January, 2021 Research Update

Amici!  It is now February!  (Or perhaps it is March the 338th, 2020 as one person on Twitter grimly joked).

Classes have started back up, so the early part of the month was spent getting my syllabi ready and so on, along with working on the book manuscript and a couple of non-academic articles (one in editing, one draft I'm trying to get finished).  And, in the grand tradition of over-promising and under-delivering, I've agreed to write a chapter in a planned 'companion' volume on food and drink in the armies of Greece and Rome (to be published by Brill's Companion to Classical Studies series) on something of a tight deadline.

Fortunately, I have Ollie, my stalwart research assistant:

For those unfamiliar with 'companion' volumes, these books are collections of article-length chapters, each by a different author, organized around a central topic with the idea being that collectively the chapters should give a good 'state of the debate' overview.  The intended audience for such volumes are:

1) advanced undergraduates writing research papers who need a lot of information delivered quickly, in more detail than a textbook but 'processed' by a scholar who can collect and interpret the primary source material and technical studies for them.
2) graduate students who need to get the lay of the land in a field or subfield rapidly; the notes of a companion volume (written by more established scholars) will clearly indicate the relevant key works and point out any ongoing points of academic dispute.
3) The academic (or layperson) straying far from their field, seeking to get their footing on what the issues and outlines of a given subject are.

In that sense, they are very handy volumes that don't necessarily seek to break new scholarly ground (although sometimes do) but to condense often decades of historiography into a compact package.  That said, because the primary audience is academic, these books tend to be marketed to university libraries which (for reasons discussed below) means that most companion volumes are priced in the $100+ range, well out of reach for mere mortals, which is in some ways unfortunate as many companion volumes would make for excellent starting points for enthusiasts otherwise.

I also have another big chunk of books I have bought to report:

T. Barkawi, Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II (2017)
P. Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World (1989)
P.A. Johnstrono, The Army of Ptolemaic Egypt 323 to 204 BC: An Institutional and Operational History (2020)
R.F. Kennedy and M. Jones-Lewis eds., The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds(2016)
J. Leidwanger, Roman Seas: A Maritime Archaeology of Eastern Mediterranean Economies (2020)
R. Meiggs, Trees and Timber in the ancient Mediterranean World (1982)
C. Minzner, End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise (2018)
S.T. Roselaar, Italy’s Economic Revolution: Integration & Economy in Republican Italy(2019)
M.J. Taylor, Soldiers and Silver: Mobilizing Resources in the Age of Roman Conquest (2020)
N. Terranato, The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas (2019)

One of those has already made it as a blog recommendation and while I haven't finished all of the rest, I think it's pretty likely that at least Crone and Johnstono will also end up making appearances at the end of a fireside chat before too long.  Several of the others may as well.  But speaking of books..

Academic Book Pricing

One of the questions I've gotten a few times is why some academic books are priced like normal books and some academic books are priced extraordinarily high and also if that means that the academics in question are making sweet, sweet bank.

So here is the thing: most of the cost of printing a book (done properly, at least) is in big upfront overhead cost (I should note these are things I learned from publishers; UNC's history department made a habit of inviting the 'history desk' editors from major presses on to campus to talk to the graduate students).  No matter if you run 1 copy of 1 million copies, the book has to be edited, it has to be proof-read, the page layout needs to be set by the printers and then a print run has to be done, all of which is quite expensive.  By comparison, the marginal cost of adding one more book to an existing run is small.

Consequently, a publisher, when pricing a book is making a judgement about how many books they'll end up printing and selling.  For a very narrow academic book, something like (for instance), A. Williams, The Knight and the Blast Furnace (2003) a publisher might well conclude that, apart from a few dedicated scholars, the real audience of the book is university libraries.  I am told that a print run of that sort may only produce 600-800 copies (because that's about how many copies you'll sell to extensive university libraries, worldwide).  Splitting all of those big upfront printing and editing costs over just 600 copies is how you get books priced at a couple hundred dollars, generally.

By contrast, a book that is expected to do really well with the public, something like (again, for instance), Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization can be priced much lower because the printing cost is split over so many more copies.  I want to note I picked my examples because they are both similarly long door-stoppers.  The issue isn't that academic books are expensive because they are tomes, they're expensive mostly because few people actually want to buy them.

Now you may ask, "do those prices let academics make bank?"  Sadly, no.  Academics tend to be awfully squirrelly when it comes to talking about book revenue, but from what I've gathered, even very successful academic books tend to generate fairly trivial income for their authors.  I don't believe I have ever met a professor whose book income even came close to eclipsing their salary (except, I suppose, for the one time I was in an audience listening to Mary Beard).

The situation is somewhat different for textbooks, both in that the publisher margins are much better and also my impression is that the returns to the writers can be somewhat (but not massively) higher.  But by and large, academics do not and can't really make any sort of a living off of their writing (which is why we do so much of it in many cases effectively for free; peer reviewed journal articles are unpaid.  For c. 1,200 words in Foreign Policy (not peer reviewed) I get $300.  For 12,300 words in Historia (peer reviewed journal), I get $0).

Given that, the next question generally is "why not self publish?" or "why not e-publish?"  And the answer gets to what academics generally want out of publishing: they want an audience to read their work (often an academic audience) and they want the prestige that comes with, both for their own good feelings but also for tenure committees and such.  A good academic press is going to be able to market your book to all 600 or so of those university libraries, ensuring it is available for other scholars.

More to the point, book prestige is often tied up (stupidly, but there it is) in the press doing the publication.  Having a book out via Oxford University Press or Cambridge University Press or the like is both a signal that you are an Important Scholar (because the press gave you the time of day) and that you have done Important Scholarship.  Getting a book out with Big State University Press is also good, but not quite as good, even if the book ends up being more influential.  Consequently, publishers can pretty much write their deals with academics, who need them in order to satisfy their colleagues (who control their tenure) and secure their position in the field.

Presumably I'll get to embark on that adventure myself before too long (as noted in last month's update, I am hoping to have enough of my book project ready to pitch to publishers by the end of this summer).

And that's it for January!