EEC Update

From Brannon Ellis, Publisher of Lexham Press:

Friends of the EEC,

On behalf of Lexham Press and Faithlife, I’d like to thank all of you for your continued patronage of the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary series. When we set out to publish the EEC, as some of you will remember, Lexham didn’t yet exist as a publishing house, and our company was still named Logos Research Systems. Acquiring rights to the EEC was one of the earliest projects we took on, and has continued to be one of the biggest. Several years into this undertaking, I know a number of you are unsatisfied with what feels like the very slow pace of progress. I’ll be the first to say that none of us realized at the time just how aspirational it was for us to commit to a comprehensive technical commentary series covering the entire canon!

Nevertheless, we remain just as enthusiastic about and committed to the EEC. In fact, as we’ve matured into the Lexham Press we are today, I believe we’re in a better position than we’ve ever been to pursue the vision of the EEC with excellence. Our published volumes, and the praise they’ve received from academics and pastors alike, speak for themselves. That doesn’t mean we won’t continue to have inevitable hiccups and unforeseen snags along the way; every major commentary series covering all of Scripture has had a similarly winding journey. But it does mean that we’ll continue to do our best to keep the fundamental promises we’ve made to you as EEC readers: to deliver thoroughly scholarly commentaries that don’t compromise on evangelical convictions, so that you can confidently use these volumes week in and week out in your sermon and teaching preparation and personal research and writing.

As part of that commitment, we’re going to make a couple key changes to the way we communicate with you about developments with the series such as newly signed authors and upcoming publication news. First, we’re going to communicate with you more fully and more often. Otherwise, it can start to feel like nothing’s happening with the EEC when quite a lot is going on behind the scenes. Second, we’re going to stop providing tentative publication dates for upcoming volumes. There are simply too many variables beyond our control that can cause delays before a full draft manuscript comes in the door. For example, authors often experience writing delays and ask for submission extensions; since we’ve carefully chosen our authors (and commissioning a new volume would take even longer), we often have no choice but to grant the delay, offer all the editorial support we can, and trust that the author needing the extension is invested in delivering high-quality work. Instead, we’ll provide you with details on exactly where a particular volume is in the publishing process—whether the author is currently writing the manuscript, whether we’re currently editing it, and so on. That’ll be much more accurate and informative than merely estimating possible ship dates. Rest assured, we’ll continue to work as quickly as possible to release new volumes as we receive them from authors.

Blessings,

Brannon Ellis, PhD
Publisher, Lexham Press

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From Derek Brown, in-house Academic Editor over EEC:

Dear EEC Friends,

Many thanks for your readership and enthusiasm for the EEC series over the years. The editorial team at Lexham Press and the authors of the EEC series greatly appreciate you.

As part of our desire to share more about the progress of forthcoming EEC volumes, I want to give you a behind the scenes update for a few volumes. But first it may be helpful to give you a brief overview of the major stages of production that each of the EEC volumes goes through before it is shipped off to you. The four major stages of production:

1. In Writing: the author is researching and writing the commentary.
2. General Editing: an initial draft of the manuscript has been completed and sent to the general editors of the EEC. During this stage the general editors work closely with the authors to provide substantive feedback to help improve the commentary.
3. Manuscript Editing: after the general editors are satisfied with revisions from the author, the manuscript is handed off to the Lexham Press editorial team. They will clean up the manuscript and prepare it for publication.
4. Printing: once editorial for a manuscript is complete, we send it off to be built as a Logos edition and/or to the printer for print publication.

With this broad overview of our production workflow in mind, I’d like to tell you about a few volumes that we are very excited about. Right now our general editors are working hard on two Old Testament manuscripts: Joshua by Ralph Hawkins and Daniel by Paul Tanner. Both of these authors have labored diligently to complete their commentaries and our the EEC editorial team is excited for their work to be in your hands soon! A little closer to publication, JoAnna Hoyt’s commentary on Amos, Jonah, and Micah is just about to be sent off to the technological wizards who will turn the manuscript into a digitally-rich Logos resource for you all. JoAnna’s commentary is full of top-notch scholarship as well as rich theological insight, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I have.

I hope this update gives you greater insight and enthusiasm for the forthcoming EEC volumes. I look forward to providing another update soon.

Blessings,

Derek Brown, PhD
Academic Editor, Lexham Press

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I will be updating the EEC product page with the new status updates shortly. Derek is also working on a more detailed update that includes update on new authors for a few volumes.

Please let me know if there are any other questions.

• Where are you going to do this? Will it continue to be simply here in the forums when complaints are aired?

We'll use a combination of these forums, the Lexham or Logos blog, and email to communicate these updates. We want to be more proactive in our communication about the EEC. Our current plan is to provide a regular quarterly update about the series, even if its a small update without any major news. 

• I recognize the need for you to stop projecting dates that are off by several years, but that just adds to the feeling that there is no real plan to bring this to completion.

As both Brannon and Derek laid out, its so hard for us to project release dates for a project of this scale. We'll hold off on assigning a release date to any volume until we receive it from the author and General Editors. At that point it's placed on our production schedule and treated like any other Lexham Press book project, usually with a six-to-nine month lead time.

• There are a number of volumes who do not yet have an author identified. After this many years are you still unable to locate an evangelical scholar who would be able write those volumes, and is that an active search?

We are definitely active in our search for authors; and not just any authors, but committed evangelicals who are also well respected scholars in their respective fields. It is hard work to find the right author, but in the end we are confident that finding the right author will yield the best volume for the EEC.