another complaint about anthology chapters

Until today I was in the strange position of having 19 publications already finished but still in the production queue. Then today, I received word of 5 of them being published. Let’s look at a statistical breakdown of the 14 remaining stalled publications, and see if it can tell us anything.

*one book (the Lovecraft book, which should be out relatively soon)

*two journal articles: one for New Literary History, which should be out in July, and another for Umbr(a), which I think will be out in 2012 at some point

*eleven anthology chapters. Eleven!

It’s no great mystery why that happens. There will always be one or two late contributors who slow the whole anthology down. Since anthologies are generally themed and one-time occasions, you can’t just tell someone they’ll have to wait for the next anthology. You’ll have to make a decision either to boot them out of the collection or wait for them to finish.

Once the collection is all set, it will still have to go through the typical book editing process, which is almost always slower than the journal issue editing process. And once again, you will be at the mercy of the slowest contributor who takes the longest to proofread his/her contribution.

And then what? I can tell you that when people cite anything I’ve written, it’s my books first, and my articles second. The book chapters generally fall into a crack in the earth and are never heard from again. Some of them are, in my opinion, among the best things I’ve written. Yet they have vanished from this planet.

There’s a place for anthologies. I co-edited The Speculative Turn and think there was an obvious logic to that collection (though several key people were not able to participate). But at this point I get more requests than I can handle, and am less inclined than before to participate in a genre of publication that quite often takes 4 years to reach the press, and seemingly results in fewer readers than other types of publication.

I edit two book series, and have generally viewed anthology proposals unfavorably in my capacity as series editor. This is in large part based on the personal experiences described above. It is ridiculous that I wrote two articles in spring 2008 that have not yet appeared in print. Utterly ridiculous.

Why did I choose to place my review of Tristan Garcia in continent, a still emerging web-only publication? Because I knew they’d publish it within a few weeks of its being written. As you all know, we have the technology to do it that way now.

Slowness in philosophy publication was the sad result of deficient institutional structures, but then we got into the habit of interpreting that pathological symptom as a merit– as if it were somehow a sign of more serious work that your 15-page article had to simmer on the editor’s stove for three years before seeing the light of day.

So, what’s stopping me from publishing all of my articles in non-traditional venues such as continent? At this point, nothing is stopping me. I have enough of a readership now that people will find my stuff.

In 2005 or so it would have been different, of course. At that stage I was an untenured Assistant Professor. When you’re at that stage, you have to worry about things like committees of senior faculty snickering about the “quality” of the journals in which you publish, and so you’re more interested in having the piece on your c.v. with an impressive journal name, even if you know it will take a few years to appear.

But what would I gain from that now? Nothing at all. I never have to worry about those committees again, and one of the many upsides to that fact is that I no longer have to agree to do whatever people ask me to do even in cases where it’s going to take them 4 or 5 years to publish what I wrote.

To summarize, I don’t plan ever to publish in anthologies again, except in very special, compelling cases. I know I’ve said as much on this blog in the past, but finding today that 11 of my 14 pieces in the publication queue are anthology chapters annoyed me afresh. It tells you everything you need to know about the problems with that genre.