I work as a production editor for a uni press--mainly academics writing for other academics, not so much 'textbooks' in the sense of being mainly for student use in classrooms. I like to think the books are better after we work on them, but it is also true that schedules mean sometimes not as much as should be. Some of these guys cannot write their way out of a paper bag. One key difference between our market and the textbook market is that most of our books will stay in print for a long time without changes. A book like Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python may need to be updated frequently, a biography of a long-dead literary figure, no so much. Sales of such a book are probably less dependent on reviews and award notices. The more specialized your book is, the more frequently it needs to be revised, the more benefit there is to self-publishing.
But I would say, don't use AI for copyediting. Hire a pro with some topical knowledge.
I am maybe not using copy-editing the way you are (feel free to correct me what is more typical in the field). My prompt is not much different than "review the text for minor grammar and spelling errors, and list the corrections you would suggest". I accept the large majority of the suggestions.
For technical review of the content, I just send it out to other experts.
Assuming that the result you get is reliable (I would not assume that), maybe that is enough. I had one book here where the author frequently repeated herself--sentences that basically said the same thing she'd just said in a previous paragraph. I had to cut all that. One with a lot of useless filler phrases that added nothing. Another where the author wrote whole paragraphs in the form of rhetorical questions. It was much better rephrased as statements. I did a lot of fact-checking on one book. Jargon that can be translated into English. Tables and charts where the data is not well organized. I mean, it goes on and on.
I know what you mean by "cannot write out of a paper bag". Agree AI won't help those folks (I honestly don't know how anyone has enough patience to help them).
My above prompt does indeed work well for me, but agree would likely not catch those example errors you list.
By all accounts I've heard, traditional textbooks have become a profit-maximizing racket. So "yes", obviously...
OTOH, self-publishing requires some serious time and a skill set, and most modern academics are already working horrible hours for crap job security and pay.
Not mentioned in the article - co-authors (spread the load), departmental support ("wouldn't it be nice to have a textbook that actually fit our syllabus for CS 473?"), and other tricks.
I work as a production editor for a uni press--mainly academics writing for other academics, not so much 'textbooks' in the sense of being mainly for student use in classrooms. I like to think the books are better after we work on them, but it is also true that schedules mean sometimes not as much as should be. Some of these guys cannot write their way out of a paper bag. One key difference between our market and the textbook market is that most of our books will stay in print for a long time without changes. A book like Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python may need to be updated frequently, a biography of a long-dead literary figure, no so much. Sales of such a book are probably less dependent on reviews and award notices. The more specialized your book is, the more frequently it needs to be revised, the more benefit there is to self-publishing.
But I would say, don't use AI for copyediting. Hire a pro with some topical knowledge.
I am maybe not using copy-editing the way you are (feel free to correct me what is more typical in the field). My prompt is not much different than "review the text for minor grammar and spelling errors, and list the corrections you would suggest". I accept the large majority of the suggestions.
For technical review of the content, I just send it out to other experts.
Assuming that the result you get is reliable (I would not assume that), maybe that is enough. I had one book here where the author frequently repeated herself--sentences that basically said the same thing she'd just said in a previous paragraph. I had to cut all that. One with a lot of useless filler phrases that added nothing. Another where the author wrote whole paragraphs in the form of rhetorical questions. It was much better rephrased as statements. I did a lot of fact-checking on one book. Jargon that can be translated into English. Tables and charts where the data is not well organized. I mean, it goes on and on.
I know what you mean by "cannot write out of a paper bag". Agree AI won't help those folks (I honestly don't know how anyone has enough patience to help them).
My above prompt does indeed work well for me, but agree would likely not catch those example errors you list.
By all accounts I've heard, traditional textbooks have become a profit-maximizing racket. So "yes", obviously...
OTOH, self-publishing requires some serious time and a skill set, and most modern academics are already working horrible hours for crap job security and pay.
Not mentioned in the article - co-authors (spread the load), departmental support ("wouldn't it be nice to have a textbook that actually fit our syllabus for CS 473?"), and other tricks.