Alice in Wonderland, Tate Publishing, £24.99, ISBN 978-1-85437-991-7

Liverpool has always published around its programmes. Books carry our ideas to a wider audience than simply gallery visitors and ensure our exhibitions have a life beyond their time in Liverpool.

Our catalogues are published by Tate Publishing, which distributes our titles, but the vast majority are actually produced by staff in Liverpool.

Keeping the project to budget and on schedule and delivering a book that will sell, requires constant negotiation and hands-on management, and this is the responsibility of our dedicated design and print officer.

We started discussing the Alice in Wonderland catalogue in early 2010, when we sketched out the look and feel, pagination, potential authors and an outline budget. Confirming specifications and authors took longer than anticipated because of staff changes.

The project became the responsibility of our new head of exhibitions, Gavin Delahunty, who edited the book alongside the exhibition’s curator, Christoph Benjamin Schulz, a literature scholar based in Germany.

Creating a catalogue linked so directly to such iconic literary property meant it was important to reference the original Alice books, while giving it a contemporary edge.

Works as diverse as sketches from the 19th century through to contemporary video installations needed to be displayed at their best. We had much more material than space, so discussions about content were numerous and at times difficult.

Some planned illustrations had to be dropped because we couldn’t source good-quality images; others because the copyright holders couldn’t be contacted. The arrival of the unbound copy was met with both relief and trepidation: relief at seeing printed pages, trepidation because any mistakes were now immortalised.

A week later, the books arrived and the business of selling them started in earnest. The catalogue is selling well. It adds to the legacy left by Carroll’s classic stories, and will continue to do so long after the exhibition has ended.

Jemima Pyne is the head of communications and publishing at Tate Liverpool.

Alice in Wonderland runs at Tate Liverpool until 29 January