| OCR Text |
Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception xv Conception either separately or not at all. Beatrice could have done that, but she did not. Instead she spent a great deal of time and money finding readers for both volumes whose word, though critical, could be trusted. Both volumes are very much improved for the rigorous, constructive criticism and encouragement her chosen readers finally supplied. My debt to her and to them is very great. It was a privilege to work with an editor of this calibre. But CUP's review procedure is unusual in requiring yet a further round of vetting: Each volume also had to be independently read and approved by the Cambridge University Press Syndicate, a group of eighteen Cambridge University professors from different disciplines who pass judgment on each manuscript which CUP's editors submit for publication. That both volumes of Rationality and the Structure of the Self survived this highly ramified gauntlet of specialized professional evaluation reinforces my belief in its worth. After both volumes had been fully and formally approved for publication by academic scholars professionally trained to make such judgments, CUP's marketing department then demanded that I cut 100 pages - any 100 pages - from each volume, in order to sell them more easily. Beatrice had agreed in writing not to require this. But it is CUP's marketing department, not its editors or syndicate of scholars, that finally determines what CUP publishes and in what form. Of course the resulting books would not have been the ones that the CUP Syndicate had approved. I refused, withdrew, and published both volumes at my website. This is what happens when you break a promise to a Kantian. Although CUP's vetting procedure is unusually demanding, its ultimate deferral to the financial bottom line is not unusual at all. The reality is that the economic climate for all print publishers, but particularly for academic print publishers, has been extremely difficult and getting steadily worse over the last decade. Pig-headed authors such as myself do not help the situation. Some publishers are forthright and transparent about these limitations. Others try to make a virtue of necessity, and to convince their authors that these limitations are, indeed, a virtue. As I accept only those limitations dictated by the imperatives of the work itself, I have sought virtues elsewhere. I did not write Rationality and the Structure of the Self in order to make a profit. But I have derived very great profit indeed from its instant accessibility to anyone beset by even a momentary flicker of curiosity about its contents. Electronic, open-access self-publication has also done much more to bring it to public attention than a traditional print publisher's contract would have allowed. Full-page advertisements in The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, The Journal of Philosophy, The Philosophical Review, Mind, Ethics, Political Theory, The European Journal of Philosophy, and Economics and Philosophy have secured its place in the historical record. And advertising it on © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
