Getting it Published, 3rd. ed.

270 Pages·2016·1.037 MB·English

by  William Germano

Getting It Published
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and Publishing
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Getting It Published
A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else
Serious about Serious Books
Third Edition
William Germano
The University of Chicago Press | Chicago and 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, 2016 by William Germano
All rights reserved. Published 2016
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28137- 7 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28140- 7 (paper)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28154- 4 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226281544.001.0001
A version of chapter 5, “Your Proposal,” appeared in the October 2000 issue
of PMLA and appears here, with alterations, by permission of the Modern
Language Association.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Germano, William P., 1950– author.
Title: Getting it published : a guide for scholars and anyone else serious about
serious books / William Germano.
Other titles: Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing.
Description: Third edition. | Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press,
2016. | Series: Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing | “A version
of chapter 5, “Your Proposal,” appeared in the October 2000 issue of PMLA
and appears here, with alterations, by permission of the Modern Language
Association.” | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038629 | ISBN 9780226281377 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780226281407 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226281544 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Authorship—Marketing.
Classification: LCC PN 161 .G46 2016 | DDC 070.5/2—dc23 LC record available
at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038629
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence
of Paper).
For Diane, who lives with books,
and Christian, who has them all before him

Contents
Preface to the Third Edition ix
Acknowledgments xv
1 Introduction 1
2 What Do Publishers Do? 9
3 Writing the Manuscript 39
4 Selecting a Publisher 54
5 Your Proposal 73
6 What Editors Look For 89
7 Surviving the Review Process 97
8 What a Contract Means 114
9 Collections and Anthologies 141
10 Quotations, Pictures, and Other Headaches 164
11 How to Deliver a Manuscript 180
12 And Then What Happens to It 194
13 The Via Electronica 207
14 This Book— And the Next 228
Afterword: Promoting Your Work 237
For Further Reading 243
Index 245

Preface to the Third Edition
If it’s possible to summarize what a book on scholarly publishing has to say
to a reader it’s this single nugget: don’t just write about, write for. This is
a truism in trade publishing. It would be difficult for any writer to pitch a
book idea without a persuasive sense that there is a readership out there
and that the readership will want what the writer has to offer. Getting It
Published argues— if argument is needed— that scholarly manuscripts need
readerships to become scholarly books. We scholars also need to write for.
If you’re reading this you probably see yourself as both a scholar and
a writer. If you don’t yet see yourself as a writer, it’s time to start. For the
open secret of scholarly books is that publishers aim to publish writers.
True, for the most part those writers happen to be scholars. There’s noth-
ing coincidental about that. Almost every scholarly house has a few titles
on its list that aren’t strictly works of scholarship, though those books are
often aimed at scholarly readers.
You’re a political scientist, but you might buy a popular guide to flow-
ering plants, for example. But the thread that links the field guide to the
groundbreaking political analysis of the death penalty in America is the
writing that animates the ideas in both projects. As every teacher knows,
it isn’t enough to have an idea if the idea can’t be expressed in ways others
can understand. Publishers work that way, too.
Much of what this book has to say asks you as a scholar and a writer to
imagine yourself with a message— and a persuasive message— not merely
as a very smart person who knows something. The gap between knowing
and communicating doesn’t get narrower as we climb higher in the aca-
demic tree. If anything, it gets more complex, if not deeper and wider.
One of the things academics are particularly good at is justifying their
methods and theories, and that can extend to the presentation of ideas
on the page, sometimes with less than happy results. We talk the talk of
clarity quite a bit— in the classroom, at the editor’s desk, in reviewing our
own work during the revision process— but there remains a core objec-
tive that enables the reader to come to the text: make it clear for someone
other than yourself. Clarity, then, is a contingent idea, not an abstraction.
You work for the reader when you write for the reader. The clarity in your
writing is a function of the clarity of your communication with the reader.