Nijay Gupta is following up on his post that received tremendously helpful comments with a series interviewing folks that have either published or are editors for the major monograph series in New Testament. See his page dedicated to this effort. Thus far, Nijay has up interviews with Mark Goodacre (about editing LNTS), Mark Gignilliat (about publishing with LNTS), and Matthew Harmon (about publishing with BZNW).

Matt Harmon is currently in the process of making some revisions for his manuscript, She Must and Shall Go Free: Paul’s Isaianic Gospel in Galatians, which he plans to submit in mid-January 2010 and is due to publish in March 2010. Matt mentions that BZNW does not require any up-front payment from authors, but also does not give out any royalties.

In Mark Gignilliat’s interview, which is very engaging, he shares some of the toil involved with revising your dissertation. First, some helpful comments from Brevard Childs:

One of the best pieces of advice given to me was from the late Brevard Childs. While in St. Andrews presenting lectures, I asked him about dissertation publishing. His advice was, publish it, don’t fiddle with it and move on. Everyone knows what a dissertation is and to make it a magnum opus is to lose sight of what it is. Childs mentioned people who spent years polishing their dissertation for publication, and then that was it. They had given their creative energy to this project and were pooped. Again, I remembered Childs’ advice and didn’t do too much beforehand other than cleaning up.

And then, his own personal feelings about revisiting the work:

For those who have done this before, they know this is extremely difficult. You’ve spent three years plus on this research project. You’re sick of it and now you have to go back to it. It is like a dog returning to its vomit. But, publishing the dissertation is worth it, despite the onerous nature of editing your dissertation one more time.

Mark Gignilliat’s monograph version of his thesis, Paul and Isaiah’s Servants: Paul’s Theological Reading of Isaiah 40-66 in 2 Corinthians 5:14-6:10, was published in July of 2007.

Mark Goodacre estimates that LNTS rejects more than half of the submissions they receive, while qualifying the process is different for an established scholar/author than for a newly minted Ph.D. From reading Mark’s comments, it seems the LNTS series looks for good writing, which I appreciate. The word limit of 80,000 words forces authors to be succinct. Generally speaking, it also seems that you will be required to revise your Ph.D. thesis somewhat more than other top publishers (which goes without saying if your dissertation is significantly over 80,000 words).

Thanks for this interview series, Nijay! Keep it up.