Book Royalties

[James T. Dennis]

Paul Rubin <phr-n2002a at nightsong.com> wrote:
> Kragen Sitaker <kragen at pobox.com> writes:
>> I have a question.  How can a self-publisher find a decent editor and
>> indexer?  Those are fairly specialized skills, and the editors and
>> indexers used by most of the books I've liked in the past are
>> employees of book publishers, so I don't expect that they are
>> available for freelance work --- right?

> I don't know about indexing but there's bazillions of freelance
> editors out there hungry for work.

 I started my book (_Linux_System_Administration_, New Riders) in 
 LaTeX and did most of my own indexing.  As I added a couple of 
 co-authors they taught themselves enough LaTeX to use my macros
 and those macros did most of the indexing, except for things we
 wanted to add "by hand."  We convinced our publishers/editors to
 hire a TeXnician to create a stylesheet to fit our LaTeX sources
 into their printing requirements (they were planning on re-typing 
 all of our work into Quark, or something like that!)  (My LaTeX is
 almost purely structural, I'm not an expert in eliciting conformance
 to some particular "look."

 Of course those are mere technicalities.  The need for editors
 and publishers goes way beyond the mechanics of composition, 
 typesetting, copy editing and indexing.  I could provide freelance
 editing --- but you have no reason to think of me as a professional
 editor or as being suitable to your needs)  Certainly you could 
 contact some of these editors, indexers, typesetters, copy editors
 and others in that industry.  You'd probably find someone, if you're
 paying reasonable fees.

 Personally I'd be wary of self-publishing, though. The economics of
 publishing are pretty harsh for small presses and self-published
 work is likely to get just about zero distribution.  In general,
 when it comes to printed media, if you can't publish it through the
 existing channels, then it's effectively unpublishable.