u/Crawler-Tiffanie

Bonjour à tous,

Je suis une nouvelle auteure, tout juste publiée, et je cherche à mieux comprendre les meilleures façons de promouvoir mon livre.

De votre côté, comment trouvez-vous vos prochaines lectures ?

Est-ce en librairie, dans les journaux, sur les réseaux sociaux, grâce à un article sur Internet, sur le site de votre ville ou par le bouche-à-oreille ?

Je ne sais pas trop sur qu'elle point m'attarder le plus, surtout que ce livre n'est pas mon occupation principale. Si cela aide le domaine du livre est sur la vulgarisation scientifique appliquée aux mathématiques.

Merci d'avance à toutes et à tous pour vos retours ! Cela me sera très utile 😊

PS : Je republie ce post à la suite des moqueries (méritées 😅) reçues sur le titre de la précédente publication. Je comprends les réactions : l'auto correcteur de mon téléphone m'a joué un mauvais tour !

J'ai écrit un livre de vulgarisation scientifique et je voulais savoir si, dans cette communauté, c'est un genre que certains apprécient lire.

Est-ce que les livres de sciences vous plaisent comme lecture de détente, ou pensez-vous que ce type d'ouvrage s'adresse plutôt à un public scolaire ? Aimeriez-vous que davantage de livres de ce genre soient publiés ?

Does anyone know a good website to buy previous special edition of the broken binding specials ?

I am looking to get the three body problem but I am a year too late for the official release

Hello everyone,

Here are some thoughts I wanted to share.

I am currently an unpublished writer who will soon be published for the first time. I wrote a book under a contract I signed with a publishing company that wanted a book on a specific topic.

Here is how everything started (I'm French, so my book is written in French don't worry—please excuse my English 😄).

About a year and a half ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn saying that a publisher was looking for someone to write a book about mathematics. I happen to have a PhD in the field and had always wanted to write a book. I submitted a few novels when I was in college, but I never took them very far because my mathematics studies took up all of my time.

When I saw that post, I spent an entire week writing as much as I could so that I would have a sample chapter to submit. They loved it and decided to work with me. We discussed the format they wanted and the general topics they wanted covered, but beyond that, the content was entirely up to me.

They gave me eight months to deliver the book. I wrote every week whenever I had time outside of my engineering job. I spent a lot of effort polishing the text and making it accessible to younger readers, adding pop culture references alongside mathematical concepts. In my opinion, it was a fun book—the kind of book that would have made me love mathematics in high school if I hadn't already loved it.

Things went well during the writing process. I sent them each chapter as I finished it. I never received anything but positive feedback, and I delivered the manuscript on time in October 2025.

Finishing the book was difficult. I wanted to do things properly while still meeting the deadline, but I was very happy with what I delivered. Unfortunately, that was when everything started to go wrong.

Since the book contained mathematical equations throughout, I had told them from the beginning that I wanted to write it in LaTeX. It would allow me to create figures and equations easily while keeping everything clean and professional. They told me that wouldn't be a problem and that they would work with it. Since I was submitting chapters regularly, I assumed they were adapting them to their format as they went because that was what we agreed on.

To my surprise, they actually knew almost nothing about LaTeX when they had assured me there would be no problems. Entire sections of chapters kept disappearing, and I constantly had to ask them to restore missing content. I suspect they were using some kind of translation software to move from LaTeX to Word, but they never properly checked the PDF versions of my chapters to make sure everything had been transferred correctly.

Even though I was sending them about two chapters per month, they had fallen far behind. Converting the entire manuscript from LaTeX to Word became a complete mess, and the lack of attention given to preserving my work was almost unbelievable.

When they sent me their first complete version, two entire chapters were missing. I was upset to be honest.

Then something else happened: they suddenly told me the book was too long. The strange thing was that the manuscript was exactly within the size limits we had agreed on at the beginning and that were specified in my contract. Yet now we had to cut large portions of the text. That part made me genuinely sad. I wish they had communicated their concerns earlier, but they didn't. Everything felt rushed so they could meet their publication deadline.

Next came another chapter in the story of why writing a book became such a frustrating experience.

They suddenly decided they no longer liked my writing style. The book was supposedly not "literary" enough, and they suggested that I was "too young" and perhaps didn't know any better.

That was probably the hardest part for me. I had written the same way from the first chapter—the very chapter they hired me based on—to the last. During all those months of submitting work, I had never received any feedback suggesting that I should change my style.

They told me I had two options: find a co-author to rewrite parts of the book or help to pay for a ghostwriter to make the changes they wanted. At no point did they ask me to revise the material myself. It almost felt as though I had been pushed out of my own project.

I ultimately didn't pay for the ghostwriter, but I did lose the €500 advance that I was supposed to receive after completing the manuscript.

Communication with them was like talking to someone who was ghosting you. Whenever I asked for updates, I received vague answers such as "things are moving forward" and very little concrete information about the next steps.

I considered walking away with my manuscript and self-publishing it. But honestly, I had no idea where to start, so I stayed, hoping the process would be finished soon and knowing that I would never work with them again.

At one point, they even gave the manuscript to a high school teacher for mathematical review ( i want to recall that I am a PhD and did harder stuff that High school maths in my life), who apparently said he didn't understand anything I was explaining. I decided to take matters into my own hands, because I was annoyed. I asked one of the most dedicated mathematics enthusiasts I know to read it, another PhD i had worked with and who is now a researcher. She gave me positive feedbacks, suggested useful improvements, and told me she genuinely enjoyed the book.

I also had to fight to make sure those corrections I got from my reviewer were properly included because not all of my first-round edits i sent them made it into the next draft. (again it felt like they barely looked at what i sent)

To be honest, I am completely exhausted by this project. The experience has left me disappointed and without even a small amount of excitement about the work I put into it who should be soon available to read by everyone.

This was genuinely something I wanted to do ... but now it feels almost wrong

Has anyone else had a difficult experience with a publishing house as a first-time or unknown writer?

Thanks for reading, everyone.