On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, William F. Adams wrote:
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...).
Well, ... Spriger-Verlag is a rather large publisher and they not only accept LaTeX files, but they have a TeXpert on staff and they provide classes for their books as well as their journals. I sent them every file produced by LyX, LaTeX and TeX (including all figures as .eps) and they needed to typeset only the first four pages: half-title, copyright page and a series page. Great to work with them; both my acquisitions editor and production editor were helpful and supportive.
You just haven't found the right publisher yet.
One of publishing's great mysteries -- to me, at least -- is why O'Reilly & Associates insist that their authors submit manuscripts in Word format. I know several authors who work strictly in linux and despise having to use OO.o then translate to .doc for submittal. Considering that ORA is known as the publisher of the best linux/UNIX books on the market, their refusal to accept LaTeX is puzzline. And, the company is a major sponsor of OSCON, the Open Source Convention (held here in Portland the past couple of years), but they insist on the proprietary Word format. I sent Tim O'Reilly an e-mail asking about this but he has not responded. Shrug.
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.)
Why is this, in your opinion? Are they oblivious of TeX?
Rich
-- Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM) <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
