LINGUIST List 8.469

Sun Apr 6 1997

FYI: Germanic lx,Guides for academic authors

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <ljubalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Richard Wiese, Reminder of abstract dead-line; Germanic lx
2. Michael Bernstein, FYI: guides for academic authors

The dead-line for the Conference on the Phonology & Morphology
of the Germanic languages (linguist-list 8.214) is close! Please
hand in your abstracts by April 12!

Please also note the conference web-page:
http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~wiese/phon-morph.html.

Richard Wiese

I've recently run across two books which might be of interest to
many LINGUIST subscribers: Beth Luey's "Handbook for Academic
Authors" and Robin Derricourt's "An Author's Guide to Scholarly
Publishing." Both books are remarkably clear and helpful.

Luey does a comprehensive job of describing the publishing
process, with advice on dealing with journals and book
publishers, revising your thesis for publication, and writing
textbooks. She includes a chapter on preparing manuscripts on
the computer, as well as explanations of contracts, copyrights,
and book pricing. At the end of the book is an organized
bibliography of further reading on all the main topics of the
book. This book won't answer every question about publishing,
and certainly isn't specific to linguistics, but it is quite
handy as a general guide.

Derricourt's book is written as a series of 80 fictional letters
from an editor to various authors. Each letter is a couple of
pages long, and explains some aspect of book publishing from the
publisher's perspective. Derricourt goes into more detail than
Luey, particularly about the production and marketing aspects of
publishing. His writing style is quite entertaining, and the
letters approach works much better than I initially expected it
to. If you want to learn about how many scholarly publishers
think and operate, this book is excellent.

Neither book is a general style guide, though Luey does include
some writing tips and several good suggestions for style guides.
Both books are relatively cheap, and can easily be ordered over
the web from http://www.amazon.com or from your local bookstore.

Derricourt, Robin. 1996. An Author's Guide to Scholarly
Publishing. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN
0691037094. $14.95.

Luey, Beth. 1995. Handbook for Academic Authors. 3rd edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521498929. $15.95.

Yours,
 Michael Bernstein
 Cascadilla Press
 michaelcascadilla.com