Let’s get away from students for a minute. I’ve been approached to finish a monograph by a deceased scholar in a field that closely overlaps my own field of interest. I never met the man, but his research was respected. I am told that 7 of 10 chapters are finished and I would be given his notes. There is no publisher lined up yet and no research funds. I’ve read a little on the specific subject matter of the book, but have read reasonably widely in the overall area, and have published a little in the field. That’s how they came to approach me—through an editor that liked one of my earlier articles. Have any of you taken on such a project? If so, what are the pitfalls and advantages to finishing another scholar’s work? One question immediately comes to mind--would I have complete editorial freedom? Also, it would mean delaying working on a book that I have already started, but one that could be back-burnered* for a couple years. What else should I consider? Thanks……
* one useful skill I learned in my old career was turning nouns into verbs! (or "verbing nouns, h/t Sawyer...)
I'm not clear on who is it that's approaching you. There's no publisher, but there is an editor? Is the dead man's family coordinating this? Who owns the first seven chapters? The answers to these questions matter.
ReplyDeleteThat said, maybe tell the editor you're interested in owning the copyright to the finished product. You want the opportunity to shop it around if the current owner doesn't like your finished product or is unable to publish it for any reason. You need to have some incentive to do this work. As is, it sounds like they have nothing to lose. And they might be extending the same offer to a dozen other people. Protect yourself. Respect yourself.
Don't even think of it if you don't have tenure.
ReplyDeleteAre you going to be credited as a co-author? First or second?
ReplyDeleteIs the deceased a famous person in your field, and is the incomplete work potentially of real value? By finishing this project, can you ride this dead person's coattails? In other words, would finishing this project tie your name with this scholar's in a way that would enhance your career, more so than spending the equivalent amount of time working on your own original stuff?
ReplyDeleteIf you cannot enhance your own academic profile by doing this, don't.
Unless they're paying you a pile of money, and you want the money. And even then you better get some sort of credit for it, or it ain't worth it.
Maybe it's discipline-specific, but Stella's advice sounds about right to me. I guess I think it's a really flattering offer, and kudos to you (wow), but it seems almost certain to me that spending time on this project instead of writing a(nother) single-author monograph of your own would not work out in your favor. But I'm pretty junior, and I don't know much about the different career pressures and possible directions that open up post-tenure.
ReplyDeleteI also think that SB is right to query the no-publisher problem. This is a bad market for books, and one wonders whether editors have eyed this project askance already. (Never mind bringing in another author much later who wasn't involved in the original research...) Last: not to be too brutal, but if the original author was unwell or was possibly past his or her peak productive years, this thing could really be a disaster. OR it could be a work of staggering genius and the masterwork at the end of a brilliant oeuvre. At the very least, don't tell them you'll take it on without reading it. Again, you know, junior people are (have to be?) pretty selfish about their research commitments, and that's the context for my advice.
The correct term you're looking for in your asterisked note is "verbing nouns," not "turning nouns into verbs."
ReplyDeleteAs Hobbes observed to Calvin, "Verbing weirds language."
ReplyDeleteAs far as you project goes, if everything is the exactly how you've described it, something doesn't seem quite right. If I were on a tenure review committee (and I've served on several) and I saw something just like what you've described listed as a line item, I'd say, "What?"
If you don't have tenure, I'd pass. Even if you do have tenure, if you won't be paid a lot of money and be given credit for this, I'd pass anyway.
thank you for all the great comments. You all gave me a great deal to consider....
ReplyDelete