Reimagining Academic Editorial Procedure for Creative Novel Publishing: Press of Rebellious Origins and Imagination’s Manuscript Process

Reimagining Academic Editorial Procedure for Creative Novel Publishing: Press of Rebellious Origins and Imagination’s Manuscript Process

My close examination of manuscripting processes based on common ethical practices outlined in “The Handbook of Journal Publishing” (Sally Morris, et al.) explores how academic publishing pipelines are established and the functionality of each stage. This project further inspects internal editorial systems within journals or publishing houses throughout a manuscript’s processing, and how these frameworks can appear through applied analysis, with both text and flowcharts for each stage. “Press of Rebellious Origins and Imagination’s Manuscript Process” is a mock in-house guidebook based on the pre-existing journal of POROI (Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa and the University of South Florida). My version of POROI has translated the original academic’s focus into a fiction novel publishing while still following the five main stages of editing Morris’ (et al.) paper: financial and publishing overview, initial screening, detailed editing and revisions, ethics and legalities, and design and cataloging. It has revealed overlap in real editorial workflows and that the process is not about perfect procedure, but rather the flexible collaboration that comes with such an interconnected system. The resulting guidebook and holistic editorial checklist demonstrate the elaboration and creativity of ethical review and management to transform a draft manuscript into a ready-to-publish novel.