Publishing
Acknowledgements are doing more work than they used to, whether we admit it or not. A brief thank-you list is one thing. A final page that quietly tells the reader how to read the book, who helped shape it, and what sort of labour stayed offstage is another.
I’m not sure the answer is always to make them longer. Sometimes brevity is cleaner. Sometimes the spare version is the honest one. But the last pages do matter. They can leave the book feeling sealed, or open a small door onto the making of it. Which is useful, until it starts pretending to be compulsory.
I’m not sure the answer is always to make them longer. Sometimes brevity is cleaner. Sometimes the spare version is the honest one. But the last pages do matter. They can leave the book feeling sealed, or open a small door onto the making of it. Which is useful, until it starts pretending to be compulsory.
The danger is when acknowledgements start doing the job of paratext and apology at once. A reader can feel when the book is trying to manage reception from the back page. I’d rather they stayed a little awkward and specific. If there’s a lot to say about labour, say it elsewhere. The last page should still feel like the book has stopped, not started explaining itself.