Posted by Eugene Volokh:
A Testimonial:
Here's an e-mail I got not long ago:
Prof. Volokh,
I ordered Academic Legal Writing over the summer and, yes, it
really did increase my penis length by 3 inches . . .
Uh, whoops, that's not right. Look, it didn't even increase my penis
length, no matter how many times I re-proofread it. Ah, here's the
right e-mail:
Prof. Volokh,
I ordered Academic Legal Writing over the summer and read it twice
just before starting my 1L year at the University of South
Carolina. Our legal writing grades were posted this morning; I
received an A. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that your
book is what made the difference. Thanks!
Todd Kincannon
These are the e-mails authors love to see, and to brag about.
Actually, I must confess that the book isn't aimed mainly at helping
people with their first-year legal writing papers. The main value that
it adds -- the fields in which it's most novel and nonobvious, to
borrow a couple of criteria from the book itself -- comes in advising
people how to write student articles, how to succeed in law review
write-on competitions, and how to write seminar papers. The "Writing"
chapter of my book applies to a wide range of legal writing, but quite
a few other legal writing books have lots of good writing tips.
Nonetheless, it sounds like my correspondent -- who is not tied to me
by bonds of blood, preexisting affection, or kickback -- did get
something useful out of the book. He probably got similar advice from
the book assigned for his first-year writing class, but sometimes
reading something in two places, presented in two different ways, can
open one's eyes in a way that reading it in one place won't. In any
case, I'm delighted that he found it helpful, and I hope that others
can, too. Again, the Second Edition of the book is now available
[1]from amazon.com and [2]from me.
Incidentally, while all authors like royalties, these surely aren't a
major source of income for me. Young Benjamin won't be going too
college on the royalties from this book.
My main reason for relentlessly plugging this isn't the money, but the
time: I spent many months writing the book, editing it, proofreading
it, and thinking about it. I put in a lot of ideas that I hope are
good and useful ones. I'd like to see as many people as possible read
and use those ideas. Someone once asked me whether writing is hard.
Not terribly hard, I said -- the really hard people is getting people
to read. That's why I figure I need to spend time promoting my works
(whether sold for money or distributed for free) as well as producing
them. Hope I haven't gotten on my readers' nerves too much . . . .
References
1.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/158778792X/qid=1103761662/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-0987265-2945606?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_12_14.shtml#1103309802
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