Reviews and Reviewers

 Reviews and Reviewers

I've written a book. It's my seventh book, so you'd think that I've got this down by now. However, for me, every book is a new adventure and requires new skills. All my books are non-fiction, so I've thankfully not had to learn to write dialogue. I've written two software development books, so, very technical. I've written three books on the history of cryptology, so, a mix of technical and story telling. I've done one book that was an edited collection of (other people's) short stories all related to cryptology in one way or another. 

All these books were different, and all were easy and difficult in different ways. I've used two different publishers, and both had different requirements for the manuscripts.

My latest book is a biography of three of the most important cryptologists of the first half of the twentieth century. So it's way different from any of the other six. The book started as the joint biography of two of these three people, William Friedman and Herbert Yardley, and most of my early research was into the lives and careers of these two men. But it didn't take long for me to realize that there was another person who just had to be in the book, William Friedman's wife, Elizebeth. Elizebeth Friedman was every bit as important to early twentieth century American crypto as her husband and very nearly as talented, so I just couldn't leave her out. Needless to say, adding Elizebeth to the book lengthened both my research time and, when I finally got around to it, my writing time. 

I'm probably one of the few people who (kind of) enjoyed the pandemic because, since I was cooped up in our house for the better part of a year and a half, I had lots of time to write. I finished the first draft of my new manuscript in mid-November 2021. I let it sit over the holidays and did a second draft in January 2022, after my wife had read and commented on the original. At that point I wrote up a book proposal, did some research on publishers, and picked a couple to send my proposal to. 

One of the publishers sent me a rejection within a couple of weeks. The acquisitions editor at the other publisher responded at about the same time and complained that the book was longer than what they usually published; including text, notes, and references my manuscript was about 170K words. Their maximum was usually about 100K words. Regardless, they asked for the complete manuscript to review. A publisher asking for the complete manuscript is a good sign because it means that the acquisitions editor likes your proposal and wants to see more.

In book publishing, you usually send a completed chapter or two to publishers along with your proposal. It's also OK to send queries to several publishers at once, as long as you tell them what you're doing. But, when you send a complete manuscript, you're pretty much obligated to wait until that publisher gives you a decision one way or another before you send out proposals to anyone else. I sent my complete manuscript along to the editor around the end of February. The acquisitions editor would then send my manuscript out to two or three reviewers that the publishing house contracts with to review the book. The reviews would be blind (I would not know who the reviewers were).

While I was waiting for the publisher's response I took a good hard look at my manuscript and did another draft, this time cutting out a lot of the text. By the end of March, the manuscript draft was down to 128K words for text, notes, and references. I felt pretty good.

Eighteen weeks (yes 18) after I first sent this publisher my manuscript I got a response from them. It was "Well, we kind of like your book, but we won't accept it until you make a ton of changes to it and we're happy with the changes. Take a look at the reviewers comments." This brings me to reviewers.

The acquisitions editor had enclosed two documents, the reports from each of the two reviewers to whom they had sent my complete manuscript. Remember, that the reviewers had my original 170K word manuscript.

Reviewer #1 wrote a detailed 10-page review of the manuscript. They gave an overview of their review and their top-level impressions. Overall, they thought it was a pretty good effort, "workmanlike" was one word used. Their top-level statements were pretty positive. But. They complained about the length, and said that the narrative was too taken up with technical details, duplicated some stories in places, spent too long on topics not directly related to the subjects, and strayed over and over again from what should be the main narrative about the three cryptologists. 

I had to agree. In fact, I'd removed some of those technical details in my first cut-and-slash editing of the manuscript, but there were other technical pieces and other stories that the reviewer thought could be improved, shortened, or just removed. Reviewer #1 then went on to go through the entire manuscript and made critiques and suggestions for improvements for each and every chapter. It turns out these comments and suggestions are a gem. In practically every set of chapter comments there are suggestions that will markedly improve the book. If I made these changes correctly, the book will be shorter, more focused, and in many other ways better. Clearly this reviewer took the time to think about what they were reading and made a real effort to give me positive, honest feedback. I am very grateful that this person reviewed my manuscript.

Reviewer #2's review of the manuscript was only half the length of Reviewer #1's. The acquisitions editor described the review as "harsh." I can not disagree with that. From Reviewer #2's comments it seems as if they have several basic, I may say visceral, disagreements with some of my opinions and thinking in the text about Friedman and Yardley. As opposed to Reviewer #1, who thought I had too much technical detail in the manuscript, Reviewer #2 dinged me for not having enough. There are a number of claims of various historical mistakes (some of which are accurate, some are not). The reviewer ends up suggesting I pretty much just throw away the entire manuscript and start afresh on a biography of just William Friedman. Friedman's only other biography was published in 1977 and most crypto historians agree that it is very flawed. But I'm not that interested in William Friedman. So, while Friedman probably does need a new biography, I'm not interested in being the person to do it. All that said, reviewer #2 did have a couple of suggestions that I will likely incorporate in my next draft of the manuscript. 

The bottom line here is that I was fascinated with both reviewer's comments. They really came at the job from two different perspectives and their reviews show that quite clearly. I've written enough papers, presentations, essays, and books to be pretty used to getting reviewed and to getting reviews that are pretty critical of my work. I like to think that I take critical reviews as opportunities for me to improve my work; they don't make me upset, and I hope they make me a better researcher and writer every time I produce a new manuscript.

I'll be moving on with a new draft of the manuscript, paying careful attention to both reviewer's comments and hoping that what I produce is better than the previous drafts. I'll likely send the new draft back to the original acquisitions editor and see if they are interested. If not, I'll move on to another publisher. Wish me luck.

UPDATE (Labor Day): This original post was written in mid-June, but I held onto it because I was still corresponding with the publisher. I set about making changes to the manuscript and by early August I had a new draft of about 125K words that incorporated nearly all the review suggestions. It really was a better book now but I thought the manuscript was really near the point that it was about as short as I could make it and still tell my story properly. I communicated with the publisher and sent them the latest complete draft the first week of August.

Crickets.

After two follow-up emails from me, I finally heard back from the acquisitions editor three and a half weeks later that the book was still too long and what was I going to do about it? 

I'm looking for another publisher.

It Turns Out I DO Have An Agenda

A few days ago I responded to one of those random surveys on Facebook. This one was something like "Cheapest gas you ever bought, where and when?" My response was "In 1969 in Houston I was paying 19.9 cents/gallon. (I’d rather pay $5/gal if it gets rid of fossil fuels.)"

A random person, whom I'll call Harry, took offense at my parenthetical remark and made a comment on my response. From Harry "...at the expense of those who have to choose between gas to get to work, or food on the table? Why do the less fortunate have to suffer for your agenda?"

Now, Harry knows nothing about me or my circumstances. The only thing he does know (I hope) is my snarky comment about getting rid of fossil fuels. Clearly he can't know if I have an "agenda" or not, but he was apparently willing to take the leap and assume I was an evil person who hopes that people who can't afford expensive gas will starve. I was offended. But as I thought about it more I realized that I DID have an agenda (although I also don't want to see people starve). 

Here's my agenda. I want my son and any possible grandchildren I may have to NOT have to live in a world that is rife with extremely destructive tornadoes, catastrophic hurricanes, constant heat waves, droughts, floods, sea-level rise, etc. That's my agenda. As far as I can tell, a side effect of my agenda is that the human race will need to wean itself off of burning fossil fuels for power as soon as possible. But, as Harry does correctly point out, there are many people who live at the edge of poverty for whom the elimination of fossil fuels - right now - will be a hardship. I get that.

I'm also only one person. My wife and I are retired. We're not rich, although we are able to live a comfortable middle-class life in a small town. We can't just throw a switch and eliminate all fossil fuels from our lives - it would be too expensive for us. So here's my plan - play the medium-term game. 

I write letters to my representatives at the state and local level encouraging them to address climate change as quickly as possible. I write to my senators, I write to the President. (Because, seriously, big changes in policies have to come from the top.) We donate what we can to a few conservationist not-for-profits, the Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund, among others. We are also, as time and expenses permit, removing things from our lives that use fossil fuels.

I signed up for a program run through our electric company that for a small fee guarantees that all our electricity comes from renewable sources, notably wind and solar. Living in the Midwest, wind is plentiful here, and there are more and more solar farms being constructed.

My old lawnmower was due to be replaced, so this year I bought an electric lawnmower. I have to mow my lawn in two stages now, on consecutive days, but it gets me out of the house. I'm planning on selling the old lawn mower, which still probably has a couple of years left in it. I understand that whoever I sell it to will be using fossil fuel to run it. But hey, that person must need a lawn mower. I also have an electric chain saw, electric hedge trimmers, and an electric weed-whacker.

Our gas stove was also due to be replaced within the next couple of years (it's 20+ years old), so we replaced it with a new electric stove instead. We also replaced our existing microwave oven with a new, more efficient, model. The old gas stove and microwave are being recycled. 

While we were at it, we had the gas line in the kitchen capped, along with one in our laundry (we replaced a gas dryer with electric many years ago), and our gas fireplace. We'll replace the gas fireplace burner with an electric one this coming fall.

That leaves only two gas appliances in our house, our forced-air gas furnace, and our gas hot water heater. The furnace is about 22 years old and we'll replace it in the next few years with a heat pump. As I said, we're not rich, so we have to space out these replacements as we can afford them. We're hoping that the prices on air-source heat pumps come down a bit and that their efficiency goes up so we don't need an auxiliary source of heat when it gets really cold. 

We replaced our gas hot-water heater just about five years ago, so it still has at least five-to-ten years left in it. When it goes, we'll replace it with a tankless electric water heater, as long as prices on those have come down.

That would leave our automobile. When we retired we went down to just a single car. That car, an SUV with a four-cylinder engine, is five years old now. We usually keep our cars at least ten years and we had our last car for 17, so it will be a while before we'll think about replacing it. When we do, I'm hoping that fully plug-in electric cars will be considerably cheaper than they are now, that they will have longer ranges, and that the plug-in network will be ubiquitous.

In the category of "I'm not perfect and I have my limits" we still have a propane gas grill, which I love and which works marvelously. I use about one 15-lb can of propane a year. I'm not planning on replacing it any time soon. 

So that's my plan for implementing my agenda - being intentional about trying to do my part in helping us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels - and how we're going to do it over the next decade or so. I don't want to preach to anyone, and I don't want to harangue people to do exactly what my wife and I are doing. I think that climate change is real, that it is an imminent and important problem that we need to solve as quickly as possible. I also think that everyone needs to do whatever it is within their means to do to help mitigate the effects of climate change. I'm hoping that what my wife and I are able to do will help.