Where Do I Begin?

Textbooks

The author alone controls the look and feel of a book—its literary style. Narrow guidelines—more often associated with journal articles—do not apply.

Nonetheless, some organizational principles are helpful. Establish an organizational pattern that you follow in every chapter. Will there be sections? Subsections? Will they be numbered or letterd or named? These decisions will be reflected in the final typesetting as we establish styles of heading. These decisions produce uniformity from chapter to chapter, a critical element in the consistency the reader expects. Your readers will learn this structure, expect it and use it to enhance their comprehension.

If your MSS is already written review it one more time to verify the consistency of the chapter organization.

Anthologies

Assemble photocopies of each article. Include bibliographic references so we can obtain reprint permission from the appropriated copyright holder. If your source for the article is a reprint in an anthology, provide us with the original publisher (as cited in the collection you have).

Additional material you want included should be sent as a word processing file. Add your articles, comments, assignments or other pedagogical material you desire.

If your are undecided about a few articles, send us those you have so we can immediately start on the permission process. We can always add the few additional articles you may submit at a later date.

Lab Manuals

If there is an older edition send it in.

Newly written or revised lab material is usually a combination of word processed text and hard copies of any available diagrams and artwork. We will draw to your specifications whatever art you need. Indicate in the body of the text the figure number and title and separately prepare a list of figures and titles. Include both with your submission. Also include any sample illustrations you want to use as models. At this stage these are concept lists, you will ultimately get to approve each drawing.

Put the files on a disk or CD and send it along with hard copies.

Copyright and Permission Fees

If you use previously published material, even if you are the author, permission must be obtained from either the holder of the copyright or the publication rights.

Whittier Publications has staff dedicated to obtaining permissions. We request, obtain and pay for all permissions. Other publishers (or bookstores selling coursepacks) frequently outsource this task—often using a third-part service, the Copyright Clearance Center. The CCC adds their own fees to those of the copyright owner resulting in higher costs. The CCC even adds their own fee to otherwise free permissions from academic journals.

By doing permissions in-house we are able to obtain the lowest possible permission fees. Occasionally though, publishers' fees are set very high. If a single article in a collection costs $4-500 and the class size is small there is a significant impact on the price. Our staff will try to negotiate lower fees (often successfully) or to contact the author and determine if another, less costly article, might be substituted.

Limitations on Copyright Permissions

Reprint permissions are usually granted when the requested material is out of print — no longer being offered for sale by the original publisher. If your requested material is in print — the publisher is selling it now — the usual practice is to limit permissions to short excerpts. Requests for more than 10% of the work will likely be rejected. “Buy my book,” the publisher will likely say.

What Does Not Need Permission

Anything published more than 75 years ago is public domain and can be freely used. Be careful, Greek plays are public domain only in the original Greek. A 30 year-old translation of the play needs permission.

All government documents can be used without permission.

Your project editor will review all the permission requests you may need.