: Is there such a thing as the "master copy" of a book? The process for movies and music is pretty well-known and thoroughly documented on Wikipedia. You shoot a movie, edit it and then you

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Most publishers use InDesign for the text block and Photoshop for the cover, and there are a variety of these files stored on the relevant staff members' computers. The closest you get to the "master copy" would be the most recent version of the work provided by the writer that has been through the editing process and contains the most up-to-date edits (ditto with the covers). This will tend to be stored on a shared drive to which the editorial team will all have access (usually "read only," but with write access when required). Again, this will tend to be in InDesign format, but it's also possible that there are more up-to-date edits somewhere on paper, or in Word, or in an email exchange with the writer/agent/editor that need to be incorporated.

A book is always in an unfinished state, even after publication (when errors, inconsistencies, and things the writer just wants to change, suddenly becoming glaringly obvious) and the file maintenance conventions publishers adopt reflect this. Reprints of books, new editions, different sized editions, editions for different markets, paper/electronic versions (etc.,etc.) will all require differently formatted files that reflect the most current version of the edit, so there's never a real "master copy."

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Is there none that can supply some "trade" information regarding the methods, file formats etc - of modern books / manuscripts? I expect, if the graphics was ever available as such - or designed so by the publisher - they would be stored as vector graphics, unrendered or uncompressed original formats. Complex images though, aren't impossible to do by vector - but extremely time consuming.

As have nicely been informed by the other users here - with older, "analog" media (video and audio), the primary function of the "Master" was to branch out a handful of copies, and duplicate further from those - due to physical wear and tear during the copy process. Books were "set" manually, and the letters separated after the print was run. Original manuscripts were usually print or writing on paper, depending on age.

In modern day - the "Master" still serves as an unadulterated original (and this is usually duplicated several times) - but not primarily due to wear and tear during a copy process. A straight 1:1 digital copy does not pose any wear on the original, or detoriation of the new copy. Its all 1s and 0s. Most data transfer processes have data corruption control. The "recieving" end will let the "sender" know what it actually got. If the data don't match the original, the "sender" will send that package again. This will loop util it "gets it right" or a defined limited set of times (whatever occurs first) - this "limit" can be indefinite.

Don't confuse this with the actual manufacturing of "digital media" like CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. The actual transfer process from the "manufacturing master", is physical pressing. Any physical pressing procedure, is actually very much analog - and thus both long-time wear or a foreign object like a speck of dust, can introduce detoriation (resulting in data corruption).

There are 2 other important aspects of "Digital Master Copies" to keep in mind.

First off - most of todays digital storage media, will be detoriate with time. This is mostly down to physical properties of the materials the storage media is manufactured from. Paper and cellulose film will deteriorate too. So will modern polyester film eventually, but its designed to last for hundreds of years given ideal circumstances. But the good thing about digital media, is that its fairly easy and little work - to replicate and migrate to a new "Master Copy". It is also fairly easy to make it automated, if you administer hundreds or thousands of "Masters".

Second: A digital master copy is usually completely without compression. Which means, its VERY, VERY, VERY large. If the format is 24 frames per second - then thats what this copy will be: 24 full uncompressed images per second of "film". A "standard" Blu-Ray disc (double layer) may hold up to 50 Gigabyte of data. Special triple layer discs may hold as much as 128 Gigabytes, although these are rare.

Now consider a modern, HQ shot 3D movie like The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug . This was shot in 48fps, 3D 5K resolution. Now lets do the math for the uncompressed, RAW digital video data (without sound). (Some numbers are theoretical likeliness, as I couldn't find those filming details) :

24 (bit color depth) * 5120 (pixels horiz.) * 2700 (pixels vert.) * 48 (frames per second) * 2 (for 3D, stereo (2 images "per frame")). Without ANY compression, that is 31.850.496.00 bits per second of film - or 3,7 Gigabytes. Per second of film. Thats almost 50 Terrabytes for a 3 and a half hour movie.

Now, even a FullHD (1080p), 24 fps movie at this bit depth would be ~142 Megabytes per second, ~1.8 Terrabyte for 3.5 hours. It goes without saying - you can't store that Digital Master spread over a thousand (or 35 in the "1880p/24fps case") Blu-Ray discs - some other storage media must be used. And to squeeze this raw digital movie footage onto a Blu-Ray disc, is actually going to require some very serious compression.

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Do books need master copies? Do we still need master copies?

The answer to both questions is yes. Even though the original copy of a book might be digital, it still needs a master copy.

For one thing, digital degrades. It might not happen as fast as with physical copies, but images degrade as they get copied (one of the downsides of image compression tech). Also, errors (formatting, spelling, and extraneous) are introduced into text as it is copied more and more.

And even if digital didn't suffer from degradation, you should still have a master (or archival) copy. It's not a good idea to assume that you will always be able to find a good quality copy in the future should you need to create a new edition. Chances are it will be a degraded copy with lower quality images and other issues introduced in the conversion process

What should that master copy contain?

In my opinion: Everything.

I would archive everything from the original source documents and images to the intermediate file formats and including whatever preferred archival file format is common at the moment. Don't forget to also include any material discarded from the published book; it could prove useful in a future edition.

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