Getting It Published, 2nd Edition: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

234 Pages·2008·2.43 MB·English

by  William Germano

Getting It Published
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On Writing, Editing, and Publishing The Chicago Guide to Collaborative
Jacques Barzun Ethnography
Luke Eric Lassiter
Telling About Society
Howard S. Becker How to Write a BA Thesis
Charles Lipson
Tricks of the Trade
Howard S. Becker Cite Right
Charles Lipson
Writing for Social Scientists
Howard S. Becker The Chicago Guide to Writing about
Numbers
Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk
Jane E. Miller
about Art as Intellectual Property
Susan M. Bielstein The Chicago Guide to Writing about
Multivariate Analysis
The Craft of Translation
Jane E. Miller
John Biguenet & Rainer Schulte, editors
Mapping It Out
The Craft of Research
Mark Monmonier
Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb,
& Joseph M. Williams The Chicago Guide to Communicating
Science
Glossary of Typesetting Terms
Scott L. Montgomery
Richard Eckersley, Richard Angstadt,
Charles M. Ellerston, Richard Hendel, Indexing Books
Naomi B. Pascal, & Anita Walker Scott Nancy C. Mulvany
Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes Getting into Print
Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, Walter W. Powell
& Linda L. Shaw
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers,
Legal Writing in Plain English Theses, and Dissertations
Bryan A. Garner Kate L. Turabian
From Dissertation to Book Tales of the Field
William Germano John Van Maanen
Getting It Published Style
William Germano Joseph M. Williams
A Poet’s Guide to Poetry A Handbook of Biological Illustration
Mary Kinzie Frances W. Zweifel
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Getting It Published
A Guide for Scholars and
Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books
second edition
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William Germano
the university of chicago press :: chicago & london
william germano is dean of the faculty of
humanities and social sciences and professor of
English literature at the Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2001, 2008 by William Germano
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28852- 9 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28853- 6 (paper)
isbn- 10: 0- 226- 28852- 8 (cloth)
isbn- 10: 0- 226- 28853- 6 (paper)
A version of chapter 5 appeared in the October
2000 issue of PMLA and appears here, with some
alterations, by permission of the Modern Language
Association.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Germano, William P.
Getting it published : a guide for scholars and
anyone else serious about serious books / William
Germano. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28852- 9 (alk. paper)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28853- 6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn- 10: 0- 226- 28852- 8 (alk. paper)
isbn- 10: 0- 226- 28853- 6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Authorship—Marketing. I. Title.
pn161.g46 2008
070.5'2—dc22
2008020562
o The paper used in this publication meets
the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ansi z39.48–1992.
for diane, who lives with books,
and christian, who has them all before him

Contents
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Preface to the Second Edition ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 : Introduction 1
2 : What Do Publishers Do? 5
3 : Writing the Manuscript 29
4 : Selecting a Publisher 42
5 : Your Proposal 57
6 : What Editors Look For 70
7 : Surviving the Review Process 78
8 : What a Contract Means 94
9 : Collections and Anthologies 117
10 : Quotations, Pictures, and Other Headaches 139
11 : How to Deliver a Manuscript 155
12 : And Then What Happens to It 166
13 : The Via Electronica 179
14 : This Book — And the Next 195
Afterword: Promoting Your Work 203
For Further Reading 209
Index 211

Preface to the Second Edition
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Writers and publishers depend upon one another, but it often seems
as if they don’t speak the same language. In the decade since this book
was conceived the disconnect between writers and publishers remains
a signifi cant issue in the academic community. Getting It Published is a
book about scholarly publishing written for authors. The fi rst edition was
written by an editor. The second edition is written by a former editor of
scholarly books—one who sometimes feels like a recovering editor—
whose current profession is professor and academic dean. Deans and
editors, I discovered, both have to nurture big-p icture judgments, make
quick decisions, and live by them. Both live lives shaped by the world
of scholars. In the years since Getting It Published, and later From Dis-
sertation to Book, appeared in print, my work with academic authors has
continued in dozens of faculty development workshops across North
America, in Europe, and in New Zealand. Each is a chance to teach,
which is a chance to learn.
I’ve kept the word “serious” in the subtitle of this book. I’m less wor-
ried now than I was then that the gesture might be misinterpreted. No
cat calendars or pop star biographies here—just the books on which
scholars depend every day of their lives.
Why aren’t we as serious about writing as we are about getting pub-
lished? Visit your campus bookstore or any surviving independents. Or
browse the writing and publishing section at Barnes & Noble or Borders.
The shelves are crammed with guides for writers. All fall into a predict-
able pattern: how to write your book (general, fi ction, screenplay, mur-
der mystery); how to write well (Strunk and White, as well as longer,
college- style handbooks); how to publish what it is you’ve written well
(books on fi nding publishers and editors and agents, mainly for trade
books). What’s missing is a book to help graduate students, professors,
and independent scholars, in other words, serious writers, for whom
publishing—and a special kind of publishing—is essential.
During an almost thirty- year career in scholarly publishing I worked