But that needn’t stop you from evangelizing your colleagues, who work at places like mine, which *are* in a position to gear up some experimental new publishing models, *if only faculty would sign on*. There is only so much I can do, not least because faculty look down their pointed little noses at mere librarians. They need to hear it from YOU, because YOU have been tattooed into the tribe.

As for editing classes, the USDA Graduate School offers some pretty good ones by correspondence.

But you mention “business models that appropriately handle first-copy costs” and then advocate for “teaming with libraries to create publishing arms that [...] aren’t expected to pay for themselves,” and my first impulse is to ask: where are those libraries? You know I’m finishing up at an institution in a state that consistently ranks 48th or 49th in public funding for higher education, and the library at our flagship campus recently had its budget slashed by more than 15 percent — so you can figure how many journal subscriptions got cancelled, et cetera, and I hope you’ll hear where I’m coming from when I ask, “What business model?”

As a writing teacher, I very much want to equip students with at least basic copyediting skills (in addition to everything else we do), and — in the teacher-training roles I’ve held and hope to continue to hold — I also want to make sure that other teachers have those skills, as well. In fact, I’d like to ask you, for my own sake: what would you say are the most important things would-be editors need to know about text artisanry, and are there sources to which you would direct them for self-education?

And as someone who takes a Marxian perspective on economic concerns in higher education, I’ll ask: what are some of the better business models you’ve seen?

I’ve seen their manuscripts. I know better.

Copyediting is a commodity as it is, done by freelancers. What we need are business models that appropriately handle first-copy costs. Everything else is gravy.

I’m for teaming with libraries to create publishing arms that (unlike uni presses) aren’t expected to pay for themselves — but you knew I’d say that.

And I agree about copyediting, but I wonder where that places the exigency for action: do we say, “Well, academics can’t copyedit, so leave it to the professionals embedded in the cost structures of conventional publishing” — or do we say, “Well, as academics, and especially as writing teachers, maybe we need to learn how to copyedit better, and get ourselves some of that professional expertise”? I think I know what many writing teachers, in our pride, might say (though I’ve seen some careless pieces published — one in an online journal with the name of the journal misspelled in the Works Cited); what would the text artisans say?

My only quibble with his suggested solutions is that most academics can’t copyedit worth a damn. It’s harder than it looks! Text artisanry needs to be done by text artisans.