I fear I may be transitioning.I may actually be becoming someone who knows something about publishing.Reading about the merger between Cengage and McGraw Hill actually seemed interesting.What’s happening to me?Actually, the largest impact has been the realization that scholars need to become more aware of the world around them.As a doctoral student I was taught to find an unexplored subject and write obscurely on it.Then, when it’s time to publish, to say to the editor that general readers will understand and find it compelling.It took some time, however, even though I frequented Waterstones and Blackwells, to realize that the books they housed were not the kinds of books I’d been taught to write.Back in America, where the brands were Borders and Barnes and Nobel, the same thing applied.People want books they can understand.
Two articles that caught my attention recently addressed the plight of the academic monograph.One was “Worried About the Future of the Monograph? So Are Publishers” from the Chronicle of Higher Education.The other was “Making Monographs Open” from Inside Higher Ed.Both share some common themes: scholars write books so obscure that even academic libraries won’t buy them and since it’s “publish or perish” it becomes the publisher’s problem.Listen, I understand that mentality.Isolated in the woods of Wisconsin with the wind howling through the trees, writing about weather in the Psalms seemed perfectly natural.Forgetting that the average reader doesn’t know Hebrew, I assumed everyone would find my disquisition irresistible.Even back in the early 2000s publishers disagreed.Life is so interesting!There are so many minutiae to explore!If you haven’t had the pleasure of following in the tracks of a thought that won’t let you go, you’ve never been really seduced.But then, somebody’s got to pay for all this.
Scholars are reluctant to acknowledge that publishing is a business.Indeed, higher education is now a business as well.Everything’s a business.To stay solvent publishers have to sell enough books to cover the cost of making them.As these articles point out, that cost isn’t negligible.The scholar who explores the publishing industry (as rare as that may be) will discover plenty of resources to help rethink academic writing.Even without reading the industry rags, just paying attention when you’re in your neighborhood bookstore can be an eye-opening experience.I was looking for a book (hardly even academic) last time I was in Ithaca, New York.If any town is likely to have such books on the shelf, it’s Ithaca.I had to ask and leave empty-handed.There are lots of books out there, colleagues!And if you want to get yours published, it pays to do a little research.Your time will not be wasted.And I fear I’m becoming someone who knows a little about such things.