Beating the Odds: Getting Published in the Field of Literacy (review)

Although general handbooks on scholarly writing and publishing for academics have been around for decades, scholarly writing and publishing books targeted to members of certain disciplines or fields (or to individuals wishing to publish in venues of certain disciplines or fields) have appeared only more recently. A relatively early example is A Guide to Publishing in Education (1977), an annotated index of education journals with a four-page introduction offering advice on writing for publication; it has been followed by much more extensive guides to writing and publishing for communication scholars, education leaders, language educators, and scholars of rhetoric and composition.¹ This development echoes, rather belatedly, not only the professionalization of academic disciplines but also the increased specialization and compartmentalization of academic knowledge. And the appearance of such texts on (and in) fields that are built around language and the written word - communication, composition, education - suggests, also, that such texts may be considered to be scholarly contributions only within select fields. Regardless of how the publications are conceptualized or positioned, all provide academic authors of any disciplinary affiliation with useful suggestions and advice. In so doing, such books reinforce certain universal characteristics and expectations of the academic publishing mind-set and process.

Shelley B. Wepner and Linda B. Gambrell's recent edited volume, Beating the Odds: Getting Published in the Field of Literacy, is one example of a discipline-specific guidebook to publishing that carries a message relevant across disciplines. Even though all seventeen contributors are from the field of literacy, the field from which most of their examples also come, readers from outside the field can learn much from the text and its supplements. One appendix, for example, provides an annotated list of eleven relatively general (and useful) publications on writing for publication. Of course, for its specifics (such as appendices that list US and international literacy and literacy-related organizations, state literacy associations and their journals and newsletters, and literacy book publishers in the United States), potential authors in the field of literacy might benefit most from this book. The editors, dean of the School of Education at Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York (Wepner), and Professor of Teacher Education at Clemson University in South Carolina (Gambrell), actually compiled this handbook for members of the International Reading Association; the volume evolved from sessions on academic publishing at the 2003 and 2004 annual conventions of that organization. Regardless, other academic authors (and potential authors) should certainly not dismiss this work because of the specificity of its subtitle.

Beating the Odds includes ten chapters in four sections: a useful contextualizing section that presents ways to approach writing for publication, a section on writing for journals and other periodicals, a section on writing and editing books, and a particularly interesting section on responding to revise-and-resubmit and rejection decisions. The book, which focuses not on writing processes per se but, rather, on publishing processes, was written for 'novice, developing, and experienced writers' (xiii) of all types: faculty members, administrators, classroom teachers, and graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in writing for publication. The publishing processes described are not technicalities of the trade, however, but perspectives from authors and editors, most of whom are faculty members at schools of education in the United States.

Each chapter is built around anywhere from seven to ten specific guidelines for authors (and potential authors), and an epilogue offers an annotated list of ten of the most commonly recurring themes of the work. Wepner writes that 'specific ideas are better than admonishments' (20), yet the line between guideline and admonishment seems tenuous at times. Consider idea number 6 from the epilogue: 'Don't minimize that writing is often difficult, painful, and discouraging' (168). Useful as a summative list of take-home points from the various chapters of the book, the epilogue demonstrates that the contributors share certain...