Ignore UK Publishers and Self Publish?

 

 I have just been told by a publisher that they will not be taking on the Canids book. Here is what happened.

I sent a summary of the book, etc. to several publishers and one responded immediately and said they would like to see both the Canid and Felid Mss. There was no way that I would send two full manuscripts to a publisher in one go even if they are in the "Top 19" wildlife publishers. So I sent a pdf of the Canids book.  On Friday (bearing in mind that this has been a bank holiday weekend in the UK) I was told that the person who contacted me had read the book and wanted to forward it to a peer reviewer. As no one else has carried out this unique research over 40+ years I wondered who was going to peer review? But I said okay.

First thing this morning the publisher involved contacted me to state that "There’s a lot of interesting material, but I don’t feel it’s something that would work for us. I’d suggest trying to add more structure to each chapter." Now each section is divided up to deal with a specific aspect of the subject of the MS so how can it be more structured? Also who was the "speed reader" that went through over 360pp and checked the details and sources (as you might expect a peer reviewer to do) and gave a report back in two days?

It could have been a little time wasting exercise by this publisher but I suspect that once it was seen that the work overturned the established dogma on canids and particularly foxes in the UK they baulked. Panicked? Perhaps some of their authors were already selling books that would now look not so well researched.

We also have to remember a lot of people in publishing houses such as directors are associated with hunts or on good terms with them.  The UK is not, I feel, a country willing to overturn established dogma and it may be that the book will have to be self published (as the original Red Paper was in 2010) again.

There is 40+ years of research in both the books and I have consulted contemporary documents that others can check and it shows the indisputable facts. I actually do not have an ego to offend here because there is no real place for that in research. 

It is disappointing that British publishers have no gumption or spine to actual publish unique research -and it is not only me saying this as it crosses the board- trash and dogma are easy to push and sell.

For this reason if I cannot get a publisher seriously interested then in 2023 I will have to self publish.