On Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:36:12 -0500 Murray Pomerance wrote: > There are plenty of civil ways to reject a manuscript, and we are giving > up civility, I fear. I know of someone who did pretty well on this. He was asked to advise on a book proposal by a major academic publisher and concluded that it was "fucking abysmal". These sentiments were set out (including the quoted phrase) in an e-mail to the commissioning editor. Unfortunately, the address he typed in was that of the proposal's author... Trying to broaden this thread a little, are there any doctoral students in film studies on this list who, like myself, are experiencing intense frustration and lack of success in getting anything published? I submitted a paper to Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television (about newsreels in post-war Britain) last March; EIGHT MONTHS later the editor had failed to get back to me with readers' reports, despite a succession of e-mails telling me that action was imminent. In the end the head of postgraduate research here at Exeter advised me that this behaviour was completely unprofessional (here here) and that I should withdraw the paper. She further advised that I should not mess around trying to get things into journals, but complete the thesis and aim for a book contract. I am rather sceptical about that: let's face it, 400 pages on non-fiction cinema in Britain during the period of Attlee's government is not exactly going to have OUP or the British Film Institute hammering at my door. I am wondering if this is a specifically British problem. We don't have a established forum for 'younger' academics to get into first-time print (in the same way that 'Cinema Journal' operates in the US) and the openings for pieces on film history and technology especially are severely limited. I guess I burnt some boats with HJFRTV as there is no other obvious place for my paper to go. About the only other things are 'Screen' and 'Sight and Sound': you have to be an established academic of considerable stature to get at the former, and have to be able to write for a semi-academic audience in the latter. Is there anyone else on this list who has had similar experiences, and if so, how did they deal with them? Many thanks, Leo Enticknap University of Exeter, UK ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama.