Book Part 2

I thought it might be useful, particularly for students, to see the entire long process of producing a textbook. This book was born in June 2003. After a long day in the National Library in Santiago, Chile, I went to a cafe across the street and started jotting notes while having a beer. When I got home, I typed them up into a formal prospectus. So now we're getting towards three years.

1. write a book proposal (called a prospectus) and send it to publishers
2. once it is accepted, negotiate royalties (this took several emails and phone calls) and how long it’ll take to write
3. write the first three chapters, which are then sent out for anonymous review by fellow professors around the country who might want to use the book
4. once the reviews come back, discuss them in detail with the editor; weed out the useless comments
5. revise the first chapters based on the reviews, then write the rest of them
6. then the whole thing is sent out for reviews again
7. get the reviews back, discuss them all in detail again
8. make revisions to the entire book
9. send the entire book manuscript out for review again, and rewrite based on the comments
10. once that is done, you get the page proofs, and study them for errors
11. then you make the index
12. then you make sure you have permissions for all the copyrighted material you use (it costs money, so the publisher gave me a small budget for it)
13. once all that is done, the author can relax a bit and then wait for reviews/sales
14. think of another topic, and go back to number 1