If anyone had asked me in mid-1967 when I joined Princeton University Press as a fledgling copyeditor whether my training in philosophy at Princeton and Columbia would likely contribute much to my career, I would have said: "Probably not." But nearly thirty years later, having reached the pinnacle of my profession as director of the press at Penn State (where I have been since mid-1989), I can now look back on those intervening years and reach quite the opposite conclusion: "Decidedly so" is the answer I would now give to the same question if asked of me today retrospectively. Let me explain why by showing how philosophy helped me during each stage of my career.

Good copyediting requires a special sensitivity to language and skill in using it. My education in philosophy not only taught me to be a careful writer myself but gave me the ability to help others write more clearly and precisely. Philosophy teaches one to be attuned to nuances of meaning, and it also provides instruction in the art of constructing cogent arguments, by organizing thoughts thematically and using evidence logically to support theses put forward. This kind of training proved invaluable to me during the three years I worked principally as a copyeditor, when I went through manuscripts line by line trying to help authors make the meanings of their statements as clear as possible and the organization of their arguments structurally and logically sound.

As I moved into acquiring manuscripts in 1969, these same skills continued to serve me well, but were applied at a different level of analysis -- more at the macro than the micro level. Acquiring editors need to make quick but reliable assessments of the merits of manuscripts, in order to judge whether they would likely contribute significantly to the advancement of scholarship and to the development of the press's list and whether they are therefore worth subjecting to further scrutiny by experts in the field. The ability to detect carelessness in the use of language to convey meaning and to construct arguments enabled me to make such preliminary judgments about manuscripts no matter what their specific subject matter might be. And as acquiring editors usually need to cover more fields than they can be reasonably expected to have any special academic expertise in themselves, this generalized capacity helped me become an efficient editorial "gatekeeper."

Princeton University Press, having no other editors on its staff at the time with any special knowledge of philosophy, also gave me the opportunity to exercise my training in the field more directly. Even while still a copyeditor, I was permitted to screen manuscripts submitted by philosophers and recommend what action should be taken on them. When I succeeded the acquiring editor who was responsible for the social sciences, I was allowed to start actively developing a list in philosophy, which theretofore had not been a strength at that press. One early opportunity I had to make a contribution came from my membership in the Society of Philosophy and Public Policy, which had been established in May 1969. From discussions in that group, led by Marshall Cohen and Tom Nagel, arose the suggestion to found a new journal, and I jumped at the chance to help get Philosophy and Public Affairs launched at Princeton University Press in 1971. Many other successes followed, most notably perhaps the publication in 1979 of Richard Rorty's now classic Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, for which I had the special pleasure of being the sponsoring editor, having earlier been a student of Rorty (who was one of two readers of my Princeton senior thesis on Sartre's ethics).

While advancing through various administrative positions at Princeton -- to Assistant Director in 1977 and then Editor-in-Chief in 1985 -- I continued to work as an acquiring editor, as I do today even while being director of a press. Thus these skills of manuscript analysis have served me in good stead throughout my entire career. For a much more detailed discussion of what is involved in this kind of job in scholarly publishing, readers may want to consult my essay entitled "Listbuilding at University Presses" in Editors as Gatekeepers, edited by Rita J. Simon and James F. Fyfe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), pages 209-258.

Being director of a press necessarily broadens one's horizons to make one more acutely conscious of how the business of scholarly publishing fits into the wider worlds both of higher education and of the general publishing industry. Planning the future of one's own press requires thinking systematically, with awareness of the complex interconnections and conflicts between the demands of the tenure-and-promotion process within universities, which presses are inevitably entangled with, and the demands of the marketplace, which presses must heed if they are to survive as fully or partially self- supporting enterprises. Training in philosophy gives one this wider vision and an appreciation for systemic complexity.

Copyright law, which undergirds all publishing, is a good example of one application of systematic thought. The debates raging now over how "fair use" should apply in our new era of electronic communications show well how errors can easily be made by focusing too narrowly on one element of the system of scholarly communication and being oblivious to the bigger picture. This is a subject in which I early took special interest, becoming a member in the early 1970s of the copyright committees of two publishing trade associations (one of which I now chair) and later a member of the board of directors of the Copyright Clearance Center, which was established in 1978 when the Copyright Act of 1976 went into effect. Copyright has been justly called "the metaphysics of the law." What better training, then, could one have to develop some expertise in it than philosophy?

Publishing, I conclude after more than a quarter-century in the business, offers a hospitable environment for philosophers, whose skills can find ready application perhaps especially in editorial departments. For anyone interested in exploring a career in this profession, I would highly recommend attending one of the summer institutes that offer an intensive exposure to the business of publishing, those at the University of Denver and at Radcliffe being the best by common acclaim. I can't say that taking such a course is absolutely necessary -- as I just leapt into the business myself without any such prior introduction -- but the networking that comes through these institutions can only help newcomers get their feet in the door, which is not always an easy task as there are always many more applicants than there are jobs available.