IVP - Addenda & Errata - January 2009 Archives

The Greatest Bargain in Academic Books

Psst. Wanna know a book-buying secret? Up to ten books for sixty bucks.

The smart money’s on reference books. Take one of IVP Academic’s “Black Dictionaries” (e.g., Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings), with about 800,000 words for $50 to $60 (and discounted at what rate?). The same amount of material might occupy 7 to 10 academic books, priced out at a retail of $200.00 or more. And the material in the reference book is likely to have a longer shelf life than that in other books. Plus it will serve a wider variety of purposes.

Updike, Downdike, Updike

John Updike’s death this week is bringing forth some interesting obituaries and assessments of his career. This morning I was reading Michiko Kakutani’s piece in The New York Times (“A Relentless Updike Mapped America’s Mysteries” [January 27, 2009]). Kakutani quotes from Updike on his love of his vocation:

From earliest childhood I was charmed by the materials of my craft, by pencils and paper and, later, by the typewriter and the entire apparatus of printing. To condense from one’s memories and fantasies and small discoveries dark marks on paper which become handsomely reproducible many times over still seems to me, after nearly 30 years concerned with the making of books, a magical act, and a delightful technical process. To distribute oneself thus, as a kind of confetti shower falling upon the heads and shoulders of mankind out of bookstores and the pages of magazines is surely a great privilege and a defiance of the usual earthbound laws whereby human beings make themselves known to one another.

Of Camp Robbers, Chips and Commas: A Morality Tale

They were 8 Grain Crisps: advertised as “all natural,” “no trans fat” 8-grain (whole white and yellow corn, whole brown rice, whole oats, spelt, barley, buckwheat, millet plus black sesame seeds, golden flax seeds and quinoa) and only “slightly seasoned with sea salt.” It was practically a birdie smorgasbord of seeds from a Birkenstock bird-seed store. It’s not like I was offering Perisoreus Canadensis (or Gray Jay) a fat-soaked Frito! And nothing like the pieces of Krusteaz pancake that his kin had robbed from my camp frying pan years ago.

An Editor’s January

It’s a good thing that January is dark, cold and wet, at least where I live. It’s conducive to work. Editors, as many other deliberative folks, like to start the new year with big plans for setting wrongs right, executing new initiatives and tackling new goals. So when January comes, let’s jump in and really get things going. Right?

Wrong! You see, editors are not just individuals who pursue their own goals. They facilitate the goal-making of others. It seems that while the editor is celebrating the end of the old and the beginning of the new year, a cadre of authors and would-be authors are drawing up their own new year resolutions, which include, of course, new books! So no sooner does the editor launch his or her own plan for taking the year by storm, than an avalanche of proposals hits the in box! Actually, these start in late December (there are early birds in every bunch). Oh, and there are also arriving the manuscripts that authors have proudly finished, though this is work of a more predictable nature and contributes to the editors own goals.

Now, about those proposals. Some of them just don’t fit us. Some are very much “us” and quite good. We like you just the way you are. Others show potential, but need more work, which calls for more thought and consideration. All of them need editorial attention of one sort or another. But the editor’s schedule was already quite full of things that must be done—books completed, or nearly so, that must be moved along, not to speak of, say, two big reference books at critical stages of development (as was the case for me last January).

So the incoming proposals don’t get the immediate attention they might deserve. And the editor’s guilt grows onerous. And the editor is tempted to hit “reset”—reject them all just to clear the desk and relieve the guilt. But, as I said, some of them are quite good and from friends and acquaintances, so that would be indecent and probably induce more guilt. And so January passes into February. And it’s a good thing that it’s still cold and dark and dreary because there is still much to be done.

But it also helps to blog about it, since it seems to give perspective on just how crazy this is but also just how fascinating to be at the intersection of a ceaseless flow of ideas. One could be working at an assembly line all day. . .

The Parable of the Great Inversion

Are you familiar with the phenomenon of a weather inversion? Here in the Northwest it seems to happen several times each winter.

A high pressure system moves in and parks over Washington State, shutting down the rain for several days. Cold air becomes trapped at sea level and in the valleys, and often fog or low clouds hang over the lowlands. The temperature might be a damp 35 degrees at lower elevations, without a glimpse of the sun. Thoughts of spring weather tease the mind. But that’s a long way off. Right now it’s just clammy, cold and dark.

That Old Bookcase Backdrop

Pastors do it.
Scholars do it.
Even insecure editors do it.
Let’s not do it.
Let’s not do it at all!

Yes, I've done it too. But it’s a visual cliché, folks. Let’s not get our professional or “author” photo taken against the backdrop of shelved books. Just today, trying to find some info on an author, I once again visited a church website (it could have been an academic site). There it was again. Everyone’s posing in front of bookshelves. (Among pastors, this is particularly endemic among Presbyterians, or at least those who aspire to the “learned ministry.”)

Foaming at the Blurbs

There’s been quite a kerfuffle out there in blogdom here and here and here over Scot McKnight’s endorsement of N. T. Wright’s forthcoming book, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (due June 2009). You can read the endorsements, or blurbs, here. Now, from a publisher’s and an author’s standpoint, that’s a pretty nice spread of folks urging you to read the book, whether you agree or not. And my friend Scot, who knows how to blurb (and now saves his ammo for a select few, salted his endorsement with his considered opinion of some of Wright’s “neo-Reformed” opponents!

We’ve been expecting some fur to fly when the book comes out. But this much over just a blurb? Well, while we do try to be high minded, even handed and above the fray, I can’t help saying that this sort of thing warms the cockles of a publisher’s heart. And it provides an interesting window onto a sector of evangelicalism.

(And thanks to Mike Bird and a few others for stepping into the bloggy fray with the gift of reason and clarity.)

Dan Reid