An additional problem is that Word is almost universal in the sense that the vast majority of people who use computers have access to it and have a basic idea of how to use it, while LaTeX might be rather offputting to learn. In other words, I can’t ask my co-author to spend days learning LaTeX just because I happen to prefer it to Word…

Any thoughts by people who use LaTeX in such collaborative contexts?

Although, bizarrely enough, I know what he means…

A bit of an apologia, as well, for those requirements:

There certainly is a big dichotomy between the requirements and capabilities of the Books and Journals divisions. The determining factor in all of this is the editing process, not production (typesetting and printing).

There was a great deal of talk, as Lakshmi says, about bringing books’ editing and production processes more inline with journals’ when I first started working at the Press (~5 years ago), but the practicalities of doing so quickly overcame the cool factor of “Online editing! SGML!”

I can only really speak to the Books end of this process, but what I can tell you is that our manuscript editors are words people, not computer people, and it’s a fairly rare individual who is turned on by both (though becoming less so!).

Kieran’s editor will edit on screen, generally in word because it’s what she’s familiar with, but also because it’s what most (I’d say about 80% in the fields I work in—history, sociology, rhetoric, and sex) of our authors use.

Inertia and the Lowest Common Denominator factor are not the only reasons we use Word. We use Word’s “track changes” to produce a redlined hard copy manuscript, which the author gets to review, and accept/tweak edits (small edits, e.g., spelling, are made transparently). Then edits are finally accepted/rejected here by the manuscript editor.

You’ll note that this process takes a lot out of the hands of the author: final production of the electronic manuscript for the typesetter is the responsibility of the manuscript editor (to say nothing of production of typeset pages!). Some authors (ekr?) would love to have complete control over the final product, but we in the publishing business like to think we add value beyond our imprint, binding, and distribution!

Now I hie me back to work, getting ready for Kieran’s ms arrival.

Then there’s Jamie Zawinski’s observation: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems..

Interesting. The commercial houses (Pearson, Wiley, etc.) all seem quite happy with camera-ready, even in the professional series. And clearly some of those come out looking very nice (cf. The Art of Computer Programming, or the Stevens books). At least to my eye, those books look as good or better than those produced by professional typesetters. For example, I far prefer the typesetting in TCP/Illustrated (done with groff) to that in the Chicago Manual of Style. Of course, this is clearly a taste thing, and I’m fanatical about having control of the look and feel, so I was willing to put in the time to get exactly the layout I wanted.

This is true; I worked at the University of Chicago Press (a few years back) and all of the journals are produced via sgml files. AASTeX was the format of choice though we could take Word and WordPerfect files as well. The last project I did there was a book that was going to be produced via the sgml-based workflow and I seem to recall that the press’s business plan was to integrate the books division into the sgml workflow. I wonder what happened.

It could just be that you got a dumb and/or lazy editor who couldn’t walk over to the other side of the building and ask if there was a way to accept LaTeX files. (I am several years out of date as to how exactly the file translation process runs there now but from what I remember you could run the chapters as AASTeX files and include the auxiliary files to make the cross references).

This in no way is to say that regexps are not the best thing ever. Of course, Word still sucks with regard to mathematics (MathType and Equation Editor are both stupid and cumbersome and don’t deal well with regexps) so it is worth it to argue with your publisher about accepting LaTeX files. (If they really don’t like it, let them send it to the third world to be rekeyed like they do all the time anyway.)

Yes, I’ve done this with them. As you say, they just want you submit a cleaned-up file.

Kotsko: you would say that.

Big University Presses (or at least the humanities/soc-sci depts thereof) really don’t want camera-ready copy. They have their One True Format, and your MS is going to be marked up into it by professional typesetters whether you like it or not. (And by the time you see the galleys, you’ll probably like it.)