Hello colleagues,

Staff and faculty with no textbook publishing experience, please feel
free to hit the delete button now.

I am in the process of developing a textbook that will be used in one of
the courses I teach (Computer Architecture, CPSC 460, in case anyone is
curious) and, hopefully, in similar courses at other universities.  I
sent a proposal to several publishers and one of them has already
responded with an offer.

For those of you who have experience dealing with book publishers, I
would love to solicit your advice about such things as what are typical
royalty rates, what type of advance (if any) to expect, how you and the
publisher handled the generation of diagrams and figures (an important
topic if you're artistically challenged as I am), etc.  In general, how
negotiable are the terms of the first contract the publisher sends you?
  If there are any publishing houses that you have found particularly
easy to work with, or any that you wish you hadn't worked with, I'd love
to know that as well.

Any advice, pointers, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Joe Dumas