But in the last year we have had several staff members leave suddenly. Initially the reasons given were varied: sudden need to make large amounts of money; need to stay close to relatives; need to join spouse in another district; etc. But most of them soon after joined one of our competitors, namely Aptara, who are one of the giants of the publishing industry and who have an excellent reputation. We have dear friends who manage the company and there is absolutely no suggestion that they have “poached” our staff. This post is aimed at our staff, not at Aptara.

Some of the staff left without serving their notice and without handing over work smoothly (a clearly deliberate and destructive action in one or two cases), and their colleagues who remained with us had to work hard to rescue the jobs. This could have been very serious and some delays were indeed caused, but on the whole work continued as before. Our production and development has always been “distributed”, so that the sudden loss of one staff member does not cause a catastrophe. In fact, after the initial hitch, our systems are now working more smoothly than before the big departure. We can’t quite work that one out!!

We have always been ambitious in River Valley, and we have many plans for the future, technically, commercially, and socially. But to implement these plans we need the wholehearted, not half-hearted, support of the staff. So here is our plea to you. If you have any doubts as to whether or not you want to work in our company, or if you feel you would be happier working elsewhere for whatever reason, then we suggest you plan your departure as soon as possible. We want you to be in a happy environment, and if we cannot provide that, we will support your move to any that serves your needs better, even if it is a move to a direct competitor. Please be open and honest and say you want to leave and join another company. Do not give us creative reasons as to why you need to leave suddenly!

We invite comments and corrections from current and former employees, and indeed from anyone else.

One thing we always disliked was the amount of paper we needed to print for our typesetting work. In 2004 we typeset a total of 45,000 pages. And for each page we had to create a total of 4 printed pages. Each checking and proofing stage needed a set of prints.

We started to work on reducing the print volume, by checking some stages on screen rather than on paper. Bit by bit we moved each stage from paper to screen. The result is that now we typeset some 160,000 pages, but only print 0.4 sheets per typeset page. We estimate that we save some 300,000 pages annually. A print is only needed in special cases, and most manuscripts go through the full production process without single print generated. We always use both sides of the paper and the scrap paper is passed on to a women’s empowerment group who manufacture hand made paper for artists, etc. We are not quite paperless, but getting there!

As a by product, using larger LCD screens, our operators feel more comfortable as they can zoom into any part of a manuscript rather than squint on small text on paper.

How we have reduced paper usage over the years.

River Valley are happy to be hosting the annual TeX Users’ Group meeting in October on our campus in Kerala. We invite publishers and others to attend for a special experience. For the first time, TUG will be held outdoors.

Details here.