Editing books is hard, and important, work. Let us stop pretending like it is not.
This is a short post about the toll editing academic volumes take on editors, and also the systemic lack of support and consideration for this type of publications in the Humanities (especially Classics + History, which I know best).
Whoever works in the Humanities is aware that an edited volume doesn’t ‘count’ as much on one’s yearly report. It’s supposedly ‘easy’ to edit a volume, whereas writing a monograph is ‘hard’. To me, this cliché reflects the individualistic nature of Humanities writing, and is ultimately indicative of the narcissistic pull that comes with the neoliberaliation of academia.
Let me speak from my experience: In addition to editing a c.1,100-page volume on the history of the Nile Delta (I know, it’s a lot of pages!), I am completing a 40-chapter volume with Ben Akrigg, which will also be quite big. These two projects came together during the pandemic. This means supporting and caring for the work of c.60 contributors while trying to stay alive.
It also means, in my case, translating two chapters from French into English & revising the English of many non native English speaking authors who normally publish in other languages but will now be featured in English in the volumes. For those of you who have never done this type of work, let me tell you that as important as it is, it is very taxing, time-consuming, and invisible labour. I am not sharing this to guilt anyone or virtue signal, but to acknowledge a type of editing labour that when done well, can actually help scholarly cross-pollination inasmuch as it renders non anglophone scholarship more accessible to English-speaking readers. This is all the more so crucial in a North American setting, that anglophone readers here are more and more prone to be excused for ignoring anything that is not published in their mother tongue.
Editing a book is a task that requires both rigour and compassion. This is all the more so true during a global pandemic. I have learnt that authors who don’t respond or keep being delayed often deal with a lot of challenges and hardships, from grief to sickness to care duties to writer’s block to anxiety and burnout. Some writers pass away. Others bail out; others end up being convinced to stay through some accomodations (including extensions, editorial support, and more creativity and flexibility when it comes to the format of their contributions); others stop responding to emails completely.
To me, then, the job of a volume editor is to care about people. This includes caring for what they have to share in their writing, but also listening and being respectful of who they are and how they are able (or not) to participate in the conversation the volume is dedicated to.
At the same time, I have been very stressed out trying to reconcile the need for an accomodating approach to deadlines with my responsibilities towards junior scholars who are on a timeline when it comes to the their publication calendar. Finding the middle ground is hard.
Editing a volume also means contributing to it, at least with an introduction. Provided you want to seize this opportunity to add content to the book, editing also means writing brand new material. In my case, I wrote respectively 70 pages (introduction + 1 chapter) + 50 pages (co-written introduction) of new material. This is a small book. Except academia tells me it is not worth a small book.
I beg to differ.
Editing a volume (or two!) demands so much time that it is harder to find time to write solo scholarship or apply for big grants. Once again, the pandemic and all the disruptioons and traumas it brought about make matters worse.
Lastly, editing a volume during a pandemic means dealing with big delays from the press, followed by sudden, very tight deadlines. It also means being expected to pay yourself for index and copy editing fees. I’ll let you imagine how much an index for a 1,100 page volume costs. Now multiply this by 2 for two volumes. Universities won’t help us cover these fees. Grnting agencies will not give you money for copy editing and indexing. Neither will presses. Where are we supposed to find the money to pay for these essential tasks that go beyond our areas of expertise?
A chair might find a few thousand dollars here and there to fund a conference. They won’t find a few thousand dollars here and there to help you cover the cost of a professional indexer. You might think, well, do it yourself then! To which I will respond: 1. this is not something I am trained in 2. this is not something I have the time to train in or do 3. there is something seriously wrong with academia and academic publishing if in addition to not getting any revenue from their books, authors and editors are expected to spend weeks if not months doing indexes while being sent the message that this type of work is worthless from an ‘academic output’ standpoint 4. in the era of ebooks, are indexes always essential? I don’t think so, but many of my colleagues might disagree.
In sum, editing a volume is a gratifying yet time-consuming and stressful endeavour that, when done with care, can be as if not more demanding than writing a monograph (at this point, writing my next solo book looks like a vacation and I am not even joking). It is also a role that, despite the clear contribution of edited volume, is undervalued in many academic settings and comes with (close to) no institutional support.
All of this to say that I have the utmost respect for book editors. I hope that the nombrilistic fetishization of the single-authored book can be counter-balanced with more appreciation towards collective bodies of work, and those who spearhead them. Let’s make this shift happen.
