Comments on: Publisher needed: Stats 101

By: Briggs

Briggs — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:35:58 +0000

Petey,

Yeah, the excerpts that showed up on the web were only portions of first drafts.

I hope to God that I caught most of the typos in the actual book. Still waiting for the galleys.

By: MrPete

MrPete — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:49:38 +0000

An aspect I am admittedly clueless about: a quick read shows the text is in need of copy editing (various typos, etc). Does a pre-edit pass improve your chances with publishers, or do they only care about the real meat?

Hmmm…

By: harold

harold — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:52:07 +0000

It was embarassing to find out that venting has nothing whatsoever to do with the French verb vendre. I wish you all the best with the publication of your book. Bayes still looks difficult and disturbing to me.Thank you for your funny and interesting blog.

By: Briggs

Briggs — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:40:49 +0000

Paul,

True enough. But I only gave about 60% of it away, and only the first drafts of some chapters. My guess is that some people, even if they have access to the chapters will still buy the book.

Plus, a publisher can do a lot more about marketing than I can.

Briggs

By: PaulM

PaulM — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:51:04 +0000

You have given away most of the book free on the web. So why would any publisher want to publish it?!

By: harold

harold — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:11:30 +0000

A paper book on this subject seems preferable to me, but have you thought about publishing it as an ebook? Mobipocket claims that an HTML conversion to …. is a piece of pie (sorry for venting)

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadSoft/ProductDetailsCreator.asp

By: Wade

Wade — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:54:06 +0000

Two questions:

1. I’d suggest Thomson Learning Inc (www.thomsonlearning.com), as most of my “better” text books were from them and they were all in the applied/observable nature. The author I have the most books of is Wayne L. Winston, who teaches at Indiana University’s business school. He could probably put you in contact with Thompson’s people.

2. Is there any way to get ahold of this book now, even in draft form? I work as a statistical analyst and as a courtesy to my co-workers, supervisors, managers, etc…, I have weekly “classes” where I teach things like basic stats, SQL, decision analysis, etc…. and would really prefer to use a text that is geared more towards the understanding/thinking side of stats. I can email you my info you’re interested.

By: Bruce Foutch

Bruce Foutch — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:46:08 +0000

Try contacting Edward Tufte. Seems your book fits well with his philosophy - and he self publishes.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/index

Good luck.

By: Briggs

Briggs — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:06:15 +0000

Very true, Charlie. I have all that, but what I was hoping for, in my whiny way, was a contact name or two. I didn’t actually intend for this to be the proposal.

Pearson owns Wiley? I didn’t know. Springer I have already contacted and they turned it down because it wasn’t enough of a graduate text.

By: Charlie (Colorado)

Charlie (Colorado) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:58:18 +0000

What you’ve written here is a pretty decent first draft of a book proposal. But looking on the publisher’s web sites isn’t going to do much without actually showing them the book. Turn this into a book proposal — which mainly means rewriting it to start out with the line about the title instead of “Does anyone know a publisher” — pack it up with a couple of sample chapters, and start actually showing it to publishers.

The folks at Pearson (they own Wiley, among others) have been good to me. Or this would make a nice Springer yellow book.