ABSTRACT
Scholarly Books («ska‹l\(r)le¤ «buÚkz) We have heard that they are dying. We have heard that they are dead. We have heard that they will live forever in cyberspace. The truth is that no one knows what the scholarly publishing scene will be like in ten years. But present trends can only support bleak predictions. A 1998 letter from a major university press seeking a manuscript evaluation from a reader included the following passage: “Although [this book] is clearly work of publishable quality, ‘publishable’ isn’t necessarily enough, given today’s shrinking market for academic books, particularly books in literary criticism. We’d want to feel confident that the book is of superior quality and that it would interest more than a handful of specialists.” If those are bracing words, consider that several university presses have more succinct responses to inquiries from English professors: “We no longer publish literary criticism.”
