A Review That Wasn't

[john at research.haifa.ac.il]

Actually, I was told that the review for my book would be 'commissioned.'
I assumed that involved a fee...
John




Quoting Lise Menn <Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU>:

> Folks, LANGUAGE and other journals depend on volunteer labor for reviews.
> They have no way to extract them from people who request the book for review
> and then don't do it, you know. Each book review editor (and lots of other
> people who depend on volunteers, like NSF program officers) keeps notes,
> mental or otherwise, on who says they'll help and then doesn't deliver, but
> they never know with a new volunteer, and sometimes even reliables get
> overwhelmed by events and a review gets lost.  The book review editor nags a
> bit now and then, and sometimes reviews come along 3 or 4 years late (look at
> a book review section and see what the dates of the books being reviewed are
> compared with the date of the issue that has the review).  Or not...
>    And publishers do a lousy job of keeping up with who the editors of
> journals are.  Jeez, I still get the occasional book addressed to my late
> husband Bill Bright as editor of Language In Society, which he stopped
> editing about 10 years ago.  So it can also be your publisher's fault.
> Sorry, I know, it's awful to have the feeling that you are shouting into a
> well.  If we had the tradition of announcing who has been given the job of
> reviewing a book before the review appears, maybe peer pressure would get
> them to disgorge the  review - but then, maybe not - and there would be
> dangers in that way of doing things too.
>    Anyway, chalk it up to experience, and keep on truckin', or dancing,
> choose your metaphor.  I happen to be overdue on a review myself, by a couple
> of months now...but to the editor who is waiting for it, yes, I will get it
> done.
>     Lise Menn
>




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