Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Thomas P.M. Barnett is a wee bit nervous about the impending release of his book:
I am not feeling very optimistic about the book's reception. I just don't sense any buzz. Maybe that's because I'm living in Indiana under a foot and a half of snow, but it does haunt me. Far more than passing kidney stones, I feel like waiting on a book release is like a woman waiting for labor--mostly it's dread and regret and the inability to get a decent night's sleep.
I know that's being self-absorbed, but--again--that's why it's like heading toward labor: there is this all-consuming sense of an onrush of something either very good or very bad and you have a hard time sensing the possibility of anything in between those two extremes.
As someone who is also waiting on a book to come out, I sympathize with Barnett's pain. I suspect, however, that his agita is actually worse than a garden-variety book author.
This has to do with the nature of book publishing and the state of the world. When publishing a book, all international relations authors not named Bob Woodward must endure a 3-12 month window during which the book is copyedited, typeset, and then published. During this period, an author can make limited changes to the text -- but nothing significant.
This gap doesn't matter all that much -- unless, of course, one is writing about world politics in a time of flux. In that case, authors feel like a hostage to current events. And because of the financial crisis, I've read an awful lot of first chapters recently that seemed out of date the moment they were published.
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