Today in class I was talking about how Auden, in “At the Grave of Henry James,” makes use of the Prayer of Humble Access, and one of my students told me that she had recently, in her choir, been singing a setting of that — which turns out to be quite beautiful. It was composed by Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876).
If you see me posting more photos than usual, that will be because I am getting to know my new iPhone 18 Pro — my previous model was a 15 — and figuring out what the new version of Halide offers. Halide really is an extraordinary app: I especially admire the various ways it allows the user to bypass Apple’s computational-photography algorithms.
Number of people living within a 60-mile radius (or one-hour drive) of Waco: approximately 600,000.
Number of people living within a 120-mile radius (or two-hour drive) of Waco: approximately 12,000,000.
As Cosmos Malick: More on the way Malick seeks life in his films.
I have a theory
Here are the relevant facts:
- Oxford University Press USA is a “crossover” publisher, which means that they’re an academic press but they publish many books meant to have some trade success also, e.g. showing up in the local Barnes & Noble.
- But OUP UK, with whom I am publishing this Sayers biography, is pretty much strictly academic in its orientation, which means that it charges high prices for books and expects to sell them largely to libraries. (I only signed with them because they promised to sell my book at a reasonable price: other books in the series are two or three times as expensive.)
- Most of the academics who publish with OUP UK are doing so for reasons of professional advancement and job security — tenure, promotion, moves to more prestigious institutions, etc. They don’t expect their books to be purchased by the general public, and even whether they get read (and reviewed) by peers is a secondary consideration. What matters is the new bullet point on the CV.
- I am not seeking professional advancement; and even when I write academic books, I write them to be read by actual human beings.
Therefore, we are seeing a mismatch between my interests and those of my publisher. The book didn’t come out on its pub day, the Kindle edition is unreadable to some, I have no idea when people will actually be able to buy the book, I am very unhappy — and as far as I can tell nobody at OUP UK understands why I am bothered. I have the new bullet point on my CV, don’t I?
I’m still trying to discover (a) why no copies of my book were available in the U.S. on pub day; (b) why, if no copies of the book would be available on pub day, pub day was not delayed until they were available; (c) why nobody at OUP bothered to tell me that my book would not be available on pub day; (d) when copies of my book are likely to be available; (e) why the Kindle edition of the book is in gray e-ink, something not true of any of the hundreds of other books I have ever read on Kindle; (f) whether the Kindle edition can be fixed and, if so, when. I have no answers to any of these questions and no clear indication of when, or indeed whether, I will get answers.