12 How to Compile an Anthology of Original Essays

If you are patient, eager to organize ideas and files, and prepared to prod senior scholars into doing their best work, then you should consider conceiving and editing an anthology of original essays. Editing anthologies can be an enjoyable way of working with other to produce original ideas rather than working alone. You can get to know on a first_hand basis some of the leaders in your field, which ultimately may help you publish articles and books and funding for grant proposals. Getting in touch with the invisible college can be an exhilarating way of escaping the doldrums of working with lackluster colleagues and departments trapped in nineteenth_century methods and ideologies.
Before starting an anthology, however, you should know that some academicians are misinformed about the difficulty of this task. Many assume that editing journals and anthologies is not particularly difficult. Conceiving, compiling, and organizing anthologies of original essays does not earn the respect it deserves in academia. Like the overweight, beer_guzzling armchair quarterback critiquing world_renowned athletes on a weekend football game on TV, some armchair academicians are blinded by their ignorance and jealousy. Just as the armchair quarterback doesn’t know what happened on the practice field on the Friday before the game, the armchair scholar isn’t aware of the extensive letter writing, editing, and revising that is involved in compiling successful anthology. As you will see from the following discussion, organizing an anthology can be more difficult than writing an original treatment on the same subject, yet the benefits can be worth the effort.
To begin, you need an original idea. By reading the scholarship in your discipline, you can define a dozen or so questions that are troubling and interesting to the members of your community. What fundamental questions do the senior scholars keep posing at the end of their journal articles and books? You may also consider organizing a fetschrift, that is, a collection of articles elaborating and extending the contributions of one of the major theorists in your field.
Once you have identified a topic that attracts excitement, you can begin the arduous task of getting other scholars excited about your idea. The secret to compiling a memorable anthology is to involve the senior scholars in your discipline. This is not the time to pay back your friends__at least not all of them. Instead, ask yourself what theorists you have enjoyed reading since graduate school. Whom do you admire most in your field? Who is writing on topics related to the subject that you have identified? This latter question is particularly crucial. You probably won’t be able to motivate senior scholars to write for you on a subject tangential to their interests. After all, you can only offer them a few copies of the anthology, a moment in the academic limelight, so you are essentially imposing on their good will. The leaders in your field do not need to work for you. Editors are already clamoring for their manuscripts. The only real way you can attract them to write for you is to give them an opportunity to write about a subject that they care deeply about.
Getting the top people is crucial if you hope to generate excitement about the book. Also, scholar stars are often stars because they write well. These endowed chairs and productive scholars know what the anthology article should look like; they know how to document their sources; they know how to urge journal editors to have your book reviewed; they won’t back out at the last minute (unless you present a shabby product). These dynamic thinkers have earned their readerships. While you may want to fill a hole in your treatment and provide space for a friend, you may find that some junior scholars write essays requiring excessive revision on your part. Editing a friend’s twenty_five_page essay down into a twelve_page essay can result in exactly what you had hoped to avoid: friction in an otherwise smooth relationship and lost time. Thus, let me warn you here: don’t offer slots to academicians who cannot write or who do not understand the editorial process. Avoid weak egos who do not understand the importance of revision.
Once you have a list of a dozen or so senior scholars in mind, you need to contact them. You should not call them on the phone or write them and say, “Hey, I’m organizing an anthology and I thought you’d like to contribute an essay. You can decide on a topic, decide where you’d like me to place it in the anthology, determine the documentation style, and set a deadline.” Instead, you need to play an aggressive role in the conceptualization and ing of the book. You need to decide the majorquestions posed hy your theme and even come up with tentative, engaging titles that would challenge and interest the contributing scholars.
First, however, you are wise to solicit a commitment from a few well_known senior scholars in your field. Your book will be stronger and more publishable if you can attract major theorists or researchers. Review current essays and see which scholars everyone quotes in their introductions. Then you need to find out who among your friends or colleagues knows these scholars.
At the same time, you need to work at polishing the proposal you will eventually submit to the authors and the prospective publisher. In a few pages, the proposal must define the book’s purpose and intended audience. You need to compare your proposed book to books currently available and show how your book extends the scholarship on a particular subject. You will need a tentative table of contents, and a list of scholars and short by_lines foreach scholar, that is, 40_ to 100_word reviews of their scholarly credentials. (See Chapter 13 for a more complete discussion of the form of book proposals.)
In our scenario, however, your proposal is still quite rough, and you do not have a list of contributing scholars or even a complete idea of contents. Nevertheless, you do have an overview of the topic and its significance, so you can use this information to write some letters to the senior scholars. In a concise way, let them know about your idea, and in a paragraph or so explain your credentials for editing the book. Until you attract a few senior scholars, you are like a shipwrecked, dehydrated sailor in a lifeboat who is lost at sea. Yet if your idea is a good one, scholars will surface like submarines all around you.
Once you have attracted two or three major scholars, you can pick up the phone and do some networking. Contact the authors you wrote to earlier and let them know who has agreed to contribute. Contact the new scholars that have been recommended by your committed scholars. In a few months, you may have a dozen or so scholars and you will have entered the invisible college.
The invisible college can be a heady, invigorating place. If your department is composed of inactive scholars orprofessors who find other methods more appropriate and other subjects more interesting, you may be inspired by getting in contact with scholars at other colleges and universities who are fascinated by the issues that drive your scholarship. Also, you will probably find that your list of scholars has changed dramatically since you first composed it based on an overview of the literature of the subject. Members of the invisible college know each other; they share drafts of manuscripts and invigorate each other by collaborating on topics and sharing ideas. Each year they gather at the important conferences and share ideas and references about special graduate students. More important to you at this juncture, however, they also share phone numbers of other scholars who would be likely to contribute to your book. Also, because they have a stake in its development, they will often suggest that you call a friend of theirs at a particular publisher. Based on one important idea, you now have a new group of colleagues to work with, and you may even have a short list of contributors in mind.
Because you still may not have a publisher, you do not want to our colleagues to write theirchapters yet. Instead, all you want is a 250-word abstract clarifying their contribution to the book as hole. Also, as mentioned earlier, you need a brief summation of their qualifications.
When shaping your list of contributors, you should examine the male-to_female ratio. Editorial committees are becoming increassensitive to the need for gender_balanced books. Also, you should attempt to get as national a distribution as possible. Unless re focusing on a local issue, one that your university press might pick up, you need to find scholars beyond your institution.
If you have engaged the interest of senior scholars, then you probably will have little trouble attracting a publisher. However, as discussed in Chapter 13, acceptance of a book proposal does not guarantee publication. If your people write boring essays that you cannot improve, you will be out in the cold. Fortunately, if you attracted truly solid scholars, they will write sizzling chapters. In any case, because of their experience, they know the score and will not bother you over the next two years about when and if the book will be published.
After receiving an acceptance letter from the publisher, you need to share the good news with your contributors: We re on! Our topic—your idea—will make a superb chapter! Let s get to work! his point, you move from pleading scholar to the boss. You clarify the length of the chapters; share with your contributors any concerns addressed by the publisher’s readers and editorial board about their proposed chapters; define the form of documentation to be used; establish how long excerpts can be before copyright permissions are required; give details about heading nd whether figures and tables are desired; ask that chapters submitted electronically; and set a firm deadline. Now comes the rub, however. Because you have attracted senior scholars, you will find that they are busy and unable to meet your deadline. Of course, you need to give them a reasonable amount of time—Say six months to write the essay. However, if my experience is indicative of the process as a whole, it will probably take at least a year for first drafts of all of the essays to come in. Professors like everyone else, tend to procrastinate, and if you have selected productive scholars, they are probably juggling numerous other projects.
When the essays do come in, you may be in the unfortunate position of needing to critique and revise chapters written by people you were weaned on in graduate school. This is heady stuff Let me warn you again: proceed with caution. First, remember that subjective factors cloud our evaluations of manuscripts. I can honestly admit, for example, that a few chapters in books that I edited seemed weak and yet were earmarked by editorial reviewers as particularly exemplary. If you are troubled by an author’s chapter, you may find it helpful to ask knowledgeable colleagues to look it over and let you know what they think of it. If the author has presented junk, you cannot accept it, nor would it be wise to write a long letter that elaborates on all of the weaknesses and errors found in the text. Instead, call the author and ask for a few important revisions. Chances are that the author will make all of the necessary changes on the next go_around. If the piece comes back weak or patched together, you will need to reject it from further consideration.
One trick to ensure that you get the best work possible from your authors is to share with them a few of the best chapters from other contributors. Also, share your proposal and introduction to the book with the contributors so that they can see how their contribution fits into the book as a whole. To help develop cohesion in the book, encourage authors to discuss each other’s contributions. Write polished letters to your authors and share published materials related to their topic from time to time to show that this is a professional endeavor and that you are committed to helping them develop the best possible chapter. Once you are satisfied with an author’s chapter, you can accept it for publication, pending final approval of the publisher’s editorial committee.
If you are in the unhappy position of needing to get a manuscript desktop ready, then you may want to translate the authors’ chapter files into your word processing program or have them retyped.l Once you have copy_edited and typeset the chapters, you should send the proofs back to the authors for final proofreading. No matter how carefully you have edited the manuscript, mistakes are likely to rear their ugly heads with additional rereading. Also, some authors still need to make minor changes before being totally satisfied, and since you want them to give you their best effort, it m;lkes sense to be flexible in this regard. Finally, if you give the authors a second look at their manuscripts, they cannot be too angry at you if the published version still has a few errors.
If all this sounds like a lot of work to you, you’re right. In fact, organizing an anthology of original essays can be much more consuming than simply sitting down and writing the book yourself. The advantages of this genre, however, are many: you transcend the petty rivalries of your department, enter the invisible college, and meet interesting and productive scholars. Once you have proven yourself, these people can help you get tenure, promotion, and jobs at other colleges and universities. With so many serious scholars working together to address a single subject, your chances of producing a memorable book are quite high. Finally, a well_orchestrated anthology can be more marketable than a singleored university press book because the scholars who have contributed to the book have a stake in helping market it. If you enjoy working with talented people and are especially well organized then you should consider editing a scholarly monograph.
NOTE
1. If you are preparing the anthology with the use of an Apple Macintosh computer, then you can use Data Link Plus Transfer to translate documents written on IBM computers. This sophisticated translation program can provide perfect translations of numerous different word processing programs.

13 How to Write Book Proposals

Rather than dedicating several years of your life to writing a nonfiction book that is unpublishable, you should first write and submit a polished book proposal. While you may be unable to entice a publisher into signing a contract based on a proposal, you can at least get a preliminary sense of whether your idea is marketable. Also, if the publisher sends your proposal out to reviewers and then shares the reviewers’ criticisms with you, you can use this information to help develop a more useful book. Finally, if the publisher does offer you a contract, you can write with the peace of mind of knowing that the concept is viable and the book publishable. However, as I will explore in more detail below, a signed contract does not guarantee that your project will be published. Most publishers include an acceptability condition that allows them to back out of a publishing contract if a manuscript receives poor reviews.
Of course, you still might want to write a book that does not win a contract in proposal form: publishers can be wrong, and they do change their minds. Yet, if you are attempting to earn tenure or promotion, be cautious and try to put your energies into projects that can earn contracts or at least garner interest before being written. Once you have tenure, then you can settle down and do the serious work that is more chancy.
Even if you have already completed a book, you may still want to submit a book proposal rather than the entire book. This may seem like an odd way of doing things, yet there are several reasons for such an approach. First, agents and editors are extremely busy, and they usually can make a decision on whether a book is viable by reading a first chapter or proposal. Second, it is possible th~t a publisher might reject your book, take some good ideas from it, and then share these ideas with authors already under contract with the publisher. According to W. Ross Winterowd, textbook authors sometimes face this problem.

WHAT SHOULD THE PROPOSAL LOOK LIKE?
Editors expect nonfiction book proposals to explain the book’s purpose and market, the features that will distinguish the book from its competition, the expected contents, the date it will be published, and the author’s (or authors’) qualifications.

What Is the Market for the Book?
No matter how well you write or how original your ideas are, your book needs a market. Publishers want to see that your text fits into a particular niche. Thus, you should let the publisher know if a required course would use your book, what its likely enrollment is, and who generally teaches it graduate students, adjunct faculty, or junior faculty. Incidentally, because of the highly specialized nature of most academic work, publishers are wary ot promises that a book will be adopted in numerous courses. Although enthusiasm can be infectious, be careful about offering the moon.

What’s the Competition?
Your goal in this section is to show how your book synthesizes all of the positive features of the competition. You also want to emphasize the unique features that will make your book stand out from the crowd. By writing in an informed way about the market for the book, you will illustrate that you are capable and prepared to do the work. Conversely, suggesting that your book is designed to compete with books that have lost money and earned a poor reputation will quickly earn you a form rejection letter.
Textbook editors are fond of the phrase evolution, not revolution because they want books that preserve the necessary conventions yet contribute in new ways to a discipline. Thus, your proposed contents need to be roughly similar to those of leading books in the field, yet somewhat different; your substitutions and deletions must reflect how your discipline is evolving. When critiquing your proposal, editors and reviewers will want to see that you are aware of the leading books that your proposed text will compete with. You can determine the best sellers and competition by examining books that have gone into multiple editions. Read reviews of books hot off the press. Talk with sales representatives to find out which books are doing well and why, and which ones are failing.

Present a Tentative Table of Contents
Your critics will expect some changes in the proposed contents and organization once you start writing the book. In fact, your critics may view this change as one of the major ways in which they can contribute to your book’s development. However, at the proposal stage you are expected to provide a brief abstract for each chapter, clarifying the focus and perhaps offering a sample of likely headings and subheadings.

Present a Condensed Curriculum Vitae
Book publishers do not want to be bothered with lengthy acadelnic curriculum vitaes (CVs). They do not need to know every committee you have served on and whose theses you have directedt nor do they need a comprehensive list of all of your publications. Instead, you should sift through your CV and determine What past activities and publications qualify you to write the proposed book. Most publishers would be pleased to see a one_ or two_page review summarizing pertinent publications, listing your academic degrees, and mentioning where you earned them. It generally makes sense to include any teaching awards you have won. Finally, mention your academic rank and whether you are tenured. (Because they know that nontenured faculty are under pressure to publish research articles, and because most salary_tenure_promotion committees do not view textbooks as original contributions, textbook publishers prefer to offer contracts to tenured faculty.)

Enclose Some Sample Chapters
Unless you have an extensive publishing record or your subject is especially hot, you will probably need to submit at least one sample chapter along with the proposal. Just to see if your topic is marketable, however, you may want to shop a proposal around without sample chapters. Before offering a contract and an advance, most publishers want to see several sample chapters to get a better feeling for the book and to evaluate your writing style. It generally makes sense to enclose the introductory chapter and chapter that is unique. Prior to receiving a contract, you may feel reluctant to pour your energies into writing sample book chapters. However, you should avoid submitting rough drafts to publishers, because they might assume that the draft represents your best effort. Once publishers reject a book idea, they usually do not want to see it again, even if the chapters are in more final form.

A NOTE ABOUT TEXTBOOK PUBLISHING
Understandably, many academicians are attracted by the big bucks of commercial textbook publishing. Indeed, if you could write a handful of texts that capture a fair share of the market, you could retire on a yacht in the Bahamas. For instance, if you wrote an introductory text that sold 40,000 copies at a wholesale price of $40 per book and your contract called for a 15 percent royalty on the first 20,000 copies and 18 percent on the remaining copies, you would make $264,000 on the first year’s sales. Next, while noting that over 10 million students enroll in college courses each year, imagine writing a best seller, one read by 1 million students, and you can see why publishers receive thousands of textbook proposals each year. Before going out and buying a new car or a new home, however, you should take a hard look at the decisionmaking process that editors follow before agreeing to publish a book.

The Audience Problem
Many textbook authors to whom I have spoken over the years have expressed great frustration over the audience problem. While an author may write a text that students would love, it still must pass muster with the book’s primary audience: the instructors. The audience problem may be the major reason why many textbooks are so bland. Like politicians who fear alienating their electorate, authors can weaken their presentation by trying to be all things to all teachers.
When evaluating your proposal and your textbook, be sure you are not undercutting the authority of the instructors who will be using your book. Ridiculing traditional pedagogies that you abhor makes as much sense as tailgating and beeping your horn at a cop for driving too slowly.

Textbooks and the Greasy Brass Ring
So far I have highlighted the advantages of textbook publishing. Yet, like the expensive Corvette that is composed mostly of plastic, we should not be fooled by the song and dance of a fast_talking aquisitions editor. The phrase “many are called but few are chosen” is particularly true when it comes to being a successful textbook author.
The competition begins at the proposal stage. According to Paul Smith, the senior editor of the College Division at D. C. Heath, “thousands of proposals [are] submitted to publishers in a giVen year, . . . only about one in forty_five is accepted, and only about half of these survive the rigors of authoring, development, and production processes to become actual, published textbooks” (160). Even after a manuscript has passed through the proposal stage, through numerous revisions called for by dozens of critics, it is not assured success in the marketplace. In fact, Smith Warns that most published texts do not prove to be successful:

In my experience, approximately one_third of all new titles published in a given year fail, costing publishers money and effort and authors unremunerated loss of valuable time and energy. Another third of the new titles published will eventually make some money (perhaps only what it cost to produce them) and remain in print for at least three years or so, but often their sales are so slow (even if steady) as to not warran~ a revision. The last third will become profitable, some exceedingly so, and be revised regularly to maintain a steady share of their respective markets. (160)

If your aim is to fatten your bank account, you might be wise to play the lottery rather than invest four to six years of your life in writing a textbook that ultimately may fail. If, however, you hope to help your students and to make a difference in a subject you care deeply about, then keep reading so that you can know about the dangers ahead.
Four years? Six years? Dangers ahead?

Yes, it takes at least four years for quality textbooks to reach print. First, writing innovative texts is not a simple matter. They require closer attention to detail than sophisticated journal articles, since they are longer and are reviewed more rigorously. Also, no matter how quickly the author writes his or her draft, the review process can take a lifetime. Textbook publishers rely extensively on the reviews of experts in the discipline to evaluate the putential contribution of a manuscript. In addition, by sending a text out to ten or twenty different scholars over the life of the book’s development (while paying a nominal $100 to $250 reading fee), the publisher can generate enthusiasm and commitment to the book, ultimately leading to adoptions.

What To Look Out For in the Contract
Experienced textbook authors invariably assert, in one way or another, that “the textbook author who represents himself or herself in contract negotiations has a fool for a lawyer” (Winterowd 151). In his critique of publisher_author relationships, W. Ross Winterowd encourages textbook authors always to reject the first offer, to assume that other publishers would be interested in your proposal, and to be willing to step away from the negotiating table. Although he acknowledges that they are standard boilerplate, Winterowd encourages authors to negotiate contracts that have an acceptability condition and an assignment condition.
Essentially, the acceptability condition means that the publisher can reject the manuscript at any point__even the night before the manuscript is scheduled to be printed. According to some contracts, the publisher does not even need to notify the author about the reasons for rejection. Because editors often move from house to house, and because publishing companies are being bought out by international conglomerates that tend to overlook any unwritten contracts between author and editor, Winterowd contends that textbook authors cannot accept the editor’s word that the author will be permitted to revise his or her work:

The acceptability condition in contracts should be so framed that publishers (l) have a time limit of, say, two months in which to inform authors of acceptability or unacceptability of the manuscripts; (2) must supply authors with a specific list of the particular reasons for the manuscripts’ unacceptability; (3) must give authors a reasonable period in which to revise the manuscripts in accordance with the list of particulars. (148)

In turn, Winterowd wams that the problem with the assignment condition is that the publishing company can sell your contract to another publisher, who in tum can sell your contract to another publisher, and so on. With each sale, your manuscript could be held up with new editors, who might not view your manuscript as one of their priorities. Your manuscript would also have to pass through additional nitpicking critics, resulting in even more revisions. Also, your book could die in committee if the publishers felt that it would compete unduly with some other book on their list. Consequently, Winterowd wisely suggests that your contract be revised to include the following statement: “The contract cannot be assigned by either party without the written consent of both parties” ( 149).
With salary_tenure_promotion committees frowning on textbooks and with the odds against financial compensation, authoring textbooks may not be a wise choice, particularly if you do not yet have tenure. Then again, textbooks allow you to shape your discipline and teach vast numbers of students. Writing textbooks can also improve your teaching while still allowing you to fulfill your scholarly obligations. If successful, you can know that you have helped shape your discipline, that perhaps your words might help some promising stlldents find their professions. If you love writing and can simplify complex material, then you should consider writing a textbook.

WORKS CITED
Smith, Paul A. “The Art and Agendas of Writing a Successful Textbook Proposal.” In Writing and Publishing for Academic Authors. Ed. Joseph M. Moxley. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992. 159_180.
Winterowd, W. Ross. “Composition Textbooks: Publisher_Author Relationships.” College Composition and Communication 40 (May 1989): 139_151.