On Mar 3, 2005, at 12:16 PM, Stefano Franchi wrote:
For books: Big publishers (i.e. big UP presses) behave as journals: they want word files and will re-typeset everything. (Actually some p. houses will retype everything from paper...). Smaller publishing houses and/or imprints will want a camera-ready manuscript and assume you will use Word and provide instructions accordingly (i.e. "11pt for the body text," "skip two lines before a section heading", etc.). You must become good at _LaTeX_ to produce the camera-ready manuscripts they want. In fact, you'll probably sleep with the LaTeX companion, as I have been doing for the last two months...
In short: major hassle.
You just haven't found the right publisher yet.
At my day job, we work with a number of publishers who will accept LaTeX files --- .lyx files once --- (and then pass them on to us for writing macros and page composition).
Unfortunately, for the most part publishers perceive it as more cost-effective and more flexible for most jobs to convert to Word or plain text and re-typeset from scratch. (In particular, doing this allows them to grab pretty much any graphic designer off the street to work on it.)
Possible counter-arguments (in rough order of importance / effectiveness):
- you want updated .tex source files returned to facilitate working on a successive edition
- you have in place an embedded index (or will put in embedded indexing codes) so as to avoid the need to have a one-off index done by a human indexer
- you have and want to maintain w/o extensive manual labour and re-checking cross-references
- you want your math typeset just so and don't want it re-set and don't want to take the effort to re-check it character for character
- you have a lot of good quality art (say drawn w/ metapost or pstricks) and having it re-drawn and manually placed would be a major point of expense
- you want to bundle a CD-ROM or have a matching web-site w/ an HTML or .pdf (w/ hyperlinks)
Since you're already working in LyX, you might be well-served by providing your manuscript on a CD w/ a compleat LyX install w/ step-by-step instructions (note that it's a free alternative to Word) --- if your book is unique enough that the publisher can't find a near equivalent by some other author who is already working in Word you should be all set. Failing that, well there's always the conversion techniques mentioned previously.
William
-- William Adams, publishing specialist voice - 717-731-6707 | Fax - 717-731-6708 www.atlis.com
