By Michael Rodgers
World Scientific
Hardback: £50
Paperback: £25
E-book: £19
In Publishing and the Advancement of Science, retired science editor Michael Rodgers take us on an autobiographical tour of the world of science publishing, taking in textbooks, trade paperbacks and popular science books along the way. The narrative is detailed and chronological: a blow-by-blow account of Rodgers’ career at various publishing houses, with the challenges, differences of opinion and downright arguments that it takes to get a science book to press.
Rodgers was part of the revolution in popular-science publishing that started in the 1970s, and he conveys with palpable excitement the experience of discovering great authors or reading brilliant typescripts for the first time. Readers with an interest in science will recognize such titles as Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene or Peter Atkins’ Physical Chemistry, both of which Rodgers worked on. Frustratingly, he falls short of providing real insight into what makes a popular-science book great. There is a niggling sense of “I know one when I see one”, but a lack of analysis of the writing.
Rodgers’ first job in publishing – as “field editor” for Oxford University Press (OUP), starting in 1969 – had him visiting universities around the UK, commissioning academics to write books. Anecdotes about the inner workings of OUP at the time take the reader back to a charming, pre-web way of working: telephone calls and letters rather than e-mails and attachments, and responding to authors in days rather than minutes. The culture of publishing at the time is conveyed with wry humour. OUP sent memos about the proper use of the semicolon, and had a puzzlingly arcane filing system, which added to the sense of mustiness.
A section on the development of Dawkins’ seminal The Selfish Gene threw up interesting tidbits – altercations about the nature of the gene, and a discussion about what makes a good title – but I was less interested in the analysis of the US market for chemistry textbooks, or such tips as “The best time to publish a mainstream coursebook is in January, to allow maximum time for promotion.”
At times, the level of autobiographical detail dilutes Rodgers’ sense of intellectual excitement about the scientific ideas in his books. The measure of a book’s success in terms of copies sold and years in print makes publishing a commercial rather than intellectual exercise, which to some extent left me disappointed. And although Rodgers worked part time, freelance or was made redundant at various points in his career, apart from a brief section in the epilogue, he seems rather blind to the changes sweeping the publishing industry, with the advent of free online content.
Those interested in the world of publishing, with a special interest in science, will find much to like about this book. But although Rodgers provides quirky tidbits about how some famous books came to be, it falls short of telling us what makes them great.
