Editions: Third Fourth Fifth Sixth

The Publisher’s and Author’s Handbook by Arkady Milchin and Lyudmila Cheltsova, sixth edition

spravochnik izdatelya i avtora 2021 cover

Task: to republish a handbook.

The Handbook by Milchin and Cheltsova is the reference book of choice of all editors and typesetters in the studio. Art directors and designers frequently turn to it for basic rules, while the studio technologists use it to write automatic typography scripts.

The sixth edition of The Publisher’s and Author’s Handbook is an almost exact copy of the fifth edition.

A true reference book has two basic objectives:

1) to justify the rational form of publishing elements and types of text, as well as their choice depending on the kind of edition, the nature of its content, target readership, etc. so that in the process of making a book or any other publication authors and publishers could better meet the needs and demands of its readers, facilitate the perception and apprehension of information from books and other publications.

2) to provide readers who create and publish books and other publications with a systematic reference material that can always be at hand during the work on the original editions, that can provide the solution for many editorial and technical problems, down to the very smallest, making it possible to rely on ready-made examples instead of searching how to design this or that element in the course of editorial processing of the original—and through this, reduce the time this work requires.

At the same time, it was not the authors’ intention to list the rules, guides and recommendations in the must-follow fashion. Instead, the aim was to justify them in such a way that they could be followed rationally and altered when necessary.

The Handbook is addressed to all authors and publishing workers—from those who lead the preparation of publications for publishing to those who solve the most minuscule issues."

From the preface by the authors

Arkady Milchin (1924–2014), the principal author of the Handbook, was a famous book expert, Doctor of Philology, long-time editor in chief of Kniga publishing house and an expert in many fields related to publishing. He is well known among writers and publishers as an author of reference and educational materials. His books and articles have educated several generations of editors, proofreaders and other publishing specialists.