The situation for complex textbooks is quite different from the situation for other kinds of books.
For nearly 20 years Ruth and I did ALL of the work on our physics textbook, which was possible only because we have very strong computer skills. We also did most of the marketing. It was only with the 3rd edition that the publisher put in sizable resources in the form of much improved layout design, colorizing our thousands of two-color diagrams, highly skilled detailed copy editing, reviews, and marketing. We provided LaTeX that was relatively simple in terms of layout but contained all of the many thousands of equations, but they paid for the design to be implemented in the LaTeX imports of our text. They also paid for the conversion to an ebook format, something that currently is highly non-trivial starting from LaTeX. Most authors of physics texts do not have the skills to have gotten as far as we did before the 3rd edition, and we couldn't have gone the last mile that led to the much improved 3rd edition. Certainly we could have done something not too shabby completely on our own, self-publishing, but as I reported in earlier notes, it was absolutely crucial that the known Wiley imprimatur be on the book; otherwise no one would have paid any attention to it. Also, the Wiley name means to potential adopters that the book will be available a couple of years from now, and maintained and corrected -- that the web site won't just disappear. I have no doubt that even complex projects of our kind will eventually lend themselves to self-publishing, and I have little doubt that eventually the imprimatur/certification role of major publishers will fade too, as alternative reviewing mechanisms take firmer hold. But I just wanted to emphasize that in the real world of publishing intro physics textbooks we ain't there yet. Bruce ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
