Author-Publisher Relations--Part 2: Power
POWERMy last post was about issues of trust (or mistrust) between authors and publishers. In part, I guess I was trying to advance the idea that publishing is no more of an evil empire than any other corporate enterprise bent on succeeding in a capitalist economy. Textbook publishers bend to market forces, it's as simple as that, and any resulting erosion of intellectual quality or integrity (real or assumed) is strictly collateral damage.
This is not to say that publishers in higher education only follow market trends, however. They innovate to create demand, sometimes making it difficult for customers to stick with tried and true ways. For example, the revolution in electronically delivered instruction, which instructors certainly never asked for, was spearheaded by publishers. Nevertheless, some academics are insulted or disappointed to discover that textbooks are products and obey the dictates of a market economy. They may treat requests for changes to their manuscripts as Faustian confrontations in which making any amendment is selling out.
It is true that publishing companies have market-derived power over content. A common misperception, however, is that marketability requires textbooks to be dumbed down and that publishers are to blame for this. Actually, textbooks need to address their true readers--students for whom the book is intended, those whose learning is at stake. These students need to be addressed where they are. That is, textbooks need to be brought to market level, wherever that level is, and if instructors demand low-level textbooks, publishers will supply them. Bringing readers to intellectual level is a different problem. For most introductory college courses, the reader is an 18- or 19-year-old person in late adolescence with little or no prior exposure to your field. Authors who do not wish to write for this audience, but prefer to maintain the language and style of discourse they use in journal articles, monographs, and graduate seminars, they should not attempt to write an undergraduate textbook.
Another common misperception is that books must be made into clones of all the other books on the market. On the contrary, publishers know that each title needs to be unique or special or innovative in some way to distinguish itself among competitors. At the same time, they know that textbooks that are too different or too far before their time, even great ones, like other great ideas for which the world is not ready, will fail.
I'd like to talk more about reasons for editorial requests for content changes and the dumbing down syndrome. These involve more than the issues of trust and power; they hinge on the issue of control. And that will be the subject of my next post.
All the best,
Mary Ellen
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