Lindsay Waters has an essay in this week’s Village Voice which he adapted from his book Enemies of Promise. I had occasion to here hm read from his book at the Harvard Press Display Room (hey Bross!) several months ago. Maybe it was the many glasses of wine I had drunk, but he made sense. Now, I believe much of what he says is more relevant to the academic publishing world, but it is important nonetheless. Look at what happened to Northeastern University Press—they had some great books, but the University claimed it lost them too much money and they must close it. “It was always considered a feather in the cap of Northeastern,” said editor in chief Robert Gormley. “They somehow figured its no longer a feather in their cap.” I am not sure what all this means. Its more that I have noticed the trend while working with the backlist here. With the economy being so shitty for the past few years, more and more university and academic presses are forced to raise prices and lower discounts. But the retail stores have been hit hard too and cannot order the more expensive books, so we order less from them each year.
I have no solutions here. That’s more along the lines of something Dan over at the Reading Experience should handle (he is much better at long articles than I am). My experience with the humanities makes me think that something is wrong with the system. Being made to specialize and at the same time to publish in order to have a “successful” career don’t seem to go hand in hand necessarilly. My graduate program adviser in the Classics department (which I have since dropped out of) told me that everything in Classics has been studied already. Just pick an obscure author and research, translate and write articles for journals. Heartening words to a student, no?