[ryanbigg]

On the topic of copy editing you raise: I wrote a book in DocBook for Manning in 2010. DocBook is XML, so I structured it with opening / end tags on their own line, content in the middle. As you would with a HTML document.

After copy editing multiple chapters, they sent it back to me with all the content on a single line. I was so incredibly upset that they ditched all my painstaking format that I almost abandoned the project there + then.

It sounds like from your experience that it has barely changed. I ended up moving to self-publishing so I have a greater control over the whole process. I wrote it up long-form here: https://ryanbigg.com/2015/08/my-self-publishing-success-stor...

[ahtihn]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you're saying you formatted XML by hand?

Someone likely loaded that into some tool, made changes and saved and likely never even looked at the XML.

Why would anyone care what the XML looks like?

[fc417fc802]

Not needing to care in the slightest is one of the major value propositions of that sort of syntax, at least IMO. If it does happen to matter for whatever reason that's what formatting tools are for.

[Cthulhu_]

Because in this case it was used for its combination of both human and machine readability, but the reviewers disregarded the former.

Might as well write it in Word if that's the case.