Occasionally, I run across a scholarly work that is a compilation of several writers and that also has multiple editors. Consider this example:
Rabkin, Eric S., Martin Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds. No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1983.
In many of these books, the editors have not contributed (written) any of the compiled chapters, which makes me wonder what kind of editing they have done.
Knowing that even small publishers generally have numerous big-E editors, copy editors, fact checkers, and proofreaders, what do “editors” such as Rabkin, Greenberg and Olander do?
Can’t say for certain, but since this is a University press, it makes me wonder if they’re all in on it for various publication/tenure reasons (a la the science faculty’s requirement to publish research papers).
You’re talking about Marty Greenberg, who has his own way of doing things.
Marty Greenberg reprint anthologies were done in a specific manner. Years ago, he worked with Charles Waugh and a big name author. The way it worked was this:
Waugh had indexed and cataloged all stories in all SF magazines going back to the 40s. If you wanted science fiction stories about, say, the Olympics, he’d go to his records and make a list.
Greenberg would then contact the big name author. If the BNA agreed, Marty would send the stories to the BNA for review, and the BNA would pick which stories from the bunch he wanted in the anthology.
Greenberg would then go to the authors involved (or their estates – some of the stories were quite old) and get permission to use the stories. He would also go to a publisher and pitch the anthology. The BNA would write a small introduction.
Greenberg has been working with Olander for some time now, and I imagine Olander has either replaced Waugh as the source for stories, or else he is doing some of the permissions work.
Marty has also worked with just one other editor. In those cases, the other editor would choose the stories, and Marty dealt with the business end. I’ve had stories in two anthologies Marty co-edited, and his role was purely to deal with the publisher and pay the authors.
Reference books like encyclopedias need editors to “ride herd” on all the authors - a chief editor might call in several subject areas and work out lists of the entries that should be included, and then they work with the authors. It’s evidently quite the management nightmare.
It’s also worth mentioning that Marty Greenberg has been listed as editor of well over 1000 anthologies of every conceivable type. Or it could be 2000 by now. Who can keep count?
His anthologies account for at least 100 of the books that Isaac Asimov claimed to have “written.” He’d send Asimov a list of stories on a theme, Asimov would cull the list, write an introduction that probably took all of 20 minutes, stick his name on the cover, and presto: another notch on his typewriter. To be honest, Asimov lost a lot of credit with me for this sort of number padding. His real accomplishments were amazing enough for one lifetime; he didn’t need to play these silly games.
I was one of four editors on a multi-author scientific volume published by a one of the main professional organizations in my field. I didn’t contribute a chapter of my own, but there was plenty to do. Tasks included:
[ul][li]deciding with the other co-editors what the focus of the volume would be, the outline of potential topics, and which scientists would be asked to contribute[/li][li]overseeing the invitations, acceptance, and peer review of the chapters pertinent to my field of expertise[/li][li]doing some of the chapter reviews myself[/li][li]editing submissions according to the publisher’s style and for grammar, etc., which can be a significant effort if the authors are less than fluent in English[/li][li]obtaining reprint permissions for certain illustrations[/ul][/li]
Any effort that requires getting a bunch of independent people to adhere to deadlines ends up being rather like herding cats.
My job title is “editor”–I guess I could put a big E on it–and I work for a small publisher (well, maybe midsize–around 50 books a year). There are not numerous copy editors, fact checkers, proofreaders, etc. There are, let’s see, 5 people, two of whom are part-time. So what the editors of compilations do is this:
They solicit material from colleagues in the field. They are experts in their field (I am not). They read submissions, or commission them, give deadlines and guidelines (or not) and direct the process up to the point when the ms. arrives at the publisher. They do any fact-checking required. They ride herd on the authors until they get their manuscripts in. Some of them do additional work on standardizing the format of the manuscripts, for instance using outline style subheads–but mostly they don’t. They arrange the work in the order they want it presented. They check the page proofs after the book has been typeset. They have the option of sending chapters out to the individual authors but as far as I know they usually don’t.
In fact, they don’t usually do a lot of what anybody would call “editing,” but then neither do I* and it’s my job title!
We’ve had works with up to four editors, and I’ve seen even more than that in bibliographies (but usually after the second one they’ll be listed as “et al..”
Whoever guessed that the editors of scholarly works might get publication credit toward tenure, you’re right.
*It is quite rare that I actually get something I can edit and I’m always very happy when that happens. I do usually edit things like the preface & introduction, and I generally run a spell check, for whatever that’s worth, on the whole ms.
In libraries, the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules specify when the title page lists up to three authors or editors, enter them all in the catalog record. But for four or more names, just make an entry for the first one and ignore the rest. In the statement of responsibility in the title field, just give the first one followed by “[et al.]”
This only affects the appearance of a name in a catalog record and hence in a database of bibliographical data, and another database of metadata. It wouldn’t impact someone’s tenure or anything in academia. It’s just that if you get a kick out of typing your name into say the Library of Congress online catalog, or OCLC (a network providing access to the bibliographical and holdings information from many thousands of libraries), and finding your works, then it would be in your interest to share the publishing spotlight with no more than two other people. In more practical terms, I think it would definitely impact your Google hits.