I’d Like to Thank the Academy

By May 3, 2013April 11th, 2014The Chronicle of Higher Education

No book springs fully formed from the head of Zeus, let alone from the brain of the author. Even the shoddiest, pulpiest novels or the cheesiest self-help tomes benefit from prepublication attention by other people.

When I was a book editor I told authors that the preface and the acknowledgments sections were theirs alone. I was unlikely to see those sections until the book was published, so they were spared my editorial scrawl.

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