Publish Well and Wisely:
A Brief Guide for New Scholars

By Michael J. Carley, Co-editor, H-France

Part 1:

There are many handbooks, pamphlets, and articles on
preparing manuscripts for publication, and the reader may
wonder why another short essay on the subject is worth an
author's bother. It is a funny thing about preparing
text for publication: the same questions and problems
confront succeeding generations of students and writers.

Some aspiring authors of each new generation
think that they are smarter and better prepared than
their predecessors, and that they do not have much to
learn before beginning a career of scholarly publishing.
A cynic might say that these self-assured attitudes
guarantee the need for fresh advice, if not a ready
hearing. Of course, cynicism can be found in all areas
of human endeavour, and so we need not pay it too much
mind in ours.

I have written this essay in the hope of
offering guidance and advice to new scholars embarking
upon their careers. If other authors find the advice
useful, all the better. The recommendations will in many
cases sound familiar because the principles of good
writing are venerable and because the advice has been
passed down through the generations. Being an author, an
editor, and an administrator in an academic environment
has given me several different perspectives on the
process of scholarly publishing. Different perspectives
often provide deeper understanding, and it seems
worthwhile to pass on the modest insights of my
experience to those who want them. The suggestions which
follow are offered as a beginning and a base of
departure. Other ideas will come to mind, and some
readers may disagree with my approach and my ideas. In
this case, the essay will have succeeded in provoking the
reader's reflections, which is the main object of the
exercise.

You may ask why bother at all with good
writing: why not simply report interesting research
findings and move on to the next project? The simple
answer is that good writing endures and gives its authors
a voice which goes on after they no longer do. Good
published writing is a link which connects us with our
forebears and our descendants. The best writing has a
mystical, undefinable quality about it. You will perhaps
doubt whether there is anything mystical about
scholarship. It's dry and turgid, the critic will say:
there are too many unfamiliar names, too much confusing
terminology. It's not fiction, and it's just not
interesting enough to hold the broader public's
attention. Certainly most scholarly authors will not
have the impact, say, of important novelists. But some
scholars still speak to us even across the millennia.
Consider, for example, the work of Plato, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Socrates. How better to illustrate the
endurance of good scholarship?

The focus here is on the three principal
forms of scholarly publication: book, article, and book
review. Electronic publishing has made strong progress
in the last few years and its possibilities and prospects
are also briefly discussed here. Good writing, however,
remains good writing in whatever form it may appear. Let
us therefore discuss some general principles of the
metier.

Basic Principles

1.) Writing is re-writing. By this epigram, I mean that
good writing goes through many drafts before it is right.
And a good author will continue revising his/her text
until it is typeset and the publisher or journal editor
advises the uthor not to make any further substantive
changes. Rewriting takes patience and discipline, but
pays in personal satisfaction as a text improves. In
fact, for some authors the most pleasurable part of the
process of writing is the
rewriting.

2.) More is less. Writing which goes on too long does
not impress or hold the attention of a reader, who will
normally jump ahead, or even worse, stop reading
altogether. Write concisely and tightly; eliminate the
unnecessary. If an author can also write with elegance,
all the better.

3.) Clarity of expression is important. This does not
suggest that clarity should be achieved at the expense of
complexity, merely that complexity can be explained with
greater clarity. The result will be a book accessible to
a wider audience, something every author hopes to achieve
and all too often cannot do. Remember that no one is
obliged to read your work; it must attract and hold the
reader's interest.

4.) Avoid jargon and trendy or bewildering language.
Jargon usually fails to impress; it may even confuse or
alienate readers. Trendy language, which may be the same
thing as jargon or may be a close derivative, should also
be avoided. Trends die out, and so does the trendy
language. Jargon or highly technical language may be
necessary in advanced physics, but in the humanities and
social sciences an author speaks to a wider audience. If
you need to rely on technical language, be sure to define
it when first used in the text. You might have heard it
said that some scholars use jargon or bewildering
language because the understanding of it is a form of
admission to an exclusive club. Most readers do not want
to be members of this club, and will not read the club's
literature. What author needs this kind of exclusivity?
The broader the appeal and accessibility of a book, the
more widely its ideas will circulate, and the more books
or journals, a publisher or editor will sell. Language
should be used to communicate, not to confuse.

5.) The incomprehensible is not necessarily profound, it
may just be incomprehensible. Put yourself in the
reader's place and ask if s/he will be able to
understand. If not, revise the text.

6.) Avoid overly long sentences. In some languages a
long sentence may take up an entire paragraph, but not in
English or French. If a sentence grows too long, break
it up into shorter ones.

7.) Avoid excessive use of qualifying adverbs or
adjectives. They usually add nothing and frequent use of
them burdens a text (e.g., very, rather, clearly, quite).
In modest use they can be effective, inter alia, to
express irony or facetiousness. An author writes to put
over an important idea or theme; s/he should not weaken
or dilute it with excessive use of qualifying language.

8.) Use the active voice as a rule; avoid excessive use
of the passive voice. The active voice tends to put the
accent on the actor; the passive, on the action itself.
Excessive use of the passive voice bogs down a text, as
in fact, does overuse of any grammatical or stylistic
device.

9.) Do not load up the footnotes with commentaries. If
you cannot put it in the text, as a rule, it should not
go into the notes. Some wags say they like to read the
footnotes first, or that there are two books, one in the
text and one in the notes. Over frequent, excessive
commentaries in the notes distract the reader from the
text and defeat the purpose of a well-written book or
article. If a passage cannot go in the text, put it out
altogether.

10.) Check and re-check footnotes and references; make
sure they are easy to use. No matter how careful you
are, mistakes somehow creep into a scholarly text. You
should verify all notes and references which should be
consistent in format and easy for the reader to follow.
Verification is boring and vexatious work, but if you
make too many mistakes, or if you confound your readers
with unclear references, your peers will doubt the
reliability of your scholarship. It will be a point of
attack by others holding contrary opinions.

11.) Learn to be a ruthless editor. Try to delete
excessive detail and long quotations. Long quotations
break up the rhythm of a text. Excessive detail will
only interest a few specialists. Most readers will not
be interested, and will skip the quotations and the
detail, if not the book.

12.) Show your work to a few carefully chosen colleagues.
Do not look only for praise; ask for honest comment and
be sure to thank your colleagues if they give it. On the
first reading you may not like the suggestions or the
criticism, but keep an open mind, your manuscript may
profit from a friendly critic's sharp eye. Remember a
good book is around far longer than its author. It
should be as good as you can make it.

13.) Read your text aloud to see how it sounds. Good
writing has a rhythm, and ebbs and flows to hold the
reader's attention. If it sounds good as you read aloud,
it will likely be pleasing to the reader, even in the
silence of the mind.

14.) Read novels; read a lot of fiction. Fiction teaches
style, sentence structure, writing technique, "tricks of
the trade". Like a good lecture or a well read paper,
good writing is a performance intended to interest and
hold the attention of your reader. The elements of good
fiction can be applied with profit in the humanities and
social sciences. Look for arresting metaphors, trenchant
turns of phrase which you can modify for your own
purposes. Often a few words say more and have a more
powerful effect than a sentence of eight lines.

15.) As an author, make your own revisions. Do not
abdicate your responsibility as author. Do not leave
revisions to editors or copy-editors; no matter
how good they are, they cannot fully know your mind. On
the other hand, be open-minded to a copy-editor's
suggestions and proposals after you, as author, are
satisfied with your manuscript. An author should not be
over-sensitive to a copy-editor's good ideas to improve
a text. And remember one journal editor's half serious,
half facetious observation, that "publishing is like war,
full of tension and the unexpected." In other words, do
not be surprised if there is a little friction between
you, as author, and your editor. Try to make the
friction creative.

16.) Lastly, feel good about your accomplishments as a
writer. But remember another traditional epigram: "The
more one learns, the more one realizes how little one
knows." It may be difficult for frustrated,
unappreciated authors, but be discreet about the
qualities of your work (though not about promotion of it,
of which I will have more to say). If your work is good,
it will be published and you will be recognized. There
is virtue in the unassuming confidence of an accomplished
and talented scholar.

Remember also that good writers are rarely
born; they develop over time as they learn their art, for
good writing is an art form. It can and should be
applied in the humanities and social sciences. You may
have heard it said that "Genius is 90% sweat." So is
good writing.

Part 2

The Book

When a new scholar begins to publish, one of
the first questions will be whether to transform his/her
dissertation into a book. Like the advice on good
writing, the brief comments here are by no means the
first on the subject. But while the topic is not new, it
remains pertinent and important. New authors may
sometimes say that they wrote their dissertations as
books and that they therefore do not need to revise
further before submitting for publication. Such
statements are so frequent now that they have become a
cliche. Authors may also provide a letter or letters of
endorsement from their supervisors and external
examiners. This is all to the good, but endorsements,
however well intentioned, do not make a dissertation into
a book.

Some observers say that graduate students in
the 1990s are more sophisticated than their counter-parts
of twenty years ago, but would-be authors still face the
same problems. The graduate student writes for a narrow
audience (essentially a thesis board), and the
dissertation is laden with a heavy scholarly apparatus to
prove a main line of argument while anticipating every
counter position. The writing may be repetitive,
monotonous, and inaccessible. These characteristics,
necessary perhaps to the dissertation, are a liability in
a book. They must be removed, and this task will
normally entail important revisions. Books must address
themselves to a wider audience, and hence the revised
manuscript should aim at providing context and a
broadening out of its topic. Organizational structure
should be reviewed and possibly revised. Tedious
literature reviews, excessive notes and quotations, and
jargon should be eliminated. Obvious directional signals
or transitions should be made more subtle. Writing
should be concise and lively without sacrificing
scholarly rigour. After making revisions, your manuscript
should in many cases be 25%-30% shorter than the thesis.
Publishers like manuscripts between 70,000 and 100,000
words. The ideal book, they say, is approximately 260
printed pages (or a typescript of 400pp. including notes
and bibliography). Try looking at it from another angle:
do you want to waste an evaluator's time and possibly
risk his/her irritation by submitting an overlong,
scarcely revised manuscript? Publishers' readers are
reluctant to evaluate long manuscripts, and if they do
take them on, they almost invariable recommend a
shortening of the text.

To undertake thorough-going thesis revision
will not be attractive to most new scholars. Nearly all
authors are impatient, and new scholars, who are anxious
to secure a university post and advance in their
disciplines, understandably want to publish their
dissertations as soon as possible. Unfortunately,
impatience and haste are usually not in the new, or any
scholar's best interests. Time often gives fresh
perspectives and ideas, and time usually helps an author-
-whether new or old--to see through his/her blind spots
and makes the author a better critic of his/her own work.
Virtually all commentators say that an author should put
aside his/her dissertation for several months before
contemplating revision and submission for publication.
This contemplation should only be undertaken when the
author is prepared to consider his/her work with critical
objectivity. Some authors, instead of proceeding in
this way, will immediately undertake minimal, cosmetic
revisions before submitting their work to a publisher.
In most cases a minimally revised thesis will not be
published. The author's impatience leads to an
unsatisfactory result, either outright rejection or a
recommendation for revision and resubmission. I would
recommend that a new scholar read Frances Halpenny's _The
Thesis and the Book_ [a pamphlet available from
University of Toronto Press] or some other author's
handbook (e.g., Beth Luey, _Handbook for Academic
Authors_ 3rd ed. [Cambridge U. P., 1997]) before
undertaking revision of his/her thesis and before sending
it to a publisher. The author needs to set ego aside and
look at the thesis with a remorseless eye. S/he may
decide to publish one or more articles from the thesis or
may decide to abandon it altogether for fresh research in
a new area. For those authors who decide to proceed with
revision, the "basic principles" of good writing (part
1) should be a useful guide.

Once you have completed the revision of your
thesis, you will want to consider which publisher to
approach. _The Association of American University
Presses Directory_ (see also
http://aaup.pupress.princeton.edu) gives, inter alia, a
listing of university presses in the United States and
elsewhere. You may already have a good idea where you
want to publish because of your familiarity with other
books in your field. If you are not sure, ask your
friends and colleagues. You will also want to check the
catalogues of publishers which you think may be
interested in your manuscript. You will be looking for
presses which have lists covering the same general area
into which your manuscript would fit. You do not want
your book to be an "orphan" on a publisher's list, that
is, the only book in a given discipline in the
publisher's catalogue. The publisher, unless
s/he wants to build in that area, will not be inclined to
commit resources to promote your book, and potential
readers will not think to look for it in that publisher's
catalogue.

Depending on the subject, there may be
several publishers with a potential interest in your
manuscript. You can write a letter of inquiry to them
with a brief description of the book's contents, main
ideas, and significance (not more than two pages) along
with a table of contents, the introduction, and
a sample chapter. You should expect a publisher to
answer promptly your correspondence, say, within thirty
days. If you do not receive a reply within this period,
follow-up by correspondence or telephone. If the follow-
up does not produce results, look for another publisher.
A publisher should show genuine, as opposed to polite
interest in your manuscript; if you think you are not
receiving it, put your doubts directly to the editor.
Look elsewhere if you do not receive a satisfactory
reply.

In the fortunate event of receiving more than
one letter of genuine interest, you will have to decide
on the publisher to which to send the manuscript. It is
considered inappropriate to submit a manuscript to more
than one press at a time. Publishers do not like it,
having limited resources to commit to manuscript
assessment. And the publishing world is a small one: it
would not be unusual for editors to discover an author's
multiple submissions. The normal publisher reaction is
to terminate consideration of the manuscript, or to
oblige the author to decide which press is his/her first
choice. No matter what happens, publishers will be
annoyed, and this cannot help an author's prospects.

Once a publisher agrees to assess your work
for publication, you should expect efficient peer review
of the manuscript. Book publishers take six to eight
months on average to assess a manuscript. Peer review
entails obtaining two or three evaluations from
specialists in the field. Readers are anonymous which
permits frankness and objectivity. Few evaluators want
to be known to an author for having prevented publication
of his/her book. Readers will be asked to comment on the
substance, methodology, research base, writing style, and
general uniqueness of the manuscript. And readers may
make suggestions for improvement of the work. Most
readers undertake these evaluations _pro bono_ or for a
modest reader's fee; they act in good faith to ensure the
quality of the manuscripts being considered by the press.
Their reports are normally constructive and useful to
authors. However, the peer review system is not perfect:
reader anonymity sometimes also hides unfair and partisan
criticism. If you know of competitors in the field with
an interpretive or personal axe to grind with you, alert
the editor, providing the names of the people you do not
want to assess your manuscript. A list of potentially
unfriendly readers should not be long.

You may expect good communications with the
publisher during the evaluation process. The editor
should give you an approximate date for completion of
manuscript review. If there are delays such as late
reader's reports or contradictory evaluations, expect to
be informed. Uncertainty is worse than knowing of delays
and divided opinions concerning your manuscript. If you
do not hear from the publisher after the prescribed time,
contact the editor handling your manuscript to ask for
information. Do not be discourteous or aggressive, but
if you do not at first obtain a reply, be persistent.

Normally you will receive complete reader's
reports, not excerpts or paraphrased resumes. If the
reports are negative, the editor will probably stop the
process at this point and return your manuscript. If the
reports are more positive, or generally so, you can
discuss with the editor how to proceed with possible
revisions or with the forwarding of the manuscript to the
press editorial board (university presses usually have
such committees) for publication approval. Keep in mind
that in many cases the editor's discussion with you of
desirable revisions is not a commitment to publish unless
there is also discussion of a contract. I would add that
the signature of a contract with a publisher prior to
peer evaluation may bind you, but not the publisher, who
will have an escape clause if peer evaluation goes badly.

If you have doubts or questions about
reports, do not hesitate to ask for clarification. You
should expect an editor to listen to disagreements you
may have with a reader's judgements or suggestions. Do
not be defensive and keep an open mind, but if after a
fortnight's reflection, you feel you are right,
explain your position in writing to the editor in clear
and dispassionate terms. Expect the publisher to give
careful consideration to, if not acceptance of your
position. You should expect a fair evaluation of your
manuscript, even if this does not always happen, or the
result is disappointing.

What if the publisher's answer is no? Do not
necessarily be discouraged. The reasons for a negative
reply may have nothing to do with the intrinsic quality
of your book, and can be as diverse as a shift in
publishing policy to an unanticipated lack of resources
to produce your book. You will need to consider
carefully the readers' reports and also the publisher's
evaluation of the reports, if there is one. You may only
receive a polite letter reporting the bad news with few
details explaining why. If you receive the reader's
reports, you should show them to a trusted colleague or
friend to get an impartial second opinion. If after this
assessment, you think the manuscript is sound and that
the readers and publisher are "out to lunch" and have
missed a good book, you should go on to the next press on
your list. As an author, you must be persistent. It is
not unusual to receive rejections before finding a
publisher who says yes. On the other hand, you may want
to undertake revisions in light of the readers' reports,
and you should complete these before submitting the
manuscript to another press. The other possibility,
which can be the most heartbreaking, is to decide that
the manuscript is not publishable in its present
form. It must be extensively revised; or salvaged
through the publication of one or more articles, or
abandoned altogether. This latter option is drastic and
should not be contemplated without serious reflection and
a second opinion from that trusted colleague or friend.
A writer must have the capacity for careful, detached
examination of his/her work and the resilience to recover
from setbacks.

If all goes well, however, and the press
agrees to publish your manuscript, you will be offered a
contract which defines the terms and conditions
of publication. Do not count on great riches from a
contract, but expect clarity on terms of publication. On
a short-run scholarly book, say 500-1,500 copies,
royalties may range from nil to 10% of the list price of
the book. Ask for the publisher's anticipated print-run
and expect a firm date of publication subject
of course to the author's respect for his/her own
deadlines in providing a final manuscript, correcting
copy-edited text, galleys or proofs, and providing the
final index. If there are delays--and there may be
through no fault of the publisher--expect to be informed
before the date of publication has come and gone. The
contract also deals with copyright. Normally in
scholarly publishing the author transfers copyright to
the publisher, but you may ask for recognition
of joint holding of the copyright on the copyright page.

Sometimes a publisher may ask you for money
to publish your book. This is a common practice in the
hard sciences where authors pay page or other charges.
In the humanities and social sciences such charges are
not common and are generally not considered to be
acceptable practice. So-called "vanity" or subsidy
presses charge authors directly or indirectly to publish
their books and they will publish almost anything. These
publishers have no or limited credibility among peers in
the humanities and social sciences. University
presses or scholarly publishers should not indulge in
"vanity" press practices. However, a publisher may ask
you to pay for certain kinds of expenses because
anticipated sales of your book, while an important
contribution to scholarship, cannot cover the publishers'
direct and overhead costs.

A publisher will normally ask the author to
provide and pay for permissions to republish long
quotations or photographs (read your contract carefully).
You may also be expected to pay for illustrations and
maps and for the index (though you can do the index
yourself). A publisher might ask you to approach your
university for support, if you are a full-time scholar.
Most universities maintain a faculty research and
publication fund for such eventualities. If a publisher
asks you for help in acquiring additional funds, you may
agree or not, according to your principles or interests.
A publisher ought not, however, to ask you to pay out of
your own pocket, and if s/he does, you may want to
decline. Because of the disrepute of "vanity" press
practices, publisher requests to authors for money
are a sensitive subject. The line between what is
acceptable and what is not may be blurred, and, of
course, subject to change over time. Authors should
consider such requests with care.

Once you have signed a contract, production
of the book will begin. You should expect to submit a
clean manuscript for copy-editing without errors and
handwritten corrections. You should also provide
computer diskettes of the manuscript (discussing with the
editor what kind of software the press prefers). The
copy-editing process will allow you to see, correct, and
revise a copy-edited typescript. You should then see
galleys (i.e., long sheets of typeset text) or proofs for
final corrections. At this point the publisher will ask
you not to make substantive revisions, but only to
correct spelling, grammatical, or formatting errors.
Author's revisions in proof are expensive, and the
publisher may charge you a hefty sum to cover their cost.

Relations with copy-editors are treated under
"basic principles", #15 (part 1), and it remains only to
reiterate that you should not let a copy-editor impose
revisions. Expect suggestions, but propose alternatives,
not the same text, if a copy-editor makes revisions you
do not like. The firmness of your positions on
the copy-editor's suggestions should also depend on a
sound, dispassionate evaluation of your own writing
abilities. You should accept house-style in grammar,
spelling, and punctuation.

After you have corrected the galleys or
proofs, your part in the production of the manuscript is
completed. It is up to the publisher to prepare
the manuscript for the printer. The printer then
produces the book and delivers it to the publisher. The
author still has one last responsibility to fulfil in
regard to publicity and promotion. You should expect to
be asked for information about appropriate journals to
review your book, about meetings or conferences where the
book should be exhibited, and other possibilities for
promotion depending on the projected appeal of the book.
If you are not consulted about promotion, ask your
acquiring editor to put you in touch with the appropriate
person, usually the marketing manager. On this point,
you should insist. You should also have realistic
expectations: do not expect to see your book advertized
in the _New York Review of Books_ or _Le Monde_. Such
advertisements feel good, but have little impact on sales
of scholarly books. Neither should you expect to see
your book in most bookstores. Only rare speciality shops
catering to the university community may carry it. Do
not be surprised if your book carries a high price:
short-run books produce little income and the publisher
must make enough money to stay in business.

After a book is published, the author can
normally expect to receive five or six free copies of the
book. You may obtain further copies at author's
discount, usually 40% off the list price. After you have
enjoyed the rapturous pleasures of seeing your work in
print for the first time, you can expect annual reports
on sales and royalties. An author should receive a clear
report of sales and royalties. If you do not receive
this report in a timely fashion, ask for it.

The final stage in this long and arduous
publishing process is to await the reviews of your book.
Books of broad public interest will be reviewed
within a few months of publication in the review sections
of newspapers. Most scholarly books do not receive this
kind of treatment, however, and will be reviewed only in
scholarly journals which incidently you may have
identified in your communications with the marketing
manager. These reviews can be agonizingly slow to
appear, perhaps only a year or longer after publication.
Reviews may appear more quickly on the Internet
discussion lists under the umbrella of H-Net, Michigan
State University in the United States (see http://h-
net.msu.edu). Check the H-Net web site for the
appropriate discussion list and contact the list or book
review editor about where to send a review copy. These
reviews receive wide exposure on the discussion groups
which have subscription lists often longer than those of
print-on-paper scholarly journals. Otherwise, all
you can do is wait impatiently for the reviews to appear,
and hope for the best. Scholarship is a rough and ready
occupation, and when authors publish, they take their
chances. Be prepared for adverse comments; in fact, hope
for a certain kind of criticism, it may help to sell your
book. In one recent case, a book taking a controversial
position on the history of Nazi Germany set off a wave of
adverse comment; the book apparently sold 500,000 copies
and made the author wealthy! This happens only rarely
of course, but it does happen.

Part 3

Articles

The process of preparing articles and
approaching learned journals is much the same as for book
publishers. You will need to determine which journals
are most likely to be interested in your article, and you
can do this by consulting friends and colleagues and by
consulting the likely learned journals in your university
library. Journals may publish information on format and
article length. This latter criteria will help to
determine your choices. Although it may be difficult, try
to keep your articles to 7,500 to 10,000 words (or less).
Some journals will accept longer articles, but you may
need the credibility of a "track record" before you can
persuade an editor to publish the longer piece.
Prestigious journals also tend to take a long time to
publish (up to two or two and-a-half years after
acceptance) and this circumstance too may influence your
choices.

You can write to several journal editors in
the same way as you might do to book publishers, but you
should submit your manuscript to only one journal at a
time. You must choose carefully to gain the best
exposure while balancing concerns about article length
and lag-time between acceptance and publication. The
peer review process usually takes between four to six
months and is conducted in more or less the same way as
with book publishers. Journal editors may ask two or
three readers to assess an article. Readers are
anonymous, but sometimes authors also are. This is
double-blind peer review: in principle it makes the
evaluation process equal for both the known and unknown
author. It is not always possible to mask the identify
of an author because of the small number of people
working in a field or because of the references in the
article to the author's own work. But basically double-
blind peer review takes the known author's reputation out
of the evaluation, as it does the new scholar's lack of
one. Editors are more likely not to show authors
complete reader's evaluations, but rather excerpts or
paraphrased resumes. You can ask for the complete
reports, but you may not get them, and this you will have
to accept. You may also be given the opportunity to
reply to the reports if they are not entirely negative.
Based on what the reports say, you may be asked to make
revisions, or the article may be accepted or rejected
according to the judgement of the editor or his/her
editorial board. Revision is part of the writing process:
if an editor asks you to make revisions, do not take
it amiss or become discouraged. Consider the editor's
proposals carefully and dispassionately, and carry out
the revisions or seek compromise solutions where
you strongly disagree. Be sure you and the editor are
clear on the revisions to be undertaken. It is common
advice not to be discouraged if the first journal
to which you submit your article rejects it. You may
have had bad luck with readers, or the article may not
strike the editor just right. One editor's disinterest
may be the next editor's enchantment. Of course, you may
not have written a publishable article in which case you
should rethink or discard it and begin a new piece in the
same way you might do in reconsidering a book-length
manuscript.

Once an article is accepted, the publishing
process is approximately the same as with book
publishers. In dealing with copy-editors, the same rules
also apply. If you are a new scholar or graduate
student, however, you may not wish to be too insistent
with a copy-editor, who can be the editor who accepted
your piece if the journal is a "back pocket" operation.
These editors usually have considerable experience, and
you should probably allow yourself to be guided by it.
The author's assertion of editorial rights over
his/her work become stronger with experience.

After the journal is published, you will
receive a certain quantity of offprints (25 to 50
normally) which you can distribute to appropriate
colleagues and scholars working in your field of
interest. You can also order more offprints at your
expense, but be careful in doing so to avoid needless
cost (sometimes high) and a box full of dusty, yellowing
offprints. The choice of people to whom you send your
offprints can be as important as the journals to which
publishers send review copies. Make a list of people and
their postal addresses to whom you want to give the
offprints. Keep it up to date, adding or subtracting
names as may be appropriate. Then when you publish
subsequent articles, follow the same process. This is a
good way to obtain exposure for your work since scholars
may not come across your article until a considerable
time after publication. In the new articles be sure to
refer to your previous, related publications. By doing
so, you will create links between articles and you will
alert readers to the other pieces which they may not have
seen. It is also a good idea to publish in a variety of
journals in different countries, for example, the United
States, France, Great Britain, Canada. This will give
your work a wider audience. However, do not expect to
see references to your articles turn up in other people's
footnotes for some time after publication. The
communication of scholarly ideas and information can be
a frustratingly slow process.

Book reviews

Some colleagues consider book reviews or
review articles/essays (on several books) to be the least
important form of scholarship. In fact, these are often
the most provoking and interesting. Readers of scholarly
journals may only check or skim the articles, but they
actually read the book reviews. For both the reader and
the author of reviews, it is a way to keep up with what
is being published in their fields of interest. Indeed,
the review section of a learned journal may often provide
its strongest subscriber appeal.

Book reviews may be the new scholar's first
form of publication. If you want to review books or a
book in particular, you can write to the editors
or book review editors of journals in your field,
indicating your areas of interest. If they respond
favourably, they will put you on their reviewers list.
Sometimes editors want to lengthen their list of
reviewers in which case they may add your name. On the
other hand, some editors prefer to ask experienced
scholars who have published more extensively. Do not
send unsolicited reviews.

Book reviews should summarize the content and
main points of a book and put it into context with other
work in the field. And a review should evaluate
strengths and weaknesses in sources, methodology, and
interpretation. In short, is it a good, bad, or
indifferent work? Some reviews are mere summaries of a
book's comments and these tend to be uninteresting. And
some reviewers shy away from making negative comments,
perhaps because the field is small and "everyone knows
everyone else", or because of a personal or political
disinclination to take an unambiguous position. There is
also a tendency to think that book reviews should be
"courteous", "temperate", "polite", or "civil", to the
point where the rough and ready of scholarly debate leads
to homogenization and conformity. Other editors
encourage tough, critical reviews. As in all scholarly
writing, the best reviews can provoke reflection,
dissent, surprise, perhaps even controversy.

Graduate students and new scholars should
approach book reviewing knowing of these differing points
of view and with a newcomer's prudence rather than
his/her brashness. Do not shy away from being critical,
but do so without trying to demonstrate your own superior
mastery of the field and without nitpicking over trifling
errors. Avoid personal attacks, but do not delete a well
crafted turn of phrase piercing the vitals of a book's
flawed main premises. It's a fine line of conduct for
the new scholar, or indeed any scholar, but with the
advice of a good editor, you should be able to avoid the
pitfalls.

Print-on paper book reviews (as opposed to
electronic reviews) normally have tight word limits
(usually 750-900 words). Some journals ask for
reviews as short as 400 words, and these give the author
little leeway for substance and criticism. Review
articles are longer pieces and may include some
of the author's own research. The best review articles
are not mechanical, seriatim treatments of several books,
but integrated, contextual examinations of related works.
This type of essay allows the author more freedom to put
forward ideas, buttressed by personal research, and if
done well can be a sophisticated form of critical
writing. The best of these review articles become
standard references in the field.

Electronic publishing

Electronic or E-publishing is a development
of the 1990s. It grew out of innovations in electronic
mail and the creation of the World Wide Web (WWW).
Listservs or electronic discussion groups led to the
development of electronically posted book reviews and
review articles. Web sites were set up to archive such
material and give it a less ephemeral quality. The most
important work in this area has been undertaken by the
listservs under the H-Net umbrella at Michigan State
University (http://www.h-net.msu.edu).

Electronic scholarly journals are also
appearing. According to its most enthusiastic
proponents, E-publishing is the future's preferred medium
of scholarly exchange, replacing print-on-paper. In the
realm of electronic scholarly journals, more advances
have been made in the sciences (where researchers have a
need for more rapid publication to report research
results) than in the humanities and social sciences
(where the need for rapid publication is less needed and
indeed less desirable).

Should new scholars and graduate students
publish through electronic media? Yes, certainly, but
cautiously. The electronic medium's greatest weakness is
its ephemerality. Those who are reluctant to commit
their best work to an electronic journal fear that in
five or ten years their work will have disappeared
except, ironically, as the personal print-on-paper copies
of individual scholars. One speaker at a recent
conference on culture in the digital age said that the
mean life time of a web page is 70 days. "The net has no
memory," he concluded. Scholars in the humanities and
social sciences will not fully accept electronic
publishing until the Net gets "a memory" and the problem
of long-term archiving of published material is resolved.
New scholars should keep this problem in mind as they
consider whether to invest time and work in electronic
publishing.

It's Easier Said than Done

It is easier to give advice than to carry it
out, but I can only offer as a defence the traditional
admonition: "do as I say, not as I do". When all is said
and done, good scholarship requires a love of one's
discipline, hard work, an open mind, and a thick skin.
Good scholarly writing requires clarity first of all,
which means clear thinking and clear organization. Of
all the messages in this essay, the need for clarity is
the most important. Whatever main objective the author
has, s/he will not achieve it without this essential
quality.

The various counsels contained in this essay
are brief and basic; you will find handbooks which go
into far greater detail, and you may wish to consult some
of them. I hope you did not expect to find any panaceas
here because there are none. The advice, however, should
set you on your way and from there you will learn from
your own experiences. Scholarly writing is a difficult
metier, but it brings corresponding rewards.

Copyright 1999 by Michael J. Carley, all
rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit
educational use if proper credit is given to the author
and the H-France list. For other permission, please
contact mcarley@ccs.carleton.ca or mcarley@magma.ca.