Publish, Don’t Perish: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes in Academic Publishing

Extract

I never thought I’d be sitting here talking to all of you, but I do want to thank you and tell you how honored I am that you have given me this award. It was completely unexpected, and I still think I’m going to wake up one day and find it was all a dream.

Not such a dream was being told I’d have to prepare an “address”—something editors rarely have to do. We are more at ease sitting in a comfortable chair reading manuscripts, or writing soothing letters to our authors who sometimes get very frazzled with all the complicated things that are involved in scholarly publishing. So I thought I’d just say a few words, certainly not an address, about what it is like to be an editor at a university press, since I fear some people think all we do is take authors out to lunch or to dinner at expensive restaurants. And we do, of course, do that too, and it is something I shall miss as I venture into retirement.