Since my first book was published 40 years ago, I have noticed with dismay that major changes for the worse have taken place in the publishing of scientific books.
My first concern is with the changes in payment. In the past, contributors to multiauthor books received a pro-rata royalty or a page fee from the publisher. Nowadays, it is common for publishers to offer no fee at all; one free copy per chapter is usually given, even for multi-author chapters. The publisher generally gets away with this demand for unpaid work because invited authors do not like to be absent from a compilation in their specialty or would not refuse an invitation from a colleague who is also a friend.
A second major change is this: Who does the work? In the distant past, authors supplied a manuscript, which the publisher carefully copyedited and typeset; figures were usually redrawn to ensure uniformity in style and typeface throughout the book. Today, the author prepares a text file with illustrations, all to be printed directly as submitted. Copyediting is very uneven: I have recent experience both of conscientious, meticulous editing and of careless, ignorant, incompetent work from hitherto highly respected publishers.
Authors are now expected to perform much of the work that used to be undertaken by publishers and printers. All other considerations aside, the new arrangement is inefficient: Certainly proofreading should be easier when the author’s own file is mapped directly onto the printed page—though my experience has taught me that everything except, perhaps, plain symbol-free text still must be checked with extreme care—but the niceties of typefaces, formatting, spacing, and printing are the business of printers, not scientists.
In short, scientific authors increasingly find that they are doing more and more of the work that used to be done by publishers and printers and are being paid less and less for it. Publishers, please explain!
