I've co-written 2 high-school level Physics texts with the local
offshoot of a US publisher, and on the whole it was a lot of fun, though
less so for the second text. They initially contacted me, because I was
working on revising the school syllabus here, so that part was easy in
my case.
My main comment would be to not necessarily accept the standard
contract, especially in regards to who has the final say on questions of
standards & quality - we had it changed to say that those issues had to
be solved by negotation, and it saved our reputations when the publisher
went into a cost-cutting mode with the second book. Also, I'd strongly
suggest dealing with a publisher who has a local art department (if
there are a lot of illustrations involved) or at the very least, reserve
the right to vet final proofs of illustrations. If your text is going to
use a lot of photos, make sure that the publisher is going to pay for
the reproduction rights, not you, because the costs can add up.
Cheers
Margaret
--
Dr. Margaret Mazzolini
Astronomy Course Coordinator
Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing
BSEE, Mail Box 31,
Swinburne University of Technology,
PO Box 218 Hawthorn VIC 3122
Australia
email: mmazzolini@swin.edu.au
phone: (+61) 3 9214 8084
fax: (+61) 3 9819 0856