I have had a few books where the editor made some detailed suggestions; most of the time, it is farmed out to a copyeditor, who looks for grammar, readability problems, but not anything about structure.
I have also been responsible for producing my own indexes.
The publisher sends out a few copies for review, places a few modest adds, and hopes that enough libraries purchase the book.
However, for blockbuster books, big advances ....
On Tue, May 29, 2001 at 08:51:09PM -0700, Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>
> In a follow up on the Ian Murray's `Privatizing Science' thread, here
> is an amusing afterward.
>
> Today, I went up to Cody's to look around for an elementary Algebra
> Two text or outline to see if I could con Joe M, my work buddy into
> continuing. As unlikely as that might be, I thought it would
> interesting to think about trying.
>
> While looking around the math section, what do I see but a giant
> volumn called `CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics', editor, Eric
> Weisstein! (Its been there for about a year. I just never noticed before)
> Even though I know this is the devil's own cookbook, evil
> spawn of the corporate pig hegemony, vile thing that should be
> surrounded by wreaths of garlic and dead chicken feet, well I couldn't
> resist it. It must weigh fifteen pounds, and runs 1969 pages in a 8.5
> x 11 format and costs 99.99. (Too many nines).
>
> Anyway, here is an excerpt from the introduction:
>
> ``...The initial document was written in Microsoft Word on a Mac Plus
> computer, and had reached about 200 pages by the time I started
> graduate school in 1990. When Andrew Trevorrow made his OzTeX program
> available for the Mac, I began the task of converting all my documents
> to TeX, resulting in a vast improvement in readability. While
> undertaking the Word to TeX conversion, I also began cross-referencing
> entries, anticipating that eventually I would be able to convert the
> entire document to hypertext. This hope was realized beginning in
> 1995, when the Internet explosion was in full sweing and I learned of
> Nikos Drakos's excellent TeX to HTML converter, LateX2HTML. After
> some additional effort, I was able to post the HTML version of my
> encyclopedia on the World Wide Web, currently located at
> www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/math/....'''
>
> Don't look there of course since it was changed over to the Wolfram
> site about a year or so later and then zapped by the CRC lawsuit.
>
> The important thing to note in the above quote is the layout details
> and how to put them together to produce both a technical book and a
> web text. I think there are now shareware versions of all these
> programs for the Winsuck crowd.
>
> In any event, the CRC text is produced in 8.5 x 11 format, which means
> proofing was done at home on a laser printer and then the dvi or ps
> files were sent to the commerical printer who produced the film
> directly off the files. There are off-set systems that make computer
> to off-set press a single step (assuming the editing was done on the
> computer).
>
> These little technical details should have resulted in a explosion of
> very cheap, abundant, and well made books and textbooks---an entire
> library in both solid (print) and effermal (electronic)
> forms. Certainly everything taught from first grade through PhD's
> should be available in both formats. Of course they are not available
> and what is available, cost more than ever. Of course he single biggest reason
> is the CPH bottleneck.
>
> Chuck Grimes
>
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu