Category: Behind the Scenes

What’s my line?

by Michele Callaghan, manuscript editor Like an actor assuming a role, we editors need to inhabit the voice and the knowledge base of our authors. In recent months, I have been a precise medieval historian, a statistics-spewing football fan, a physicist with a flair for describing science for a lay audience, and a political science…

What’s my line?

by Michele Callaghan, manuscript editor Like an actor assuming a role, we editors need to inhabit the voice and the knowledge base of our authors. In recent months, I have been a precise medieval historian, a statistics-spewing football fan, a physicist with a flair for describing science for a lay audience, and a political science…

The Current State of Publicity

by Kathy Alexander, publicity manager Book publicity in 2013 is drastically different from what it was a mere ten years ago. Traditional print media has declined, broadcast journalism continues to be fickle and fad-driven, and digital media options have exploded. Numerous print venues are cutting their review sections; even academic journals such as JAMA have…

I am not a Luddite but I am a weaver

By Michele Callaghan, manuscript editor Almost two hundred years ago, weavers displaced by the industrial revolution smashed the machines that they thought cost them their jobs. Heroes to some and “dinosaurs” to others, they saw their livelihood and way of life stripped away and felt powerless to stop it. This type of permanent disruption engendered…

Quilting the Cover

Amish women have long been connoisseurs of fabric, skilled at assessing the differences in weight, hand, color, and texture. The Ordnung—or guidelines that govern church districts at the local level—has long limited Amish families’ fabric choices for clothing to solid colors. As a result, for much of the twentieth century Amish women typically executed quilts…

Quilting the Cover

Amish women have long been connoisseurs of fabric, skilled at assessing the differences in weight, hand, color, and texture. The Ordnung—or guidelines that govern church districts at the local level—has long limited Amish families’ fabric choices for clothing to solid colors. As a result, for much of the twentieth century Amish women typically executed quilts…