The Book - Prelude

I was recently asked to be editor of a book on my specific area of research by a small science publisher (Nova Science). This would involve planning the scope of the book, finding authors for the chapters, getting those authors to actually write and submit their chapters, editing the chapters where necessary, and finally compiling them and sending them to the publisher. In a fit of insanity I agreed... In my defense, I had just finished a project where I co-edited a journal issue dedicated to my postdoc advisor. That project went fairly smoothly and really wasn't that hard. Of course when I agreed to do the book I completely forgot that for the journal issue I had an energetic co-editor plus the help and backing of the journal's editor-in-chief and the journal staff. The book? Well, the publisher will handle everything once it's written, but the rest is up to me... Oh, and the monetary benefits for this kind of thing range from pitiful to non-existent. Then again, I'm not doing it for the money.

So anyway, I thought I would chronicle the progress of this project here. Each post will be under the heading The Book. I will keep you abreast of things ranging from obtaining authors, to wrangling with authors, to wrangling with the publisher, all the way up to the book appearing on Amazon.com. This may take a while...