The Academic Ego, Part 3: Authors' Expectations
This is the 3rd installment of a previously unpublished article I wrote for academic editors to help them gain a perspective on the authors they work with. Authors often come with (largely unjustified) positive or negative expectations of publishers, which can become a huge problem for editors. (Copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka: All Rights Reserved.)
Real-world disdain among some academics (especially the princes of ivory towers) sometimes includes misconceptions about the publishing industry, including editorial values and practices, and about commerce in general. Animadversions about publishing as an evil empire abound in academe and appear to center on two themes: 1) disgust over what is perceived as a capitalist conspiracy for profit through economic exploitation, and 2) outrage over perceived threats of censorship or abridgement of academic freedom by media conglomerates. In the first, the author may assume one of two views, equally naive: that publishers exist to disseminate new knowledge and care about the development of academic disciplines, or that publishers exist solely for profit and do not care about anything else, not even what they produce (as in, “They could be making widgets”).
Some academic egos easily accommodate dissonant expectations, holding naive and cynical views simultaneously.
In any case, editors must manage to tread a middle ground in this minefield of expectations. The best houses support their authors’ careers and the academic disciplines their lists serve, while nevertheless remaining profitable—ruthlessly, if necessary, in light of capitalism’s prime directive.
Authors' expectations about income from publishing range from naively high hopes to outright cynicism (as in, “If I wanted to make money I wouldn’t be doing this”). Acquisitions editors often take shocking advantage of authors who think it is both a necessity and a privilege to be published and who do not expect material gain. On the opposite front is the textbook author who expects to retire on $200,000 USD annually for his or her introductory undergraduate textbook, or the scholar or scientist who expects to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of his or her popularization in cross-over markets. (And, admit it, every high-end trade book editor probably dreams of signing a Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, Daniel Boorstin, Camille Paglia, Jared Diamond, etc.)
Then, in a class by themselves, are the “anarchists,” authors who claim that scholarship is a moral enterprise that should not be expected or required to follow the dictates of (filthy) capitalism. Just as ideas cannot be copyrighted, all knowledge, they say, including that in books, should be free. As with religious fundamentalism, alternative views and practical realities have no defense. Some members of this class may very well be the people who in their youth felt entirely justified in purloining books, magazines, records, tapes, or CDs from corner stores and malls.
Anarchists, or perhaps iconoclasts is a more contemporary term, tend to be righteous, and many are drawn swiftly to wikis and open access publishing. Editors beware! Iconoclasts who stray into commercial publishing can become authors from hell. Some continually agitate for far more investment than the book can possibly afford based on projected sales. Worse, some come secretly or incognito and tend to produce unsalable POV books or masterpieces of disinformation, the whole time thumbing their noses at editors too stupid or ill-educated to recognize what is going down.
In addition, authors may naively or cynically focus on "capitalist exploitation" in publishers’ contracts and publishing decisions. Complaints about contracts often target meager (or lacking) advances or grants, low royalty rates with infrequent payouts, befuddling royalty reports, and unfavorable terms, such as taking all rights and then failing to return them in a timely fashion. Grievances about publishing decisions tend to focus on “acceptable manuscript” clauses, unrealistic drafting schedules, and cancellation policies. Failure to revise or reprint effectively kills a book—a bitter pill for authors, regardless of the strength of their academic ego. But there is no middle ground here. Publishers everywhere struggle to unload losers while attempting to maintain minimum industry standards for ethical practice.
Academic authors typically do not understand why their books may be losers and have no concept of the costs and risks involved in publishing. They often evince amazement, if not outright disbelief, to learn how small the margins actually are. Wise editors patiently educate their academic authors on these real-world matters. For example, authors are not aware of all the direct and indirect costs of publishing over which the publisher may have no control. They also may not grasp the complexity of issues that on the surface seem obvious. For example, authors may not appreciate the role of instructors, college stores, and students themselves in the pricing of textbooks. Complaints about prices, commonly referred to as price gouging, are in sympathy with students, who dispense inordinate sums for their burdensome course materials, especially textbook packages bundled with mandatory supplements (now a thing of the past since "debundling" has become mandatory instead). In any case, students and instructors then contribute to higher prices and loss of royalties by selling back their books.
Labels: A, academic authors and editors, Academic ego, author-editor relations, author-publisher relations, textbook publishing
Academic Ego, Part 2: The Ivory Tower
This is the 2nd installment of a previously unpublished article I wrote for academic editors to help them gain a perspective on the authors they work with. Authors come with (largely justified) ego, discussed in the 1st installment, and also with pressures surrounding textbook publishing, publish or perish mandates, and the constraints of ivory towerism. (Copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka: All Rights Reserved.)
Author profiles for acquisitions in publishing often reflect academic career constraints. Ideal authors for textbooks in higher education, for example, are associate or full professors, preferably with tenure, but perhaps not actively involved in administration. Active department chairs and heads of academic associations often are too busy with administrative duties to give textbook authoring projects their due. In addition, textbook projects may have low cachet in institutional or departmental qualifications for tenure, such that prospective tenure-track authors may feel they cannot afford to divert their time and efforts. Research institutions in particular may spurn textbooks as trivial, while at the same time applying immense pressure to publish.
The phrase "publish or perish" was publicized, if not coined, by Texas scholar Logan Wilson in his 1942 study, The Academic Man: A Study in the Sociology of a Profession (Hibbits, 1996). "The prevailing pragmatism forced upon the academic group is that one must write something and get it into print. Situation imperatives dictate a 'publish or perish' credo within the ranks"(197). Logan interviewed professors (overwhelmingly male at the time) in a classic study of their attitudes, beliefs, and values about their academic life. Now, as then, tenure committees emphasize refereed scholarly publishing of dissertation adaptations, original short-term research, and review articles, quantified through calculi such as aggregate citation rates and percentage of articles with sole or first authorship (Goh, 2002). In contrast to these harsh intramural realities, academic milieus often appear to be shockingly isolated and naive in relation to extramural life or practical requirements, a phenomenon widely known as “ivory towerism” (Fuller, 1969).
French literary critic C. A. Sainte-Beuve coined “ivory tower” in 1837, when the term had positive or mixed connotations of strength, purity, virginity, and imagination (as in flights of fancy). The term entered American English around the turn of the century with a negative connotation that reflects the profoundly pragmatist principles on which that nation was founded (Becker, 1997). In the negative ivory tower stereotype, scholars and members of academia in general are socially aloof, detached from reality, or unaware of or insensitive to worldly affairs. Like all stereotypes it is not true, but it has been employed in culture wars since the Progressive Era, especially to criticize academics who somehow fail to embrace the applied.
It is true nevertheless that intellectuals tend to hone their knowledge on campuses and in the sheltered workshops provided in academic associations, research facilities, and institutions of higher learning. Although the dichotomy between “pure” and “applied” study has all but disappeared, disconnection between academe and the real world in many cases has not. Witness, for example, textbook authors who resist writing to actual reading levels of students or providing pedagogy with real-world relevance or practical lay application. In an academic author, the combination of proprietary knowledge, intellectual arrogance, and real-world naivety or disdain may constitute an editor’s greatest challenge.
Labels: academic authors and editors, Academic editors, Ivory Tower, Publish or perish
Academic Ego, Part 1: The Sources
My next series of blogs is for editors of academic and scholarly books. A couple of years ago an editor friend asked me how I can abide working with academic authors. Aside from having been one myself, I've had some experience on the editorial side, and so this is my answer. My aim was to explore issues relating to the academic ego while providing some insight for editors and their editorial enterprises. I would love to hear from editors and authors on the matter. What follows is a previously unpublished article, copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka 2007, all rights reserved.
The Academic Ego: The Sources
People who write academic and scholarly books and textbooks in higher education live for what they know and what they think they know. Underlying (and in many cases unconscious) assumptions are that 1) greater knowledge naturally results in intellectual superiority to others (in the abstract), and 2) one can never know too much. A corollary is the much-loved phrase coined by Francis Bacon in 1597: “Knowledge is power.” In the abstract that power is irresistible as the source of all human achievements of note—mastery of fire, harnessing of atom, programming of chip, and so on. Devotion to knowledge as power often predisposes authors to communicate in the abstract, however, as they cast ideas into unformed seas. One consequence is that academic editors everywhere must struggle with abstractions in expository narrative and must strive for concretization.
The classic academic assumptions also establish the defining conditions of intellectual arrogance, which even the most humble of scholars necessarily harbors, for as a mental enterprise the intellectual life is driven by it. Expository writing betrays this substrate of intellectual arrogance in surprisingly detectable ways, such as use of first-person pronouns, omniscient authorial voice, grandiose oral rhythms, obscurantism, love of jargon and irony and (sometimes) salacious humor, heavily seeded disclaimers, and paucity of source citations, along with the claim (stated or implied), “But, I AM the source!” Other giveaways are signature expressions, such as “Indeed,” “Of course,” “Certainly,” “Obviously,” “Perhaps,” “In fact,” “It goes without saying,” “All other factors being equal,” and the like. Good textbook manuscript editors purge these expressions, which, however, in scholarly works may lend charm.
Litmus aside, intellectual arrogance—along with positivist or idealist values of truth seeking (or beauty or perfection seeking), as well as mercenary values of fame building—drives the enterprise of scholarship. Cumulative knowledge becomes, acknowledged or not, the intellectual’s principal source not only of power but also of ownership, pride, and competitive advantage. Knowledge becomes capital, information and expertise its currency. This is intellectual property in every sense of the term. Editors everywhere will attest to the strength of ownership issues in academic and higher education publishing. These issues most often surface when authors are asked to revise in response to market analyses, reviewer comments, or editorial suggestions (as in, “Who’s book is this anyway?”). In this context, academic ego often spills over from chafing under editorial direction to maddening disputes among coauthors.
Academics acquire their intellectual property over a long time, at great financial and personal expense, amid strong competition in high-risk contexts, and usually in milieus that do not make it easy or convenient for them to be successful. An average of ten years separates a B.A. from a Ph.D. in anthropology, for example, and an anthropologist’s professional career usually is not considered to be officially underway without Ph.D. in hand. Subsequent career barriers, including institutional policies and departmental politics, significantly affect job placements, work assignments, publishing opportunities, promotions, and tenure. These conditions select for intellectual arrogance as an adaptation for survival. Thus, knowledge and expertise must be marshaled, tested, branded, guarded (perhaps jealously), and leveraged, and the provenance and distribution of intellectual achievements must be carefully controlled.
Labels: academic authors and editors, Academic ego, intellectual arrogance
