I have been invited to submit a paper for an edited book by colleagues in the past. And have jumped at the chances I have been offered. I have not found the guts to take the initiative a write a proposal for a publishing house to review. Many of us haven't either but have a positive attitude towards undertaking such a big step in our career. Editors I have worked with reminds me that it is a headache the only fact to deal with 10 or 12 authors each one with unique egos, styles, strategies to meet deadlines, etc. What does, then, take to become a book editor beyond the "all of the above" easy answer? Is book editing something to fear to the point of never ever considering writing that proposal for gatekeepers to know I have an idea worth while considering?
Go for it. Book editing is not easy, but it is certainly a
lot easier than writing a whole book yourself!
1. Do a bit of Web research to find out what is already out there.
2. Write a short synopsis of what you want the book to do. Give it to potential authors. Try to get one author per chapter to even the workload.
3. Ask your authors to prepare rough proposals, which you judge to see if they will really contribute in some way to the theme of your book. Write a
review of their proposals and submit it to potential publishers. First Come, First Served.
4. Also prepare a contract to each author with dates for deliverables in it.
5. The next secret is to write out your house style BEFOREHAND,
and distribute it to all your authors.
6. As you read their chapters, make notes on what you regard
as the contribution of each chapter. Use these notes to
generate your Preface, which review will draw the reader into
the book.
Go for it. Book editing is not easy, but it is certainly a
lot easier than writing a whole book yourself!
1. Do a bit of Web research to find out what is already out there.
2. Write a short synopsis of what you want the book to do. Give it to potential authors. Try to get one author per chapter to even the workload.
3. Ask your authors to prepare rough proposals, which you judge to see if they will really contribute in some way to the theme of your book. Write a
review of their proposals and submit it to potential publishers. First Come, First Served.
4. Also prepare a contract to each author with dates for deliverables in it.
5. The next secret is to write out your house style BEFOREHAND,
and distribute it to all your authors.
6. As you read their chapters, make notes on what you regard
as the contribution of each chapter. Use these notes to
generate your Preface, which review will draw the reader into
the book.
Great advice from Ian. Doing edited books is very stimulating. Having a co-editor will make the project more manageable. Split the communications side of dealing with authors between you but be sure you both read all chapters. Don't just write a preface-write a full first chapter traversing the big ideas in the field and introducing the authors in terms of the book's overall themes. And make sure that your own chapters are excellent as readers will probably go there first.
And while it sounds boring and self-evident, having just submitted a 21 chapter book, keep a regularly updated running sheet of tasks. An edited book will take around 18 months and there are myriad things to be done.
Go for it Juan. If I were you I would publish it in the United States or England to score a point.
I wrote some books and edited an equal quantity of the others. In the first case you have to face with a long research, by yourself and summarize in a better way what you really think. This work takes, in my case, many years. Editing is a kind of research coordination, if seriously made. And this work of organization of the researchers think is really the biggest problem. Every time you try to unify the language, the tough, ecc. and every time the final book is diverse from which you imagined. But we are social animals and the confrontation is always stimulating. We don't live for the career and is quite stupid to make absurd competitions on any academic field. We live once, and it would be a great thing to make what we like. To publish in USA or GB is not a good idea for people living outside, because they cannot say exactly what they mean, even if academically paying...
I completely agree with Pietro.
Publishing a book is always a human adventure before an academic challenge.
I think the first is always the content and not the context in which we publish (U.S. or UK).
Choose a framework to publish their research work for its formal assessment I think it's depressing for the value of the research content.
I am aware that what I think it contrasts with all the policies of the bibliometric analysis of research products.
Definitely its passion which came from reading & writing skills. You also need to have sufficient knowledge in the subject to respect & understand the thoughts of contributors.
Book editing is really a challenging task. If you are getting an invitation from reputed publishers, like Elsevier, Springer or Nova Science, It shows your reputation among scientific community or your area of research. My advice, you could definitely go for it..!!
You also asked about leadership. Yes, you have to be a manager to lead the team of writers to success. Editing a book is like herding cats! Difficult, but not impossible.
It is all about passion and love towards academic interests.
I am sorry for my different opinion but I think. Edited book suck more mid night oil in comparison of writing a whole book. Because managing others' thought is more difficult instead of all own thoughts...
Editing a book is a matter of all the three, passion, skill and leadership ! Passion helps in completing the task, skill helps in quality editing and leadership helps in getting the task done, efficiently and effectively :)
I agree that editing does burn a great deal of midnight oil but it does enable you to bring together great people in your field in a creative way and I have found the editorial process has helped me craft my own writing.
Hi Juan, Some good advice above. Some things to keep in mind. Chapters in books and edited works are not as highly regarded as academic artefacts as say and article in a peer reviewed journal. Some times people are reluctant to edit or contribute book chapters for that reason. On the other hand, fortune favours the brave, edited books give freedom in form and content to explore topics outside the rigours of the peer review process. Edited books, I think, are best at addressing new topics where the literature is scarce. Often that is where the passion comes in, "I am going to edit a book in this area because the literature is thin and I have something to offer in shaping the topic." The best edited books come from a deep knowledge and commitment to the topic in any case, because that is what generates the best structure, chapter and author selection.
You should also try to get colleagues on board, three editors will spread the work load, gives you the networks you need to select authors and provides a good forum to test ideas. That may be where leadership comes in.
Print runs of edited books are small 400 or there about, the audience has to include students or libraries won't buy it and scholars probably couldn't afford it. As an editor you will probably contribute a chapter. Writing a draft might test your commitment to the project. To convince publishers you are serious you will need a chapter written. Finally choose your publishers with great care. Only consider publishers with a track record of academic publishing, preferably within your topic. That way you can be sure it will be marketed properly. This maybe where the skill comes in. BW Matt.
Truly it is a matter of expertise and experience and those who do this hard-and-delicate work are really expert and have different knowledge about different dimension of a scientific work and MUST LOVE to do these kind of works. So GO ON without any hesitation. You also will get a good experience to do your work on your own- this is because you are getting more sensitive towards others' work to become perfect and so you learn to do perfect work on your own. You can't get this experience anywhere and you will not hear that there will we a workshop on such a work.
Good Luck!
Book editing is merely a skill based, beyond passion and leadership. Writing a book is a passion and leadership.
I politely disagree. I can assure you having recently submitted a 107,000 word edited book ( to a good international publisher )that it took passion and commitment to see this project through. My co-editor and I saw the need for the book and worked to secure great contributors and to design a brief for each chapter to ensure a coherent theoretical foundation for the work as a whole. This is more than technical skill; we needed to build on our own previous scholarship in the field and our links to others with expertise.
Yes, it's a combination of these, but you also need time (2-3 times more than you initially planned), luck (publishing houses do not accept all book proposals: you'll have to 'sell' the idea to them), a good network (if e.g. some authors cannot submit their papers, you'll have to find somebody to replace them), good nerves (to deal with lots of unexpected problems: e.g. the authors cannot meet the deadlines, some papers are not good enough, the book is shorter than what you should submit according to the contract....) and lots of diplomacy (to solve problems with/between the authors and the publishing house)... I've co-edited 2 books by Emerald, so I know. NB! Sometimes it helps to keep 'double deadlines': e.g. if the publishing house needs the book by 1st of march, tell the authors to submit their papers by 1st of January: then you can later give them some extra time, and, if really necessary, find some new contributors.
I think that adding " integrated and comprehensive" task of all three passion, skill and leadership brings about something new to the whole goodness of the scientific and academic communities in first place and the society well being in general. Having an integrative approach adds fun to the whole process, by fun, I mean the missing joy to give of oneself to others, the hardest the task the higher the satisfaction.
Cheers to all, happy that I can learn from you every time I read along.
It must be a persons interest and knowledge he has that counts-my opinion
If you have not written the book yourself, as I understand, then you will need to be a team-worker.
Writing a book is relatively easy - For Editing you must be a scholar with at least 3 decades experience- it not correcting English , commas and semicolons- You can even correct absurdness in the bud - Not only authors but also editor is responsible for the statements made
Writing or editing a book necessitates that the writer is passionate about his/her work, happy to go through the experience, and ready to deal with a diversity of styles. Openness is a must and the love for knowledge and sharing of knowledge would follow as natural habits.
From a personal experience, once your contribution to other books becomes saturated with knowledge and experience about a certain field - and not necessarily about the whole field - that would be one indicator that you are ready for it .
But, this requires several other characteristics. An editor of a book has to be passionate, patient, persuasive, positive, laborious, methodical, connected, etc.
The writing and communication skills have to be up-to-par so as to be able to deal with the different writing styles of the contributing authors and bringing their work into harmony so that the overall work is somehow homogenous.
A word of caution - Don't expect to make a wealth from an edited book. As mentioned earlier by one of the colleagues, some publishing companies print < 500 copies of an edited book and usually they sell much less than this number. The royalty is in the vicinity of 9% for two years only. Moreover, you don't get royalties for the sale of separate chapters. Certainly, other publishing houses have different rules.
I wrote such chapters for edited monographs before, it is of course possible. In my opinion the most important is find enough of experienced authors keen on the topic, with new publications (last five years), and with significant impact to the discipline. They should be aware that aim of the chapter is other than single research article (maybe pattern will be helpful). But success is not guaranteed - please take into consideration that some of the authors do not agree to participate, some may do not obey the rules and should be excluded, timig is also important, etc.
Bassam, not necessarily. You can not generalize this way. Simply, look around you, thousands of examples abound. It is a matter of interest and availability beside the different skills discussed in this forum.
Dear Bassam , To improve biodata you need not write a book - if you are asked or feel you can write book - editing I feel you need masterly skill in the field - as a teacher you can prepare or collect lecture notes for class room purposes
I believe it is an art that you discover by chance, though it might have been there with you for a long time.
Thanks everyone for your collaboration. I have been always very lucky here with writing thread initiators. This one is particularly dear to me for a number of reasons, the main one being the number of angles one has to look at and that obviously I had not thought about. I also liked your cheering, I particularly enjoyed the what was it, the cats in a herd? Time to work. I live in San Jose, CA and I will need to contact some of you off-list. Thanks very much.
Editing improves your knowledge and vocabulary - please be careful about the contents as you own partial responsibility of the statements made
Editing a book may be passion, charm, and also involves skills and wisdom, and a leadership too as an expert of a subject. It always improves quality and peer-reviewing business -- with quality publication and admired by readers
Language correction , asking queries to the contributors to make clear statements , reducing sentences are good part of it
It brings with it the happiness to serve the scientific community and the society at large.
Another thing: the book needs to be needed. :-) In other words, the book must be integrated (not too many variations of topics), chapters must be lined up in a logical order, it must be up-to-date (not too many incomplete or short papers or surveys), and of high scientific standard. The latter means that a full blind review with at least two or three reviewers per chapter is needed. To edit a book you also need to have established yourself scientifically, and you need to have a good contact with a good publisher who is willing to publish it, and help out with the technical matters concerning typesetting, referering, and other matters of publication business that preferably is done through a web site.
editing a book is not leadership --if you have interest you can do this
you should be fair and genine
Nowadays everyone is or may be most are trying to edit or write a book - may be due to score cards / promotions, career advancements .......... even publishers are publishing without any much peer-reviewing.......with passion and hard works only few books come up compared to forcefully written / documented --- due to many unwarranted reasons
Agreed Prof. Muralidharan. However, maybe the leadership trait of taking risks could be brought out here. Writing a book and not knowing the audience's response (even scientifically) may carry risk.
Dear Ruchi - leadership and expertise quality may be different what i feel --- writing a book does not mean that one has leadership quality.
i dont think writig a book needs leadership quality ..you need audience who are interested to read you...
But I need to convince other authors that my project is worthy. I need to trust me. I need to trust them. Then, I have to keep everybody on a schedule and send out friendly reminders of due dates. Then I have to be flexible while at the same time firm with the writing itself. Most writers can make a quick commitment to write a paper but when it is time to deliver, we all know what happens:Grading comes first, family comes first and then that paper that will or may appear in an edited volume. I definitively feel that leadership that leadership will be needed in a project like this one.
Yes, Juan you described the situation well when due dates are near the delivery time. This is why, the writer/editor needs excellent skills of communication and a good approach to people.
Juan Pino-Silva, I would say it is a combination of all three. It seems like you simply need to find the right editor for your text. Maybe this article might help you clarify what you should be looking for in an editor: https://www.aclang.com/blog/scientific-editing/
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