An Education for Academic Writers, Part II: Money vs. Honor

Academic books are expensive. Everybody knows this. I’ve often joked that I’m the reason your textbooks cost so much. People may laugh, but they also believe it.

It’s not true, of course.

An Education for Academic Writers, Part I

Every writer has their imaginary audience, even if their real one is (like most of us) just friends, people linking to pictures you’re hosting, and parents who wouldn’t actually be interested in what you’re writing about if anyone else wrote it.* Mine is usually my grad school self and his colleagues—people who discuss insane things over wine and coffee after lectures, who have absolutely no clue about why people aren’t interested in what we study, and who labor under more than a few delusions about how this whole “publish or perish” thing works.