The Academic Presses

Roger Gathman's new column about academic books for the Austin-American Statesman -- the first one ran over the weekend weekend -- is a remarkable thing to behold. Smart, sharp, compact, and handling serious titles rather than the cookbooks and guides to state flowers that university presses now tend to publish a lot.

At his blog, Gathman writes:

So tell your Ma, tell your Pa, and tell the person you know who works for a university press or who wants to publish some academic book. I think this column might be a first for a regular newspaper. And if it goes well, I'll become the godfather of the academic publishing world. Those on my right hand I will elevate to their thrones in heaven, those on my left hand I will damn eternally. Or something like that.

Well, for what it's worth, my experience is that you are lucky if they even remember your name. [ Long rant redacted ]

Be that as it may, this will be a column worth watching.