Publication of "Physics for the Health Sciences"

Early in 1975 came the publication of the first edition of Physics for the Health Sciences by Carl R. Nave and Brenda Nave. It sold very well in the first year of its publication. It was a time when most Nursing programs and Allied Health saw the value of a basic understanding of the physics involved in physiology. It quickly became known as "Nave & Nave" around the country and we got a lot of positive feedback about the book. Rod had initiated a course called Physics for Nursing and the Allied Health Sciences at Georgia State University and had been teaching it since about 1972. He had initiated the course in response to requests by the Nursing Department, but it was also taken by a number of students in Physical Therapy at Georgia State. The only reasonable text found was a survey book by Flitter, but Rod almost immediately began working toward a text to cover the material needed by nurses. Brenda had a much clearer perspective about what subjects were needed by nurses, so she was quickly brought in as co-author. She not only help select topics, but in her employment as a Registered Nurse at Georgia Baptist Hospital, she interacted with a lot of doctors and could get their suggestions. In 1973 we published a spiral-bound text "Physics in Nursing and the Allied Health Sciences". It was published by the Physics Department of Georgia State University.

Besides the writing task and the production of all the illustrations, there were lots of steps taken in 1974 in preparation for the publication of a textbook - certainly a new experience for us. The first step was an Agreement for Publication drawn up on January 4, 1974 and finally executed on March 7. It included signatures representing W. B. Saunders Co. as well as ours. It included the specification of a royalty of 10% to us or 5% for those sold outside the U.S.

We had registered the Copyright for our local version of the text "Physics in Nursing and the Allied Health Sciences" on October 1, 1973. So on the 24th of July, 1974 we signed documents transferring that copyright to W.B. Saunders so they could copyright the new text which included that material. We submitted the text and illustrations to W.B. Saunders in Philadelphia, and then went through the rounds of checking the proof copies and making corrections. All that was completed in time for the book to go on sale for the winter term of 1975. The sales jumped up to around six thousand per year for three years and then started to tail off. To a practiced publisher's eye, that would look like an accumulation of used books and a prompt to publish a revised edition.

This was quite an exciting publishing venture for us. The 300-page textbook was received very well and we were impressed with the total of 28,357 texts for the first edition. With the encouragement of the publisher, we worked toward publishing a Second Edition in 1980.