When a prospective employer says it's not a design job, believe them: it's not a design job.

They want a production person so, yes, you'll be typesetting. This does not necessarily mean you'll be typing things in manually (although you may be); you will most probably simply be flowing in text from word processor / ascii files. And you'll no doubt be using specs provided by the art director/actual book designer. What you'll mainly be doing, I'd surmise, is preparing files for the printing process.

If you want a design job, my advice would be to look further. However, there is also nothing like some practical production experience, so you might want to give it a try for a bit while you look elsewhere. If you take that route, be sure to absorb as much production knowledge as you possibly can -- production knowledge will serve you well in design work!

--Nance

Yeah, what Nance said: typesetting really isn't a design job. And many designers have no clue how to do it, which I think becomes a handicap when they try to specify designs for book interiors: they don't understand what needs to be spec'd, they don't understand how to express their wishes unambiguously, and they don't understand why the pages don't always come out looking the way they imagined them.

I wouldn't necessarily advise you to take this job--you might find that you enjoy typesetting, but it's probably not what you went to design school for--but I do recommend that you try your hand at typesetting long documents at least a couple of times. It's a totally different process from designing an ad or a brochure or a CD booklet.

Note, meanwhile, that if you *are* typesetting, you absolutely are not expected to read the books. In fact, if you do try to read them, you'll never get your work done. But you must be able to skim a manuscript quickly, identifying special problems and elements that need to be styled.

You must also have a firm grasp of copyediting and proofreading markup (the Chicago Manual is a good resource for this), as you'll be not only typesetting the raw manuscript, but also entering corrections to subsequent passes. And it helps to have some knowledge of the editorial conventions of the field in which you're typesetting (textbooks tend to use different styles from those of trade books--e.g., different punctuation, different rules about spelling), as well as a modicum of tact: If you are at all alert, you will spot unmarked editorial errors as you work. Some of the people you are typesetting for will want you to report these; others will not want to hear about them. Don't pretend you're illiterate, but don't be a pest, either.

And you must know how to use your layout program, *really*. There are a lot of tricks to making copy fit and look good, most of which you'll probably have to learn through trial and error unless you're lucky enough to have a helpful and patient colleague. If you're curious, technologically savvy, and enjoy playing with software, you can ace this. If you rarely look at your programs' defaults or preferences and aren't interested in figuring out what all those cryptic commands listed on your application menus do, you're going to turn out homely pages, and you'll probably find the work extremely tedious.

Regarding references to help you if you get the job, yes, you should familiarize yourself with the specific style guide for the field or company you're working in, if there is one, as well as the ubiquitous and wonderful Chicago Manual. You don't need to memorize these references, but you ought to know what they contain and how they're organized, so that you can look things up quickly when you need to. You should also be aware of the general differences between one style and another, e.g., Associated Press style versus Chicago style, as this will help you interpret the instructions you receive.

James Felici's _Complete Manual of Typography_ is the only book I've seen that addresses copyfitting from a practical, digital standpoint. I'd love to hear of others.

As for learning your software, trying to solve real problems is the best method I know of. But at the very least, make sure you know how to set tabs, create paragraph rules, type different kinds of spaces (nonbreaking, em, en, hair), force a word to hyphenate or stay closed, set H&Js, and create and use style sheets. And if you're using Quark, I recommend that you learn how to export, edit, and import tagged text--sometimes dumping a chunk of copy into a text editor (such as BBEdit) and search-and-replacing xtags into or out of it is the fastest way to style it the way you want. This not only garners geek cred, but it can also save you a few thousand clicks per week. (It's not necessary with InDesign, where there are usually other ways to skin those cats.)

I hope this helps.

India
http://indiamos.wordpress.com/