Understanding the Acceptability Paragraphi in a Publishing Contract

Authors who have signed a contract with a health care educational publisher have no doubt come across a paragraph that says that the publisher won't publish the book unless it finds the author's manuscript "acceptable."

The paragraph also comes with a date by which the author must present the "acceptable" manuscript. If the author hasn't presented the manuscript by then, a publisher may cancel the contract and try to recoup its losses.

Yikes!

That can be one scary paragraph.

"What if my book isn't good enough?"

"What if I didn't do exactly what they wanted?"

"What if I don't get the book to them in time?"

Seldom used

First, take a deep breath. Publishers seldom invoke that paragraph, and when we do it's typically because we received a truly lousy manuscript despite all the work a developmental editor surely would have done by then.

We want authors to succeed, because when they succeed, we succeed. So we'll work with a manuscript as much as we can to ensure success.

Sometimes, though, nothing we do can salvage the manuscript. In those instances, yes, we'll invoke the acceptability clause. But we don't like doing it.

In more a decade at F.A. Davis I've invoked that clause exactly twice.Most of us publisher-types have, I think, invoked that part of their own contracts at about the same rate.

Seldom abused

That paragraph is also seldom abused by authors. Well, the acceptability part of the paragraph anyway. But we find that many, many authors don't meet their manuscript deadline. Many.

Lots.

Numerous.

Copious numbers.

Did I say "many"?

See, we're accustomed to authors who, for one reason or another, find themselves unable to deliver a manuscript by the date on the contract, even when we think we've provided more than enough time. We understand why that happens..

We don't like it, but we understand it, and we work with it.

To a point.

So, where's that point?

That point varies with each publisher and with each product. Some of us are more forgiving than others, and some products are under less pressure to publish than others.

Example: We published a book a year or so ago a full ten years after the contract was signed. The only reason we allowed it to go on was that, for that particular book and that particular market, the author under contract was the best person to write it and the book was still sorely needed by the market.

That's an exception, though, and certainly not the rule. I would say that, on the whole, regardless of the publisher, if you haven't been able to finish your book within, at the outside, four years of signing your contract, you probably won't be publishing a book.

By the way...

I should mention that the publisher is and must be the sole arbiter of what makes for an acceptable manuscript. The author certainly can't do it, so who else can? Who else should?

Right. No one, just the publisher.

Now, about that paragraph...

The gist of that whole acceptability paragraph are these two points:

1. Your publisher will most likely do everything in its power to help you develop an acceptable manuscript. So work with your editors, learn from them, and grow. That's what we want to see, growth. We want authors who can succeed, and we'll work to help them get there.
2. Don't dilly-dally. Your publisher has only so much patience, and then...bye-bye.

What Is "Manuscript" and What Should It Look Like When It's Finished?

New authors hear the word manuscript and think it's some magical being that can't be understood by human people persons.

So not true.

Let's take a look at what actual manuscript is and why you shouldn't be afraid of it.

What is it?

Manuscript is nothing more than a book in chapter form in a word processing document, typically Microsoft Word. One chapter per file. No big deal.

How is it formatted?

Each publisher has its own preferences for how a manuscript should be formatted, but here are the basic parameters most of us use. Please do be sure, though, to check each publisher's author page for more specific guidelines.

• Most publishers want just a plain, unfancified, unstyled (if you don't know what styles are, you'll be all set to roll) Word document.
• Double-spaced
• 1-inch margins all around
• Times or Times New Roman font, 12-point
• One tab in front of each paragraph except the first paragraph after a heading (for most but not all publishers); no tab in front of first paragraph after a heading
• NO EXTRA TABS (more on that in a moment)
• ONE space between sentences, not two
• Headings in boldface
• Notations to indicate where photos, illustrations, tables, and other figures should be placed. We use something like this:

There are certainly other parameters, depending on the publisher, type of book, feature set, and so forth, but those are the main ones.

What’s the deal with extra tabs?

I tell you what the deal is with extra tabs. They get in the way!

Notice I said "extra" tabs. Single tabs, as noted above and for other purposes, are fine. It's those double-, triple-, and quadrillion-tabs that mess things up.

It doesn't make any difference what a list or table looks like on the manuscript page; it will all be designed in the final product.

If you want to make a three-column table of information, for instance, just make a table in Word and fill it in. Don't try to make everything line up with tabs and hard returns. If you do that, you'll make your editor go insane, and based on the editors I know (me included), that's not a long trip.

5 Tips for Reviewing Manuscript for a Health Care Textbook

People who can review drafts of a manuscript and provide cogent, reasoned, and intelligent feeback are considered gold by us publisher types. Gold, I tell ya.

If you're a subject matter expert and have been asked to review someone's manuscript, here are some tips and guidelines for turning yourself into gold.

#1 Be fierce.

Publishers don't want their manuscript reviewers to tell them what they want to hear. They want reviewers to tell them the truth.

If a chapter's organization doesn't work, say so. If a description doesn't make sense, say so. If an illustration is inaccurate, say so.

And don't sugarcoat it. Don't dance around it. Come right out and say it.

#2 Be vigilant.

Look at everything. Simple definitions can look simple but be wrong.

Here's an example. The manuscript defines diabetes as "a disease in which there's too much sugar in the blood." Simple, yes, but wrong.

Sucrose

Diabetes is a disorder, not a disease, and it's not sugar that's too high, it's glucose. "Sugar" implies sucrose, a compound consisting of glucose and fructose. I can understand using "sugar" when writing for children, but certainly not when writing a textbook for students in a health care program.

#3 Be flexible.

Know that the content you're reviewing hasn't been edited by a copyeditor, so you will almost certainly come across misspellings, punctuation errors, and grammatical faux pas. Resist all editing urges and pay them no mind.

Seriously.

Don't waste your time pointing out errors we'll catch in a later phase of the project. Overlook those issues and focus on the content itself.

If you subsequently review page proofs, then point out all errors you find, because that content will have already gone through the copyedit stage. If you find an error then, let us know.

#4 Be professional.

Maintain the same level of professionalism in your comments as you would in any other endeavor. Harsh comments about the writing style or knowledge of the author don't help anyone.

If the author has stated something inaccurately, just say that. Don't say, "This author doesn't know what she's talking about."

Just, you know, be nice. Truthful, but nice.

#5 Be prompt.

When you agreed to review manuscript for a project, the editor most likely set a deadline for when the review should be finished. Do everything you can to meet that deadline.

If you can't meet it, let the editor know so she can find someone else. It's not the end of the world if you can't finish a manuscript review in the time allotted, so don't fret none, but you gotta let us know.

Good luck!

How to Write a Foreword for a Health Care Textbook

Not to be confused with forward — and why would you, really — a foreword can be valuable for health care textbooks and reference books.

A foreword is a kind of Good Housekeeping seal of approval for a book. Typically written by a well-known person in the field, a foreword tells potential buyers why they should buy the book, why they must buy the book, why they would have to be sophomoric kumquats not to buy the book.

Perhaps that's being a bit harsh.

The point is, forewords should put a high-gloss shine on the concept and execution of the book. Foreword authors should meet a few basic goals:

• Promote yourself. Readers should understand right away that you what you're talking about. If you've published in the field or won awards for pertinent work you've done, say so. Don't be modest.
• Say great things about the book's author. If you know the author, or at least one of them, say so. Give some insight into why you respect the author and trust him (or, you know, her) to create the best book possible on the subject.
• Say great things about the book. This is where you need to actually have a copy of either final manuscript or page proofs. Page proofs are printed or PDF documents that show exactly what the final product will look like, including images, page numbers, and so forth. Take a close look, overlook any typos, and try to paint for the reader a portrait of all the great content they'll find in the book.
• Finish with a prediction of success. Surely potential buyers who purchase the book and study it will learn in a new way, succeed beyond expectations, win the envy of their peers, and save the entire planet from almost certain destruction. Or something like that. 

The main goal here is that you, a leading expert in the field, a someone in the area the authors are writing about, are saying how wonderful the book is, how great the authors' approach is, and how perfect the book is for whomever it's being written for.

Apologies to Good Housekeeping!

In short, when you're a foreword author, YOU are the book's seal of approval.

Should I Write My Health Care Textbook Before Sending It to a Publisher?

NO!!!

Do NOT write the whole book before you talk to a publisher!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

(Loud panting.)

Sorry, I got a little carried away, there.

Every now and then an aspiring author tells me that the book they're working on is nearly finished, and would I consider publishing it. I try to control my emotions and explain slowly and clearly why that's not a good idea.

No publisher, no guidance

Authors generally write their entire first novel before finding a publisher, and that's fine. It works in trade publishing. But in educational publishing, it won't fly.

Successfully authoring a textbook or clinical reference without a publisher is rather like trying to drive cross-country alone, without a map, and expecting never to get lost. It could happen, but the odds are amassed against it.

In textbook publishing the publisher is the author's best friend. The publisher and her team (or, in my case, his team) help the author by:

• fine-tuning the author's vision for the book
• delineating the specific market
• analyzing and enhancing the features of the book, including such tasks as:
• identifying and formatting themed sidebars
• reviewing the table of contents with an eye to the book's marketability, not just its clinical and pedagogical organization
• providing expert feedback about specific chapter content, paying particular attention to pedagogy, clarity, organization, tone, and consistency in presentation
• serving as champion for the author's clinical and creative vision when dealing with the publishing company's decision-making body
• providing essential feedback early in the process to avoid problems later

Let experience be your guide

Experienced authors know well the benefits that a trusted publisher can bring to a project. I don't think any of my experienced authors would ever attempt to author a new textbook without getting a publisher first.

They've learned firsthand the value of having fresh insight into their vision. They know just how incredibly important a developmental editor's work is. They understand unequivocally how  important it is to marry the vision for the book with the markets best suited for it.

So take a lesson, you first-timers. Talk to a publisher before writing your entire manuscript. You'll be glad you did.

[Large, contented sigh of relief.]

5 Tips for a Great Manuscript Review

By Guest Blogger Donna Morrissey

A key ingredient for publishing a successful textbook is the review process. Before a book is published, while the manuscript is still in draft form, publishers will seek out the opinions of other experts in the field to read the manuscript and identify weak areas and incorrect content as well as the strengths that make the book worth buying.

This feedback is critical for helping authors fine tune their work and for ensuring the book's success. As any writer can attest, one can lose sight of the forest while in the midst of the trees.

As an author gets deeper and deeper into the writing of individual chapters, it can be difficult to maintain continuity between chapters and keep track of all the details. For reviewers, particularly instructors who are involved in making decisions about what textbooks to use for their courses, it's a good way to keep an eye on the latest trends.

So what makes for a good review?

#1 — A good review focuses on the content as a whole. When teaching a course, does this content explain the material clearly? Will students understand what they're reading? Will they gain the knowledge needed from reading these chapters? Will instructors need to develop a host of supplemental materials to fill in the blanks that the book does not address?

#2 — A good review compares the manuscript to the textbooks they're already using. Does the new book do a better job of explaining the important concepts? Does it cover more topics than their current textbook or is it ignoring important topics that one would expect to see? Does it provide the most current information? Does it identify other resources students can easily access if they want more information?

#3 — A good review examines the learning outcomes or objectives given at the beginning of the chapter. Are they clear? Are they attainable? Are they practical? Will a student be able to accomplish these objectives after reading the chapter?

#4 — A good review also examines the review questions given at the end of the chapter. Do they prompt the student to think about what they read or can they copy and paste the answers from the text? Are the questions relevant to what's covered in the chapter? Do they assume more than what a student of this course would be expected to know?

#5 — Ask: Are key terms clearly identified and defined? Do the terms help broaden a student's vocabulary and knowledge? Do the terms help students deepen their understanding of the subject?

These are all elements authors and publishers need to know are being done well. A textbook that does not explain the subject, fails to inspire students to think critically about the subject, or does not provide students with tools to help them transition from understanding the concept to putting it into practical application is not a good textbook. Reviewers who provide this type of feedback are a valuable resource for publishers, authors, and for the market in general.

What does NOT make for a good review?

What does NOT make for a good review are reviewers whose comments focus on the mechanics of writing or the more technical issues. Many reviewers return chapters of manuscript with pages filled with notes about misplaced commas or typos. Publishers typically hire people to fix those mistakes. They're called copyeditors.

Reviewing drafts of chapters is understandably difficult. It can be distracting to read through a text that's filled with dangling participles, passive verbs, and split infinitives. For people who love language and writing, it can be hard to resist the urge to delete that unnecessary comma or insert that critical semi-colon or circle that annoying typo. I can respect that.

However, reviewers need to keep in mind they were approached to review a manuscript because they possess a level of expertise about the subject at hand and not because they have mad English skills. As a developmental editor, part of the job is to help guide authors in their writing to ensure they are expressing the content in a clear, concise manner that is useful to students and instructors.

Although a DE may be fairly knowledgeable in many areas, most of them aren't experts in any one particular area. Receiving solid feedback from reviewers can confirm that the authors are on the right track or give them the evidence that tells them a new direction is needed.

Copyeditors, on the other hand, have a completely different set of skills. They are trained to spot the smallest detail and the slightest wonkiness in sentence structure. The range of their knowledge extends from the most glaring of spelling mistakes (loose vs. lose is a favorite) to the finest detail of semantics and word selection (read that last paragraph...should it be 'ensure' or 'insure'? Are you sure?). They can recite their prepositions on command and know the differences between an en dash, an em dash, and a hyphen. They'll go to the mat to defend their placement of commas and apostrophes and woe betide the person who uses "it's" or "its" incorrectly.

Copyeditors may seem a bit obsessive, but that's why we love them. They'll take those draft chapters and vigorously disinfect them from spelling errors, grammatical errors, and ambiguous wording. By the time the manuscript gets to the printer, it will be as smooth as a baby's bottom with not a blemish in sight. Trust in this, reviewers.

So, let go of your inner copyeditor and tell us: After this book is published, will you use it?

5 Mandates for Preparing a Manuscript

Got yourself a book deal, eh? Excellent! Here are a few tips you'll need to keep in mind as you prepare your work for an editor. Well, I call them tips, but really, they're mandates.

Do 'em.

Mandate #1 No underlining!

You know that little underline icon  on your toolbar? (Alternately, you know that Control/Command-U keystroke?)

Ignore it. Don't click it. Don't touch it. Make like it never even existed.

That's right, the underline doesn't exist. If you want to underline a heading, book title, or pretty much anything else in your manuscript, use that little italics icon  instead. (Alternately, that Control/Command-I keystroke.)

The underline was used a long time ago, back in ye olde typewriter days, to indicate italics. Nowadays we've actually GOT italics, so use them.

Mandate #2 Stop making things look pretty on the page!

Your job as author is to present clinical content. Our job is to make that content look pretty on the page.

So don't be mucking things up with tabs in the middle of sentences and multiple spaces after a bullet so the text lines up on your screen. The reader won't be seeing your screen, number one, and number two, your editor will have to strip all of that extraneous garbage out of the manuscript. So don't put it in to begin with.

Mandate #3 No All-Cap Headings!

Please don't make your chapter title or any headings all capital letters. I know that all-cap headings are common but they're not universal.

Far better to use title case, which we can always and easily make into all caps if needed. But it's a huge pain to go the other way, from all caps, typed in on a keyboard, to title case.

So do everyone a favor: Use title case for all headings.

Mandate #4 Pay attention to heading levels!

If all of your headings are Times New Roman 12pt Bold, how will your editor be able to tell which headings are main headings and which are lower level headings?

There are several different ways of formatting head levels but I recommend the following:

Bold and Centered for the Chapter Title

Bold and flush-left for first-level headings

Italics and flush-left for second-level headings

Roman (not bold, not italics) for third-level headings

NOTE: Always check your publisher's author guidelines, though, for specific instructions.

Mandate #5 No more double spaces after a sentence!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Stop using two spaces between sentences.

Doing so is a leftover of the typewriter. It's archaic and insanely annoying. Plus, someone later has to delete them all anyway, so why put them in?

I'll bet you've got some mandates of your own. Let's hear 'em!

5 Reasons We Have Chapters Reviewed by Experts

So, you're written a few chapters in your textbook and they've been fine-tuned by a developmental editor. Now what?

Now come the chapter reviews.

We'll send your manuscript to a number of experts for their feedback, and we'll pay close attention to what they say. That's because a manuscript review serves different purposes than a proposal review. Here are five of those purposes.

1. Check for clinical accuracy

The most important reason to obtain manuscript reviews from subject matter experts is to make sure that all the clinical content is fully accurate. Yes, you're authoring a book, and yes, you're an expert too, don't worry, no one can take that away from you.

Here's the thing. Whatever you write in the book, when it's finally published, will be the Word. And the Word will be yours. And so will the lion's share of the responsibility for errors in those Words.

We do our part, certainly, and we want to help do your part too. So we show your Words to people who can best point out where they might be confusing, incomplete, or inaccurate.

Even if they misread some Words and think you've made an error but actually you haven't, that's good too. It tells us where there are slight hiccups in the writing, so we can smooth them over.

All praise the Reviewers!

2. Double-check features and flow

You know all those wonderful features you planned to include in the book—key terms, themed sidebars, case studies, whatever? Well, we want to see if they actually work and do what we intend them to do.

If the reviewers confirm what we thought, yay for us. If not, we can fix the issues and move ahead.

3. Verify the vision

When you set out to write your book, you and your acquisitions editor formed a clear idea of what the book would be, who it was for, and what would make it stand out above the crowd. Now it's time to make sure we stuck to that vision or, if we didn't, to make sure our deviations made sense.

4. Procure promotional points of view

The reviewers love your book, don't they? Of course they do. We use manuscript reviews to obtain quotes we can use in promotional materials and give to our sales reps, so they better understand the key sales points about the book and how best to sell it.

When you have a reviewer write something like, "This is an extremely well-written text, and I can't wait to adopt it"—that's gold.

5. Seed the market

Manuscript reviews also help potential adopters become invested in the product. If they think their feedback is helping, if they think we really listen to it and make adjustments accordingly—and believe me, we do—a kind of emotional bond can begin to form between the book and the reviewer.

It takes time, but it pays off. When the book publishes, those reviewers will be more likely to adopt the book and recommend it to their colleagues at other schools.

And you can take those Words to the bank.

Authors and Production and Compositors, Oh My

Let's say you write a terrific manuscript for an exciting new textbook. Your developmental editor and acquisitions editor have provided solid guidance, and you've listened to and acted on that guidance. Now it's time for your manuscript to go through the production process.

In the production process, the words (usually formatted in Microsoft Word) are married to the interior design (usually laid out in Adobe Quark) to create the look and feel of the final, published book. Integrating manuscript into an interior design involves a number of key steps, each of which can both rectify and introduce errors into the text. Perhaps the scariest, and the one we seem to have least control over, is when the manuscript is sent to a compositor.

A compositor is responsible for pouring the author's words into the assigned page layout and then placing photos, illustrations, sidebars, and other elements onto the page. The publisher provides detailed instructions to the compositor, but when it comes to laying out a page, the handler's eye and experience play a large role in the success of that layout.

Sometimes the compositors do great work, and for that they should be applauded. But  sometimes they don't, particularly for more complicated designs. More often than not, it seems,  page layouts can return with, shall we say, less than stellar designs. The author and editors must then identify each problem and indicate where and how to fix it. Humans being humans, though, some errors inevitably make it through, and the proofing-and-correction process must continue until the pages look right.

We in publishing know that this step—composition—can prove enormously frustrating for authors who don't know all the million things that can go wrong during production. They may end up ranting at the developmental editor or acquisitions editor, demanding that something be done.

That's when I wish this whole textbook-publishing process was smoother, more consistent, and less frustrating. Alas, it isn't.

Publishing is an unwieldy behemoth, with bundles of intertwined workflows and a plethora of disparate and often widely dispersed individuals working on each book in the hopes that someday, if everyone plays their cards right, an actual book comes out at the end.

Know what? It almost always does. So hang in there and trust your Editorial and Production partners to get the job done. Eventually.

Role of the Author

A somewhat common situation here last week prompted me to write this entry.

It seems that one of our authors had given us a large amount of content, separated neatly in different Word files, and then considered his job finished. Done. He wrote, he saved, he sent. Finito.

Not so fast, Bucko.

We held in our hands lots of content, absolutely, but it was pretty much raw content. Chapter numbers but no chapter titles. No end-of-chapter exercises even though the book was supposed to have them. No directions of any kind about what kinds of illustrations he wanted.

(By the way, I'm using "he" here but it could just as easily be "she." The point is that this situation is not rare and not confined to any particular gender, market, or type of book.)

Basically the author was saying to us, "Here's your content, make a book."

Nuh-uhn. That's not how it works.

When you author a book, you need to give the publisher all content. Everything. You write the title page, subtitle page, copyright page (though some publishers, like us, usually take that on, though we shouldn't), dedication, acknowledgments, key terms, glossaries, appendices, everything.

You tell us what kinds of illustrations you want and where to put them. You can't say, "Hey, Publisher, here's a complex graph of data from a medical study. Simplify it, please, so the average reader can make sense out of it. And then put it somewhere in this chapter."

Nope, that won't work either. You're the content expert, you tell US how you want it simplified and roughly where to place it.

So if you're thinking about writing a textbook and you think all you'll need to do is pull together some raw content and it will magically appear as a well-structured, easily read book…well, think again.