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REVISING THE TEXT FOR
FUTURE EDITIONS
Now that you have brought your book to successful publication, you can rest—at least
for a while. If book sales are strong, it is likely that we will ask you to revise the present edition. Although you will not have to start from scratch, you will need plenty of
time for your revision work. And we will require the same amount of production time
that it took during the last go-around to turn your manuscript into a bound book.
Thus, to get your book into production by a certain date, you and your acquisitions or development editor will have to plan carefully. That means starting the
revision process early—usually a year before the completed manuscript is scheduled to be turned over to production. Your goal in the revision is the same as it was
when you wrote the book the first time: to get your book into the hands of the sales
force in time for adoptions.
REVIEWS: WHAT THEY ARE
WORK WITH THEM
AND
HOW TO
Your acquisitions editor will take the first step in the revision process when she or
he sends the latest edition of your book out for review, often with the help of a
development editor or project manager. In most cases, reviewers are instructors
who have used your book in the classroom, although some reviewers may never
have seen it before. The opinions from these people are the best tools we have in
deciding how to improve the text in the next edition. Reviews also alert us to market changes and to the strengths and weaknesses of the competition.
You can join with your editor to put together the reviewer questionnaire.
Reviewers’ answers to these questions, as well as their personal observations of
how well the text works in the classroom, will give you a great deal to go on when
you start your revision.
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Your editor will glean a list of revision guidelines from the reviewers’ comments and give them to you in the form of a review summary. Thus, you will see
at a glance the key points you should keep in mind as you add and delete material.
Your editor will also send you a full set of the actual reviews, which you should
consult as you work on the text.
In most cases, we test the market once more by sending all or part of your
newly revised manuscript out for review. We take this step to make sure that your
manuscript changes are acceptable and attractive to the market. Although yet another round of revision may follow, remember that our ultimate goal is to improve
on quality and sales in the new edition.
MORE IDEA SOURCES
Product Team: The members of your book product team, including your acquisitions editor, development editor, marketing manager, and project manager, may also
give you other valuable information to use along with the reviewers’ comments.
Product Information Forms: Our sales representatives are trained to ask about a
book’s strengths and weaknesses while instructors are using the book in the classroom
and to pass these comments on to the acquisitions editor and marketing manager in the
form of Product Information Forms (PIFs). Your editor will keep a PIF file over the
years the current edition is in use and give it to you when the revision begins.
Other Idea Sources: Occasionally, we conduct mail or phone surveys of potential
users to learn more about the current market. Our sales staff may also target certain
customers for in-depth interviews about your book, its competition, and the market
as a whole. Once again, all of these results will be given to you before your revision work begins.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO MAKE YOUR
REVISION EASIER
Authors who have been through the revision process have found that the following
techniques help make the job a lot easier.
1. Keep alert to changes in the competition by examining your competitors’
revisions carefully whenever they appear. The content or pedagogical
changes that your competitors make in new editions have often been recommended by users from your own book’s potential audience.
2. Keep a running file of materials that might be useful in future editions of
your book. Have a file folder for each of your book’s chapters into which
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you drop clippings from periodicals, interesting applications, handwritten
reminder notes to yourself, and any other items that you think might come
in handy later on. It is much better to set up and use such a system
between revision-writing periods than to have to scramble for usable
material at the eleventh hour.
3. Keep a special copy of your book in which you jot marginal notes and
ideas for clarifying the text. These ideas may occur to you during classroom discussions, while preparing exams, when grading papers, while
looking at competing texts, and so on.
By following these suggestions, you will be well prepared to start your revision on time—with minimal stress. Most important, you will be able to focus on
writing new text, creating new artwork, and reorganizing the flow of ideas rather
than on gathering raw material.
PREPARING
THE
REVISED TEXT
If you are reusing a large portion of material from the last edition and have only
light to moderate changes throughout the manuscript, talk to your acquisitions editor about whether preparing a tearsheet manuscript might make for an easier production effort than getting a copy of the final disks from the previous edition. If it
is decided that a download of the previous edition is preferable, specify whether
you require Macintosh or IBM-compatible disks and what software program you
will be using. Our prepress department will contact the vendor and will supply your
editor with the disks in the format you require if at all possible. (Note that this is
less likely if yours is a mathematics text.) If you are making major revisions
throughout, you may wish to key the manuscript from scratch. Prepare the manuscript as you would a new manuscript. (See Chapters 6–9 for our earlier discussion
on the physical preparation of text and illustrations).
REVISING
THE
ART MANUSCRIPT
Revised illustrations fall into five different categories. As you will see, these categories affect the way the art is handled.
PICKUP LINE ART AND PICKUP LINE ART WITH CORRECTIONS
Pickup line art can be reused from the current edition of your book or another
Addison-Wesley title as is, requiring, at most, a revised figure number. In contrast,
although the basic structure of pickup line art with corrections remains the same,
minor changes are needed. You may, for example, want to change some illustration
labels, update data, or correct a mistake that slipped through in the last edition.
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To revise these two types of art, start by pasting up the tearsheet illustrations
from the latest printing of the most recent edition. Be sure that each tearsheet shows
the old figure number and the old book page number so that we can easily keep
track of the illustrations. If tearsheets are not available, or if you prefer to keep the
text and illustration tearsheets intact, use a photocopy of the full book page to create a separate art manuscript. If you are using illustrations from another AddisonWesley title (whether pickup line art or pickup line art with corrections), identify
the source on the art manuscript page, complete with full title, edition number, page
number, and figure number.
When indicating a new figure number on pickup line art, simply mark
through the old number and insert a new number above or to the left of the old
number. Please do not make it impossible for us to read the old figure (or book
page) number. Once again, it will make your editor’s job a lot harder if old numbers are not readable.
Indicate minor corrections on the tearsheet in the same way as you see in
Figure 13.1.
NEW LINE ART
In a revision, new line art refers to illustrations appearing in the text for the first
time, or illustrations from the previous edition with major changes (if you are uncertain what constitutes a major change, consult your editor). Prepare new art for the
revision following the guidelines described in Chapter 9 of this Author’s Guide.
Keep in mind that any new art you include in the revision must be consistent with
the current art. The basic style, structure, and editorial thrust of the text’s art program
have already been set, and all new art must fit comfortably into the art program.
When your art program is complete, number new line art, pickup line art, and
pickup line art with corrections in sequence to make one final illustration program.
Figure 13.1 An example of pickup line art with changes marked for a revised edition.
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PICKUP PHOTOS
When you use photos that appeared in the previous edition of your book or in
another Addison-Wesley title, they are referred to as pickup photos. In preparing
your pickup photo manuscript, follow the same procedures we described for pickup line art. (This category also includes pickup camera-ready art.) As a general
rule, you should strive to pick up approximately 70 percent of the images from the
previous edition, and replace 30 percent with new photos. Check with your editor
to determine the suitability of this rule to your current revision.
NEW PHOTOS
All photos that will appear in the revised text for the first time are new photos.
They should be prepared according to the guidelines in Chapter 9. This category
also includes new camera-ready art.
REUSE AND NEW PERMISSIONS
TEXT AND ART
FOR
You must obtain permission for all copyrighted material in the revised text. This
includes copyrighted material taken from any previous edition, as well as all new
copyrighted material. Sometimes, owners of copyrighted material grant permission
for use in all future editions, but you cannot count on this. On the contrary, most
permissions are for one-time use only.
Your best course of action is a careful review of your permissions correspondence for each piece of copyrighted text and art. Start this process early so that
you can request all your needed permissions in time. Then follow the same procedures you used for the first edition (see Chapter 5). Key all permissions letters to
the manuscript, and submit them to us along with your final manuscript.
FINAL PREPARATION
Follow the same guidelines given in Chapter 6 for instructions on numbering the
manuscript and shipping the manuscript to us.