I'm one of the authors of a book that's been published in several editions by the Professional and Technical Reference division of Prentice Hall. This is part of the giant Pearson empire, which also includes Addison-Wesley and, I believe, Wiley. The industry consolidation doesn't seem to matter too much at this point, since most of it affects the back end (printing, distribution, etc.) more than the relationship between the label and the authors. So I think it's still worth researching the specific brand name you want to publish with rather than just assuming that one brand is as good as another within a given publishing empire.
We've worked with several editors (product managers, really - they do no editing) at PHPTR over the years, some better than others, but most of them helpful and competent. Support staff such as production editors and copy editors have been uniformly excellent. Overall, I'd say our experience has been very good.
Our manuscripts go to the publisher camera-ready, including the cover. This isn't the normal workflow for them, but they've done a very good job of accommodating us. I recommend this approach for anyone without a pathological fear of typesetting since it keeps you in control and skirts all kinds of format-related conflicts.
Potential technical book writers should be aware that the market has been contracting by double digits every year since the turn of the century. See Tim O'Reilly's blog postings about the technical book market for some great detail on this issue. It used to be a reasonable living, but now it just isn't. And our book is relatively successful. If a sizable part of your motivation for publishing is the prospect of royalty income, I would suggest approaching technical book writing with considerable skepticism. It's a great form of self-promotion, but you have to use the book as a basis for other streams of income.
Finally, unless you yourself are planning to put out crap, I would not even consider going with a shlock publisher like SAMS or Sybex. Just take a tour of your local technical bookstore and write down the name of every imprint you see on a wide-margined, 1,000-page tome about a relatively simple subject, especially if it has the words "unleashed", "revealed", or "secrets" in the title. There are plenty of publishers out there with great, legitimate lineups; there's no need to lie down with dogs.
Although FrameMaker is a well-designed system, Adobe has made it pretty clear that FrameMaker won't be growing up into the 1990s, let alone the current millennium. Unfortunately, InDesign is in no way, shape, or form a replacement for FM - it's a completely different type of application more akin to the old PageMaker.
As a book author who uses FrameMaker, I've been keeping my eyes open for a modern replacement for more than a decade. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that nothing currently available fits the bill. Stick with LaTeX if that's what you know.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm one of the authors of a book that's been published in several editions by the Professional and Technical Reference division of Prentice Hall. This is part of the giant Pearson empire, which also includes Addison-Wesley and, I believe, Wiley. The industry consolidation doesn't seem to matter too much at this point, since most of it affects the back end (printing, distribution, etc.) more than the relationship between the label and the authors. So I think it's still worth researching the specific brand name you want to publish with rather than just assuming that one brand is as good as another within a given publishing empire.
We've worked with several editors (product managers, really - they do no editing) at PHPTR over the years, some better than others, but most of them helpful and competent. Support staff such as production editors and copy editors have been uniformly excellent. Overall, I'd say our experience has been very good.
Our manuscripts go to the publisher camera-ready, including the cover. This isn't the normal workflow for them, but they've done a very good job of accommodating us. I recommend this approach for anyone without a pathological fear of typesetting since it keeps you in control and skirts all kinds of format-related conflicts.
Potential technical book writers should be aware that the market has been contracting by double digits every year since the turn of the century. See Tim O'Reilly's blog postings about the technical book market for some great detail on this issue. It used to be a reasonable living, but now it just isn't. And our book is relatively successful. If a sizable part of your motivation for publishing is the prospect of royalty income, I would suggest approaching technical book writing with considerable skepticism. It's a great form of self-promotion, but you have to use the book as a basis for other streams of income.
Finally, unless you yourself are planning to put out crap, I would not even consider going with a shlock publisher like SAMS or Sybex. Just take a tour of your local technical bookstore and write down the name of every imprint you see on a wide-margined, 1,000-page tome about a relatively simple subject, especially if it has the words "unleashed", "revealed", or "secrets" in the title. There are plenty of publishers out there with great, legitimate lineups; there's no need to lie down with dogs.
Although FrameMaker is a well-designed system, Adobe has made it pretty clear that FrameMaker won't be growing up into the 1990s, let alone the current millennium. Unfortunately, InDesign is in no way, shape, or form a replacement for FM - it's a completely different type of application more akin to the old PageMaker. As a book author who uses FrameMaker, I've been keeping my eyes open for a modern replacement for more than a decade. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that nothing currently available fits the bill. Stick with LaTeX if that's what you know.