Author-Supplied Pages

Reviewing Your Sample Chapter

Before contracting with your editor to provide McGraw-Hill with author-supplied pages, you will need to provide the production department with both an electronic and a hard-copy sample. Consult with your editor regarding the trim size of your book (that is, the physical dimensions in inches of your finished page) and request type specifications if you will be working to a McGraw-Hill standard design. You can then begin preparing your pages, preferably in a recent version of QuarkXPress, which is currently the industry standard.

We will review your sample for margins (the white space between your text and the spine or trim edge of the book), width and depth of type page (the dimensions of your copy from the top of the running head to the bottom of the last line), appropriateness of type in both text and headings, clarity of presentation in special sections or display, placement of art and tables, as well as general readability and adherence to accepted rules of page make up. You should provide at least a complete chapter with trim corner marks on all laser pages, as well as your final art plus the fonts required for output on your disks. The sample chapter should also include as many of the text elements as possible that you plan to use for the larger work such as tables, lists, icons, computer code, or display sections, for example, so that you can avoid reworking these at a later date.

Your sample disk will be reviewed for our ability to output your material to plate or film. During the print production process, your files will be passed to a high-resolution output device that will create the final images from which we can print. Unfortunately, problems can occur during this process that are not evident on your hard-copy laser sample. If you are working in QuarkXPress, you need simply to pass along your sample chapter in Quark. If you are making up pages in some other software, please consult the section on final deliverables at the end of this discussion.

The Production Process

Upon our approval of your sample files and disk, you are ready to proceed with the page make-up process. The paginated hard copy for all chapters, including frontmatter and index, should be supplied to your editor at a mutually agreed date. Your output pages should contain all art and text elements but can be low resolution—300 or 600 dpi is acceptable. The number of pages in the book should be approximately the number of pages that is stated in your contract.

Your in-house editor will forward your laser pages to production, where you will be assigned an editing supervisor to direct you through the production process. The editing supervisor will phone you to provide a production schedule and to address your concerns prior to copyediting. He or she will then supervise the copyeditor, who will read your pages character for character to correct errors in organization, spelling, punctuation, and usage. The copyeditor's changes will be marked directly on the hard copy, which is returned to you for updating the pages.

When you input the copyeditor's changes, you must output a clean set of pages and return them with the marked set to the editing supervisor. The editing supervisor will compare the two sets to ensure that the proper changes have been made. Note that if additional changes are discovered, or if the copyeditor's changes have been neglected, we may be forced to authorize a complete second reading of your pages to fix the problem. This will cause your title to be removed from the production process and your publication date to be delayed.

The editing supervisor will contact you after reading your second pages and will request a third proof of any pages with corrections remaining. (Note that if copyediting changes have caused your pages to rerun or shift, you must correct your index as well.) When this "ironing out" process is complete, you will be requested to send us your final disk.

Final Delivery

The normal final delivery for McGraw-Hill author-supplied pages is your updated and corrected files plus your clean hard copy showing trim corner marks. A second copy of the information on disk or CD should be sent for storage in our archives since the first copy goes to the printer.

If you have been working in QuarkXPress, we will generally request that you send us the pages in Quark and in PDF format. All non PDF files must be labeled clearly, one file per text chapter or art piece. The PDF file may be in chapters or in final book form. All fonts and high-resolution artwork must be included on your disk. The art files can be collected into folders but must be linked to their position in text. PDF files should be created using Adobe Acrobat Distiller's Press job options and set to include all fonts. This reduces errors in fonts or formatting that may occur during the final output process. You should output your hard copy set of pages from the PDF files.

If you have been working in some other software such as PageMaker, FrameMaker, TeX, InDesign, or even Microsoft Word, the rules are the same with one additional item. We would like you to send a small text file called CreatorInfo.txt giving the name and version number of the application program used to create the files, such as InDesign 2.0, so that we can keep a record of what was used. Keep in mind that the file will be printed from the PDF version you give us.

You can expect to receive bound copies of your book in your hands from 3 to 6 weeks after you submit your final disk. If you have carefully followed the preceding instructions, as well as the guidance of your editing supervisor, we believe you will be more than happy with the result.