Not Splashing but Drowning
Jul. 8th, 2023 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmMy last book, Literary Studies Deconstructed: A Polemic, was a bit of a disaster. Not the book itself, you understand, which I'm really proud of, but its reception. Actually, not even its reception, which as far as it existed was positive (there were two reviews that I'm aware of, both very good), but its lack of reception. No one had a bad word to say about it, but then hardly anyone read it at all. In terms of having an impact on the practice of literary studies, forget it.
Why was this? The first problem was the title. I'd always intended it to be called "The LITMUS Papers; or Lies I Tell My Undergraduate Students", which I thought and still think appealing and attention grabbing. However, Palgrave, being (like all academic publishers) slaves of the metadata, insisted on something ploddingly descriptive, a title that might bore potential readers but would pique the interest of a search-engine algorithem. Unfortunately, all my descriptive terms were very broad, ensuring that neither humans nor algorithm gave it a second glance.
The second problem was my own professional position. Within the world of children's literature academia I'm fairly well known, but that's a rather closed-off world within literary academia generally. This book was too general in scope to be widely reviewed within the children's literature world (albeit several of its case studies involved children's literature), and its author too obscure to attract the notice of anyone outside that field. It fell between two stools, and as far as we know is falling still.
The third problem was me. I'm not on Twitter (nor am like to be), my Facebook is generally friends-only, and I'm generally too introverted and unglamorous to be a selling point in myself. There was no launch event, of course. As with most academic publishers, the motto of Palgrave's publicity department was "Your secret's safe with us." But I did little to counteract that.
So, for the new book, BRITISH CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN JAPANESE CULTURE, I'm hoping to turn this around by being brash, shouty, and altogether relentless in bigging myself up and putting myself out there, as people apparently say. Which is to say, I've made an Instagram: BritishKidLitInJapan. If you're on Instagram too, please feel free to follow me.
Why was this? The first problem was the title. I'd always intended it to be called "The LITMUS Papers; or Lies I Tell My Undergraduate Students", which I thought and still think appealing and attention grabbing. However, Palgrave, being (like all academic publishers) slaves of the metadata, insisted on something ploddingly descriptive, a title that might bore potential readers but would pique the interest of a search-engine algorithem. Unfortunately, all my descriptive terms were very broad, ensuring that neither humans nor algorithm gave it a second glance.
The second problem was my own professional position. Within the world of children's literature academia I'm fairly well known, but that's a rather closed-off world within literary academia generally. This book was too general in scope to be widely reviewed within the children's literature world (albeit several of its case studies involved children's literature), and its author too obscure to attract the notice of anyone outside that field. It fell between two stools, and as far as we know is falling still.
The third problem was me. I'm not on Twitter (nor am like to be), my Facebook is generally friends-only, and I'm generally too introverted and unglamorous to be a selling point in myself. There was no launch event, of course. As with most academic publishers, the motto of Palgrave's publicity department was "Your secret's safe with us." But I did little to counteract that.
So, for the new book, BRITISH CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN JAPANESE CULTURE, I'm hoping to turn this around by being brash, shouty, and altogether relentless in bigging myself up and putting myself out there, as people apparently say. Which is to say, I've made an Instagram: BritishKidLitInJapan. If you're on Instagram too, please feel free to follow me.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-08 03:02 pm (UTC)