I fear I am over Doug's daily limits, but...
There is no simple answer to your question, but I do not think it was some organized conspiracy to keep economists from reading evil chaos theory at a decent price, although I used to tell myself it was during the period I was getting rejected. About a third of the publishers simply sent it back with no comment. Several others sent it back with something along the lines of "this does not fit our interests/list/whatever at this time." Several others actually sent it out for review and got negative reviews. Some of those reviews were unreasonable, even ridiculous. A few made good points that led me to make corrective revisions. The irony is that once the book came out, it got nothing but highly favorable reviews in all the journals that reviewed it. I gather it is now viewed as almost boring, a general reference work because of its thoroughness, and that is often what is cited as.
Kluwer just happens to be one of those publishers that simply does not issue paperbacks and usually aims at breaking even by selling a few overpriced copies of its books to enough libraries, with little serious expectation of selling to the public. I had the sense that my book did not fit that description, but after 13 rejections I was not able to push my line very hard. I have stuck with them for the second edition out of sheer loyalty and the fact that the same editor is there (Zach Rolnick), who cuts me a lot of slack. Changes of editors are a major bain of the book publishing biz, as anybody on this list who does any publishing of books can no doubt attest. Barkley Rosser email: rosserjb at jmu.edu website: http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb
-----Original Message----- From: Lisa & Ian Murray <seamus at accessone.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 4:09 PM Subject: RE: my book
>Jr. wrote>>
>> Since the issue of my book and its cost was
>> a topic of discussion when I showed back up on
>> the list (sorry to catch you offguard, Yoshie), I thought
>> I would make a few further points.
>*******
>
>Barkley,
>I was the one making the complaint about cost :-(
>Anyway, why would 13 publishers reject your stuff? Do they consider it too
>subversive and thus don't want it accessible to the unwashed masses if it
were
>affordable? The genre of chaos does well in other disciplines at pretty
decent
>prices, why should economics texts be a holdout and why don't more
economists
>use chaotic modeling/narratives? I got the reference to Machover and
Farjoun's
>work from the Amariglio and Ruccio essay in "Why Economists Disagree" and
found
>the piece interesting enough to try and find the work. Is chaos as a social
>ontology/political economy too much of a taboo in the econ. profession; a
fear
>of the a-rational and/or irrational in social life emerging from a
misreading of
>human agency by rational choice theorists etc?
>
>Ian
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