不健康内容的书页。Dunn还曾经给一本医学教材做过修复手术，那本教材上将恶性肿瘤图例标成了良性的。
Dunn的工作有时还能帮助出版商重新调整印数计划。2002年10月，兰登书屋旗下的Villard出版了魔术师大卫?布莱恩(David Blaine)撰写的《神秘的陌生人》(Mysterious Stranger)。成堆没有卖掉的“陌生人”被送到Dunn，然后被撕掉硬皮封面，换上新的纸质平装封面。Dunn每个月大约都要对600,000册精装本书籍作这样的处理。
Dunn是由戴维?邓恩(David Dunn)1976年创建的，邓恩之前也在一家书籍制作公司任职。Dunn公司最初主要从事书籍装帧。1983年，在几家客户倒闭之后，Dunn开始盯上了出版商的那些出了错的书籍。Dunn雇有125名全职员工，其中包括邓恩的3个侄子、妹夫、姐姐、邓恩的妻子、3个女儿还有她们的丈夫。Dunn的业务能实现700万美元的年收入，而且还在以每年5%的速度增长。
Dunn的网站上有一个医院大门图案，上面写著“紧急入口”。点击大门，会看到一个专家名单，这些专家被称为“书籍医师”。单子上分别标著：护理、修复手术等等。
今年早些时候Dunn曾接到了一单生意，是锡拉库扎大学出版社送来的800本Ghada Samman的小说The Night of the First Billion。这些书的毛病是最后一行被无意中漏掉了。该出版社设计和制作部门的经理莫尔说(Mary Peterson Moore)说，等到发现这个错误时，一切都晚了。所以只好找到Dunn。
在Dunn的工厂里，一位技术娴熟的工人用一把刻刀裁掉出错的书页，然后在那个位置涂上一道胶水，再把正确的书页粘到胶水的位置，最后合上书。整个操作没有在书里留下任何痕迹。
