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[abacus]

Hello,

I have a question about the book manuscript. The editor usually sends the manuscript to two or three readers. I am just wondering how common it is for reviewers to reject the book manuscript, and how common it is for the editor actually decline the project hu thought great at the beginning.  What usually happens if the editor receives negative reviews or mixed reviews?

Thanks,
abacus

[tt33_hist]

If reviews are mixed, the editor may ask you to respond to the comments and explain how you will address them in a rewrite.

[shrek]

Then again, if the reviews are negative the editor may ignore them entirely. I reviewed a proposal and sample chapter for a press that I thought was awful (the manuscript, not the press) and they STILL published it (and then sent me the book once published as a "thank you"). As expected, the book was awful. Either way do try to get copies of the reviews they may have some good suggestions.

[abacus]

Thank you. Sounds quite different from the article reviews. So, don’t reviewers of the book have as much power as the ones in the journal articles?  Must the revised manuscript be sent to the same reviewers before the author gets the contract?

[tenured_feminist]

But OTOH, a couple of bad reviews can sink a manuscript about which an editor was initially excited.  I have heard unofficially that at least one top U press will reject a project if it gets a negative reader's report.

[bibliothecula]

As an editor, if I receive bad reviews, I'll look at the materials on my own and decide either 1) stuff can be fixed, in which case the author gets to see the reviews and must submit revisions to me, which I then check against reviews and/or send out for review again; or 2) cancel the project. What tips the project in one direction or another? If a book is already under contract (say, by a previous editor) or is in a super-hot and lucrative field, then authors often get to revise. If there is no contract as yet, or the field is small, we dump it.

If you are an author and you've gotten bad reviews, revise! Sometimes terrible reviews can help make a project strong enough to publish in a later iteration.

The only caveat I can think of is if you are writing something controversial and it gets reviewed by someone whose views differ radically from yours. In that case--which you'll likely know exists by the review--try another publisher, and look into getting early reviews done by people who will treat the material fairly.

Good luck.

[seniorscholar]

If negative reviews cause the editor to withdraw the project (so that, technically, it has not been "rejected" by the university press's board of review, which is made up of senior faculty with expertise in a number of disciplines), make sure you ask to see the reviews. They may send you into serious depression (if the reviewer has said, for example, that there are essentially unfixable flaws, and has not used polite language in the report) but, on the other hand, they may well show you things you need to know and important sources you have overlooked before you do a full revision of the manuscript and seek another press. I'm not sure any other source will give you such frank advice as the anonymous reviewers of a book manuscript; and I have certainly seen at least one book that I criticized strongly when reading the ms. for press A appear four or five years later, very much improved, from press B.

[abacus]

Bibliothecula and seniorscholar, thank you for sharing perspectives as an editor and reviewer. I haven’t gotten the reviews yet but just concerned how things will proceed after I receive the reviews. I am a bit impatient about the whole process of waiting. And I really like this UP and the editor so I want to keep working with them. I don’t have a contract, so the UP can technically reject it at any point. I just don’t want to think about submitting it to other publisher after rejection and wait for the long reviews and revise and so on. Seems it takes years and years and the topic is just not hot anymore.

One more question. Does the board of review often reject the manuscript?

[seniorscholar]

I served for six years on my university press's board of review. I can only remember two times when the board actually rejected a book that had gone through the review process; a couple of times more when the board balked on offering a contract at this stage but asked the editor to have the author revise and resubmit [one of those, I know, was later brought back, accepted, and published, but I can't remember what happened to the other]; and fewer than half a dozen occasions when the editor withdrew the project after listening to the discussion before the vote. Oh yes, and one more occasion when, because of certain production/illustration issues, the marketing department had decided that the book would have to be so expensive that it would not sell enought copies to cover its costs, even if the author were asked to find a subvention from his/her university or professional association.

What I don't know, however, is how many books the acquisition editors themselves turned down after seeing the readers' reports. Certainly I have written quite negative reports on a number of manuscripts over the years. In some cases the book has later come out from a different press than the one for which I read the manuscript; in others it has never appeared. Editors don't bring the proposal/sample chapter/readers' reports/author's response to the board unless they believe the board and editor-in-chief will accept the book.

[aristotelian]

Do any authors have experience or advice on getting published in spite of negative reviews.

Although I am not the o.p., I'd like to say thanks to seniorscholar for the advice on this thread and elsewhere. 

[bibliothecula]

Do any authors have experience or advice on getting published in spite of negative reviews.

Although I am not the o.p., I'd like to say thanks to seniorscholar for the advice on this thread and elsewhere. 

It is certainly not unheard of for a book to be rejected at one press and to be published at another, albeit with some revision. If a ms is getting negative reviews from numerous places, then it is probably time for more major revisions before sending it out again.

[tenured_feminist]

Depends, too, on the nature of the reviews.  If your work is interdisciplinary, the reviewers may be coming at it from a disciplinary perspective that creates problems, and you're best off talking to someone in the discipline to figure out how to address or bracket more effectively those concerns.

Sometimes negative reviews raise similar issues -- if this is the case, you really need to listen and put in the spade work to address the critiques before sending out again.  But if they're all over the map, you may have some up front framing issues that are making it hard for acquisitions editors to see clearly to whom to send the MS for review.

The one thing not to do is ignore the reviews and just send it right back out.  I once wrote a negative review only to have an acquisitions editor from a different press contact me 2-3 months later about reading the same manuscript . . . and from the AE's description, it didn't sound like the author had done anything to the MS.  I declined to review it a second time, but I know others who, in that situation, have just tweaked and sent back the same review.

[sinead]

In the process with which I have been involved, the manuscript is sent to reviewers and the reviewers read it and submit external assessments. Some of these may include suggestions for revision, along with opinions about whether the manuscript should be published.

The author reviews the reviewers' assessments. If revisions are required, the author makes them (or, decides not to) and resubmits with a letter outlining how they have taken the suggestions into account, or sometimes, why they have not.

This seems to me, to be a reasonable (although to my mind, very lengthy) process, but a fair one. It is also a process that depends on the suitability of external reviewers.

[historyphd]

Let me start by saying I have had good fortune in publishing but often anonymous reviewers are not, actually, fair (I find a tendency with them to protect their own theses rather than fairly judge others') or they are unusually cruel (probably from being stuffed into lockers in high school).  If you have a decent editor, sometimes it's worthwhile arguing against some of the comments made by reviewers.  I also find that often, or at least in some instances, their comments are written out of ignorance or pretentiousness.  This is not to say there are some damned fine reviewers, but the review process, it seems to me, can be problematic.

So don't sit back and just accept their criticism as divine truth.

[professorx]

Is there more to the OP's rejection anxiety than the usual end-of-project jitters? If you perceive some weaknesses in your manuscript that may attract red flags, use the review process as a means of facing them.