Getting there

Good news today: my co-editor and I are getting a book contract.

Several people have asked me recently whether the volume coming out of the conference last autumn has been published yet. Which shows how little they know about book publishing.

For the conference, we asked for full papers. It means that we had a vague idea of what people would be talking about. We went deliberately to different sessions to hear as many papers as possible. A good written paper doesn't always make a good presentation, and a conference paper does not necessarily make a good volume chapter. Publishers don't want conference proceedings these days, because these don't sell. And frankly, I hate conference proceedings that lack coherence and are very uneven in quality. So we decided from the beginning that we would select no more than twelve papers. It was a hard decision, because there were many good papers that simply didn't fit into the book. I sincerely hope they have been or will soon be published elsewhere.

The conference was last September, and by the end of October we had made our selection, informed the lucky few and asked them for abstracts to be included in the proposal, at the same time asking them to revise and expand the papers to almost three times the length. I have never yet met an author who was upset by the request to expand their paper. Mostly we are asked to cut them down.

By December, we had collected all abstracts and written an introduction. We had completely opposite ideas about what an introduction is supposed to be doing, so it was a very useful exercise. We also wrote a formal proposal with specifications of audience, competition on the market, estimated length and other stuff. I have a file in my computer for this, where I just insert the relevant info.We submitted the proposal early in January. We also sent the outline to our authors asking them to take each other's chapters into consideration.

Sometime mid-March we received the positive first response from the editor who requested two sample chapters, one by an established and one by a less known scholar. Since we had asked all our contributors to submit their finished chapters by first of March, and surprisingly enough some of them did, we chose two and resubmitted. Meanwhile we chased the rest of our authors and edited all chapters for correct format. At least a couple of submissions were really late, but it didn't matter much at this point. We kept our authors posted about the progress. Authors tend to get impatient because they want to include their chapters in their CVs as forthcoming. We told them they could do it at their own risk. Personally, I'd never put anything on my CV before I had a contract.

About a month ago we had a generally positive response from the editor who had received two reader reviews. Now, reader reviews can be extremely helpful or they can be hopelessly stupid. Most of the comments were helpful, some were stupid, but what we were asked to do was address every single comment, either agreeing with it or arguing why we didn't agree. The fact that we didn't quite agree between ourselves wasn't quite helpful, but we did it. Meanwhile, we chased the tardy authors and corrected format and footnotes. If you ask authors to correct the footnotes you can be sure that they will make new errors, so it's just as well to do it yourself.

Today - happy news! The Board has approved the proposal, and we are getting a contract. So when is the book coming out? Take it easy. Since we have been so optimistic and prepared the manuscript while we were waiting, we can now submit it very quickly, probably next week. The editor has sent us, once again, Author Guidelines, with a really helpful note that we don't have to keep to them. So much for all our efforts. After we have submitted, the ms will go out to another round of reviews. It means that it is pointless to ask the authors for further revisions, even though we would like some. But we'll wait till we have the reviews, which may be helpful or stupid. In any case, we will have to report back to the editor how we are going to address the comments and then send the chapters back to authors for revisions. Are you with me? We are now probably in September-October. We will have to give our authors a couple of months for revisions. Meanwhile, we cannot do anything. When we have received all revisions, we will do the final editing and send the ms to the editor. It will then go to copy-editor and return to us with queries, helpful or stupid. Some copy-editors like to show that they have done their job well and change your spelling from British to American or the other way round, or change double quotes to single, or insert new paragraphs where you don't want them.

I think we are well over Christmas now. Copy-editors deserve their Christmas holidays. A few months later there will be page proofs, which always, I mean always, come when you least want them, and it's always urgent, after all those months. Hopefully, this publisher will not send out proofs to all authors individually. I much prefer to proofread myself than chase contributors who happen to spend their sabbatical in Antarctis without internet access.

Eventually, about two years after the conference, the book will be out. Our publisher is very proud of their short production cycle.

How to be rejected

Yesterday I posted a status update on Facebook sharing the fact that an academic journal had rejected an article that they had asked me to submit. I posted it deliberately for some younger colleagues to note that being senior, established, renowned and so on is not a guarantee that everything you offer will be published, and not even that everything that is commissioned will be published. I got many responses to this post, exactly of the type I had expected, and it feels there is more to be said.

I once gave a paper at a conference where several academic journal editors were fishing for good stuff, and after my session the editor of the most prestigeous journal asked me to expand the paper into a full-scale article. Which I did, because the subject was something I thought important, and the journal prestigeous. I put a lot of work into it, and it went out to readers who very obvioulsy didn't understand what I was doing. They made some, in my eyes, irrelevant comments, enough to get the article rejected, but they didn't seem to have noticed my completely revolutionary approach! I eventually published it elsewhere and got my brilliant new ideas across, but it did hurt.

I am sure that I occasionally do the same when I am asked to read a manuscript for a journal. Fail to see the new revolutionary ideas. Hopefully, the authors publish elsewhere.

I think this is something we need to accept as academics. Sometimes we are lucky, and a good journal or essay collection will take your piece, with small revisions (no articles go to press without revisions). Sometimes, after having been rejected by high-profile journals, you publish in a less esteemed one. I have published in Swedish something that had been rejected in English. And the other way round (in fact, my first real book, Children's Literature Comes of Age, was rejected by a Swedish publisher, so I re-wrote it in English). I also have publications in Croatian and Slovenian that haven't been published anywhere else.

I still have plenty of unpublished stuff in my computer. Every now and then I go through it thinking that I ought to do something about it, such as a short and comprehensive introduction to Bakhtin, or a comparative study of illustrations to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, or my brilliant Francelia Butler memorial lecture on bridges in children's literature (I hope some editors are reading this). But I am doing other stuff now. It's too late.

It hurts a lot when you are rejected, especially when you are convinced that you piece is good. Sometimes you submit something written half-heartedly or marginal to what you are doing or something that will be included in another piece. But when you know it's good, the only way to handle it is try again. Some of the readers' comments may actually be helpful. Even if they have completely misunderstood you, it is worth contemplating why.

And whatever happens, we need to remember that we have chosen to play this game, and every now and then we win.

How to get published, continued

Ten months ago I submitted a book proposal to a publisher. I did it because I noticed a substantial gap in the publisher's list and felt that, with my qualification and interest, I could fill it. I was quite enthusiastic about the project, but there were so many other things going on that I didn't chase the acquisition editor when I didn't hear from them for a while. In August, I got an email with lots of apologies: the editor had somehow mislaid my file, but would immediately send it out to reviewers. November: one reviewer super-positive, the other lukewarm, so the proposal would go to a third reviewer. By that time, I had got engaged in a completely new project and was more or less hoping that the proposal would never go further. Actually, the other day I contemplated contacting the editor to withdraw the proposal. Yesterday, the editor got back urging me to respond to all the three reviewers' comments and send in a revised proposal by Wednesday.

A brief look at the reviews reveals that the reviewers suggest that I write a completely different book, which is not uncommon. I once wrote a book, with a proper contract and a generous advance, stating explicitly that it was aimed at graduate English majors. The acquisition editor sent it out for reviews that said the book was too advanced for education undergraduates. I kept the advance and offered the book to another publisher.

Revision and detailed response by Wednesday. Hmmm. There are several options in this situation. You can say "%!$$&#@%!!", forget the project and probably get a bad reputation in the publishing world, since all editors know each other. You can say that the deadline is unreasonable and wait another ten months until the revised proposal is considered. Or you can, as I am doing, put everything else aside, work until late, work on the weekend and get the d-d thing done by Wednesday. Mind, it does not guarantee that you won't have to wait another ten months.  

Editor's laments

One aspect of getting published that I had forgotten, but was reminded of yesterday is edited books. Every time I have done it I swear solemnly that I will never do it again, but here I am, right in the process.Moreover, co-editing, which has it advantages and disadvantages.

My first edited volume was in Swedish and originated from a seminar series on children's literature and literary theory. It was used for many years in children's literature courses, but before that, it gave me a lot of trouble. No matter how detailed instructions you give to your contributors about footnotes, bibliography, indented quotes, subheadings and double-spacing, they will all do it wrong in different manners. As an editor, you have two options. You can send the chapter back to your contributor and ask for corrections. This will probably delay your already delayed production schedule by a month, so the second option most editors take is to correct everything themselves: it least, it will be wrong consistently when you submit it to the publisher. Likewise, you prefer to do all proof-reading yourself - you need to do it anyway - rather than sending out and wait for another month. There is always one contributor who is more busy than evebody else.

It gets still more complicated when you edit an international volume, and at least one of your contributors does not use email or has antedeluvial software or is on study leave in the faraway rainforests. Some will go beyond all deadlines, and you have two options. You may send a nasty email saying that if you don't get the typescript right now, the chapter will not be included. This is not the option you choose, because it will collapse the neat structure of the volume, and it is often the contribution you want most. The second option - no, you cannot write it yourself, although you would. The second option is to wait and to passify your other contributors with promises you know you can't keep.

If you co-edit a volume, you can be sure that your co-editor will have a wedding, a sick relative, a prolonged business trip and thousands of other reasons to postpone the submission. You have three options. You can wait until your co-editor does her share of work. Meanwhile, the contributors will bombard you with questions about the progress. The other option is doing everything yourself. The third is withdrawing from the project, but that can be fatal as you jeopardise your professional relationships not only with your co-editor but all contributors as well.

To crown it all, edited volumes are rated low in academic reports, bring no royalties, are seldom reviewed, do not sell and do not get quoted, so you do it all for the love fo the subject.

To be honest, I must admit that I have contributed to lots of edited volumes, and although I am usually prompt with deadlines, I have withdrawn a couple of times, I have messed up with bibliography and double-spacing, excellent guidelines notwithstanding, I have forgotten to read proofs, and I have been a nuisance bombarding editors with silly questions.

There are at least two sides to everything.

Further reflections on getting published

My very first publication was a book review. Book reviews can be very helpful at the beginning of your academic career. I reviewed for a weird semi-academic journal that only had reviews of foreign books, and I was their Scandinavian reviewer. That's how I learned to read Norwegian and Danish, that I have actually never studied. The journal was bi-monthly, and I contributed to every issue, only it was against the rules to have more than one review in the same issue so all reviewers had lots of pseudonyms. I would, for instance, use my father's or my grandfather's first names as pseudonyms. Once a year, there was a special issue on children's literature, and I always reviewed several books for those. I reviewed Tove Jansson's Moominvalley in November when it first came out. Now mind, this was behind the Iron Curtain, and reviewing was the only way for me to get hold of books. And of course I wasn't allowed to keep them, they went to the library.

Occasionally, I reviewed something for the journal on children's literature. I am quite proud of having reviewed the first Russian translation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Some years after I had come to Sweden, a new journal in children's literature started, Opsis Kalopsis, and I happened to sit next to the editor-in-chief at a reception, just as she was looking for reviewers. I wrote for this journal for many years (and was allowed to keep books). I mostly specialised in fantasy and had “my” authors, including Lloyd Alexander, Diana Wynne Jones and Philip Pullman. Many reviews fed into my academic writing.

For a while I reviewed books for the cultural journal of the Swedish church. I did it because these were not children's books, and I thought it might be useful to add to my cv. I reviewed such authors as Harold Bloom and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I have written reviews for Scandinavica, and occasional reviews here and there. I don't review on a regular basis any more, but every now and I am asked to review a professional publication. I only do it if I am really interested, which I most often am (I guess that why they ask me).

Looking back, I think that reviewing was an extremely helpful writing practice. Staying within word count and keeping deadlines is always good training. Following an author for several years was stimulating and resulted in author portraits and other publications. And in many cases, the journals I reviewed for would eventually take my own article.