why buy the cow?

[Joanne M. Despres]

Well, Professor Butters, thank you for your offer to supplement
lexicographers' incomes with higher payouts for dictionaries!  I'll
forward your e-mail to the sales department.

I can't speak for my colleagues at the OED or anyplace else, but
here at M-W, historical research doesn't get nearly the editorial
time-investment that definition-writing does (definitions are what
most people buy desk dictionaries for, after all).  I could run the
idea of paying for outside research by my boss, but alas, it
probably wouldn't fly. What he wants is the very best we can do
within our means.  If price weren't a consideration, we would do a
lot more.  But, as it is, I'm allotted a small staff, at least in relation
to the number of definers, and they struggle mightily to perform the
research within their grasp.  It's frustrating that we can't do more,
but I wouldn't expect extra help (in the form of more dollars for more
editorial hours or for outside research) unless it were impossible for
us meet our deadlines.

The kind of work that Barry Popik does, and Fred Shapiro, and Jim
Landau, among others -- work that involves extensive library visits,
specialized knowledge of research sources, travel in foreign
countries, or even just reading extensively and carefully from
selected texts for antedatings -- would be very hard to compensate
fairly in any case, because it's so incredibly labor-intensive for the
amount of data generated.  I have no idea how many words the
abovesaid gentlemen can research in a day, but I suspect it's a lot
fewer than the 150 or so entries reviewed by each person on my
staff every day.  Of course, what they do is a very different kind of
research that is far more targeted and takes a great deal of
imagination and skill.  It has terrific scholarly value, but alas,
limited selling power for a mass-market publisher.

So getting monetarily compensated -- by my employer, at least --
is probably too much to hope for.  But I think Professor Cohen is
right in seeing scholarly publishing as the best way for a serious
researcher to get rewarded for his or her work.  You get, first of all,
the endorsement of a respected publisher, the chance to have your
work appreciated by a wider range of people (and people who
understand how to judge it), a little piece of posterity if you don't
have kids, and, if you're lucky, maybe a little money too.

In the meantime, you have the undying appreciation of us poor,
understaffed lexicographers, for whatever it's worth to you.

Joanne Despres