Steve Litt writes: In an attempt to do something like what's described above, several months ago I made the "Writing Books with Lyx" website at http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/lyx/. In cases where the above mentioned questions are asked, you might want to refer people to that website. This is a useful site, but it might more accurately be titled `Writing Self-Published Books with LyX.' Most trade publishers*, university presses, and scientific publishers have quite specific guidelines for manuscript submissions. A few will accept camera-ready copy in Postscript or PDF according to their design guidelines, or will accept LaTeX submissions using their required templates. Most expect submissions in MS-Word or WordPerfect which can be used by their copy-editing/indexing/typesetting software. When you show up with a beautifully typeset manuscript written with LyX, the most common response is that if you cannot submit it in MS-Word, you should submit ascii text, with spaces between paragraphs, and no other formatting. That can be very frustrating if you have spent long hours polishing the LyX output.
My last novel was written in LyX and was published by a trade publisher (they typeset the book from hardcopy manuscript); the narrative history I'm close to finishing and another novel in the hands of my agent were also written in LyX. I like LyX, and will probably continue to use it, but it can be frustrating for books. Because trade and university publication is a collaborative process involving copy-editors, line editors, indexers, and others, publishers aren't as impressed with LyX as we are. * Trade publishers are those who publish for the general public, like Random House, Simon & Schuster, Knopf, etc. -- Ronald Florence www.18james.com
