If you haven’t already, read these first: Part I – In which I manage to get a publishing contract
Part Ia: Writing a Prospectus – In which I detail how I wrote my prospectus
You’d think that selling a publisher on your book idea would be the hard part. Once you have a contract in hand, the rest should be easy, right? After all, in my case, the contributors had already presented their work, so they already had at least a draft to work from — all that’s left is for each person to clean up their draft, maybe expand a piece here and there, and tidy up their references. Right?
Right?!
Wrong. You’ve heard the expression “herding cats” before, right? Well, I decided that getting an edited volume put together was a lot like herding glaciers.
What I’m saying is, it goes a bit slowly.
Part of the problem is the academic schedule. Most academics are bound to a semester-by-semester schedule that a] changes frequently, and b] puts us through periods of intense work interspersed with periods of intense inactivity. During the school session, for all our good intentions, non-teaching projects tend to fall by the wayside. Some academics are lucky: they have tenure, 1- or 2- class per semester teaching loads, and committee work they’ve learned how to blow off. Those are not the kind of academics one would expect to find contributing to an edited volume by an unknown grad student.