People are of two minds here. A suggestion in the interests of mediation: write with enthusiasm and put your project out into the world. A lot is achieved by doing that alone. Temporarily declare money to be of minor importance. If there should be any money lying by the wayside during the rest of your journey, pick it up and pay your authors an appropriate fee.

Profit equals income minus expenditure. This rule also applies to book production. On the expenditure side, we have printing costs and authors' fees; on the income side, the sale of books either through the book trade or to sponsors.

* Calculations for an 800-page book, retail price 50 Euro, 27.50 Euro profit per book after deduction of 45% for middlemen and shipping
** Number of copies sold

These figures show that, for 500 printed copies, the profit zone begins between 200 and 300 copies sold. For 1,000 printed copies, it is between 300 and 400 copies. The exact figures for this so-called break-even point are shown in Table 4.2.

If you update your book every year, you need to ask yourself: "How many books can I sell in 12 months?" The answer depends on the subject. Neuropathology does not sell as well as antibiotic therapy. In some cases, it can be decisive whether a sponsor (foundation, pharmaceutical company) buys a few hundred or - less often - a few thousand copies in bulk.

Book production can be lucrative, but you can't always get yourself out of the red. Fortunately, even this does not have to mean the kiss of death for your project. You can tolerate a deficit in the bookshops if you manage to make money via a second financial source. This second source is your website!

The second source of income for a Flying Publisher project takes the form of sponsoring contracts for an internet site. The entry of a company logo on your homepage can balance your budget by several thousand Euro - yet another reason to set up your website as quickly as you can. It even makes sense to publish some texts there in advance, although the book hasn't been printed yet. It is common practice in the internet business to publish in advance, as negotiations become easier if you have something to show.

The same rules apply to the sponsor's entry on your homepage as those for book texts. Sponsors cannot be allowed to influence or even change the core statement of your texts in any way. You will find important details about this and about the criteria for selecting sponsors at the end of this chapter. But first, there is still some detailed work on the agenda:

How do we shape the first and last pages of our book? How do we found a publishing house, how to we reserve the domain name for our website and how do we set it up?

You can rewrite the opening credits for your project within only 10 minutes. Change title and publisher, enter your address on page 4, write 3 sentences in the foreword and enter the first colleagues in the list of collaborators. Name the first chapters from page 11 onwards and, finally, update the contents in page 9. Procedure: position the cursor anywhere in the Contents and press the right-hand mouse key. From the menu which appears, select "Update field" and, in the next window, "Update entire table". Take good care of this document. Later, you will copy the chapters from your authors into it.

You should draft a foreword very early on - even if nothing is left of it in the final version. Drafting forewords helps to present a concept more precisely.

You asked your authors to supply you with the details for the list of collaborators in your first letter. Enter these details.

The index is at the back of the book. You can only compile one if, within the individual chapters, you have already defined which words will be recorded in the index. You will not edit these so-called index entries until you reach the final stages.

The cover consists of a front and a back page. Ask a professional artist to design it.

In the HIV Medicine book, the title is followed by the current year. In addition, the book is a different colour every year. The reason: you should be able to tell from the new colour that you are looking at the current edition, in which the texts are less than 12 months old. In addition, it shows who is carrying the new edition in their coat pocket.

The back cover should be planned just as early as the graphic design of the front cover. The text which appears there must be able to convince a potential but as yet undecided buyer. Do not be afraid to sing the praises of your book. This is not the place for false modesty. For once, self-praise is allowed.

Founding a publishing house is very easy in some countries. In Germany, for example, all you need is to register a business with the appropriate local authority. Take along your ID papers and 22 Euro and the formalities are taken care of in half an hour.

Books need an ISBN number. This number guarantees that your book will appear in the electronic registers of the booksellers.

The allocation of these numbers is regulated differently in every country, so that we cannot give you any detailed information here. The annual costs are low.

The foundation of a publishing house is followed by the setting up of a website. First, you must reserve an internet domain and find a service provider upon whose computer your texts can be connected with the internet. This service provider is called a "web provider" or "internet provider", the service is known as "webhosting". In addition, you need someone to maintain your website.

If you are in search of domain names, you should make sure that you reserve both the *.com and the appropriate country-specific domain (*.fr for France, *.es for Spain, *.it for Italy, etc.). *.com domains were originally intended for commercial enterprises, but today they are the gold standard. Do not reserve a country-specific domain for which the *.com domain is already taken, nor a *.com domain, if the country-specific domain is no longer available.

It is wise to make webhosting contracts with companies in your own country. The advantage here is that you can get an answer quickly and easily if you have any questions or problems. It only makes sense to make webhosting contracts with companies abroad if you have a good command of the language. In addition, the difference between the time zones should not be too large - so that the hotline is not asleep when you are having problems.

As soon as the domain names have been reserved and the webhosting contract signed, you must decide who is responsible for maintaining the website. The initial design should be left to an experienced graphic designer. For all subsequent work, student assistants should be your first choice - it is motivating to be involved in a prestigious project and everyone benefits from this collaboration.

Your website is brought to life by the texts you publish there: whether further information (daily or weekly news, congress reports, calendar of events, "frequently asked questions", and address lists) is offered, is dependent on the time you have and the dedication of your students. But remember: regular maintenance is the name of the game. A website where nothing happens for weeks will moulder and die.

In addition, you should offer your visitors the chance to join a mailing list. This is where readers can show their interest in being informed by e-mail about new or updated texts in the future. This direct contact to the readers is eminently important for the success of your project!

A deadline is a deadline. It is not always easy to make it into a real dead line, because the publisher is dependent on the contributions of his authors. These things are generally of help:

1. A first reminder e-mail (or phone call) 30 days before the deadline;
2. A second reminder e-mail 10 days before the deadline;
3. A telephone call 1 day after the deadline if the article has not arrived.

As a publisher, you should not be afraid of the fact that this is an annoying procedure. On the contrary: most authors are grateful to be reminded in good time of the task they have taken on.

And as for the authors - we already mentioned it earlier: anyone who worries or knows that he can't meet a deadline should not become involved in book projects.

In Chapter 2, we indicated how important it is to know the current status of every text. The project centre - which is sometimes one and the same person as the publisher - keeps account. This is where the texts arrive and are passed on.

What must be considered?

1. Ideally, every text should be read by two qualified colleagues with a good sense of literary style.
2. After being read twice, the text should be returned to the author with any unanswered questions. The corrections of the authors must be recorded using the function "track changes" (click Tools->track changes ->highlight changes + highlight changes while editing).
3. The authors' corrections are checked by both readers and the chapter subjected to Word spell verification (see next section).
4. The text is checked by a professional proofreader.
5. The proofreader's changes are checked once again by one of the medical readers.

Word spell check is a valuable tool and should be used by the authors, the readers and the proofreaders. You start spell verification with F7. As soon as the dialog window opens, check that the window shows correctly "Spelling < your mother tongue >".

This is the procedure if a different language is given: mark the whole text with CTRL-A, then define the language: Tools->Language->Set Language + your mother tongue + OK)

When you subject the text to spell verification, words which are unknown to the system are shown in red. If the spelling is correct, type ALT-A in order to add the word to the supplementary dictionary. If you do not want the word to be included (e.g. in the case of proper names, foreign words and unusual words) type ALT-G and the entry will be ignored.

The individual chapters gradually pass though the stages of reading and final proofreading and assume their definitive form. You are on the verge of publishing the first chapters on the internet and the authors are waiting impatiently to see themselves on the net.

Suddenly, a potential sponsor calls and asks to talk. What do you need to bear in mind?

Foundations and pharmaceutical companies can be considered as possible sponsors for your project. Foundations will generally subsidise your project, while pharmaceutical companies will buy up part of the printed version in order to distribute the books to interested doctors. As every type of co-operation between doctors and pharmaceutical companies must remain free of any conflict of interests, there are a few rules you should know.

When you wrote, you wrote the truth and did not formulate your texts with company X or company Y in mind. This is an extremely important point. The standards regarding independence of statements and recommended therapies cannot be set high enough. Any doctor who writes something against his own convictions for his own benefit is guilty. Doctors who practise accommodating journalism quickly end up on a par with drug barons and arms dealers. May anyone who practises this kind of accommodating journalism in medicine be struck down by leprosy so that he can no longer write!

The chances of reaching an agreement with sponsors from the pharmaceutical industry depend on various factors. Both personal and internal company factors play a role here. One of the golden rules of a colleague who had 30 years experience with the publication of medical textbooks was:

"The marketing budgets of pharmaceutical companies are structured according to drugs. There is more money for drug X than for drug Y. Budgets are generous when new drugs are being introduced to the market, very generous when a drug is being introduced and has to compete against an existing market leader."

When you approach the staff of a pharmaceutical company with your project, you are expected to "sell" your project. This is not meant in a derogatory way, it just means that you should ask yourself these questions before you approach the company:

1. What good will it do this company to sponsor me?
2. What can I offer this company with my book and/or my website that other media cannot?

If the answer to both questions is "nothing", you should perhaps rephrase your offer - or look out for another company. In this life, all you get for nothing is nothing.

Pharmaceutical companies live off the sale of their drugs, and the staff of their marketing departments have been instructed to increase the turnover of these drugs. In order to increase the turnover, arguments are collected to convince doctors of the superiority of the company's own products. The companies want to sell, pulling out all the stops: that is their job.

It is our job to distil the truth from the information available to us, especially from scientific literature. Regardless of the fact that you have a duty to write the truth and nothing but the truth, you should remember the following points when negotiating with possible sponsors:

It is allowed

• for the potential sponsor to itemise the advantages of his product. It is your task to separate fiction from the truth.
• for the potential sponsor to ask you if he may read and comment on the passages about his product. Upon this request, you should send him the passages as a PDF file, never as a Word document. Reserve the right to accept changes or not.

It is not allowed

• to provide the sponsor with the original document so that he can make corrections to it.
• to incorporate whole passages from the potential sponsor.
• to permit the potential sponsor to influence the composition of your team of authors.

It is bad

• to print the logo of your sponsor on the cover. Logos belong on the first inside page of the book.

It is dubious practice

• to accept advertising for drugs in the book, such as full page adverts on the last few pages. This compromises your credibility.

If a potential sponsor does not accept these points, you must abstain from any further co-operation - even if this causes temporary difficulties with the financing of your project. Remember: the worst thing that can happen to you is loss of credibility. Everyone knows the jokes about the qualified university lecturers working as pharmaceutical sales reps. If you sell yourself you lose your credibility - a flaw which marks some people in our profession for the rest of their lives.

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