Editing a Book

Having recently completed the process of editing a collection of papers, I thought I might share my experiences with those who may be planning to do so or are already working on a book. I get frequently asked about this process and it seems the whole ordeal of gathering contributors, writing up a proposal, approaching potential publishers, and getting a contract for an edited book are mysterious for many early career philosophers -- they certainly were to me!

So, I'm going give you a brief "behind the scences" account of how my book, Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press, 2012) came to be.

 

Idea for a book

The idea for a collection of papers might emerge from a number of different sources: perhaps you've organized a conference and would like to publish the proceedings, maybe your thesis supervisor or some prominent philosopher you are familiar with is retiring and you want to edit a festschrift, or you might spot a pressing need for a collection on some emerging or neglected topic. The idea for my volume was really a combination of things. I had been interested in editing a volume of some kind and one idea that I had was a type of festschrift for my supervisor, E. J. Lowe, whose 60th birthday was approaching. There had also recently been a conference in Lowe's honour and I thought that the speakers at that conference would make for good contributors. However, I wanted the volume to be substantial, so I also needed to have a strong theme to it. It also soon became apparent that festschriften are somewhat frowned upon by many publishers -- they don't tend to sell very well. So it's preferable to have a theme for the volume in any case. 

 

Editing by yourself or with others?

Whatever the reason, the first question is: are you editing by yourself or with others? Many volumes are edited together by at least two people. At least in the case of conference proceedings, I believe that the primary reason for this is that several people may have been involved in the organization. In that case you may not have much of a choice. It may also be that the idea for a volume is the result of some discussions with your colleagues, in which case it is only polite to ask if they want to get involved, should you decide to pursue the idea. In my own case, I was the only editor. I feel that this may have been an advantage, as it enabled me to make all the decisions regarding contributors and so on; the process will probably be speedier if you do it on your own.

 

Choosing contributors

How do you gather the contributors? It's likely that you know some of them beforehand, especially if your volme is based on a conference. But even in a conference volume, there is often room for some extra contributions, so it's likely that you'll end up inviting some people. It might feel awkward to approach potential contributors out of the blue, especially if they're distinguished professors, but keep in mind that you may also be doing a favour to them: they may have a paper that fits your volume perfectly, but they haven't been able to find a home for it yet. Generally, people are flattered to be asked to contribute. They may be too busy to actually do it, but don't take offence if that's the case. Do also make sure that they don't accept to contribute if they indeed are too busy to do it in a timely fashion -- you don't want one person to hold up the volume. I had to drop one potential contributor myself because of this. In general shorter is better: publishers prefer more concise volumes because they're cheaper to print (while they can still ask for the same price). 14 essays of about 8,000 words is often the upper limit (or it is at least for CUP). Finally, make an effort to gather a representative list of contributors. This does not always mean just the leading names in the field, but also up and coming young philosophers (like yourself!). Do also make sure to have both female and male contributors. I could've been better regarding both of the previous points.

 

Preparing your proposal and shopping around

At the point when you have a good idea about what the volume might look like, and have at least a provisional list of contributors (not all of them have to have agreed to contribute yet), it's time to start shopping around. Mind you, sometimes the idea for a volume might even come from a certain publisher -- and they may invite you to edit it -- but that may not be very likely in the case of early career philosophers. I didn't have immediate success with my own volume. I offered the idea to Blackwell's Philosophers and their Critics  series, but they were going through some editorial changes at the time and were planning to reduce publications in the series in any case. I also tried OUP, but my proposal looked too much like a festschrift to them. So I landed with CUP, and the senior commissioning editor, Hilary Gaskin, was interested in the project. It was with her consultation that I came up with the final theme, and I ended up just dedicating the volume to Lowe. You can contact potential publishers before you have the proposal prepared, or even a final list of contributors. In fact, it's probably a good idea to do so, because that way you get an inkling about whether they are at all interested in what you're offering, and you can reflect on their preferences in your formal proposal. The proposal itself depends a little bit on your publisher. Some publishers have a form that you will have to fill out, some accept more informal proposals. In general, you want the proposal to be not much more than ten pages, including abstracts. You should address at least the following:

• The background of the volume and its theme.
• Why it's an important topic.
• Have there been other volumes on related themes?
• What is the market of the volume (can it be used as a text book for courses)?
• Your own background and competence.

Recall that, unlike for journals, the referee process for edited volumes is not double-blind. That is, the referees will know your identity, but you will not know theirs. Typically, the proposal will be sent to at least two external referees, who will report on the aspects mentioned above.

One more thing: who should you publish with? Well, prestige is what matters the most here, but do also look around for existing series that might be appropriate. You could use the following poll about best academic publishers (from Leiter Reports) as a guideline (top ten reproduced here):

1. Oxford University Press

2. Cambridge University Press

3. Blackwell

4. Harvard University Press

5. MIT Press

6. Routledge

7. Princeton University Press

8. Cornell University Press

9. University of Chicago Press

10. Yale University Press

Contract!

Congratulations, you've got a contract! The referees can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of months to review your proposal, but the publishers are usually pretty swift, and you should hear back from them quite quickly once you submit the final proposal. After that there are some legal matters to sort out, and of course you have to negotiate royalties. Don't expect to get rich: it's typical that publishers will only start paying royalties after so-and-so many sold copies, and it's rare that philosophy books sell very well. Even after that, you may only get something like 5-8% of the profits. But you're probably not in this business for the money anyway, you just want people to read your book! In any case, you may have very little influence over the contract, they're pretty generic. One thing that you do want to make sure is that there will be a paperback edition of your book, because those tend to sell much better (as they're cheaper). You also want to make sure that you as well as all the contributors get a few free copies of the book.

 

How long does it take?

From my initial idea for a book to actually having it in my hands, it took just over two years. It's a long process, but my volume actually came out relatively quickly. It's not unheard of for a book to be in the making for three or four years, even longer. Be prepared to wait around... Much of this is not up to you: you have to wait for the contributions (and allow sufficient time, maybe a year), and even if you're lighting fast in the actual editing, you'll have to wait for the copy-editor, get proofs, then get everyone to revise the proofs, then get the copy-editor to go through the proofs, perhaps have another round of proofs, and so on. These tasks are not generally done in-house anymore, so you'll be dealing with people in India, or freelance copy-writers. They can be slow.

 

Cover, index, editing

When you finally get the contributions, you'll have to make some decisions. You will of course read them yourself, but are you going to send them for external refereeing? It will no doubt help in order to get the best possible volume together, but it's likely to take another six months, at least. I compromised: I created a secure server where I uploaded the early drafts of all the papers, and distributed the password among the contributors. That way I could create an internal refereeing process and also enable the contributors to have a good idea about what else would be in the volume. This seemed to work out ok, although an external refereeing process would certainly be preferable.

The actual editing will probably have to be done in Word, which sucks, but you can't really help it. It may be possible to deal with LaTeX files if your book will be very formal, but generally publishers seem to be stuck with Word. It's a good idea to ask your contributors to send you Word files as well, although some of them probably won't. At least you should ask them to keep the house style in mind when they're writing up their papers. Ultimately, it's up to you to make sure that the papers conform to the house style. If you have no experince in editing, this can be a daunting task, but it's not difficult as such.

The publisher may ask you whether you want to create the index yourself, or to hire someone to index the volume for you. You should choose the first option, as otherwise it's likely that you'll have to pay for the indexing from your own pocket, and it will be inferior. It will help here to ask all the contributors to suggest words that they'd like to have in the index, but even in this case it will be a time consuming task to create the index. Once again, you'll probably have to do it in Word, and I discovered that the indexing tool is rather crappy. Still, I feel that a good index is very important, so it's better to take your time with it (it will take you several full working days).

Finally, the cover. Depending on the publisher, they may have some suggestions for your, some of which may be royalty free. Other than that, you can look for royalty free images online (e.g. old paintings). Or you could hire an artist or buy the rights to some image (but you'll generally have to pay for it yourself). A further option is to make the cover yourself, or have your friend or significant other who happens to be an artist to do it for you. In my case, I used a photograph of my own, since I'm also a keen landscape photographer. The actual design will probably be done by someone else, but they will send you proofs of the cover art anyway.

 

That's it, I hope this is helpful if you've been thinking about editing a collection of papers. Feel free to ask further questions in the comments. And of course, buy my book!

Comments

[Marcus Arvan]

Thanks for sharing this, Tuomas -- it's a very helpful post! I was wondering if you, or any of our readers, have any thoughts on how to get *into* an edited volume. I've noticed that some early-career philosophers I know have found their way into these kinds of books, but I have no idea how they've done it. Does one simply have to network well and hope that someone offers, or is it worthwhile (and appropriate) to approach people?

[Mark Alfano]

Indeed, thanks! I'm in the process of editing several books myself, so this should come in handy.

Marcus: from what I can tell, it's mostly a matter of being networked. That could mean knowing the right people. It can also mean being generally known as "the guy who does X." In other words, you can be known personally or known through your brand.

[Tuomas]

I'm glad you found the post interesting!

Regarding getting into a volume. I've contributed to a few myself, and was recently invited to contribute to another one. By and large I think networking is the key here (as for so many other things!). Talking to people at conferences, hearing about things they are working on, and indicating that you'd be interested in getting involved. But good things also tend to come to those who have them already, i.e. if you've got a couple of good publications in a given field and you've given a few talks on something related at conferences, chances are that someone will remember you.

[Helen]

That's really helpful, Tuomas! Thanks for the careful explanation!

[Nicholas Joll]

A useful article! (But) I'd like to consider/ask about that slightly oxymoronic genre, the popular philosophy book,

One question about such books concerns royalties. I get 5% - on all formats, including electronic - for my *Philosophy and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* book, and one philosopher has told me that that constitutes a rip off. What do others think?

Another question is how such books look on one's C.V. I like to think that my being with Palgrave rather than either being with Open Court or being in the Blackwell 'Pop culture and philosophy' series helps me here (as does my subject matter). But perhaps it doesn't - and anyway I'd like to warn people off Palgrave. I can hardly tell you how utterly, utterly awful they have been to work with, although the finished book (well, the paperback; Palgrave incompetence means that as yet there is no electronic edition) does look good.

[Tuomas]

Thanks Nicholas!

Regarding royalties, I think that your 5% is not untypical. It's possible to get up to 8% or so, but my impression is that royalties for philosophy books in particular are very low, mostly because they don't sell very well anyway.

Having said that, *Philosophy and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* does sound like a book that might sell fairly well...

I don't think that contributing to or editing popular philosophy books will help one's CV very much, but it's unlikely to be harmful either. I know some people are a bit uneasy about them, but if you've got a solid publication record otherwise, it would be silly (not to mention unprofessional) to let that be a factor. I've contributed to one such volume myself, and may do so again, but I just consider it a bit of fun.

[Richard Brown]

I was asked to contribute to a book by some people that had read one of my papers. So networking is important but so is getting published!

I also edited one of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series books (Terminator and Philosophy). I think the only way it van hurt you is if you try to act like it is a scholarly achievement. At best it should be thought of as service to the profession.