I am going over the page proofs for our textbook, which is supposed to be in production by spring.
The copyediting and production editing of our manuscript was outsourced to a company in India. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Many Indians speak English as their first language, but it doesn't look as if the manuscript was copyedited much, if at all.
Our manuscript was originally with a small independent publisher, but was sold to Taylor and Francis, and is now with CRC. This is not the first time I have had "fun" with a big publishing house. I'm convinced now that it takes a truly evil soul to become an editor, and Satan's own minions are the CEO's of McGrawHillThompsonTaylorFrancisWadsworthPearsonPrenticeHallAllynBaconFreemanWorth.
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About Me
- Angry Professor
- I am a tenured faculty member at a large state university. My teaching efforts primarily consist of delivering statistics lectures to social science majors. These experiences have colored my perspective somewhat.
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7 comments:
No wonder the likes of Lulu.com are making money hand over fist.
Ah, well, the academic credentials one can gain with publishing via the likes of lulu are usually expressed in negative numbers.
I always get suspicious when I get those e-mails from textbook reps asking "Have you ever wanted to write a textbook?" Yes, I have, but I'm afraid someone from the big houses will steal my ideas if I reply to the message from my book reps.
W.W. Norton is one of the very few worker-owned publishing houses. I try to do business with them whenever I can.
Frenchdoc: Whaaaaa...? Wow, that's insane. Our Norton rep is a pretty nice guy. Weird!
At least you are reviewing your proofs. I had one class where the prof wrote the textbook and at the end of the semester, after grades were completed, I simply gave him my copy of the textbook which had all typos, grammatical and punctuation errors, errata, and other mistakes marked for editing. I eventually got a nice thank you note.
Isaac Asimov and two colleagues wrote a textbook and had their students proof it when it came out. They paid $.25 per error and $1.00 per formula error.
They nearly went broke.
I HATE TEXT BOOKS!! Thank you A.P. for letting express my opinion on this topic.
I have to say the worst books I have ever read were text books. One of the most powerful memories I have about reading is the consistently low quality of text books. They were all poorly organized, and contained some of the driest and most turgid writing I have ever encountered.
The all time whopper was an economics test book called, "Economics 101" we used in college. It ran to 500 pages. I figure the author was paid .05 cents a word to write it. For shits and giggles we would take entire 30 page chapters and condense then into 3 paragraphs and say the same thing.
I had an architectural history book that covered architectural history from pre Egyptian architecture all the way out to Frank Lloyd Right and modern architecture. This was a 1,000 page tome that DID NOT HAVE A SINGLE PICTURE IN IT.
Fast forward 10 years to my time teaching at Bone Head Tech. One the courses I had to teach was architectural history. I was assigned a text book to use, wait for it, THAT HAD NO PICTURES IN IT.
I went to the local library and checked out all the architectural picture books I could find and made slides of all the pictures so the students could see what the hell I was talking about.
I also learned that text book business is one of the most shameless and cynical around.
I taught hand drafting in the engineering department at Bone Head Tech as well. We used a wonderful book called, "Technical Drawing" It covered everything related to all kinds of drafting. It was 800 pages, well organized and jam packed with good information. The knowledge base that makes up drafting does not change much over time, so there is no reason to revise things much.
A new revision came out that was over 1,000 pages long, cost twice as much and had reduced content. We all agreed that this was a bald attempt steal money from the students.
I was also appalled by the text book reps who would hawk the worst junk and tell me how the crap they were selling would help me.
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