Long Tail

Leave a comment

There’s a truism in academic publishing (how many of these are actually falsisms!) that a book reaches its sales potential in three years.  After that, the received wisdom says, a sale here or there may occur, but the book has reached the end of its commercial life.  One of the problems with this is that sometimes a topic will experience a resurgence, or, perhaps, pick up for the first time.  Some publishers raise their back list prices every year, making those late sales nearly impossible.  McFarland, however, seems to understand that if you lower prices after the front list sales, a book may live on.  I received a royalty statement for Holy Horror this week.  I’m used to sales being low but I was surprised to see that the lifetime total is now up to 246 copies. Still no bestseller, but more than it was six months ago.  Many of those sales have been in the past year, six years after publication.  I was chuffed.

Academic publishers who price books at around $100 and keep them at that level are killing those books.  Nightmares with the Bible is so priced (and the publisher has no taste for paperbacks), meaning that it has sold less than 100 copies.  Surprised?  I’m not.  Academic pricing models are terribly outdated but the extra revenue from hardcovers priced beyond the reach of the interested reader is just too enticing to leave behind.  Libraries are the main market, in their mind.  Libraries, however, are in the crosshairs.  The Make America Dumb Again crowd is even slashing our copyright library—the Library of Congress—where a copy of each book published in America is kept.  Who else will be left to buy expensive books?

Speaking of libraries, I have an embarrassing confession to make.  I’ve seen (but not been in) the largest library in the United Kingdom, the Bodleian.  The Bodleian is the main library of Oxford University.  I’ve been to Oxford a few times but I don’t know the city well.  The embarrassing confession is that I realized I’d seen the Bodleian only by reading a novel that stated Blackwells, the bookstore, is just across the street.  I know right where Blackwells is, of course, and have been there a time or two.  There’s a kind of irony in that I learned a truth about the world by reading a novel about a place I’d been.  I spend more time in bookstores than libraries these days, but since I make purchases I like to think I’m supporting the growth of knowledge, in my own small way.  And I write books, which, pleasingly, still sell a few copies in a year even when they’re old.

Editorializing

Leave a comment

One of the realities of being an editor is that you have authors consistently ignore your advice and then ask you for solutions when what you predicted would happen does.  Oh, that sentence!  Let me put it this way: there used to be a time when simultaneous submission was frowned upon.  Even “forbidden” by some publishers.  The internet has changed all that.  Publishers who won’t accept submissions if anyone else is also considering them, lose out.  There are lots of publishers out there.  Many more than most people think.  Some of them are small and fly-by-night, but others are also ultra-specialized so they can hit their markets.  Even among academic publishers there are many to choose from.  If you submit to only one, wait to hear, and then get a “no,” you have to start all over again.  Or submit simultaneously.

Peer review can take a long time.  I mean a l-o-n-g time.  Especially since the pandemic, but even before, overwrought academics have trouble committing to adding one more thing to their plates.  If they do accept a review offer, the response is likely to be quite late; more often after the deadline than before.  I’ve been an anxious author waiting.  It’s the kind of limbo few actually enjoy.  It’s a reality, however.  If your book is about current events, or something trending, well, godspeed.  That’s a tough place to be.  Submitting to more than one publisher at a time gives you the leg up of not losing time if someone turns you down.  Some authors prefer a certain publisher and want to hold out for them.  Publishers get lots of proposals.  If I had so many proposals when I was in college I wouldn’t have been nearly so lonely.  Holding out is bad dating advice.

The best piece of editorial advice I can muster is to research publishers.  Academics are researchers by nature, but few take the time to research publishers.  There’s plenty of information out there.  When I couldn’t get an agent interested in Holy Horror, I turned to McFarland.  Why?  Because I’d familiarized myself with the kinds of books they publish and mine seemed a good fit for them.  Sure, there were more prestigious places to go, but I’m a bit too busy to bang my head against that wall all day.  Even a little bit of web searching on publishers can pay off.  Publishing is a business.  Never forget that.  If you only want to get your ideas out there, starting a website (which isn’t expensive) is probably a better way than getting a book published.  Writing books is great, and getting them published is incredibly validating.  But do yourself a favor, if your editor suggests a course of action to you, take it.

Double-Dipping

Leave a comment

Double-dipping takes many forms.  The kind I’m talking about is trying to get more than your fair share by either taking twice, or by fooling others into buying the same thing two times.  I’ve fallen victim myself.  Some publishers will sell a hardcover book and then release the paperback with a different title a couple years later.  If you’re a fan of the subject, you’ll buy the same book twice because they won’t easily tell you that it is the same one.  On paper the strategy is to get libraries to buy the hardcover (which costs more) instead of waiting for the paperback.  Why change the title if not to fool someone?  Maybe I’m just embarrassed by the vegan egg on my own face because I realize that I’ve bought the same book more than once.  Maybe more than once.  With a limited budget, I don’t appreciate being deceived.

The egg is even older and more obvious when I realize that those of us of a certain age can’t keep our memories as sharp as they used to be.  I read a lot.  I try to get through 60 or 70 books a year.  Have done for over a decade now.  If a book doesn’t create a strong impact, it may go into that category of enjoyable but not really memorable.  So when I recently learned that a publisher had double-dipped with a book I’d bought and read—twice—I felt violated and embarrassed.  Even more troubling was the fact that I wrote blog posts about each of the books (about three years apart) without recognizing I’d already read it.  To be fair, buried on the copyright page (who reads that?) the paperback confessed that it was the same as the differently titled hardcover.  Of course, I’d already bought the book, read it, and blogged about it (twice) before someone pointed out to me that it was the same book.  Gotcha!

I hold myself to high ethical standards.  I hope that I’m an honest person; I tell the truth whenever possible.  I’d certainly not try to sell someone two of the same thing without telling them that they weren’t buying something new, but simply giving more money for something they already had.  Even Amazon says, “Purchased on,” and gives you the date if you call up a book you’ve already bought.  Publishers, I know, have a difficult time.  Publishing is a “low margin” business, which means that you have to sell lots in order to stay solvent, and each sale brings in only a small profit.  Temptation to double-dip must be very strong.  Still, I feel a bit silly to have fallen for it, even when it’s what I do for a living.

Book Stages

Leave a comment

Books appear in stages.  All publishers are different.  These platitudes encapsulate my experience in finding a venue for my ideas.  Sleepy Hollow as American Myth has just appeared in McFarland’s spring and summer catalogue.  I haven’t seen the proofs yet, but I suspect I will before too long now.  What’s with the spring and summer catalogue?  Well, believe it or not, books are seasonal.  Publishers go by seasons.  For many academic publishers there are two seasons: Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter.  The timing of certain books may fall in a specific place within those seasons but many academic books are aimed at classroom adoptions so early spring and early autumn are the most popular times.  It’s no coincidence that academic conferences also cluster around the semester system, the big ones being either autumn or spring.  Academics have a migratory instinct.

Personally, I’m hoping Sleepy Hollow will be out in late summer.  I don’t have any control over that, but it’s about then that normal people’s thoughts start turning toward falling leaves, long nights, and monsters.  Every year there’s a day in August when I step outside and literally smell autumn in the air.  As a kid seasons seemed like something as rigid as a biblical law: spring was March through May, summer June through August, and so forth.  The older I get, the more I realize how negotiable seasons are.  The Celts celebrated the start of spring in February.  Yes, there are lots of cold days yet to come, but the early signs of spring have begun.  For early risers, we finally start to observe earlier sunrises.  (These technically start around January 10, but they’re slow getting out of bed.)

You might think the ideal season for a book on spooky stuff, like Sleepy Hollow, would be timed for release in the fall/winter cycle.  Not necessarily.  Both Holy Horror and Nightmares with the Bible hit the market after Halloween.  Normal people’s thoughts had shifted to Thanksgiving.  I’m pleased that Sleepy Hollow will be released a bit earlier.  Summer is ideal for Halloween-themed books.  And yes, I devote a chapter to Halloween and the Headless Horseman.  They are closely related.  So I was glad to receive McFarland’s spring/summer catalogue and find my book on page two.  I don’t have a publication date yet, but I’m looking forward to being part of the discussion about one of my favorite ghost stories of all time.  Speaking of which, it’s almost time to begin gathering firewood for next winter, or at least it will be in summer.  And it’s not that far away.

Academic Publishing

Leave a comment

I had lunch with a friend a couple months back.  He is one of the few people who’s read The Wicker Man (the Devil’s Advocate version).  Not many reviews appeared and no royalties at all have yet followed its publication.  The funny thing is, when I search for reviews I notice that the book is “for sale” on far more websites than copies actually sold (I’m assuming).  You see, one of the best-kept secrets in publishing (both trade and academic) is the number of copies sold.  Publishers are terrified of poachers after their authors, and don’t advertise actual sales figures.  For an author only the royalty statements reveal just how many (or few) copies ever made it to the hands of potential readers.  We’re all adults here; we know that not every book purchased is read.  I do wonder if there has been any interest in this little book at all.

My friend actually went and watched the movie because of my modest little book.  The film The Wicker Man is widely known in certain circles, but it is still a movie with a cult following.  Horror fans know it, of course, with some declaring loudly that it’s not horror.  It gets referenced all the time in more mainstream media.  I occasionally read quirky little books like Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village.  I wasn’t surprised to see The Wicker Man (the movie) referenced there.  As I discuss in the book, it’s even the subject of a Radiohead video for their song “Burn the Witch.”  Beyond a few academics, however, nobody’s really interested.

My friend suggested a topic for a new book for me to write.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, barring a teaching post coming my way, I’ve given up writing books for academic presses.  I’m pleased McFarland accepted Sleepy Hollow as American Myth, but the crude cost-benefit analysis that I do tells me writing books for academic presses, without library access, is always a money-losing venture.  Remember those old Guiness Book of World Records paperbacks?  I recall seeing, as a child, the least successful author listed.  Of course I don’t remember his name.  I now know that at least that record hasn’t been broken.  Not officially, but when books cost so much to write… Academic publishers are facing hard times but I don’t see the wisdom in pricing your books so that nobody can afford them, just to scrape in a few university library sales.  Not to sound as mercenary as a Hessian, but what’s in it for me?  Certainly not tenure or groundskeeper Willie’s retirement grease.  I’m not paid like a professor. Right now, though, I’m wondering if maybe I’ve broken that record after all.

Personal Publishing

Leave a comment

I recently joined the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group.  I haven’t really met any other members yet, although I know one from another local community.  By my reckoning, this is the fourth writers’ group I’ve joined and I do hope it leads to some friendships.  I like talking about writing.  I read Blurred Lines by Scott Christian because he’s a person I recently met and he kindly gave me a copy.  A collection of poems and stories, it’s a small book but a deeply personal one.  I guess that’s one reason that I like talking about writing with other people—it is deeply revealing.  There are those who write as a job, and there are those who write because they must.  This book falls into the latter category.  Some of us are compelled to write down what we experience, whether it be in poetry, fiction, or fact.

Self-publishing can be a way of expressing what the publishing industry suppresses.  I once told a group that it’s a little disturbing how much power publishers have in determining what people can read.  I write “can” intentionally.  Only the biggest in the industry have the financial wherewithal to get books into bookstores (where readers congregate like bees on a warm day in October) where they’ll be laid out on tables and priced to move.  Like many others, I began my writing in academia.  It took some time before I realized that academic prices are a deterrent to readers.  Breaking out of that mold is also difficult.  At the same time, publishers have resources to devote to marketing that an individual seldom has time for, or the reach to accomplish.  So it goes.

Another review of Nightmares with the Bible has appeared (this one in Catholic Biblical Quarterly).  While not glowing, it does recommend reading the book, despite the fact that the publisher has no interest in paperbacking the series and it takes a great deal of motivation for even me to spend that much for a book.  Yes, I can understand self-publishing.  It is a writer’s chance to get their voice heard.  Even some famous authors—Mark Twain comes to mind—had to get their start by paying to have their books published.  Some of us write because we can do no other.  We have thoughts and feelings to share.  And I keep joining local writers groups looking for the rare person who will talk to a stranger about that most intimate act we call writing.  Reading such a book is a very personal thing to do.

The Publishing Self

Leave a comment

One of the things I noticed while researching Sleepy Hollow as American Myth was that many resources on the legend were buried in self-published editions of the “book” itself.  And other material about the legend was from self-published sources.  This lack of serious attention was behind my writing of the book.  Clearly the story is an integral part of American Halloween and Halloween is a big business.  Why aren’t mainstream publishers interested?  (I tried several agents but nobody seemed terribly drawn to the project.)  In any case, my thoughts today are about self-publishing.  Some of these self-published books aren’t even listed on Amazon, which is pretty amazing.  I even found one that apparently lacks an ISBN!  The author’s website (the only place it can be purchased) lists it as out of stock.  Self-publishing must require vigilance in order to be a way to make a living.

The profits from self-publishing are likely better than publishing with an academic press.  (Unless, of course, you’re given the rare trade treatment.)  If you’ve ever tried to find a publisher, the urge to self-publish is understandable.  The publishing world tends to be cliquish.  The same names keep coming up time and again.  If you’re friends with one of them, well, you can get in the door.  And mainstream publishing, surprisingly, doesn’t really like new ideas.  Most publishers prefer to keep on acquiring titles in the vein of one of their successes.  “More like this,” you can imagine them saying in their sleep.  New ideas are untested and may flop.  Bestselling authors seldom flop and those who imitate them often get a seat at the table.  The rest are left to self-publishing, or perhaps academic publishing.

I’ve read many self-published books and most of them have led to disappointment.  You see, a book is better if someone reacts against it.  The problem in mainstream publishing is the reaction against is generally a rejection and that means even if you improve you still have to publish yourself.  I was sorely tempted to self-publish a book before Holy Horror.  Having found a publisher for that book somewhat painlessly (the agents weren’t impressed with it either), led me to keep on going.  Nightmares with the Bible and The Wicker Man were both series books, so again, fairly straightforward.  Sleepy Hollow as American Myth followed the track of Holy Horror.  Written not for a series, I tried to find an agent, failed, and again turned to McFarland.  At least they’ll publish it in paperback.  I’m still discovering self-published books on Sleepy Hollow that I missed in the writing of my book.  For all its faults, academic publishing at least generally offers a good bibliography.

Is That Cookie Free?

Leave a comment

I offer free editorial advice here, from time to time.  Not many academics, I expect, pay any notice—what have they to learn from a mere editor?  Still, it’s a public service, so here goes.  It really pays to do your research.  I don’t mean about the topic of your book, but research into what publishing is and how it works.  Some authors, for example, think that if they pay an Open Access fee their book will get bells and whistles that other mere monographs won’t.  They underestimate how much it costs to print a book, especially when they’ve already undercut their own sales by making it available for free online.  There some basic business sense lacking here.  There’s a free cookie but then there’s also giving away the whole box.  Who’s going to buy what’s free?  (There are good reasons for Open Access publishing, but wishing for special favors isn’t one of them.)

Photo by Food Photographer | Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

I make no claims to be some kind of publishing guru.  I tend to think of myself as a guy who got lost along the way, career-wise.  But I’ve learned that I wish I’d known more about publishing when I was teaching.  I see the same rookie mistakes over and over and over again, made even by senior scholars sometimes.  I remember, however, when I was teaching.  It never even occurred to me to find out anything about publishing.  In the academic’s eyes, publishers are there to serve up what researchers discover.  To a point that’s true, but publishers vary quite widely in their tolerance for the purely academic exercise.  You see, you actually have to sell books to stay in business, and if your research to too obscure, well, I guess you could try to find some Open Access funding.

One of the things that amazes me about the biz is just how many academics assume that editors are menial workers in the larger enterprise of getting their important ideas in print.  My time in publishing has been an education in itself.  I may not have time to keep up with Ancient West Asian studies anymore (the draw is still there, but it’s a terribly expensive habit).  Horror’s a bit easier to handle since you really have only about two centuries to cover, rather than four millennia.  But I can’t help but muse on what a missed opportunity presents itself when a free cookie is passed up.  It’s far easier to stay wrapped in that academic shell than it is to try to break out and discover what is freely offered.  Strange how the world works sometimes. Have a cookie…

Going Once, Going Twice

Leave a comment

Do you ever get that feeling that you’ve been sold?  One thing I learned early on in academic publishing is that buyouts aren’t that unusual.  I recently wrote about Transaction being acquired by Taylor and Francis, for example.  Just a couple days ago I noticed in Publishers Weekly that Bloomsbury had bought out Rowman & Littlefield’s academic wing.  Then, at a company meeting the buyout was mentioned again.  Finally, I had an email from R & L letting me know.  You see, Nightmares with the Bible was published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic.  This is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.  This means the rights to Nightmares have just been sold to Bloomsbury.  I do hope Bloomsbury has a more progressive idea about paperbacks!  In one of those strange synchronicities (all of this happened on the same day), I’d emailed one of the series editors of Horror and Scripture, asking if the series was still going.

I have no real concerns about being owned by Bloomsbury.  If you haven’t heard of them, it’s probably because they were a small operation until they took a chance on an unknown author by the name of J. K. Rowling.  Suddenly flush with cash, they started buying out smaller presses.  Big fish got to eat too!  Rowman & Littlefield had been buying out other publishers for years.  If you’re an academic you probably remember University Press of America.  Ever wonder where it went?  They bought Rowman & Littlefield in the late eighties and took over their name.  They bought other “assets”: Prometheus, Scarecrow Press, Hal Leonard.  They grew an enormous list of academic titles, now owned by Bloomsbury.

As someone who has knocked around academic publishing for some years now, it seems like this small world is getting even smaller.  Companies buy other companies and sometimes it works out for the benefit of authors.  Sometimes not.  Bloomsbury is only 37 years old.  Rowman & Littlefield was 75.  University Press of America (which first bought R & L, would’ve been 49.)  The younger buying out their elders.  Perhaps it’s because of my career malfunction, but I’ve discovered academic publishing to be a fascinating world in its own right.  Many academics pay little attention to the publisher, especially outside the big-name university presses.  But there are stories here.  I know that before I began working in the industry I’d never heard of Bloomsbury.  Then they bought out Continuum, which had bought out T & T Clark, from my beloved Edinburgh.  Now one of my books is under their umbrella.  And I have to wonder who will be sold next.

Learning to Write

Leave a comment

It’s a reciprocal relationship.  Ideally a symbiosis.  The publisher has a reach, and know-how, that an author lacks.  An author provides content the publisher needs.  Yet publishing is a business in a capitalistic world and has to (unless subsidized) turn a profit.  As an author who works in publishing I’m skewered on the horns of this dilemma.  It’s heartbreaking to see the lengths some authors go to only to find out their book is priced the same as a week’s worth of groceries.  Or three tanks full of gas.  Who buys a $100 book?  Libraries.  Well, some libraries.  Occasionally a publisher will run sales, if you order direct, but by then interest in your book (which may be timely) has passed on.  You become just another name on the shelf in the Library of Congress.

I’m looking for a publisher for my sixth book.  This has to be someone who understands that even $45 is beyond the reach of most intelligent readers.  “What the market will bear” feels like the death sentence to the years of your life you’ve put into writing the thing.  A friend once asked me, “Why do you do it?”  For authors the real question is “How can you not do it?”  The need for the validation through publication runs very deeply in some people.  More deeply than our national love for Taylor Swift.  It has to do with meaning.  Purpose.  A sense of what we’re put on earth to do.  

Image credit: Codex Manesse, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The standard “wisdom,” and practice, is to publish in hardcover, priced for the library market, and if it sells well at $100, perhaps offer a paperback.  Hopefully priced lower than $45, but don’t hold your breath.  “What the market will bear,” should be your mantra.  It’s a wonder that civilized people ever got educated.  I grew up on cheap books from Goodwill, which is all I could afford.  College, on borrowed money, taught me the price of reading seriously.  It was a lesson I never forgot.  I’d begun my faltering steps to writing books while in high school.  I started writing short stories even earlier than that.  It has been a life of writing.  Even series books, I’ve come to see, are too easily exploited in this way.  My shortest book is priced at $40.  At least I know that I’ve written some collectors’ items.  Take heart, my fellow writers trying to emerge from academe.  There are other ways of being in the world.  And some of them may even be symbiotic.

Scholarly Publishing

1 Comment

So here’s the thing about innocuous names—they don’t work well with the internet.  Search engines throw a rod trying to find something so insipid that it might mean anything.  I’m driven to this topic by the fact that “Scholars Press” or something like it, is used by a number of organizations, some apparently predatory.  If you’re a scholar of religion you know to what I’m referring when I say “Scholars Press.”  You know the neat, trim little monographs that you consumed like popcorn while writing your dissertation.  Try to find a history of the press online.  I’ll wait.

So finally I heaved myself out of my chair and got an actual book (imagine that!) off the shelf.  It is a volume I purchased when the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature met in Orlando.  A conference to remember.  So, along with Woody and Buzz Lightyear, we were gathered to learn about religion and I finally shelled out for Ernest W. Saunders’ Searching the Scriptures: A History of the Society of Biblical Literature 1880–1980.  There I found what Google couldn’t: Scholars Press dates from 1974, a joint venture of the two societies.  Originally it published books from the University of Montana at Missoula, and later moved to Chico, California.  Finally it settled in Atlanta and eventually split into two as AAR and SBL took on the publishing of their own books.  I saved myself several minutes of probably fruitless scrolling.  It seems nobody else is really interested in this.  I am an historian of religion, but an historian none the less.  I wanted to know the sequence of events.

I am curious when the two decided to break up this venture.  There was a divorce, or temporary separation, between the societies some years back—I can’t recall when it was—that seems a logical time for them to think about taking on their individual publishing programs, but then again, they may have started before then.  In other words, I don’t have the date when Scholars Press dissolved.  Religious studies, I realize, is a small discipline.  For many colleagues it’s their entire world.  Some of them write histories about various aspects of it—I saw a book that I want to read about the murder of a religion professor Ioan Culianu back in 1991—but compared to history or English, we’re minuscule.  And we don’t seem very curious about ourselves.  We’re an odd lot, that’s for sure.  And we don’t always pick the best names.

Playing Authors

Leave a comment

My family looked at me funnily, but not for the first time.  With a holiday gift card I’d ordered a book on the card game Authors that I’d blogged about recently.  You see, there’s not a ton of information on it on the web, and it was a formative influence in my life and I wanted to know more.  I suppose it’s typical for someone raised as a fundamentalist not to immediately think of evolution, but Authors has evolved over the years.  And quite a lot.  For one thing, you can’t copyright an idea and other game-producing companies made their own versions of the original game.  And what I’d assumed had been the original (since it was the one I had as a child) was only one of many versions.  The book even documents the Bible Authors game I’d mentioned.  My real interests included that age-old question—did it ever include Edgar Allan Poe?

Today is Poe’s birthday.  It’s fair to say that he’s one of the most recognizable authors in the world now.  He also had a tough time being accepted.  This book, which I haven’t read through—it’s more of a reference book, in any case—points out that Poe was indeed included in more than one edition of the game.  He isn’t one of the strongly recurring authors (which include several of whom I’d never heard).  This is the fate of writers.  Reading about Dickens lately, I came to realize that even after several best-selling novels (at numbers that would make any modern publisher gloat), he was effectively living off debt until well into his forties.  And he died at 58.  He was famous, but until his final years not what you could consider wealthy.  

Another realization dawned.  Writing for a wider readership means getting away from academic publishers.  I had an agent interested in my current book project for a couple of months before he decided it wasn’t for him.  I’ve also come to see that several authors I respect, and whose books are priced below $20, have published with presses that aren’t part of the Big Five.  And they earn some profit from their efforts (unlike academic publishing).  In other words, becoming an author of either fiction or non, often involves book sense that I’ve been slow to gain.  At the Easton Book Festival a few years back I met several local writers who were putting additions onto their houses with the royalties they earned.  I’d published three books at that point and was turning my pockets inside out hoping for forgotten spare change.  Authors is a game.  Those who are included are those who figured out how it’s played.

Review, Please

Leave a comment

I realize few academics read my musings.  (Heck, few non-academics read them either!)  Nevertheless, I have a plea: please be a peer reviewer when asked!  I get hit with this particular conundrum from both sides—as an editor potential reviewers simply don’t want to do the work (hint: we’re all “too busy”!) and as an erstwhile member of the academy, I also get asked to do reviews.  Out of a sense of obligation, I always accept the invitations, if at all possible.  You see, I know how hard it is to secure reviewers.  In the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve been tapped as a reviewer five times.  Ironically, when I had my full-time teaching position (for fourteen years!), I was never asked.  How times have changed!  Editors are now beating the academic bushes for those of us in the hinterland who have credentials and good will, even as we’re out gathering twigs.

You see, academic publication simply cannot go forward without peer review.  If you publish, someone was willing to review your work.  Don’t you think it’s only fair to offer the same courtesy?  Academia used to be, and still should be, a community.  Yes, those who break into those coveted teaching positions are often Lone Ranger types, shooting from the scholastic hip.  Still, the system only works if we help one another.  One of the long-term accusations against the academy is that those within have tunnel vision.  (I suspect there may be some neurodiversity going on here.)  That may be true, but try to consider the wider picture.  Teaching jobs are tough, yes, but the rewards are enormous.  Believe me, if you haven’t had to work a 9-2-5, you may not realize just how privileged you are!

Many editors dread the prospect of having to find new reviewers.  They spend time on university websites that are designed for recruitment, inviting them back to school (believe me, it’s tempting!), not to help editors find experts.  And we don’t like to use the same person over and over.  Reviewing also has some benefits—there are carrots as well as sticks!  I encounter new and untested ideas as a peer reviewer.  Who doesn’t like to be the first to get a crack at new knowledge being born?  My own portfolio of review requests stretches from semitic goddesses to the weather to monsters.  I’ve published in those areas and colleagues had to read my materials to make that possible.  So if you’re an academic and someone asks you to be a peer reviewer, please say yes.  Pretty please, with sugar on top.

How to Write a Book

2 Comments

When I worked at Routledge I was told never to mention William Germano’s name.  I’ve never been one to dabble in workplace politics, but I did wonder why.  Over time, as I tried to commission the kinds of books I knew Routledge for, I was told that they didn’t do those kinds of books.  Not since the Germano days.  Years later I still don’t know what all of that was about, but I do know that Germano wrote a book that would make nearly every academic editor’s life easier if it were handed out at every doctoral graduation ceremony.  From Dissertation to Book is a classic in the field.  Now in its second edition, in it Germano explains, in non-technical language, why and how a dissertation is not a book.  He also explains how to make it a book.

You see, academic editors, such as yours truly, see more dissertations than the most ambitious professor.  The doctoral student, flush with the praise of his or her examination committee, sends off their thesis, largely unchanged, and wants it to be published.  Hey, don’t be embarrassed—that’s what I did too.  The truly amazing thing to me, as someone who’s been both professor and editor, is how little publishing and academia know about each other.  If I had to guess who knows whom better, I’d have to say publishers take an edge over academics.  Their knowledge is far from perfect, however.  Academics have to publish for promotion and tenure, but they don’t bother to learn about how publishing works.  Germano’s book would help them too.

For many years well-known academics have been stating in highly visible places that academic writing is poor writing.  It is.  Germano explains why in this little book.  Better than that, he gives solid advice on how to improve your chances of getting published.  I’ve been working in academic publishing for a decade and a half and I learned quite a lot from this little book.  Dissertations are written to prove yourself to a committee.  Books are written for a wider readership that wants to be able to understand what you’re talking about.  Day in and day out, people like myself read dissertations.  Generally there’s a kernel of something good there.  (Sometimes, honestly, there’s not.  Not all theses are created equal, although that’s not one of the ninety-five.)  Germano’s book offers a way to find and plant that kernel so that it grows into something any editor would be pleased to receive—the proposal for an actual book.  It should be read widely—much more widely than it is.

Cone of Silence

Leave a comment

I still get asked occasionally.  Actually, I was never asked when I was employed as a professor.  Peer review is essential to the academic process.  Although I hung my shingle at Nashotah House for a decade and a half, nobody was passing by.  Now I get asked from time to time, to do some academic reviewing.  As an editor I have to ask people to do this on a daily basis.  It always bothers me when some privileged professor says, “I don’t do peer reviews; I’ve got my own writing to do.”  Well, professor, if everyone felt that way you would never be published.  We’ve got to pay our dues, no?  Getting a Ph.D. doesn’t necessarily make you humble (although it should) or considerate.  Although I’m hoping to move away from academic publishing to the more popular trade venue (believe me, I’m trying!), I know that holding a Ph.D. means I should review when I’m asked to.

Right now I’m reviewing a book manuscript that I really wish I could talk about here.  Problem is, peer review is either a singly or doubly-blind process.  The author doesn’t know who the reviewers are—that’s crucial.  And sometimes the reviewer doesn’t know who the author is.  Although this blog doesn’t get a big readership, it’d be just my luck that I’d be spouting off about some ideas I read and the author of said manuscript (I don’t know who it is, in this case) would happen upon my remarks.  That means I have to make this post about the process rather than the content.  Too bad too, because I’ve had a number of conversations about this very topic recently.  Ah, but I must keep my fingers shut.

Peer review isn’t a foolproof process.  I try to remind people frequently that nobody—and I mean nobody—has all the answers.  As the Buddha reportedly said, “Don’t take my word for it, check it against your experience.”  I used to tell my Rutgers students that same thing.  Don’t take my word for it just because I’m standing in front of an auditorium full of students.  Ask others.  Ask yourself, does it make sense?  And don’t believe anyone who claims to have all the answers.  That doesn’t solve my dilemma, though, of wanting to tell the world about the hidden book I’m reading.  It ties in so well with what I try to do on this blog.  And, really, it’s an honor to be asked.  Someone thinks I have knowledge worth sharing.  Only I can’t talk about it.

Photo by saeed karimi on Unsplash