Specialization by university pressesParsons, Paul
doi: 10.1007/BF02683807pmid: N/A
Just as scholars now specialize, so do university presses. This article explains why university presses designate publishing lists, discusses how they determine their list-building areas, and analyzes the listbuilding designations of eighty leading American university presses. Listbuilding at university presses is heavily weighted toward the humanities and social sciences, with less emphasis on the natural sciences.
The American reading script and its nineteenth-century originsVenezky, Richard
doi: 10.1007/BF02683808pmid: N/A
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, reading textbooks were composed of short selections, drawn from a variety of subject areas, but intended for reading aloud. These texts were almost always compiled by a single person, often a schoolmaster or minister, but occasionally a printer, and they contained few directions for the teacher. In contrast, the basal readers used in most schools today are developed by publishers with teams of designers, writers, and authors. Selections are predominantly narrative fiction selected from among the world’s “best” literature for silent reading. Accompanying teacher guides usually outweight the readers themselves and are usually fully scripted; that is, they give step-by-step directions for all instruction, often with the actual words that teachers are to utter. The progression of changes that transformed the early nineteenth-century reader into its luxurious present-day version is traced through the contributions of three nineteenth-century compilers: Samuel Wood, William Holmes McGuffey, and Lewis Baxter Monroe.
Interpreting and applying the acceptability clause in book publishing contractsSluss, Sara
doi: 10.1007/BF02683809pmid: N/A
Many significant legal cases concerning book publishing contracts have arisen from disputes over satisfactory manuscripts. Consequently, the acceptable or satisfactory manuscript clause in contracts is a major negotiating point for agents and authors. The courts’ interpretation of this clause has an impact not only on authors, agents, and publishers, but on readers as well, because the potential for discouraging new authors exists if the courts consistently decide in favor of publishers or if publishers are unwilling to adopt changes recommended by the Authors Guild.
A comic author’s marketing techniquesHanna, S.
doi: 10.1007/BF02683810pmid: N/A
What happens when an author undertakes a supplementary marketing campaign to university librarians? S. S. Hanna, the author of a comic account of finding a publisher, added to the efforts of the Iowa State University Press some communications of his own. The details of his campaign, and some of its results, are offered.
Fear of fiction: The novelStarker, Steven
doi: 10.1007/BF02683811pmid: N/A
When realistic prose fiction appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century, it aroused the fears of the privileged and pious who believed that vivid details and heightened emotional scenes would corrupt readers. Fantasy and even madness would replace rationality and conscience. Young people and women were viewed as particularly vulnerable. Such fiction flourished nevertheless, both in England and in the United States.