Update on Book Proposal

So I heard back this morning from Specific Series Editor of #1 Publisher. It turns out that he's no longer editng the specific series for which I prepared my book proposal. That's all the news he could give me. He gave me the name and email of a contact person at Publisher, but it turns out that she's travelling with limited email for the next two weeks. The person mentioned in her auto-reply didn't know the answer to any of my questions but said she would try to find out. So, as it stands now, my email submission was pointless, and my hard copy submission is now in the mail, addressed to a series editor who no longer edits the series, and I don't even know if that specific series is going to continue to exist! Hopefully I won't have to wait the full two weeks for the contact person to return in order to get an answer. Hopefully someone else will be taking over editing the series, but at the moment I don't even know that. This came as a shock to both supervisors #1 and 3, neither of whom had any idea that series editor wasn't editing the series anymore. Supervisor #1 has close ties with series editor and there's a long track record of people for whom he puts in a word getting a book contract, but now that the series is no longer being edited by that person, I can't count on that connection to help me out, which is the most troubling part of all this. So now I sit and wait for an answer from the publisher about the status of the series. And I go back significantly deflated to those 37 more job applications. And I'll have to tackle modifying my proposal for those three other publishers a lot sooner than I thought. Ugh.

Book Proposal Progress & Job News

Whew! What a day! I finally sent off my book proposal today to number-one-make-your-career-for-life publisher! I'd been working on it for months, then after that first draft had to set it aside while I worked on an initial batch of job applications, so over a month went by between the first draft and when I actually began the revisions suggested by supervisor #3. That was a good thing, I think, because it gave me some distance and let me see more clearly what needed to be edited and how to do it. In the end, my supervisor's suggestions were perfect and I'm feeling really confident about the final product. It's a lot better than the first draft, that's for sure. I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders now that it's been sent. Sure, I'm sending it over a month later than I had planned, so I'm no longer sure if I will hear back in time for MLA interviews, but at least it's done. There are still three other publishers to whom I want to send the proposal, but this was the most important one to send it to first, and the other three all want the proposal in another format (of course!), so that will take some time and may not get done at all given how time consuming job applications are.

Speaking of which, good news! I just got an email a few minutes ago informing me that I'd made the short list of the first school to which I'd applied. It looks like a pretty decent university with a manageable teaching load; the only downside is that it's on another continent in another hemisphere! Still, making the short list is a positive sign, right, and it surely must bode well for all the other applications I'm sending off too, right? Actually, the thing that makes me the most hopeful is having completely revised my job letter, slashing and editing and restructuring, so it looks nothing like last year's and it breaks the mould in some ways.

So far, as of a few hours ago, I have submitted 12 applications. There are still 40 more on my list of positions to apply to!!! There are about 3 which I'm still debating about or which have really late deadlines after MLA, but that still leaves 37 more applications to finish and send in the next few weeks. It's exhausting! Not to mention there's still that article due by xmas that I haven't touched in the past six months, and the second book proposal too.

All in all though, after today's successes, my spirits are much higher than they were at the beginning at job season! Gawd, people talk about the dissertation as if it's a marathon, but the diss is nothing compared to being on the job market, especially when it's not the first year, or the second, or even the third...