Editor's note: This series of blogs addresses the questions we are most frequently asked at SAS Press!
In our last post about how to write a good outline, we discussed the importance of developing an outline for your proposed SAS Press book and gave some tips on how to do this. In this post we describe what happens when you have had your outline approved and have signed the contract - what next?
- You will be assigned a Developmental Editor (DE) who will guide you throughout the entire process: from writing the sample chapter to publication. She will discuss schedules and milestones, and provide you with an authoring template, style guidelines, and any software you need to write the book. She will also answer any questions and help you solve any problems that you encounter along the way.
- Once you have everything you need, you will be asked to write a sample chapter. The sample chapter gives your DE a chance to evaluate your writing style, quality of graphics and output, structure, and any potential production issues. The sample chapter enables your editor to address any problems early in the process to avoid time-consuming reworks at the end!
- The next milestone is usually the submission of your full draft manuscript for technical review by internal and external subject-matter experts. After this review, you are given the opportunity to revise the manuscript based on feedback from the technical reviewers.
- When you and your DE are happy with the technical content, your DE will perform a substantive edit on the manuscript, taking particular care with the structure and flow of your writing. Meanwhile, our graphic designer will design your cover and perform another pass through your graphics and output to check for clarity.
- Your manuscript will then be passed to our production team, where it will be copyedited by a technical editor and formatted by a production specialist.
- The polished and formatted manuscript will be indexed, and our in-house librarians will verify the references, at no cost to the author.
- Your book will be converted into print and eBook formats ready for sale!
Wondering what else we can do for you? Hear what our authors have to say about their experiences during the writing process and how we helped their books succeed.
If our series of blogs has inspired you to write a book for SAS Press, please email your outline to saspress@sas.com, or if you’d prefer to talk through the submissions process with an acquisitions editor, include that request in your email and we will give you a call.
To learn more about submitting a book proposal, visit support.sas.com/publish.
Too Busy to Write? Review Instead!
If you have technical and teaching abilities but are too busy to write a book, consider reviewing instead. We are always looking for qualified technical reviewers to help with our book development process! Reviewers receive a copy of the book when it’s published, book credit to be used in the SAS Store, and much gratitude from SAS and SAS Press authors for your help!
