Posthumous Publication and Exemplary Editorial Stewardship
We provide rigorous and compassion-driven services for the posthumous publication of scholarly and literary works (Nachlässe). This includes the diligent appraisal of drafts (whether digital or handwritten), audio interviews in need of transcription, and collected lecture notes. We offer clear advice and strategy on the most propitious routes to both swift publication and enduring legacy.
As required, we will organise, edit, and coordinate with our extensive network of academic commissioning editors (from Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, to Yale University Press) to ensure the decedent’s literary works are published quickly and faithfully. As part of this process, we will also organise and collect any copyright permissions. Our team is adept at preparing professional proposals, pitching works to appropriate university presses, trade outlets, and/or journals. We then negotiate contracts and oversee the full production process, ensuring that materials reach publication in the form of memorial editions, digital archives, or other formats that honour the decedent’s authorial will and testament.
Literary estate management
Our support furthermore extends to the wider management of literary estates. We map intellectual property rights, including moral rights, coordinating closely with executors and trustees to ensure clarity and legal soundness. Where appropriate, we help estates formulate policies governing licensing, quotations, translations, and derivative works. We also advise on and arrange the secure deposit of materials with universities, national repositories, and specialist collections, ensuring that a scholar or author’s intellectual output is safeguarded for future generations.
Legacy-building initiatives
Beyond publication and estate administration, we also assist in planning and implementing initiatives that serve to promote living authors’ academic or literary influence. We work with many academics into late age to ensure their works are published as intended. In so doing, we typically (and gladly) establish deep connections with family members of senior academics to ensure that manuscripts-in-progress make it to publication, facilitated and in liaison with those holding the power of attorney with regard to intellectual property.
Our work to this end has included the creation of book prizes, essay competitions, scholarly bequests (e.g., studentships at the decedent’s institution), lecture series, fellowships, and research groups named and themed in the author’s honour.
How we work
From the word ‘go’, our process is collaborative and transparent. When approached by a literary or academic executor, we immediately seek to understand their aims, obligations, and expectations. We then conduct a legacy review, evaluating both published and unpublished materials, before providing a menu of options outlining possible ways to honour the decedent’s legacy.
The scope of engagement is entirely flexible: executors may request help with a single manuscript or commission a multi-year programme of literary estate management. Once a plan is agreed, we execute it carefully, reporting regularly and coordinating approvals at every stage.
Who we support
Our services are designed to serve a wide range of stakeholders. We have, for example, worked with literary executors of late Oxford and Cambridge academics, ensuring their unpublished works were brought to light in liaison with the respective faculties with whom the emeriti retained research funds from which their executors could draw to enable posthumous publication.
We assist literary and academic executors who require expert publishing guidance, families and trustees who wish to honour and preserve the work of a loved one, universities and foundations administering bequests and archives, and publishers or agents in need of specialist editorial or rights management support. In each case, we adapt our approach to the needs of the estate, its custodians, and undoubtedly with an eye to the estate’s beneficiaries.
Why Lex Academic
Lex Academic is uniquely positioned to provide these services. Our highly experienced team is spearheaded by published academics with extensive experience commissioning and organising Festschriften and thereafter preemptive management of academic literary estates. We combine scholarly rigour with an unparalleled level of client commitment and care. We bring a wealth of knowledge across academic publishing. Our project managers and editors offer field-specific expertise, with privileged access to elite institutions (including their archives), publishing networks that span university presses, journals, and trade houses. We also bring a high degree of relevant legal literacy thanks to our hard-won experience with copyright law.
The scope of our work is both broad and entirely bespoke. For example, we may guide an unfinished monograph through to publication with a university press, editing it into a critical edition that faithfully reflects the author’s notes and intentions. We might also design and market a named book prize, complete with governance and endowment structures, or establish a memorial research network and lecture series to keep a scholar’s intellectual legacy alive and relevant.
Other engagements have involved cataloguing a Nachlass for deposit in a special collections library or negotiating translation rights and foreign editions in collaboration with agents.
Ethics and fees
Ethical considerations lie at the core of everything we do. We insist that authorial integrity is paramount: no work is brought to publication unless it is defensible both scholarly and ethically, and all necessary permissions are secured. We also operate under strict principles of confidentiality, handling all materials with the highest levels of discretion and security. In addition, we remain sensitive to potential conflicts between families, executors, agents, and institutions. We work to clarify and respect roles from the outset.
Since every literary estate is unique, our fees are scoped individually. Typically, an engagement begins with a fixed-fee phase covering the review and production of a legacy roadmap. Success-based components may then apply for the placement of works, licensing, or related outcomes. This flexible model ensures both clarity and fairness, while aligning our incentives with the successful realisation of an author’s legacy.
Get in touch
To enquire about our academic legacy services, please email editor@lexacademic.com or complete our contact form. Your enquiry will be treated with the utmost confidence and we endeavour to reply within 24 hours.
Can we help with anything else?
We are famous for purveying extraordinary academic proofreading, copy-editing, and developmental editing. Our impeccable author services include correcting all typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors. Where desired, we can make stylistic and substantive changes to your work that promise a powerful first impression with major publishers. Our authors have published with all of the top-tier publishing houses, including Bloomsbury, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Penguin, Peter Lang, Princeton University Press, and Routledge.
