Loads of people poo-poo self publishing and print on demand as though only publishing houses can guarantee that quality books hit the market. Anyone who’s read any number of books knows how ridiculous that assumption is. We’ve all read real nonsense from big publishing companies.
There are certainly good publishing houses that do tremendous work. Really good stuff is published the traditional way. But academics especially, who talk so much about education and knowledge, who oppose self publishing, print on demand, or electronic only distribution are being a tad hypocritical to continue ‘but only traditional publishing will do as it ensures peer review’. Nonsense. Anyone can send a copy of their work to learned friends and colleagues and voila, review, correction, suggestion.
Those who maintain that only traditional publishing is appropriate for scholarship are- if I might put it plainly- interested in two things: money, and elitism. Money is more likely (at least for now) to flow to authors who publish with companies that have huge publicity machines. Of course that publicity model is changing as some blogs and bloggers reach far wider audiences than any academic publishing house mailing list does. And second (and probably centrally) is the elitism factor. These academics are just like those who were first entrusted with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hold the texts and you hold the power. Allow only certain texts to be published at a pace you determine and you can call the tune. Such methodology may suit those who have all the power and want to hold on to it- but such power grabbing, and holding, have nothing whatsoever to do with learning and the dissemination of knowledge.
And that’s the most amusing aspect of the ‘we must all only publish via traditional methods to ensure the purity of our discipline’ crowd. They don’t even see, or know, how their disposition concerning publishing flies in the face of their work as putative educators. Educators educate. Educators don’t hide or hoard or hang on to what they know, they share it.
Publishing has come full circle. It was originally (as anyone with historical knowledge knows) fully funded by the authors of those materials taken to the press (and who hoped they would at least sell enough copies to get their investment back). Then publishing houses came along and so did big money. But big money is drying up and print on demand has become sophisticated and requires not a cent of up front money. It is the ideal method.
Self published books are far less expensive, carry no overhead, are printed on demand and don’t require warehousing, can be of extremely good quality, are peer reviewed and analyzed as thoroughly as any other books (if their authors wish them to be), and are more easily accessible to people who may be interested in them. There’s no downside. Except, of course, for those who wish to continue to tell the whole world what it may or may not read. Academics falsely called so.
But you don’t have to believe me. Even an essayist in the New York Times sees the handwriting on the wall.
Academics should, and eventually will, get on board or get left behind. Those left behind deserve to be: they aren’t interested in disseminating knowledge, they’re interested in something else. Something less scholarly and far less academic.
My Amos commentary was peer reviewed and “self-published” in electronic format. At least one of the reviewers, I discovered after the event, was a very well-known and respected Hebrew Bible scholar. However, despite this it is less often cited than print commentaries. It may be that reviewers (including those who after publication wrote reviews in scholarly journals) were mistaken in their estimate of its value, but it is also possible that one reason to avoid “self-publication” is that other writers’ prejudices meant you work will be cited less
By contrast publication in Open Access journals may make work more likely to be cited. Perhaps what is needed is an Open Access biblical scholarship press… It could start with FOSOTT…