My experience with Walter de Gruyter

Fellow blogger John Anderson asked me about my experience with WdG as far as publishing my dissertation as a monograph. While I will address John’s questions about the length of the process, I will ask make some general comments.

First, I went with WdG because it is a world-class publisher and the BZNW series is excellent. I appreciate that they have monographs in both German and English and that the editors are well-respected (including James DG Dunn). On a more superficial note, I really like the covers – both material and color-scheme.

Several people brought WdG to my attention, including Loren Stuckenbruck and Dunn. Another factor was timing – I wanted my dissertation published rather quickly so I wanted a publisher (1) with a quick turnaround time for assessing its suitability for publication and (2) that usually requires few changes to the text (i.e. they will publish it more or less “as is”). WdG and Mohr Siebeck both tend to fit that bill.

I submitted it only a few weeks after my viva – perhaps about a month after my viva. I took that time to make the suggested corrections from my examiners – some of them involving major re-writing. The decision took about 6 weeks. I had to make about 30-40 corrections to phrasing, typos, etc… That process took only a few days. The major work is that WdG requires the author to typeset the manuscript – to make a camera-ready copy. This involves major re-formatting in WORD and basically making it look like what they will eventually print out.

They asked me how long this process would take. I didn’t know, but I gave myself plenty of time – about 9 months. I turned it in at about 8 months and 2 weeks. I spent probably 150-200 hours on the typesetting, but much of that time was spent figuring out how to use some of the advanced formatting features of WORD.

I am pleased with my relationship with WdG and they were very kind and patient throughout the process.  They offered to typeset the manuscript for me for a fee (something like $1000-1500, but in the process of typesetting I caught all kinds of mistakes and poor wording, so it worked out for the best. Plus, I don’t have that kind of money to spend on something I could do myself.

Here is a quick snapshot of the timeline

July 20, 2009: defense of thesis

August 20, 2009: submit pdf file of thesis to WdG

October 30, 2009: acceptance into BZNW

June 1, 2010: final submission of pdf camera-ready copy

July 15, 2010: projected publication date

July 16, 2010: take a long nap