Seeking some wisdoms as first time editor of a volume

[profjackster]

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post and am very happy to be here.

Currently I am an editor compiling chapters for a volume to which a good press has expressed much interest. There are 17 authors working on 14 chapters (some are co-authoring). Given that I have never published an edited volume, I'm hoping some of you might be able to provide wisdoms for the questions below:

1) After the proposal is submitted to the press and if we get the contract, to what extent does the publisher directly deal with chapter contributors individually when reviewers offer comments--or will the publisher funnel the reviewed comments through me so that I can further forward them to the respective chapter contributor?

2) What if a particular author is unable to time manage their way through the process. Will it be the publishing house that attends to this matter by, say, removing the person from contributing, or am I the designated person to do so. I can only hope it's not the latter.

I'm asking these questions as I hope the process will be a smooth one. Also, I certainly do not want to be an editor that will in any way appear overbearing toward my colleagues' time management. For me to remind a particular individual to somewhat hurry or that their chapter is no longer feasible will be a tough thing for me to do. I can certainly rise to the occasion should such a scenario arise, but obviously prefer not to. So, in closing: I'm just hoping that the publishers will be a more regulatory mechanism than me in this project.

Am I being unrealistic? Any tips coming this way will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Jack

[Hegemony]

Yes, that is unrealistic. As the editor, that is precisely your job.

The press may not review the chapters at all — that may be entirely up to you. That's been the case in the three volumes I have edited. So you will give the authors feedback and ask them to revise the weak parts.

Similarly you will be adamant about the deadline. You can always threaten that if they do not meet the deadline, they will be dropped from the volume. That's if you can afford to lose a few chapters. In the last volume I edited, only two of eleven chapters were in on time. One was more than a year late, and when it finally came in, it was terrible (sentence fragments, no footnotes), and I dropped the contributor.

The contributors will also be infuriating in other ways. They will insist the word limit should not apply to them. Their references will be all wrong, and if you ask them to fix them, they will take 8 months and then turn them in wrong in different ways. In my last volume, there was a misspelled title or author in every single footnote — more than 120 of them. That involved a lot of checking on my part.  The contributors will also not format their pieces according to requirements of the press, no matter how much you beg them. It will take you weeks to reformat them.

I wonder if your contributors may also sometimes be non-native-English speaking?  I get the impression that you may be a non-native speaker yourself. ("provide wisdoms" etc.) If that's the case, you will also want to have someone at your disposal who will check all the non-native-speakers' contributions for solecisms. The press will not do that for you.

But all that is exactly the job description of an editor. If you do not feel you're up for this, you may want to withdraw from the volume. The press will in no way do this for you. That's why they recruit volume editors. It may be that you're more a monograph kind of scholar?

[traductio]

Everything Hegemony says is correct. I'm too lazy to type up examples of the bone-headedness I have dealt with in editing volumes (I've also done three -- nope, four -- I'm a glutton for punishment and clearly have forgotten the one that should have been out this spring), but they're in line with what Hegemony describes, especially where formatting is concerned. The challenge I've faced is that the chapters I need most are always written by the people who follow instructions least.

(Or that one guy in my first volume -- his chapter was freakin' brilliant and the book wouldn't work without it, but he accused me of being racist in every email, and he was not one to use lower case letters when all caps would do.)

That being said, I'll likely publish edited volumes in the future. In each case, they've been more than the sum of their parts. The one I overlooked a second ago (which was supposed to be out this spring) might be the most solid piece of scholarship I have ever produced. Perhaps not the most innovative, but deeper and wider than any other book on the (admittedly narrow) topic ever published. Not to blow my own horn, of course -- I had great contributors, even if one made me google every single reference based on clues in his terribly formatted essay because he couldn't be bothered to put together a reference section!

[Katrina Gulliver]

Agree with Hegemony. YOU are the editor. You will be wrangling the contributors - you recruited them, not the press.
My major tip: hire a professional indexer.

[polly_mer]

It may be that you're more a monograph kind of scholar?

My bet is this is an article kind of scholar who is venturing for the first time into an edited volume on a special topic because there's finally enough knowledge to consolidate into one place.

These questions look to me a lot like not knowing the difference between a true editor for a standalone volume and being an organizer for a conference that includes a special journal issue in which the combination of professional society and journal staff do all the legwork on getting the special issue published.

[profjackster]

Thanks for all your great comments. I'm already seeing some of the issues percolating as mentioned by many of you. Thus far we're all contributing chapters on the pandemic and physical distancing, the point being that it appears many are very animated and ready for this project due to its timeliness. Many are domiciled in EU universities while some have returned to Asia (educated here in the USA) to draft their chapters. Because I've had zoom meetings with many of them, it seems like there is indeed a sort of solidarity emerging, but I'm just being cautiously optimistic. Also, I tend to be a very easy going person to work with and many of them indicated their preferences for such personality attributes. But we'll see...

Yes, I normally write monographs and articles and my first foray into this is rather anxiety-inducing. But *for now* there appears to be some cohesion where not one person has ventured off into some peripheral place in their thinking, away from the work's core ideas.

Thanks once again for the great insights.

Sincerely,

Jack

[Hibush]

physical distancing, the point being that it appears many are very animated and ready for this project due to its timeliness.

Because I've had zoom meetings with many of them, it seems like there is indeed a sort of solidarity emerging, but I'm just being cautiously optimistic.

Keep those zoom meetings going so that your contributors feel the peer pressure. That seems like a very helpful innovation in editing a volume like this.

[Dismal]

For me to remind a particular individual to somewhat hurry or that their chapter is no longer feasible will be a tough thing for me to do...

Am I being unrealistic? Any tips coming this way will be greatly appreciated.

As the others have said, this is totally your job.  If your center or department has an administrative person to help organize correspondence with the authors and make sure all of the tables and figures are included, that would be useful.  Even then, you are the person who makes the requests for content changes and keeps the time table.

In my field, there isn't much professional reward for book chapters and it can be very hard to get people to submit them on time.   

[Morden]

I suggest two sets of timelines--the ones you tell contributors (and push them for if necessary) and the ones you tell the press.

[mamselle]

Just a note, "wisdom" is a singular quantitative (vs. qualitative)  noun--so no 's' at the end.

If English is your primary language, and that was just a typo, no issues...I know how hard it is to fix a header for a new thread.

But if you're in an ESL situation, you might want to hire a good native-English-speaking academic editor who specializes in your field.

I mean that sincerely and without snark or prejudice; that's what I do when working on pieces in French.

M.