Subject: Ed Dickinson Howard & Moore
Dear Neil and Liz,
Thank you for your interest. You are correct that we had hoped to publish this year. We now expect it to be late 2011.
I apologise for that. The following factors are the main ones involved:
a) Because of the wealth of molecular studies being published we have:
aa. Set up an independent Editorial Advisory Committee to advise us on which contain conclusions that allow us, in spite of incomplete taxon sampling or other drawbacks, to draw useful conclusions. This Committee, made up of people working in the field of such studies, offers us advice and has the liberty to openly criticise us post launch if we don't accept its views. But the judgement call rests with the Regional Consultant and/or the Editors. The overall conservative stance of our work will remain, but there will inevitably be many more genera, from redivision of over-lumped genera, and species recognised if the evidence is strong enough. Molecular evidence alone may rarely be enough.
ab. Extended the deadline for Joel Cracraft to provide his input which essentially determines the family sequence, and is likely to permit us to bring orders back above the family level. But this, of course, will also initiate a serious check to see that as many as possible of the 'problem genera' are placed in or close to the 'right' family (we shall I'm sure still have some "Genera Sedis Incerta" sections when we can only get close but not safely bring such groups into a given family). This check will have to be done quite quickly and very carefully to achieve our new target date!
b) A&C Black seem to have printed more stock than I imagined, they never tell you, and they certainly in March this year held more than they told us 18 months ago! As a result they agreed a six-month sale of that stock at a 50% discount (from July through December). We all want to get that behind us.
c) The field studies of some of the team, especially Bob Dowsett, have taken more time than was allowed for in the planned preparation time.
d) The meticulous revision of all species throughout the Americas, not done in the 2003 edition, is leading to hundreds more footnotes and references (on top of those necessitated by the needs of changes which must be linked to published authorities) to the point where we may have to print more than the number of pages that can be safely bound without using such lightweight paper as to be a serious disadvantage. At the moment we are not excluding a two-volume product.
There is nothing secret about this information; I have not mentioned the new features we shall include; so if you feel that others need to read the above please share this message. We are also hoping the next edition will be announced with a pre-publication order option giving a 20% discount. I expect most members of our team will actively spread the word when the sign-up is available so perhaps you could keep in touch with Bob Dowsett or David Pearson. Obviously such an announcement is best made after deciding on the specs of the book and the pricing. Final discussions on that are still a few months off.
Best wishes
Edward