Handbook for Academic Authors, Fifth Edition

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Fifth Edition

Whether you are a graduate student seeking to publish your

ﬁrst article, a new Ph.D. revising your dissertation for pub-

lication, or an experienced author working on a new mono-

graph, textbook, or digital publication, Handbook for Academic

Authors provides reliable, concise advice about selecting the

best publisher for your work, maintaining an optimal rela-

tionship with your publisher, submitting manuscripts to book

and journal publishers, working with editors, navigating the

production process, and helping to market your book. It also

offers information about illustrations, indexes, permissions,

and contracts and includes chapters on revising dissertations

and the ﬁnancial aspects of publishing. The book covers not

only scholarly monographs but also textbooks, anthologies,

volumes with many contributors, and trade books. This ﬁfth

edition has been revised and updated to align with new tech-

nological and ﬁnancial realities, taking into account the impact

of digital technology and the changes it has made in authorship

and publishing.

Beth Luey is the founding director emerita of the Scholarly

Publishing Program at Arizona State University and has edited

books for many university presses and textbook publishers.

She has been the editor of Documentary Editing and Publishing

Research Quarterly and is a past president of the Association

for Documentary Editing and the Society for the History of

Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. She has won numerous

teaching awards, as well as the Lyman Butterﬁeld Award from

the Association for Documentary Editing, and she has pub-

lished articles in Book History, Documentary Editing, Publishing

Research Quarterly, and the Journal of Scholarly Publishing.She

now lives on the south coast of Massachusetts and conducts

faculty development workshops throughout the United States.

For Mike and Nora, still

Handbook

for

Academic Authors

Fifth Edition

BETH LUEY

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,

São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

First published in print format

ISBN-13 978-0-521-19498-3

ISBN-13 978-0-521-14409-4

ISBN-13 978-0-511-64187-9

2009

Information on this title: www.cambrid

e.or

/9780521194983

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the

provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part

may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy

of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,

and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,

accurate or appropriate.

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

erback

eBook

(

NetLibrar

Hardback

Contents

Illustrations page viii

Preface to the Fifth Edition ix

Preface to the Fourth Edition xi

Preface to the Third Edition xiii

Preface to the Second Edition xv

Preface to the First Edition xvii

Chapter 1 The Publishing Partnership 1

Publishing What You Write: How to Use This Book 2

The Scholar’s Bookshelf 4

The Publishing Partnership 5

Chapter 2 Journal Articles 9

Writing Well 10

Selecting a Journal 13

Preparing the Manuscript 18

Refereeing 20

Yo u ’ v e G o t M a i l 23

Revising Oral Presentations 25

Money 27

Book Reviews 30

Chapter 3 Revising a Dissertation 33

Purpose and Audience 34

Revising 37

Articles 42

A Word of Encouragement 44

Chapter 4 Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book 45

Types of Book Publishers 45

Choosing a Publisher 56

Agents and Editorial Consultants 59

Submitting the Manuscript 61

Contents

Refereeing 62

Getting a Prompt Answer 65

Revisions 66

Chapter 5 Working with Your Publisher 68

The Contract 68

Subventions 91

Seeking Grants 94

Working with an Editor 96

Manuscript to Bound Book 101

The Ad in The New York Times 102

After Publication 104

Chapter 6 Multiauthor Books and Anthologies 107

Collections of Original Essays 108

Anthologies and Readers 118

Chapter 7 Finding a Publisher for the College Textbook 123

The College Textbook 123

Choosing a Publisher 126

Chapter 8 Working with Your Textbook Publisher 133

Writing a Textbook 134

Reviews and Rewriting 137

Working with Your Editors 142

Supplementary Materials 145

Marketing 146

Revised Editions 147

Chapter 9 Books for General Readers 150

Economic Realism 151

Finding a Literary Agent 152

Writing for General Readers 155

Finding a Publisher for the Trade Book 165

Editing and Design 168

Marketing 170

Are You Ready for This? 172

Chapter 10 The Mechanics of Authorship 173

Manuscript Preparation 173

Illustrations 188

Permissions 196

Proofreading 200

Indexing 203

Chapter 11 Costs and Prices 207

Costs 208

Prices 218

Why Prices Vary 223

Contents

Subtracting Paper and Ink 226

Paperback and Reprint Editions 228

Textbooks 230

Trade Books 232

Financial Partnership 235

Chapter 12 Born Digital 237

Finding a Publisher for Digital Work 240

Working with a Digital Publisher 242

Funding and Evaluation 243

To Sell or Not to Sell 245

Marketing and Maintenance 246

Thinking Big 248

Bibliography 251

Index 267

vii

Illustrations

1. Typical questions for manuscript readers page 64

2. Electronic manuscript questionnaire 175

3. Art inventory form 194

viii

Preface to the Fifth Edition

Earlier editions of this book beneﬁted from conversations with

editors and publishers. This edition has beneﬁted from con-

versations with authors and aspiring authors as well. For the

past ﬁve years, I have visited college and university campuses,

conducting publishing workshops for faculty members and

doctoral students. Looking at twenty-ﬁrst-century publishing

from their point of view has led me to rewrite completely the

chapter on revising dissertations and to alter many other sec-

tions of the book.

The normalization of digital technology in research, writing,

and publishing has allowed me to simplify the instructions for

manuscript preparation and to explore more systematically

new ways of exploiting that technology. Changes in the eco-

nomics of publishing and bookselling have led me to update

the chapter on costs and prices.

Working closely with young scholars has beneﬁted me per-

sonally as well, by breaking down the cynicism about academe

that tends to build up over thirty years of life in academic

bureaucracy. I hope that this edition reﬂects the enthusiasm

and optimism that I have seen among young colleagues and

that I myself have regained.

Preface to the Fourth Edition

This edition brings advice to authors fully into the age of the

Internet, the World Wide Web, and the electronic book and

journal. Although many technological, economic, and profes-

sional issues about electronic publishing remain unresolved,

confusion is beginning to give way to clarity. The last chapter

of this book, which is entirely new, is meant to describe current

practices and, perhaps more important, to encourage authors

to explore technology not only as a way of communicating

knowledge but also as a way of generating it.

The rest of the book brings readers up to date on the

processes of ﬁnding a publisher, producing journal articles,

working with journal and book publishers, and preparing a

manuscript. I have also evaluated the economic impact of elec-

tronic publishing.

In preparing this edition, I have beneﬁted from discussions

with book and journal editors, documentary and textual edi-

tors, historians of the book, and my colleagues and students at

Arizona State University. Contemplating the possible “death

of the book” has clariﬁed the value of print and the meaning

of books and reading in our lives. The medium is not the mes-

sage, but it shapes the message and the impact of its delivery.

I hope this edition will help authors convey their messages

effectively by choosing the appropriate media and using them

wisely.

Preface to the Third Edition

The ﬁve years since the second edition of this book appeared

have witnessed economic and technological changes in schol-

arly publishing and in the academic world. The nation’s eco-

nomic recovery has not been reﬂected in the budgets of colleges

and universities. The anticipated improvement in the market

for Ph.D.’s has not occurred, and academic jobs remain scarce.

Library book budgets have shrunk, reducing the sales of schol-

arly publishers. University press budgets have suffered along

with those of academic departments, and presses are more than

ever tightening their belts and seeking new markets. There are

some brighter spots, however. Personal computers have made

it easier for authors to prepare manuscripts and cheaper for

publishers to manufacture them. Electronic networks and CD-

ROM technology have created new products and more efﬁcient

distribution methods. The technology is young, and neither

publishers nor authors are entirely comfortable with it, but it

is promising. For example, although university presses are not

putting their books online, you will ﬁnd their catalogs on the

Internet.

For the academic author, these changes mean that publica-

tion is more important than ever, more difﬁcult than it has

been, and likely to take new forms. In this edition, I have tried

to help authors adjust to this new climate by providing current

information on both the state of new technologies and their

meaning to authors. I have revised Chapter 12 [11 in this edi-

tion] to reﬂect the changing costs associated with reduced print

runs. Most important, I have added a chapter on writing for

xiii

Preface to the Third Edition

general readers. I did so not only because scholarly publishers

are eagerly expanding into this market, but because the under-

standing of scholarship that such books generate may be the

best way to maintain and extend public support of education

and research.

xiv

Preface to the Second Edition

Soon after the ﬁrst edition of this book appeared, it became

clear that publishing practices were changing so rapidly that I

needed to begin thinking about a new edition. The most sig-

niﬁcant change has been in the expanded use of computers

for composition and desktop typesetting. A clear majority of

academic authors write with computers, and the practice of

typesetting from authors’ disks has moved beyond the exper-

imental stage.

This edition therefore has a new chapter, Chapter 10

[Chapter 11 in the third edition and Chapter 12 in the fourth

and ﬁfth editions], about using the computer and about elec-

tronic publishing: databases, CD-ROMs, and the like.

Another change has occurred in the structure of the pub-

lishing industry, which has become increasingly global. Com-

mercial scholarly publishing has a greater presence in the

United States because of the expansion of British and Euro-

pean houses into the U.S. market both through the opening of

new ofﬁces and by the acquisition of U.S. ﬁrms. Although the

long-term implications of internationalization remain unclear,

it seems important to provide more information about com-

mercial scholarly publishing and about the practices of transat-

lantic publishers. You will ﬁnd most of this information in

Chapter 4, but it appears throughout the book wherever it is

relevant.

My own experience has expanded over the past three years

to include editing the journal Book Research Quarterly,re-

titled Publishing Research Quarterly in 1991. As a result I have

Preface to the Second Edition

expanded Chapter 2 to add what I have learned. I am also

working on a book about grants for publication, and I have

provided an introduction to that subject in Chapter 5 and in

the appendix [omitted in subsequent editions]. I have updated

the bibliography and incorporated some of the suggestions

made by reviewers of the ﬁrst edition, to whom I am grateful.

xvi

Preface to the First Edition

In 1980, after ten years as an editor of scholarly books and

textbooks, I began teaching scholarly editing and publishing. I

soon learned that my faculty colleagues regarded me as a win-

dow onto a mysterious and often frustrating publishing world.

They asked my advice on questions ranging from semicolons

to royalties, from en dashes to remainders. At the same time,

they informed me of a number of publishers’ practices – many

admirable, some reprehensible – that I had never encountered.

As a teacher, I met daily with students who were curious

about aspects of publishing that I had avoided. I have little

artistic ability, for example, and had always regarded book

design as magic. That explanation was clearly inadequate for

bright, curious graduate students. My expertise in the dollars-

and-cents area of publishing was equally sad; to correct my

deﬁciencies, I even went so far as to take an accounting course

so that I could use the proper terms in explicating the ﬁnancial

arcana.

In 1982 I began to worry that my theoretical knowledge,

though apparently sound, was untested. Besides, I had some

ideas for books that needed to be written. I formed a small

publishing company and, with the assistance of my husband

on legal and ﬁnancial matters, learned ﬁrsthand the realities

of what I was teaching. There is no better way to learn the

economics of publishing than to invest your own money. Nor

is there any better motivation to improve your marketing skills

than to have your closets taken over by unsold books.

xvii

Preface to the First Edition

Having been editor, indexer, publisher, production manager,

marketing manager, and shipping clerk, I decided it was time

to try being an author. The result is this book. I have tried

to test my advice by following it, and so far it has worked.

I have also discovered that I am not immune to authorial

paranoia and irrationality. Although Colin Day, my editor at

Cambridge, diligently kept me informed of the manuscript’s

progress, I was periodically convinced that it had been sucked

into a black hole. And although the copyediting was tactful,

the green deletion of every little comma nevertheless caused a

twinge of psychic pain. I have added empathy to my profes-

sional skills.

Finally, a word about this book and Cambridge University

Press. Relations between author and publisher are always com-

plex. They are doubly so when the book is about publishing.

This book is not an ofﬁcial Cambridge guide for authors. It

describes the general range of publishing practices, not all

of which the Press follows. I sent a prospectus to a dozen

presses. I submitted the completed manuscript to Cambridge

and received a contract four months later. Only after acceptance

did they offer generous assistance and suggestions. More than

a half-dozen people in the New York and Cambridge ofﬁces

commented in detail on the manuscript, but at no time did

anyone attempt to dictate content. I incorporated their sugges-

tions happily – when I agreed with them. But the ideas and

opinions in this book are my own.

I am grateful to many employers, colleagues, and friends in

scholarly publishing who have shared their ideas, pleasures,

and frustrations, especially Margot Barbour, John Bergez,

Georges Borchardt, Louise Craft, Fred Hetzel, Naomi Pascal,

Elizabeth Shaw, and Phyllis Steckler. My colleagues at Arizona

State University have helped me understand authors’ prob-

lems and puzzlements.

I must especially thank Brian Gratton, who not only com-

mented extensively on several chapters but also convinced

me to learn to use a computer so that I could ﬁnish the book

promptly. I have edited books for more than a hundred authors,

and I have learned something from each of them. I must

xviii

Preface to the First Edition

thank my students, who have taught me a great deal. Finally,

Cambridge University Press – personiﬁed in Colin Day, Rhona

Johnson, Brigitte Lehner, and Christopher Scarles – has been

prompt, courteous, helpful, and enthusiastic: an exemplary

publisher.

xix

Chapter 1

The Publishing Partnership

I promise to do all I can to make you a great publisher even as

I expect you to do all you can to make me a great author.

Robert Frost to Alfred Harcourt

Faculty members are always writing or talking about writing

and of necessity are always thinking about publishing. Each

has an article nearly ﬁnished, about to be started, or stuck

somewhere in the middle. Many have a book manuscript under

way or under consideration at a press. And some are complain-

ing, half-sincerely, about the tedium of reading page proofs.

Although writing and publishing are discrete processes, they

are interdependent. Why write if no one will publish? And

what is there to publish if no one writes?

Despite this interdependence, academic authors and pub-

lishers of scholarly books and journals do not always under-

stand each other very well, and they sometimes ﬁnd it difﬁcult

to coexist peacefully. Publishers and journal editors lose sight

of the tremendous pressure to publish that is exerted on schol-

ars, particularly young, untenured scholars. Authors, for their

part, are guilty of not understanding either how publishing

works or how to use the system to their advantage.

Publishers’ indifference to the scholar’s plight, although per-

haps regrettable, does serve a purpose. The editor considering

a manuscript who remains conscious at every moment that

the fate of another human being is at stake may not make the

best decision. Especially in this era of scarce academic jobs and

often unrealistic administrative demands for “productivity,”

Handbook for Academic Authors

failure to publish early and often may force a scholar to resort

to driving a cab or designing Web pages. But the editor who

too generously takes that into account and publishes too many

marginal manuscripts may also end up driving a cab. Authors’

ignorance of publishing, however, is both self-imposed and

self-destructive. It is not difﬁcult to learn how the world of

scholarly publishing works, and it is foolish not to make

the effort. Once you understand what publishers want from

authors, it is easy enough to provide it and thereby improve

your chances of publication. That is what this book is designed

to help you do.

Publishing What You Write: How to Use

This Book

In an ideal world, people would write only when they had

something important to say. Discovery or inspiration would

be the driving force. In the real world, though, this is only

one of several worthy motives. Academic authors do write for

the pure joy of communicating ideas, but they also write for

tenure, money, and fame.

Let us assume for the moment that you are writing because

you want to get tenure, be promoted, or get a raise. Perhaps you

want to publish so that you can ﬁnd another teaching job at a

more hospitable institution. In these cases, depending on your

ﬁeld, you are going to have to write articles for scholarly jour-

nals and possibly a book or two for scholarly presses. Because

university administrators believe that the refereeing proce-

dures of these journals and presses guarantee the scholarly

value of the works they publish, they accept such publication

as evidence of the author’s scholarly accomplishments. Chap-

ter 2 explains how to ﬁnd an appropriate journal for your work

and how to speed up the refereeing process; it also offers sug-

gestions for effective article writing and for revising talks and

speeches for publication. Chapter 3 is devoted to the problems

of revising a dissertation for book or journal publication. Chap-

ter 4 describes the various sorts of book publishers and tells

The Publishing Partnership

how to decide which publisher would be best for your book.

It also suggests ways to make responses more prompt and

acceptance more likely. Chapter 5 tells how to work with a pub-

lisher, including an explanation of how to read your contract

and a discussion of how to seek grants for publication costs.

In Chapter 6, I offer advice on editing multiauthor books and

volumes with many contributors and compiling anthologies.

Perhaps you are not concerned about tenure or promotion

but do want to make some money. In that case, skip the journals

and monographs and get to work on a textbook. (Either that

or shift to romance ﬁction, apocalyptic novels, or diet books.)

Journals do not pay authors, and few scholarly books generate

signiﬁcant royalties. Writing textbooks, however, can be prof-

itable. As you will learn, the money is not quick or easy. Writing

a textbook usually will not help you get tenure, because many

university administrators mistakenly exclude textbook writ-

ing from scholarly activity. Although writing a textbook does

not require original research, it does demand a comprehensive

knowledge of the ﬁeld and an original, well-thought-out per-

spective on it. Chapters 7 and 8 will help you write a textbook,

ﬁnd a publisher, and see the project through to completion.

If it is fame that you seek, you need to write a book that

nonacademics will read, that will be reviewed in newspapers

and popular magazines, that will be stocked in bookstores, and

that achieves a respectable sales rank on Amazon.com. This is

not as easy as it sounds and requires authors to involve them-

selves in the publishing process in new ways. And although

writing books for general readers is more proﬁtable than writ-

ing monographs, it is typically less lucrative than writing text-

books. Chapter 9 discusses the writing, publishing, and eco-

nomics of trade books.

Chapter 10 explains the mechanics of authorship, regardless

of whether you are writing a journal article, monograph, text-

book, or trade book: how to prepare an electronic manuscript,

obtain permission to quote and to reproduce illustrations,

proofread, and index a book.

Because money is so often a bone of contention, I have sum-

marized the economics of book publishing in Chapter 11.There

Handbook for Academic Authors

you will ﬁnd an explanation of why books cost so much and

where the money goes, along with an analysis of the impact of

online publishing on costs and prices.

Chapter 12 discusses new opportunities in digital pub-

lishing.

Finally, the bibliography, which is brieﬂy annotated, lists

books on writing, guides to journals in various ﬁelds, style

guides, and further information on most topics covered in the

book. It is organized topically, following the order of the text.

In addition to the pleasure and pride of seeing one’s ideas

and words in print, publishing can lead to security, status,

wealth, and (occasionally) fame. Surely it is worth the effort to

learn a bit about it. This book is an introduction to scholarly

publishing. The serious writer needs several other books as

well.

The Scholar’s Bookshelf

Anyone who writes should own The Elements of Style by

William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. This brief paperback solves

the most common difﬁculties of grammar and diction and

offers sound, memorable advice on clear writing. I read it once

a year without fail. (Full information about this and all other

works mentioned in this book is provided in the bibliography.)

You must also own a good dictionary. Although the

Merriam-Webster dictionaries (the third edition of the un-

abridged or the latest collegiate edition) are the most gener-

ally accepted, I prefer the American Heritage Dictionary because

it provides good usage notes and has a more pleasing layout.

Its CD-ROM version provides spoken pronunciations. Another

popular choice is the Oxford American Dictionary. If you plan

to write a book, you must own The Chicago Manual of Style.

Nearly every book publisher relies on it, and it is the authority

for many ﬁelds on note and bibliography style. It also tells you

how to proofread and index your book. It is fairly expensive,

but it is worth buying. If you deal with British publishers or

The Publishing Partnership

journals, Judith Butcher’s Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Hand-

book will be helpful.

If you become interested in the world of academic publish-

ing, you many want to subscribe to the Journal of Scholarly Pub-

lishing (formerly Scholarly Publishing), published by the Uni-

versity of Toronto Press, and to Publishing Research Quarterly

(formerly Book Research Quarterly), published by Springer. If

you do not subscribe, make sure your library does and take

time to browse through the journals occasionally. The American

Scholar includes at least one article a year on some aspect of

book publishing, and the Chronicle of Higher Education fre-

quently includes news and feature stories on scholarly pub-

lishing.

The Publishing Partnership

While authors are worrying about getting their books pub-

lished, editors are out busily acquiring manuscripts. It is the

same process viewed from different angles. The reputations of

authors and publishers ride on the same books. When a book

is well reviewed or wins a prestigious award, both author and

publisher share the glory. The book that succeeds commer-

cially puts money into both the publisher’s coffers and the

author’s pocket. When a book fails – critically, ﬁnancially, or

aesthetically – author and publisher share the disappointment.

Why, then, is there conﬂict between partners? Ignorance is one

source of conﬂict. The author who does not understand the ref-

ereeing process, who does not read the contract, and who does

not learn to proofread is bound to be unhappy with how long

it takes to get a book accepted, to feel cheated on discovering

that the publisher will not provide an index, and to become

outraged when a reviewer points out typos.

Illusions about money are another source of friction. An

author whose book is priced at $40.00 and whose royalty is

10 percent ﬁgures “$4.00 per book, and they’re printing 1,500,

so I should get $6,000.” Unfortunately, the royalty may be

Handbook for Academic Authors

paid on net receipts (20 to 40 percent less than gross), at least

100 copies will be given away free for reviews and publicity,

and not all the other copies will be sold. When the ﬁrst roy-

alty check arrives and the author gets, say, $1,500 – knowing

that the ﬁrst year is probably the best – disappointment sets

in. With disappointment comes suspicion. Where does the rest

of the money go, anyway? Authors who do not know what

it costs to produce a book and who do not understand prices

and discounts are apt to think mistakenly that presses are get-

ting rich from their labors. They are not. University presses do

make money on some titles but rarely more than the authors

do. Successful trade books make money, but authors should

not be misled by the six- and seven-ﬁgure advances paid to a

handful of best-selling authors and celebrities. For most serious

nonﬁction books, royalties are respectable but far from extrav-

agant. Textbooks, too, should make money for both author and

publisher, with the amount depending on the number of stu-

dents who enroll in the relevant courses, the book’s share of

the market, and the book’s longevity.

Some authors and librarians, irritated by what they view as

exorbitant prices for journals and books, are hoping that elec-

tronic media will eliminate the need for publishers, or at least

reduce prices. Electronic media certainly play an increasing

role in scholarly communication, but it is unlikely that either

publishers or high prices will disappear. The value added by

publishers in acquiring, reviewing, selecting, and improving

articles and books is too often overlooked. Paper, printing,

ink, and postage represent a small part of scholarly publishing

costs. In addition, publishers must meet readers’ expectations

that electronic media will have useful features not available

in print media, increasing costs further. If you want to know

about the impact of technology on book and journal prices, just

ask a librarian.

Throughout this book, I explain the ﬁnancial implications

of various policies and technologies, and Chapter 11 discusses

the economics of scholarly publishing in some detail. I hope

that this will reduce one source of mistrust. Chapter 12 will, I

The Publishing Partnership

hope, contribute to constructive discussion of new media and

their uses.

Editorial changes can lead to disputes. Most writers have

worked hard on their manuscripts, and many resent any at-

tempt to alter their words and punctuation. They view the edi-

tor’s suggestions as attempts to take over their books, and they

see editorial queries as questioning their authority. The edi-

tor, however, is trying to correct errors, clarify meanings, and

eliminate clumsy constructions in order to make the author’s

book better. I hope that the sections in Chapters 5, 8,and9

on working with your editor will help you to develop happy

and productive relationships with those who labor to improve

your writing.

Some authors also fear that their publishers are not doing

enough to sell their books. The level of marketing effort, and

the types of marketing activity undertaken, will depend on

the nature of your book and the publisher’s estimate of the

size of the audience. Chapters 5 and 9 explain the marketing

strategies of scholarly and trade publishers and suggest ways

authors can help to reach the largest possible market.

Much of the conﬂict between authors and publishers is

rooted in the very interdependence that makes them partners.

Authors resent having their professional stature and even their

livelihoods rest in the hands of nonacademics. And just as fac-

ulty members often comment on how great teaching would be

if it weren’t for the students, publishers occasionally long for

the day when books would magically appear without authors.

With a little understanding, however, the two sides can get

along quite nicely.

This book is, in a sense, an effort at making peace as well

as informing. The writer who understands publishers will be

more successful in dealing with them and will make the pub-

lisher’s life much easier. Writers may view my effort as one-

sided, because all the instruction is directed at them. Through-

out the book, though, I have set a high standard of behavior

for publishers and have suggested ways authors can hold

publishers to these standards. For most authors, publishing

Handbook for Academic Authors

is rewarding and even fun. Needless to say, the same is true

for most editors, or they would be in a better-paid ﬁeld. I hope

that this book will make publishing easier for both authors and

publishers and that it will reduce the friction that often seems

inevitable.

Chapter 2

Journal Articles

He put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow:

only, it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to

his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he

declares, not the mouth of a human being. ...“Gayton,Ibelieve

that alchemist man knows it was I who got his paper rejected.”

M. R. James, “Casting the Runes”

Journals are the medium most frequently used by academic

authors to disseminate the results of their research. In some

ﬁelds, particularly in the natural and physical sciences, book

writing is rare. A biochemist may publish hundreds of journal

articles and never think of writing a book. Journals are also the

least professionalized of the publishing media. In the human-

ities and social sciences, journals are often edited on the side

by academics with regular teaching and research assignments

and without professional staff.

(This is far less common in the

physical and natural sciences.) The advent of personal com-

puters, desktop publishing, and electronic publishing has led

to the creation of numerous small, specialized journals run out

of faculty ofﬁces. Electronic journals that are “printed” only

after they reach subscribers’ computers are becoming plenti-

ful; these are even easier to start and cheaper to distribute.

The growth of specialized journals since the 1960shas

expanded opportunities for publication. At the same time, the

Should you ever become a journal editor, you will want to consult Journal Pub-

lishing by Gillian Page, Robert Campbell, and Jack Meadows (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1997).

Handbook for Academic Authors

end of the academic hiring boom of that decade and the stabi-

lization of the size of the academic community have decreased

the number of submissions received by many journals. This

adds up to improved possibilities for getting good articles pub-

lished, even if they are on very specialized topics. It also means

that mediocre work can be published in less prestigious jour-

nals that need to ﬁll their pages. This phenomenon, in turn, has

generated efforts by research councils in Europe and Australia

to rank journals, allowing these agencies to quantify the accom-

plishments of faculty members, departments, and institutions.

Some U.S. universities attempt such rankings less formally.

Pressure to publish sometimes tempts scholars to rush their

work into print before it is ready. They may take a confer-

ence paper that has not been thought through completely, give

it a quick rewrite, and start submitting it to journals. Given

the range of journals out there, they may well get an accep-

tance letter. This is really not a good idea. Publication is a form

of self-presentation. It will often be the ﬁrst time a colleague

at another university learns about your work, and it is some-

thing that hiring and promotion committees will read. Pub-

lishing immature or sloppy work is akin to showing up for

a job interview without combing your hair or washing your

clothes. Everything you publish should enhance your reputa-

tion, not merely add a line to your curriculum vitae. Take the

time to make sure your submissions are your best work, and

try to place them in the best possible journals. The keys to qual-

ity publishing are writing well, selecting carefully the journals

to which you submit your work, preparing your manuscripts

properly, and communicating clearly with journal editors.

Writing Well

Good academic writing is clear and succinct. (To use myself

as an example, I ﬁrst wrote that sentence: “For the purposes

of academic writing, writing well is writing clearly and suc-

cinctly.” I read it, saw that it was neither clear nor succinct, and

rewrote it. Reading and revising are essential to good writing.

Journal Articles

Had I not spotted the problem, the manuscript editor would

have ﬁxed it, after a good laugh at my expense.) If you can

move beyond clarity to grace and elegance, you are to be con-

gratulated. Editors will happily settle for clarity, however.

Many ﬁelds have formal conventions about article writ-

ing: All articles are organized in the same way, with subsec-

tions covering speciﬁed topics (e.g., title, abstract, introduction,

method, results, discussion, references). Because disciplines

vary, you should learn the conventions of the ﬁeld in which

you are publishing. If this is the ﬁeld in which you have done

most of your research, you probably have absorbed such con-

ventions subliminally. You will have to make a special effort,

though, if you are writing in an area outside your usual ter-

ritory (e.g., a historian venturing into a medical journal or a

lawyer writing for a psychology journal). The bibliography of

this book includes the ofﬁcial style manuals for a variety of

disciplines. If your discipline has a generally accepted style

manual, you should own and use the current edition. Many

journals provide details about style preferences on their Web

sites. The bibliography also includes several general guides to

writing, guides to writing for speciﬁc ﬁelds, and dictionaries.

Intelligent readers are impressed by ideas and clear expres-

sion, not by elaborate constructions and excess words. If your

writing is obscure, vague, and verbose, readers will translate

what you have written into plain English and wonder why

you did not write it that way in the ﬁrst place. There are two

possible answers, neither of which is ﬂattering. First, perhaps

you did not know how. More damning, perhaps you realized

that reduced to plain English your idea did not make sense

or was so obvious that it wasn’t worth saying. Good writing

saves the reader’s time and your reputation.

Beyond the basic advice on writing offered by Strunk and

White in The Elements of Style, I can offer a few suggestions

that may help you avoid errors common in academic writ-

ing. A frequent error is the use of jargon. The lingua franca

of many disciplines frequently departs from standard English.

However, it is rarely necessary to use a word that is not in the

dictionary. This does not mean that you should avoid technical

Handbook for Academic Authors

language, because a technical term often expresses an idea

most economically and will be understood by your readers.

In writing for specialized journals you need not worry about

whether a layperson will understand your vocabulary, because

no layperson will read your work. To determine whether you

are using technical expressions appropriately or are simply

resorting to jargon, ask yourself whether you are using the

plainest word that will say precisely what you mean. Do not

use technical words merely to impress. It sometimes can be

helpful to deﬁne technical terms precisely, within your article,

to ensure that you are using them properly and that your read-

ers will understand exactly what you mean. Technical terms

can take on a life of their own if not used carefully.

Bureaucratic language is a form of jargon that easily creeps

into one’s writing and provokes the special ire of editors and

careful readers. Do not use ﬁnalize, monies,ordebrief when you

mean ﬁnish, money,orquestion. Equally to be avoided is trendy

language, which rapidly becomes overused and then dated.

“The perfect storm,” “the best and the brightest,” and “the

right stuff” all fell victim to this phenomenon, but even words

that have not been used in book titles are vulnerable. Try not

to use business jargon: By the time your work appears, we can

hope that no one will be taking things to the next level, pushing

the envelope, or ramping up their efforts. Some of these expres-

sions – though not all – were acceptable at one time, but overuse

has worn them out. If you feel you must choose between being

stuffy and being trendy (a false dilemma), choose stuffy.

Also avoid cuteness, especially in titles. Your title, of course,

should be brief and should tell the reader what your article

is about. Occasionally a title can be used to attract attention

but usually not in a scholarly journal. If a title is not clear,

your article may be indexed incorrectly and will not turn up in

computer searches, so that it may languish unread and uncited.

Another frequent fault in academic writing is the repeti-

tion of certain words, notably qualifying adverbs and abstract

nouns. Rather, quite,andsomewhat can usually be omitted with-

out sacriﬁcing meaning. Similarly, you should rewrite sen-

tences to avoid using such phrases as “friendly by nature,”

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“in terms of,” “on a weekly basis,” “generous in character,”

and “for the purpose of.”

Even if you are deaf to the beauty of language, you can be

accurate. Check and recheck all quotations. A literary scholar

once quoted Macbeth’s hags on the heath as chanting “Double

bubble toil and trouble.” The failure of referees to catch such

mistakes should not be taken as license to butcher the Bard – or

anyone else. Also be accurate and complete in the citations you

provide in notes and bibliographies. Any of the style manuals

in the bibliography – including, of course, The Chicago Manual

of Style – will assist you in this task. Some journals and a few

book publishers routinely check citations, but you should not

rely on this. The reader who cannot ﬁnd an article using your

citation has good reason to doubt your reliability.

In sum, you can write well by being clear, direct, precise, and

accurate. If you can accomplish this apparently modest goal –

and if you have something new and important to say – you

will be on your way to publication in a reputable journal.

Selecting a Journal

Few journals tolerate multiple submissions. In fact, some

regard this as a sin so serious that they report it to the author’s

department chair. Because you can send your work to only

one journal at a time, you should choose carefully. The best

way to decide where to submit an article is to look through

the journals you read regularly. As long as you are writing

in the mainstream of your own discipline, one of these jour-

nals will probably be the place to start. However, when you

venture into new territory, you will have to do some explor-

ing. Investigate journals cited in your manuscript ﬁrst. A few

ﬁeld-speciﬁc guides to journals are published (see bibliogra-

phy), and you should consult them. Much of this information

is also available online, sometimes through links on profes-

sional societies’ Web sites. This rooting around will produce

a list of journals that cover your subject area. The guides will

often provide further information, such as maximum length

Handbook for Academic Authors

of articles, usual time for review, preferred style, percentage

of submissions accepted, and time between acceptance and

publication. (Such information is usually based on the editors’

self-reporting and may not be entirely accurate or up to date.)

Because journals frequently change editors and addresses, and

because policies change, you should always consult the latest

issue of the journal or the Web site to verify its current location,

staff, and editorial policy.

Most journal editors do not welcome query letters, so it is

up to you to decide whether a journal is appropriate. A journal

that regularly publishes articles in your ﬁeld that are the same

length and scope as yours is appropriate. Do not, for example,

submit a bibliographical review to a journal that never includes

such reviews, even if it does include other sorts of articles in the

same ﬁeld. When you have a list of journals, look at the current

issue of each. Many journals include a description of editorial

requirements; most post these on Web sites; all provide an ad-

dress to write to if such information is not published. You

may have to eliminate some journals from your list because

your article is too long or too short or because your article is

illustrated and they do not publish graphic material. Perusing

a few issues may also disclose an ideological or theoretical bias

that renders a journal unsuitable. You may decide to eliminate

others because they seem sloppily produced or edited. Take a

look at the date of the current issue to see whether the journal

is hopelessly behind schedule.

When, contrary to the norm, the journal’s note to contribu-

tors or directory listing indicates that the editor does expect a

query letter, compose a brief one that includes the subject of

your article, why you believe it is suitable for the journal, and

why it is worth publishing. Also include a physical descrip-

tion (length, illustrated or not, how many notes, and so forth).

You may send such query letters simultaneously to as many

journals as you like; the single-submission rule applies only to

the full manuscript.

In deciding where to submit, you ﬁrst may want to ﬁgure out

whether to choose a less prestigious journal that you think will

probably accept your article and publish it quickly or to begin

Journal Articles

by trying for one of the big names. This decision will depend

on your own impression of how administrators evaluate pub-

lications, on how rushed you are, and of course on how much

you yourself value publication in a major journal. Do not auto-

matically assume that a lesser journal represents your best bet.

Journals are quirky, and you may ﬁnd your work rejected in the

minor leagues and accepted in the majors. However, remem-

ber that more prestigious journals may take longer to get your

work into print because of backlogs of accepted articles. They

may also demand more extensive revisions than lesser jour-

nals. Whenever possible, choose a refereed journal – that is, a

journal whose submissions are reviewed by outside readers in

addition to the editor. Most universities distinguish between

articles in refereed and nonrefereed journals when awarding

tenure and raises, but many do not distinguish among refer-

eed journals. Some, however, take into account citation rates,

impact factors, or other measures of status. Your colleagues and

department chair can tell you how your work will be evaluated.

Your colleagues are also a good source of information on how

prompt a journal is about refereeing, how quickly articles are

put into print, and how well promises are kept. You should take

much of this information with a grain or two of salt, because

horror stories abound. (For the classic ﬁctional account of how

bad things can get, read Kingsley Amis’s marvelous academic

novel, Lucky Jim.) Consistent accounts of mistreatment by a

journal should put it low on your list.

Colleagues can also warn you away from journals whose

quality or reputation is questionable. Having your work pub-

lished in the journal of last resort may lengthen your publi-

cations list, but it will not enhance your reputation. If your

work is rejected by several journals, especially if a number of

referees point out substantive problems, you should consider

radical revisions before continuing to submit it. If your only

remaining hope is a journal with a reputation for publishing

almost anything, you need to decide whether publication will

help or hurt your career.

Most journals appear in both print and electronic editions.

Some, however, are electronic only, and some publishers and

Handbook for Academic Authors

librarians believe that most journals will shift to purely elec-

tronic publication in a decade or two. Electronic publication

saves a great deal of time by eliminating mailing time, reducing

the time required for typesetting and proofreading, and elim-

inating printing and binding. The whole idea of an “issue”

can be dispensed with: Articles can be published as soon as

they are accepted, edited, and proofread – without waiting

for enough articles to accumulate to put together an issue or

for the next month or quarter to come along. Because space

is not a consideration, there is no such thing as a backlog of

articles in a purely electronic journal. This makes electronic

journals especially attractive in ﬁelds in which practitioners

such as doctors need timely information on new treatments.

When deciding whether to submit to an electronic journal,

you should consider the same factors as for a print journal:

quality, reputation, appropriateness, and speed of decision

making.

You may want to ask one or two colleagues to read your

article before you send it off. You probably know who is likely

to give helpful suggestions on content, organization, and writ-

ing. Be prepared for criticism and accept it graciously. After

reading the manuscript, your colleagues may suggest a jour-

nal that you had not considered. Do not follow the suggestion

without checking the journal yourself for appropriateness and

editorial requirements.

Another way to get criticism of your work is to present it

as a paper at a national or regional meeting or at a less formal

colloquium. Some writers regard such public presentation as

insurance against plagiarism by referees. Such dishonesty is

too rare, however, to make this a genuine concern. The real

value of public presentation lies in the opportunity to receive

criticism and suggestions, anticipating the responses of peer

reviewers.

Some authors achieve lengthy publication lists by recycling

their research. They change the emphasis slightly, alter the

length, rephrase, add a section or two, and submit two or

three articles instead of one. Although journal editors and sub-

scribers may initially be unaware that they are being victimized

Journal Articles

in this way, eventually word gets out. Both editors and col-

leagues read more than one journal. Although this practice

is legal, it is ethically questionable and wastes the time of

editors, referees, and readers. In the medical sciences, it can

have serious consequences for patients. A researcher doing a

meta-analysis (a synthesis of several studies on, for example,

nonsurgical treatment of a speciﬁc cancer) may unknowingly

be counting the results of a single study more than once if its

authors have published them more than once. This duplication

will alter the statistical results and may mislead practitioners

into thinking that a treatment is more (or less) effective than it

really is.

On the rare occasion when republication of material is appro-

priate – for example, if the ﬁrst appearance was a brief note in a

journal with very limited circulation, or in another language –

you should nevertheless tell the editor the circumstances of

the ﬁrst publication. Enclosing a copy of the original article or

manuscript will enable the editor to verify the differences and

make an informed decision.

A variant on duplicate publication is “salami publishing,” in

which each bit of research is divided into the thinnest possible

slices (sometimes referred to as “LPUs,” for “least publishable

units”), with each slice submitted as a separate article. This is

marginally more ethical than duplicate submission, but it is

equally wasteful. Nor is it clear that it does the slicer much

good. In any serious review of a scholar’s work (for tenure,

promotion, a new job, or major grants), reviewers look at all

the applicant’s work as a body. If there is only one ounce of

salami there, slicing it thin doesn’t make it any weightier. One

signiﬁcant article in a major journal almost always beneﬁts a

researcher’s career more than four or ﬁve trivial pieces scat-

tered in lesser publications.

Both duplicate publication and salami publishing are easily

detected in an electronic literature search. Editors and referees

do such searches when they suspect these practices, and they

will reject the offending manuscript and, in some cases, put

the author on a list of potential contributors to be viewed with

caution.

Handbook for Academic Authors

Another way that lengthy bibliographies are built is by over-

stating the number of authors. In the humanities, where single

authorship is the rule, this rarely happens. But when scientists

work in research teams, each team (or sometimes each depart-

ment or institution) sets rules for who may be considered an

author. (In a few cases, more than a hundred authors have been

listed for a single article.) Some professional societies are trying

to establish standard deﬁnitions of authorship, but so far none

has been widely adopted. Most standards revolve around two

issues: knowledge and responsibility. To be listed as an author,

one should have direct knowledge of the conduct and results

of the entire study and should be willing to take responsibil-

ity for its conduct, data, and conclusions. In the absence of

accepted standards, each author must follow the guidelines of

institution and conscience.

Preparing the Manuscript

The general rules for preparing an article manuscript for pub-

lication are very simple: If hard copy is required, print out

neatly on high-quality white 8

/2-by11-inch paper, double

space the entire manuscript (including text, notes, and bibli-

ography), and leave ample margins on all four sides (at least

1 inch). Use 12-point type. Print the article on a laser or ink-

jet printer. It is usually all right to send a photocopy if it is

of good quality. (Some people argue that sending the origi-

nal assures the editor that you are not submitting the article

elsewhere. The fallacy of this argument is obvious, particu-

larly in the era of computer-generated “multiple originals.”) If

electronic submission is preferred, follow the journal’s instruc-

tions about software, sending attachments, and so forth. Your

e-mail message becomes your cover letter and should indicate

the software used and the title of the ﬁle or ﬁles. Tables, ﬁgures,

and notes are sometimes best transmitted as separate ﬁles. You

can use the acknowledgment feature of your e-mail program

to conﬁrm the manuscript’s safe arrival.

Journal Articles

Beyond these commonsense requirements, be sure to fol-

low the instructions provided by the journal to which you are

submitting the manuscript. Speciﬁcally, if the journal’s format

includes notes in a particular place and in a particular style,

comply with these conventions. Conforming to a given foot-

note style can be a nuisance if journals in your ﬁeld do not

agree on which style to use, but it is worth taking the trouble.

(Software is available to switch from style to style, but many

users have found it takes more time to learn and use than mak-

ing the changes themselves.) If the editor wants two copies

of the manuscript, send two copies. If the journal publishes

abstracts, prepare one. If quotations must be in English, pro-

vide translations. If the journal follows the style book of the

Modern Language Association, American Psychological Asso-

ciation, Council of Science Editors, or some other professional

organization, or if it has its own style sheet, get the style guide

and follow it. (See the bibliography for a list of style guides.)

Many journals in ﬁelds where mathematical or scientiﬁc nota-

tion is used require that manuscripts be submitted as electronic

camera-ready copy, using software such as TeX or LaTeX. These

journals will provide details about format.

Proofread and correct the manuscript carefully (see Chapter

10). Make sure you have a printed copy of your own, even if

the manuscript is also on your hard drive. Keep a backup on

disk or on another computer.

Unless you are told otherwise, be sure to provide a separate

title page with your name, address, and article title. Repeat

only the title on the ﬁrst page of the text. Do not put your

name in the header or footer on each page, because this makes

it difﬁcult to implement blind reviewing, in which referees are

not told the author’s identity. If you are sending hard copy, mail

the manuscript ﬂat, not folded. Enclose a self-addressed enve-

lope of appropriate size with return postage. Send it ﬁrst class.

If you want reassurance that the manuscript arrived safely,

senditbycertiﬁedmailwithareturnreceiptorencloseaself-

addressed, stamped postcard. Journals should automatically

acknowledge receipt of submissions, but not all of them do.

Handbook for Academic Authors

When submitting articles to journals outside the United States,

enclose International Reply Coupons for return postage. They

can be purchased at the post ofﬁce.

A brief cover letter or e-mail is adequate unless you have

something speciﬁc to tell the editor. For example, if you have

sent copies of artwork, you might want to let the editor know

that you have the originals and will obtain permission to use

them. (On illustrations and permissions, see Chapter 10.)

Refereeing

For refereed journals, experts review submissions; for nonref-

ereed journals, the judgment of the editor or the editorial staff

sufﬁces. Thus, editors of nonrefereed journals can make deci-

sions faster, but publication in these journals does not offer the

prestige or the assistance provided by the refereeing process.

The notion that refereeing provides a service to a would-be con-

tributor may be alien to the author busily collecting rejections

or requests for revision. Nevertheless, it is a service. Referees

can save an author from mistakes of fact, poor logic, ignorance

of sources, and other embarrassments. Their purpose is not

merely to screen out bad articles but also to recognize good

ones and help move articles from the unacceptable category

into the acceptable one. Although you should not expect ref-

erees to correct minor details or rewrite bad prose, they will

often give general advice on further sources or weaknesses in

your argument whose correction would make your work pub-

lishable. Certainly not all criticism is constructive, but much of

it is. As an academic writer, you are likely to wear the hats of

both referee and author during your career. To perform both

jobs well, you should try to keep in mind what it is like to be

under the other hat.

Most articles are read ﬁrst by an editor who determines

whether they are appropriate for the journal and good enough

to be sent to a referee. “Good enough” may mean sufﬁciently

original and interesting, adequately researched and docu-

mented, clearly written, or all of these. Articles that survive

Journal Articles

this initial scrutiny are then sent to at least one referee, who is

either a member of the editorial board or a specialist unafﬁli-

ated with the journal except as an occasional reviewer. Journal

editors may ask referees speciﬁc questions about the article or

ask them to ﬁll out a form; some ask for a letter grade in addi-

tion to comments and recommendations. More often, however,

the referee is asked merely whether the article should be pub-

lished in the journal and why or why not. The major scientiﬁc

and medical journals have a more elaborate refereeing process

that may include review by a statistician or other technical

experts in addition to review by outside referees.

Referees have a great responsibility, and only those who are

willing to take the job seriously should agree to review a sub-

mission. A referee must be competent in the ﬁeld (and that

includes being familiar with current research), free of conﬂicts

of interest, able to judge other people’s work objectively, will-

ing to spend the time it takes to evaluate the article and make

useful suggestions, and committed to doing all of this under

a deadline. As a contributor, you expect this of referees. When

you yourself are asked to be a referee, make sure you meet

your own standards.

Because most people who write articles also judge other

authors’ work, you may need some more advice about what

to do when wearing the referee’s hat. As you read an article,

you will be asking yourself a number of questions: Is the topic

worth investigating? Is the author’s research sound? Have the

relevant sources been tapped? Is the thesis clearly and con-

vincingly argued? Does the evidence support the thesis? Is the

article adequately documented? Is the writing clear and suc-

cinct? Did I learn anything from reading this? One question

you should not ask yourself: Is this the way I would have writ-

ten the article? The least fair, least useful reviews result from

asking this question. One reason research is fun and exciting

is that no two people approach a question in the same way.

Perhaps you would have done it differently, and perhaps your

way would have been better, but that is not the issue. You have

been asked to evaluate an article as written, on its own terms.

Do so.

Handbook for Academic Authors

Remember, too, that the manuscript you have been sent is a

privileged communication. You must not cite it or use it in any

way. You should not show it to others or discuss its contents.

If you feel that a colleague or a graduate student might be a

better referee, ask the editor’s permission before passing the

manuscript on. Communicate with the author only through

the editor.

It is possible – and in some ﬁelds even probable – that a sec-

ond journal will send an article to the same referee that the ﬁrst

journal used. If you are asked to referee an article that you have

previously advised be rejected, you should behave in a civi-

lized, ethical manner. It is not acceptable to blight anonymously

and eternally another person’s career. The solution least preju-

dicial to the author, yet helpful to the editor, is to decline with-

out giving a reason and suggest another referee. There is an

exception to this rule: an article that you felt was inappropriate

for journal A but all right for journal B. It is of course reason-

able to referee an article for journal B that you recommended

for publication to journal A but that its editor nevertheless

declined. (Do not be outraged if this happens. The journal

editor or another referee may have disagreed, or perhaps the

author declined to make changes required by the editor.)

Many journals use “tracking” software that automatically

acknowledges receipt, instructs referees, reminds referees of

deadlines, and notiﬁes authors of decisions. Especially for

large journals, these programs reduce the editor’s workload

and speed up decision making. Authors are sometimes put off

by the impersonal and mechanical nature of these communi-

cations, but the practice of refereeing has not really changed.

Manuscripts are still read by human editors and referees, and

the human editor or board makes publishing decisions. Any

substantive communication, such as a revise-and-resubmit let-

ter, is still written by a human being. And, to be honest, most

editors used form letters long before computers were invented.

These journals also use software to speed up the editing, type-

setting, and other production processes. We may have lost a

bit of personal contact, but we have gained a great deal of

efﬁciency.

Journal Articles

Now, back to the author’s hat. While one or more referees

are reading your manuscript, what are you doing? Not sitting

at home chewing your nails, I hope. You already have a second

journal in mind for your article in case the ﬁrst one rejects it.

(In an article offering suggestions on journal writing, Richard

Penaskovic recommends using the term returned rather than

rejected. You, too, may ﬁnd this comforting.) You are launched

on a new project. But you have not forgotten about your article.

On your calendar, about three months after the date you sub-

mitted your article, you have written a note reminding yourself

to send the editor a polite note or e-mail: “On 5 September I

sent you my article on the Bermuda Triangle. When may I

expect a response?” Mark a date three or four weeks ahead for

another inquiry if you have not received an answer by then. If

you still have no answer ﬁve months after your initial submis-

sion, telephone. Then, if the response is inadequate, write to the

editor withdrawing your article from consideration (a letter is

preferable to e-mail in this instance), and send it elsewhere. For

articles in the sciences, or in any case where timely publication

is vital because of the article’s subject, this timetable should be

speeded up considerably.

You’ve Got Mail

When a journal accepts your article, the editor may publish it

as is or ask for revisions. If revisions are required, make sure

you understand exactly what is wanted. For example, if the

article is to be shortened, by how much? If you are to shorten

the article yet include additional material, how is this miracle

to be accomplished? Find out when the revised manuscript is

due. Make sure, too, that the article will deﬁnitely be published

if you make the revisions. Sometimes an editor hedges, and you

may not want to revise extensively to someone’s speciﬁcations

if the article may still be rejected despite your additional efforts.

A “revise and resubmit” decision means that, after your revised

article arrives, it will be sent out to referees again and may be

rejected. At a minimum, seek the editor’s assurance that if the

Handbook for Academic Authors

article is to be re-reviewed, the same referees will be consulted.

If you are not satisﬁed with the editor’s answers, you might

prefer to make only the revisions that are clearly necessary and

then send it to another journal.

If you have quoted extensively from other people’s work or

if you are reprinting tables or illustrations from other sources,

you must get written permission from the copyright holder.

Dothistheminutethearticleisaccepted.Chapter 10 provides

information on acquiring permission.

You may be asked to review a copy editor’s work on your

article, or you may merely receive proof to be read (see Chap-

ter 10 for instructions). The proof may be electronic or hard

copy. In either case, read carefully. Indeed, it is best to print

out the edited electronic manuscript, because proofreading

on a screen is less accurate than proofreading on paper.

When you receive an edited manuscript, you may still make

changes and ask for clariﬁcation of editorial changes you do

not like or understand. In proof, you must restrict yourself to

changes that are absolutely necessary unless the editor permits

more extensive alterations. Return manuscript and proofs on

time.

Although it is certainly better to have an article accepted,

you should not be disheartened by two or three rejections.

The rejections in fact may have nothing to do with the quality

of your work. That particular journal may have a backlog of

articles in the same ﬁeld, or the editor may feel that your article

is – in the publisher’s vague jargon – “not quite right for us.” It

may easily be “quite right” for another journal. If your article

is returned, try to answer the referees’ objections (if they are

valid) and then send the article on to another journal. When

articles are returned without comment, write a polite letter or

e-mail to the editor asking whether you might see some of

the referees’ criticism. You may not get a response, but it can’t

hurt to ask. Also, be sure to incorporate any new information

or citations that have appeared while your work was under

consideration.

Some journal editors make a special effort to be helpful

to authors who submit their work. They will send referees’

Journal Articles

comments and their own suggestions and sometimes even

recommend other journals that might be more appropriate.

Unfortunately, most editors do not have the time to do this.

When you are given such generous help, write a note to thank

the editor. Perhaps your next encounter with the journal will

have a happier ending.

Revising Oral Presentations

Many journal articles begin as talks presented at professional

meetings. Not every oral presentation can become an article.

For example, a report on a work in progress is not ready for

publication, and a paper that is part of a panel may not sur-

vive out of context. Many conference papers, however, can be

revised for publication.

Before undertaking revision, check with the conference

sponsors. Some groups publish proceedings of their meetings,

and they may want to include your paper. Others ask that you

give their own journal the right of ﬁrst refusal. You should, of

course, honor those expectations.

There are many differences between oral and written pre-

sentations. If you have ever sat through someone’s reading of

an article (after a banquet, in the worst case), you have some

clues to the differences viewed from that angle. The talk was

probably too long, too dense to follow easily, and devoid of

enlivening spontaneous remarks. Reading an article instead of

presenting a paper is a mistake. But submitting an unrevised

talk to a journal is also a mistake. Shifting from the oral form

to the written requires some work.

The most important consideration when revising a talk for

publication is the audience for the article. The audience for

your oral presentation may have been only a handful of spe-

cialists; perhaps it was a roomful of amateur enthusiasts. In

any case, it is not the same group as the one your article will

reach. Revise with your readers in mind and alter the level of

detail, the background information, the tone, the tables and

illustrations, and the documentation accordingly.

Handbook for Academic Authors

In some cases, revision will require substantive changes. It

is always wise to incorporate changes based on your audi-

ence’s reaction. Any doubts, misunderstandings, or questions

your hearers expressed will occur to readers as well, and you

should deal with those problems when you revise. If your talk

was a brief summary of your work, you will probably want

to ﬂesh it out with examples and details when you prepare

it for publication. The article may also offer opportunities to

review background and earlier work, to discuss possible lim-

itations or qualiﬁcations of your conclusions, and to expand

on opportunities for further research. If, by contrast, your talk

was discursive and chatty, you will have to tighten it up.

A speech generally contains references to the occasion of its

presentation. In an article, an initial note can tell the reader

where and when the material was ﬁrst presented; references

within the text should be eliminated. The obvious ones are

easy to omit (“It is a pleasure to be here in Punxsutawney

on Groundhog Day”), but be on the lookout for subtler refer-

ences, such as those that refer to the nature of the audience, the

interests of the group, or an earlier paper or other event at the

conference. These, too, must be omitted or altered. Similarly,

references to time should be adjusted.

If you used visual aids in your talk, these must be adapted for

publication. This is not simply a matter of preparing your slides

in a different medium. Readers of journal articles have more

time to look at tables or graphs and to relate them to the text.

Speakers who have selected or compiled their tables somewhat

hastily must make up for those lapses as they revise. Make

sure that the table actually says what you have claimed, that

it is accurate and succinct, and that you have documented the

sources. If you have simply copied a table, graph, or drawing

from someone else’s work, you will have to get permission

for publication. Also make sure that the illustrations are really

needed. Speakers often use slides and overhead transparencies

to liven things up and to keep the audience’s attention. In the

written incarnation, however, illustrations should be kept only

if they are vital to the argument.

Journal Articles

An article requires more rigorous documentation than a

speech, which does not come with footnotes. In a speech

you may get away with something like “As Lobachevsky has

pointed out....” In an article you must add ﬁrst name, arti-

cle title, journal name, date, volume, and page number. You

must also check to see that you have quoted accurately. Speak-

ers occasionally indulge in such statements as “Someone once

claimed that” or “At a conference I attended a few years ago, a

speaker argued that. . . . ” Some of these quotations, I suspect,

are ﬁctional. In any case, they must be omitted or documented

when revising for publication.

The tone of an article is generally more formal than that

of a talk. You may wish to shift from the ﬁrst or second per-

son to the third, in addition to removing or formalizing jokes,

anecdotes, and other casual features. You may have to ﬁnd an

appropriate punctuation mark or phrase to substitute for the

raised eyebrow, hard stare, or eloquent gesture that you relied

on when speaking.

When you are writing, you may want to provide more struc-

ture for your argument, and the medium of print allows you

to use headings and subheadings. Some speakers display or

circulate outlines of their talks, and these can be transformed

into headings.

Although some speakers expend as much effort on an oral

presentation as on a written one, they are the exceptions. Most

academics regard such presentations as trial runs. Journal edi-

tors have learned this, and they do not look favorably on unre-

vised speeches. On the other hand, a speech that has been

presented to a critical audience and then properly revised has

received a sort of preliminary referee’s report and can be a

valuable contribution.

Money

Scholarly journals rarely pay contributors or referees. At most,

authors receive a few extra copies of the journal or some

Handbook for Academic Authors

offprints. Some journals – generally those in disciplines such

as literature where amateurs frequently venture – even charge

submission fees that you must pay before they will consider

your article. These fees are meant to defray the cost of refer-

eeing and to discourage frivolous submissions. In the physical

and life sciences it is accepted practice to bill authors a “page

charge” for publishing their work. This does not mean that

enclosing a check with your manuscript guarantees publica-

tion. Rather, once the article is accepted on its merits, through

the usual review procedure, you are informed that you must

pay x dollars (anywhere from $20 to $150) per page. Some

journals apply a sliding scale, with fees doubling or tripling as

articles grow longer (e.g., $100 per page for 1–4 pages, $275 per

page for 5–8 pages, and $385 per page for more than 8 pages). In

fact, some journals that impose page charges may waive them,

but they generally limit the number of free articles per issue.

This means that if you do not pay the charges, your article will

probably be published, but not for quite a while. Journals in

the physical sciences have charged these fees since about 1930,

and fees are common in the natural and medical sciences. Some

journals in other ﬁelds are considering their adoption as well.

Because there is a good deal of misunderstanding about them,

they merit some discussion.

It costs money to publish a journal. Staff must be paid, as

must typesetters and printers. Paper and ink cost money. The

postal service charges for delivering mail. Journals are housed

in buildings that charge rent, and they use utilities that charge

fees. Computers and copying machines cost money. With elec-

tronic journals, many costs of traditional production are elim-

inated, but certain costs remain and others are added. In addi-

tion to evaluation, editing, and design, publishers of e-journals

must pay people to maintain the site, format material, notify

readers of new articles, maintain subscription lists, and mar-

ket the publication. (Even if it is sent out free or posted free

on the Web, you must let the market know it is there.) Nor is

it possible to include advertising or charge for offprints. (One

exception to the advertising limitation is journals whose Web

sites are located on servers that permit advertising.)

Journal Articles

All of these costs must come from some combination of ﬁve

main sources: subscriptions, advertising fees, page charges,

offprint charges, and contributions from a university or a pro-

fessional association (e.g., cash, release time for an editor, or

subsidized rent). Subscriptions and advertising fees go hand

in hand: The more subscriptions you have, the more adver-

tising you can get and the more you can charge for it. This

is why popular magazines can charge fairly low subscription

rates and still pay their contributors: More readers means more

advertisers paying more money, so even if the charge per sub-

scription is not particularly high, the magazine is proﬁtable. A

specialized journal cannot do much to increase the number of

subscribers (especially when academic hiring and library bud-

gets are declining) or to increase subsidies from a university

or an association. Although some journals could attract more

advertising than they do, there are deﬁnite limits on what they

can charge. Some journals, for ethical reasons, limit the sorts

of advertising they accept or accept none at all; some have too

few subscribers to appeal to advertisers. So that leaves only

three sources of money to meet rising costs: subscription rates,

offprint fees, and page charges. Page charges cover between a

quarter and three-quarters of the costs of journals that impose

them.

A journal without page charges must ask readers to

pay higher subscription rates and must charge contributors

more for offprints. If you belong to a professional organization

that publishes a journal or if you subscribe to a journal, you

are helping to underwrite publication. Paying a page charge is

just another form of subsidy.

Some journals that do not ordinarily impose page charges

may charge for publishing photographs (especially in color) or

complex tables. These fees, which can run to several hundred

dollars, are meant not to discourage the use of such material but

to cover the additional cost of preparing and reproducing it.

If page charges are common in your ﬁeld, you should be

prepared to pay them. Universities sometimes provide funds

Marjorie Scal, “The Page Charge,” Scholarly Publishing 3,no.1 (October 1971): 64;

National Science Foundation, “Federal Support of Scientiﬁc and Technical Publication”

(1976), reprinted in Publishing Research Quarterly 14, 4 (Winter 1998/99): 9–23.

Handbook for Academic Authors

for this purpose. If your research is supported by grants from a

federal agency or a private foundation, you should write publi-

cation costs into the proposal. (Federal agencies will pay page

charges to nonproﬁt publishers.) These are legitimate costs,

and your research is of little value if others cannot read about it.

Some publishers have begun imposing another sort of

charge, in response to the open access movement. Before pub-

lishing your article, they will ask you either to assign the copy-

right to them or to allow free access. If you choose the latter

alternative, they charge a steep fee.

Book Reviews

Most academics enjoy reviewing books in their ﬁelds. It is a

way to make sure that they keep up with the current literature

or, to put it bluntly, that they actually read the things they

mean to read. Reviewers are not paid for their reviews, but

they get a free book. Reviewing is also a relatively quick and

painless way to publish. Although book reviews do not count

with tenure committees nearly as much as refereed articles do,

they are worth something. They also offer a chance to express

an opinion on subjects of interest.

If you want to review books for a journal, write to the editor

or to the book review editor, if such a person is listed on the

masthead. You should state your interest in reviewing, the

ﬁelds in which you wish to review, and your qualiﬁcations.

Many journals are eager to expand their stable of reviewers.

Do not, however, submit unsolicited reviews. The editor has

probably already assigned the book to another reviewer, and

yours will not be published.

There are occasions when you should decline to review a

book. If you have written a book that competes with the vol-

ume to be reviewed, you should decline. Arguably, you know

the most about the subject, but you are unlikely to be objective.

Nor should you review a book that you evaluated for the pub-

lisher or author before publication, or that you are reviewing

for another publication. Close personal or professional ties to

Journal Articles

the author (especially if you are mentioned in the acknowledg-

ments) are another reason to decline the assignment. If, after

receiving a book for review, you feel that it is not worth review-

ing, let the editor know. You may be asked to return the book

so that it can be sent to another reviewer, or the editor may

agree with you.

A book review is supposed to help readers decide whether

to invest their time and money in a book. For that reason,

the review should be primarily an evaluation, rather than a

summary or abstract. Certainly, you will have to tell what the

book is about, but that is only the beginning. Your evaluation

can include comparisons with similar books when appropriate,

but lengthy comparisons should be reserved for review essays

whose purpose is to discuss several current works on a subject.

Similarly, although your opinion of the book is the heart of

the review, you should reserve lengthy expositions of your

own ideas for essays of the sort found in The New York Review

of Books. The readers of scholarly journals generally expect a

review focused on the volume in question.

You may ﬁnd it useful to think about how a book review com-

pares with a referee’s report. An obvious difference is that a

review is signed. A more important difference is the audience.

When you referee, you are writing for the editor, who must

decide whether to publish, and for the author, to whom you

are offering suggestions for revision. When you review, you

are writing for potential readers who want to know what the

book is about, whether it presents information and ideas not

available elsewhere, and whether it is well written and accu-

rate. When you referee a work in progress, your comments on

grammar and usage or suggestions that another document be

consulted are useful. When you review a bound book that will

not be altered, your reader will be interested in minor ﬂaws

only if they are so numerous that they detract from the work.

Nitpicking to demonstrate your own superior knowledge is

neither necessary nor appreciated. Finally, a referee’s report

is informal, whereas a review is written for publication. You

will want to take more pains with your writing, and you must

adhere to the journal’s speciﬁcations about length.

Handbook for Academic Authors

Refereeing and reviewing do share some important features.

Both require that you meet deadlines. If you cannot review a

book on time, decline. Both also require that you be objective.

You should not attempt to review a book whose author you

loathe or whose approach is an anathema. Your review would

not be credible and would be a disservice to yourself and the

reader. If you ﬁnd that in all fairness you cannot recommend a

book, say so matter of factly and explain why. As in refereeing,

vitriol and ad hominem arguments are out of order.

Chapter 3

Revising a Dissertation

Within the unwieldy cocoon . . . there is a small, exquisite but-

terﬂy of a book struggling to emerge.

The New York Times Book Review

In the humanities and some social sciences, a monograph is

required for tenure. The wisdom of this rule is being ques-

tioned, most notably by the Modern Language Association

(MLA).

It seems likely, however, that the requirement will

remain in place for some time in disciplines other than liter-

ature, and even within the MLA’s domain it will not vanish

overnight. In these ﬁelds, a scholar’s ﬁrst book usually orig-

inates in the dissertation, but the book is likely to look very

different from the thesis.

From the publisher’s point of view, an unrevised (or thinly

disguised) dissertation is not a good investment. Dissertations

are available online, individually or by subscription, from Uni-

versity Microﬁlms International (UMI). Academic libraries, the

main purchasers of scholarly monographs, subscribe to UMI’s

service, so their patrons already have access to dissertations.

The libraries have no interest in paying twice for the same

content. From the reader’s point of view, reading an unrevised

dissertation is an inefﬁcient way to learn: There is too much

extraneous material in the way. From the author’s point of

view – despite the appeal of quick, effortless publication –

MLA, Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Scholarly Publishing, “The Future

of Scholarly Publishing,” Profession 2002 (New York: MLA, 2002), 172–86; online at

http://www.mla.org/issues_scholarly_pub.

Handbook for Academic Authors

the dissertation is probably not the best way to present one’s

knowledge, creativity, and writing talent to the world at large.

For all these reasons, it is wise to put a good deal of effort into

revising your dissertation. This chapter is designed to help

you do that efﬁciently and to get the most mileage from your

efforts.

But you may not wish to expend that effort. Sometimes the

best thing to do with a dissertation is nothing at all. A project

may serve the purpose of a dissertation – demonstrating one’s

proﬁciency and mastery adequately to earn a degree – with-

out turning up anything that is capable of interesting a larger

readership. It may have been a successful academic exercise

but no more than that.

Another reason not to revise your dissertation would be

that you cannot face it. If you suffered great pain in writing the

thesis, it may be best not to do anything with it. You should

also abandon the dissertation if you are simply tired of it. Ask

yourself whether you want to work on it again, and if your

honest answer is no or a shaky maybe, just let it go. Revision

is rarely quick or easy, and if the subject bores you and you

are eager to get on with something else, do so. You will gain

nothing from bringing an already stale mind to a mound of

overworked material. Usually, though, a dissertation can be

turned into a publishable book with careful thought and work.

Purpose and Audience

A dissertation is an academic exercise designed to let you

demonstrate your mastery of a discipline and a speciﬁc subject

within that discipline. To write it, you must read and under-

stand the literature of your ﬁeld; be able to use at least some of

its research methods; know the relevant theories, ideological

differences, and schools of thought; and be ﬂuent in its special-

ized vocabulary. You must also be able to choose and reﬁne a

For more detailed information from editors themselves, see Beth Luey, ed., Revising

Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editors (Berkeley: University of California Press,

2008).

Revising a Dissertation

topic, formulate and test a hypothesis, articulate an argument,

and endure a long process of research, writing, and rewriting.

To accomplish these purposes, many graduate students end

up doing a lot of work that proves tangential, but that work

is nevertheless written up and included in the dissertation to

demonstrate that it has been done. This meets the goals of the

academic exercise.

The purpose of a scholarly book is to advance knowledge, to

convey new and interesting information and ideas to people

whose work and lives will be enriched by them. The disserta-

tion is focused on its author: It communicates what he or she

has learned to the very limited audience of a specialist com-

mittee whose job is to ensure that the candidate is qualiﬁed to

move on in the academic world. The book must be focused on

its readers: their needs, what they bring to it, and what will

attract and hold their interest. The ﬁrst step in revision, then,

is to deﬁne that audience.

We can begin with the very practical matter of size. A pub-

lisher has a difﬁcult time justifying the intellectual and ﬁnancial

investment that a book requires unless it will sell around ﬁve

hundred copies. That sounds like a modest enough number,

until you realize that only about three hundred research

libraries are likely to purchase it. If only ﬁve hundred copies

are printed, the price will likely approach $100, setting it out-

side the reach of most individual buyers. (See Chapter 11 for an

explanation of pricing.) A book with slightly broader appeal –

the kind of book that might sell a thousand copies – will be

much more attractive to publishers and, because it can be

priced lower, to potential purchasers as well. Equally impor-

tant, it will get your ideas and work into the hands of many

more readers. You can move from that small circle of poten-

tial readers to the slightly larger one in a number of ways:

by attaching one or more small subdisciplines to your own,

by expanding your topic geographically or temporally, or by

reaching into a related discipline. If you begin by thinking

about the sort of people who you think should be interested

in your topic, you can go on to think about how you might

present the material in a way that will attract them. You can

Handbook for Academic Authors

then refocus your work to reach your audience, remove what

they do not need, and add what is missing.

Suppose, for example, that you have written a dissertation

about medical handbooks for laypeople in eighteenth-century

France. The dissertation itself may be of interest only to French

medical historians who specialize in the eighteenth century, but

you have three potential audiences nearby: French social his-

torians, historians of medicine, and book historians. You might

even be able to reach beyond France to European historians in

these ﬁelds. What can you do to make your book interesting

to one or all of these groups? By expanding temporally, into

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, you could attract most

French social historians. By expanding geographically, you

might attract European social historians who specialize in the

eighteenth century. By looking at your subject in the context

of medical advice outside France, you could interest historians

of medicine generally. To interest book historians, you would

need to focus on the authorship, design, circulation, and recep-

tion of the books themselves. You cannot do all of these things,

at least not with the tenure clock ticking, so you will have to

choose on the basis of your own interests and the supplemen-

tary material available. You should think, too, about the work

you have already done. You may, for example, have looked at

work on nineteenth-century France as background to your own

work, so that is already begun. If you decide to look at the topic

throughout western Europe, is there enough secondary litera-

ture to support such a study? Do you have the language skills?

Adding nineteenth- and twentieth-century France might be a

good deal easier, but again, you’d want at least some secondary

literature. Where the secondary literature is thin, are primary

sources available?

Your choice of audience determines what you will do with

your material – and that is how you should be thinking of

your dissertation: as material for your book. It is not, alas, a

penultimate draft or even a ﬁrst draft. Revision will take a

lot of work, and for that reason, everyone who has written

about the process agrees on one thing: You need to give the

dissertation a rest before you undertake the project. Defend it,

Revising a Dissertation

set it aside, graduate, celebrate, and move on to your ﬁrst job.

Think about it if you must, but do not take it off the shelf. After

a few months, you can begin to think seriously about revising.

Your work should proceed in ﬁve stages: focusing, structuring,

pruning, enlarging, and writing.

Revising

Focusing allows you to ﬁgure out what the core argument or

narrative of your book will be. You might begin by thinking

of a one-sentence reply to the question, What is your book

about? The person posing the question is an intelligent, well-

read person outside your ﬁeld – perhaps an NPR interviewer,

your doctor, or even your editor. A second sentence can explain

why it is important. Once you have done that, you have a

statement that will help you determine what is relevant, what

can be discarded, and what is missing.

You can try out more than one of these, to see what works

best: “My book is about the way ordinary people acquired

medical information in France from 1700 to 1900. It gives us

insight into the rise of an educated, informed population and

its changing attitudes toward scientiﬁc authority.” “My book

is about books of medical advice for lay readers in France

from 1700 to 1900. By comparing the design, marketing, and

reception of these books with the publication of other popu-

lar literature – novels, histories, and poetry – we can see how

the notion of scientiﬁc authority was physically embodied.”

“My book compares popular books about medicine in France

in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with those explain-

ing other sciences, such as chemistry and astronomy. Because

of their practical applications, books about medicine reached

more easily beyond an elite, educated audience to those of

far more modest learning.” Which one do you want to write?

Which one can you write?

Structure describes the shape you will give your book. Most

dissertations are not consciously structured. Their organiza-

tion is dictated by convention: a review of the literature, the

Handbook for Academic Authors

methodology, and so forth are laid out in whatever pattern

is generally accepted in the discipline. Rather than structure,

you probably thought about organization. If one were to assign

a geometric shape, most dissertations would be rectangles,

solid and static. Books work best with an active structure that

impels the narrative or the argument forward. If you think in

two dimensions, imagine an arrow. It might go gradually up;

it might go up for a while, and then down; it might go up

and down repeatedly; it might go in a circle. The point is that

it’s going somewhere. If you think in three dimensions, your

book might be a pyramid, with a solid base of theory, context,

or history narrowing up to a speciﬁc application or instance.

It might be an inverted pyramid, starting with a case study

and building out to generalization. One colleague envisioned

her book as a bracelet, with large links of biographical mate-

rial connected by smaller links joining the characters to one

another and thematically to her argument. Your argument, or

the path of your narrative, will suggest a structure.

You need to create a structure consciously so that you can

see where the parts of your book will go and how they will be

connected. This is how structure relates to organization. You

can still use an outline or whatever system works best for you,

but the organization is not freestanding: It has to move your

book along into the shape you are planning. In fact, if the

structure is clear in your mind, you can probably limit the use

of outlines and other structural tools to individual chapters.

But envisioning a structure serves another purpose: If your

structure suits your focused topic well, then material that

doesn’t ﬁt into it probably doesn’t belong. Imagine, for a

moment, a biography. Biographies generally have a linear

structure. Some have an upward trajectory, with the arrow

pointing down from time to time when setbacks occur. A politi-

cian, for example, wins some elections and loses others, suc-

ceeds in some goals and fails in others. If the structure is linear,

then anything that diverts the arrow more than brieﬂy proba-

bly doesn’t belong. For our politician, a long digression into the

nuances of the debate over an issue in which he played a minor

role would not be warranted. A lengthy history of the founding

Revising a Dissertation

of his party before he was born isn’t needed. The genealogy

of his wife’s family isn’t important, although the fact that her

father was a politician may be. Any of these things might have

been needed in the dissertation (even if only to show that you

understood the debate, knew the genesis of the party, or had

mastered the use of genealogical sources). However, they are

clearly diversions to be removed from the book, but perhaps

to be used as the basis for an article – which, in turn, can be

cited in the book.

Pruning is the process of removing what is not needed, mate-

rial that will not interest your chosen audience or that distracts

from the focus of your book. The easy decisions are categorical:

the literature search, discussion of methodology, and much of

the documentation. A literature search was required in your

dissertation to demonstrate that you know and understand

what others have said about your topic. The readers of your

book assume you have done your homework, and they proba-

bly have read much of the material themselves. Any part of the

literature that is relevant to a particular episode or argument

in your narrative can be discussed at that point in the book; it

need not be analyzed at length. Also, while in the dissertation

you may have presented someone else’s analysis and then dis-

cussed further arguments pro and con, in the book you need

only discuss the works that you have judged to be most rele-

vant and revelatory. Except in rare cases, you need not defend

your choice.

Methodology is an important part of graduate education.

Depending on the discipline, a student may need to learn tech-

niques such as how to conduct surveys, do regression analysis,

collate texts, or conduct interviews. The section of the disserta-

tion that describes methodology will, in all likelihood, explain

why a given method was chosen (and others rejected), the

details of its application, the method of analysis, and an eval-

uation of its success. For example, if a survey was used, the

chapter would justify the sample size; explain how the sample

was selected; explain the construction of the survey instru-

ment and include it, perhaps in an appendix; describe how

the survey was actually conducted; and explain and justify

Handbook for Academic Authors

the method of analysis. The author’s committee would then

be satisﬁed that the student was familiar with the relevant

methods, knew how to select among them, had carried out a

well-designed survey, and had analyzed it appropriately. None

of this is needed in the book, which need say only “a survey of

100 suburban high school students showed that 37 percent of

them claimed to have experimented with prescription drugs

themselves, although they believed twice that number of their

fellow students had used them.” Research methods are rarely

of interest to book readers, and they may safely be omitted.

If the methodology was innovative, however, and might be

useful to other researchers, it could be written up for a journal,

with the article cited in a note in the book.

An important function of the dissertation is to demonstrate

that you have read everything you should have read and that

you know how to cite it. Whether your discipline uses notes

and bibliography or parenthetical name/date citations with a

reference list, you will have mastered all the details by the time

you have ﬁnished. In addition, you probably will have exten-

sive footnotes or endnotes defending your choices, demon-

strating that you are aware of counterarguments and coun-

terexamples, explaining why you did not include something

or why you found an argument unconvincing, and generally

hedging your bets. All that should remain of this hard work

is the absolutely necessary source notes. If the discussion in

a note is important, it should be included in the text; if it is

not, it should be discarded. The bibliography should include

only the sources that were in fact useful and relevant. Delete

sources that you read because you needed to see whether

they were relevant but in fact were not. In other words, the

bibliography should be informative, not defensive. (If every-

thing that appears in the bibliography also appears in your

notes, your editor may decide to omit the bibliography. In

your manuscript, however, you should include it.)

The rest of the pruning process is more difﬁcult. You must

decide how much of the content of your dissertation will be

relevant to your book. At this point, you might want to expand

your two-sentence summary into a full paragraph that will

Revising a Dissertation

show how you will develop your argument or narrative. That,

plus the structure, will tell you what should remain.

This can be a scary moment. With the literature review and

methodology chapter gone, the bibliography and notes pared,

and perhaps another chapter or two removed or severely trun-

cated, you may not have much left. It is also one of the most

exciting moments, because it is your opportunity to write the

book you want to write, to meet the demands of an audi-

ence that you want to inﬂuence. It is a chance to pursue the

questions and sources that you didn’t have time for, or that

your committee didn’t ﬁnd interesting. It is the moment to

inject new energy into a project that you may have begun to

tire of.

If publishing a book is optional for tenure, this is the time to

decide whether you might be better off writing a major article

for a top journal and moving on to another project. If, however,

you must have a book completed in a few short years, you

may not have that choice. The summary you have devised will

guide you. It will show you what is missing, and the missing

pieces are what you will spend much of your time developing.

It will dictate the additional research you must do and allow

you to plan the actual writing of your book. It will also help

you answer the question editors will ask: How is your book

different from your dissertation?

The other reason for adding material is your chosen audi-

ence. If you want your book to be read by scholars outside your

subdiscipline, you will have to provide context that your com-

mittee did not need. “Context” may include explanations of

theories, historical background, plot summaries, biographical

sketches, and the like. You have a ﬁrm grasp of that context, so

it will not be difﬁcult to provide. The only difﬁculty is getting

yourself to think like your anticipated readers so that you can

ﬁgure out what they will need in order to understand your

work.

You should refocus your material and decide what you will

add very early in the revision process, because you must plan

your research and evaluate whether your proposal is realistic.

This is the time to make sure the sources are available and to

Handbook for Academic Authors

begin amassing them. It is also the time to apply for grants and

fellowships to give you the time and resources you need.

After doing all this hard work, you will come to the writing

phase. This is the moment when you combine what remains of

the dissertation with the new material you have developed. It

is also the moment when you must make some basic choices

about writing style. You will begin with voice. Which of your

many voices is appropriate for your book? How formal do you

want to be? Is your reader “you,” “the reader,” or someone

else? Are you writing about a group of which you are a part,

and if so will you use the ﬁrst-person plural? How familiar are

your readers with the specialized language of your discipline,

and how much of your jargon must you deﬁne or discard?

Again, this is an opportunity for you to write exactly as you

wish, perhaps for the ﬁrst time, unfettered by the demands of

dissertation traditions and committees.

Articles

Being able to spend all of your research and writing time on

your book is a luxury that few people are given. Most junior

faculty members are expected to publish a few articles before

tenure as well. Indeed, it is probably a good idea to begin writ-

ing and publishing articles before you ﬁnish graduate school.

In the natural and physical sciences, many dissertation-related

research projects generate brief journal articles while they are

under way. Writers in the social sciences and humanities, too,

should consider whether some of their work might be pub-

lished while they are still working on the dissertation. Cer-

tainly, prospective employers are impressed by those who pub-

lish while in graduate school. In addition, publication may put

you in touch with people whose work will be helpful to you

(although the journals outside the sciences are generally so

slow that this is unlikely). In any event, if discrete parts of

your research can be written up for journal publication, you

should develop these as articles. Doing this will help you to see

Revising a Dissertation

your work more clearly and should make your ﬁnal writing

of the dissertation easier. And an article in a well-read journal

may attract the attention of a diligent book editor and bring

you an invitation to submit your work.

Whether publication comes before or after the dissertation,

however, I must issue one major caveat. Most book publishers

will ask how much of your manuscript has already appeared in

print, and if the answer is more than 20 or 25 percent, they will

not be interested. This means that you must be very careful

about which material belongs in the book and what can be

spared.

I have already suggested some possible sources of articles:

your methodology, anything tangential to your book, and any-

thing that needs to be mentioned in the book, but not at length.

In addition, you might be able to derive articles from prelimi-

nary surveys, case studies, new biographical material, a textual

study, a manuscript ﬁnd, a bibliographic note – anything that

stands on its own and is not needed (or can be summarized)

in your book. You may also want to think about writing up

part of the dissertation for readers outside your book’s target

audience. For example, if you are a political scientist or soci-

ologist and your dissertation has a historical chapter that will

be omitted or truncated in the book, you might want to write

it up for a history journal.

Sometimes additional research is needed to transform parts

of your dissertation work into articles. Perhaps the case study

you did of a short-lived dot-com startup was not earthshaking,

but you could combine it with some other published studies

and some theoretical work on high-tech startups. Alternatively,

you could compare it with a similar but successful startup. Per-

haps you unearthed some correspondence that is irrelevant to

the book but is interesting on its own. Sometimes a bit of statis-

tical analysis that you will not want to include in the book can

be combined with published ﬁndings to show a useful rela-

tionship. In other words, do not regard the search for articles

as a mere cut-and-paste effort. Look at your work as a source

ofideasaswellaswords.

Handbook for Academic Authors

A Word of Encouragement

Even when the ﬁrst edition of this book came out, in 1987,unre-

vised dissertations were generally unpublishable. Twenty-

some years later, young scholars face higher expectations for

productivity plus greater challenges in reworking their gradu-

ate research for publication. At the same time, though, I believe

that senior scholars and tenure committees have a better under-

standing of what their demands entail. Junior faculty members

are more likely to be given research leaves or course reductions,

and postdoctoral fellowships are more widely available.

The most interesting – and encouraging – change that I have

seen, though, is that graduate students are choosing more inno-

vative, challenging, and interesting research topics. From the

very beginning of graduate school, they are looking for sub-

jects that will take them through the dissertation and beyond.

They are doing a lot of intellectual multitasking, working on

one topic, thinking forward to the next, and juggling several

ideas at once. They are taking bigger risks, and these gener-

ally pay off. They are doing interdisciplinary work, increasing

the potential to reach larger audiences. One measure of their

success is that The New York Times Book Review and other main-

stream media will, from time to time, review a book that was

once a dissertation. You, too, may see your name in lights.

Chapter 4

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

It circulated for ﬁve years, through the halls of ﬁfteen publish-

ers, and ﬁnally ended up with Vanguard Press, which, as you

can see, is rather deep into the alphabet.

Patrick Dennis, on Auntie Mame

Types of Book Publishers

Scholarly books are issued by six types of publishers: univer-

sity presses, proﬁt-making scholarly publishers, trade publish-

ers, university centers and learned societies, vanity presses,

and online self-publishing services. These types of publish-

ers differ in their refereeing procedures, to some extent in

the kinds of works they publish, in their approaches to mar-

keting, and in the contractual arrangements they make with

authors. Despite some overlap, they serve different purposes,

and authors should understand the differences before deciding

where to seek publication.

University Presses

University presses are the main outlet for book-length schol-

arly work. They are nonproﬁt publishers. Most university

presses are self-supporting or have a small part of their costs

underwritten by the sponsoring institutions and by occasional

grants from private foundations or government agencies. Some

Handbook for Academic Authors

have raised general endowments or endowments for books in

certain ﬁelds. About one hundred university presses in the

United States and Canada belong to the Association of Ameri-

can University Presses (AAUP); a few small university presses

are not members of the AAUP.

A university press disseminates knowledge by publishing

books and journals in print and electronic formats. In its search

for the best in new scholarship, a university press encourages

research and writing. Some presses initiate scholarly projects

such as reference books and new editions of the Bible or of

classic literary and historical works. University presses also

seek to extend the audience for scholarship by acquiring and

promoting works that make current research accessible to a

general audience. In addition to traditional monographs, there-

fore, university presses may publish poetry, ﬁction, transla-

tions, children’s books, anthologies, and cookbooks. Increas-

ingly, they are publishing works of scholarship addressed to

nonspecialists. Many university presses, especially those at

public institutions, publish books on their state or region for

both scholars and general readers. These may include works of

history, literature, anthropology, botany, zoology, and political

science.

University presses vary greatly in size: Some publish fewer

than ten books a year, whereas others publish close to a thou-

sand. Some specialize in a few academic ﬁelds, whereas others

publish in nearly every subject.

Like any other part of a university, a press must carry out its

noble aims in the less lofty realms of limited budgets, limited

space, and limited staff. A press has many publics to please: the

university administration, sometimes the state legislature, the

faculty, its authors, librarians, bookstore owners, and its read-

ers. It is a complex organization that often seems mysterious to

would-be authors. Because its purpose is to ﬁnd, recruit, and

publish the works of promising scholars, however, a press’s

staff is generally happy to meet with faculty to discuss how

they work and what they are looking for. Although I will not

go so far as to urge you to take an editor to lunch, I do suggest

that you attend a press’s open house, invite an editor to meet

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

with your department’s faculty and graduate students, and

generally take advantage of the staff’s expertise and interest.

Even if you do not want to publish with your own university’s

press, or if it is not active in your discipline, the staff can be

helpful and informative. They also welcome queries and invi-

tations from nearby colleges and universities that do not have

their own presses. Journal and book editors sometimes orga-

nize panels at academic meetings to provide information and

exchange ideas.

Academics hold many misconceptions about university

presses. The ﬁrst is that because presses do not need to make

a proﬁt they do not concern themselves with the salability of

a book. This is not true. Most university presses may run in

the red on some titles, but they mustn’t drown in the ink. They

must be responsible publishers, using limited resources wisely,

and they must on balance earn more than they spend. Because

they cannot offset their inevitable losses on some titles with the

proﬁts from romance novels, celebrity biographies, and other

“commercial properties,” they must be very careful about how

they use their funds. No university press will turn down a

book simply because it will not be a best-seller, but costs and

salability are always important considerations. The lifetime

sale a university press expects of a given book may be as few

as ﬁve hundred copies. However, every university press must

publish some books that will sell considerably more than this.

Many university press books could be published equally well

by commercial (trade) houses, and on such titles presses must

offer competitive terms to authors.

Another misconception is that a university press exists to

publish books by the faculty of its own university. Although

most presses encourage home faculty to submit manuscripts

and do try to publish their work when it is worthwhile, all

manuscripts are subject to the same reasonably impartial ref-

ereeing process. Works from outside the university are treated

the same way as are those from within. Because this miscon-

ception is so widely held, many authors avoid their home

presses for fear that colleagues will regard the publication of

their manuscript as a favor. If you are publishing for prestige

Handbook for Academic Authors

or promotion, and if your colleagues are unsophisticated about

publishing, you may want to avoid your home press. In fact,

you need not fear (or hope) that your home university press

will accept your book just because you are on the faculty.

Besides, publishing locally may guarantee more intense,

prompt attention and enable you to be on the spot throughout

the consideration and production of your book. Even if your

home press does not publish in your ﬁeld, its editors should

be willing to give you advice on which presses do.

Another misconception about university presses is that they

are stuffy, unimaginative, and uninterested in promoting their

books. Some are stuffy, and some may seem to make little

effort at promotion for a few of their books. Most, however,

are staffed by bright, innovative people who want their books

to be bought and read. Again, you should consider your own

interests and be realistic. If a book is of limited salability, it will

not help if the publisher emblazons the title on the ﬂank of an

elephant and parades it down Fifth Avenue. You should choose

a publisher whose strength is in the area where you need the

most help. University presses are far from unimaginative when

it comes to technology. In fact, university presses are at the

forefront of innovation in digital publishing.

University presses generally pay royalties, though not al-

ways. The decision is based on expected sales and proﬁtabil-

ity. Some even offer advances, at least on an author’s second

book and on books that other publishers are competing for.

No one, however, should count on making a lot of money

from a scholarly monograph. (Chapter 11 explains the mone-

tary return to an author and a publisher from a typical mono-

graph.) Some university presses have begun to request sub-

ventions from authors. This controversial practice is discussed

in Chapter 5.

The main difference between a university press and a com-

mercial scholarly publisher (other than proﬁtability) is the pro-

cess used to select manuscripts. University presses use a rather

elaborate system involving in-house reading, expert referees,

and a faculty review board. This procedure has two main

advantages for the author. First, you get expert opinions and

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

the opportunity to revise your work, anticipating and avoid-

ing adverse comments and reviews of the ﬁnished book. Sec-

ond, it reassures colleagues, administrators, and search com-

mittees that your book is truly worthy of publication, having

met the standards of impartial reviewers. The disadvantage is

the amount of time it takes. A manuscript of average length

will take from one to eight weeks for in-house review (depend-

ing on how busy the staff is, how thorough the review is, and

whether cost estimates are required), a month or two per out-

side reader (usually at least two readers, occasionally as many

as ﬁve), a week or two for recommendations to the faculty

committee, and two weeks to two months waiting for the fac-

ulty committee to meet. Add in mailing time, and you’re up

to a minimum of three months. If a summer intervenes, you’re

up to a minimum of ﬁve or six months. And that allows no

time for reviewers’ tardiness. Occasionally review takes more

than a year. Later in the chapter I suggest ways to minimize

this period of agony.

University presses are also distinguished by greater empha-

sis on substantive editing and copyediting and (often) by

higher standards of design and production (e.g., better paper

and sturdier bindings).

The people who work at university presses are known by a

number of titles. Each press has a director or president who

has overall responsibility for the operations of the press, but

from there down you will ﬁnd little consistency in nomen-

clature. The person who goes out looking for books and who

evaluates incoming manuscripts may be an acquiring editor,

a sponsoring editor, a senior editor, a humanities (or economics

or biology) editor, or just a plain editor. An editor in chief or

editorial director may oversee the work of the acquiring editors

and possibly the manuscript editors as well. Manuscript edi-

tors – who go over manuscripts line by line correcting spelling

and grammatical errors, improving the ﬂow of ideas, and sug-

gesting other changes – are also called copy editors, line edi-

tors, and sometimes editors, associate editors, or assistant

editors. The senior copy editor may be called the managing

editor.

Handbook for Academic Authors

Outside the editorial department, production of your book

will be handled by a designer and a production editor (who

often coordinates freelance manuscript editing as well), pro-

duction manager, production director, or production assistant.

Electronic publications may have their own editor or manager,

and a staff member may work full-time on the press’s Web

page. Marketing is headed by a manager or director, sometimes

with assistants for advertising, direct mail, and promotion. A

rights and permissions or subsidiary rights manager may be in

charge of selling paperback, translation, serial, book club, and

other rights. The business ofﬁce employs numerous people,

sometimes including the enticingly titled fulﬁllment manager,

whose job is not to cater to authors’ emotional well-being but

to get the books out of the warehouse and into the hands of

customers. Throughout this book I have tried to be as speciﬁc

as possible when designating the person you should write or

call on various matters. However, because presses are orga-

nized differently, this is very difﬁcult. Generally, the acquiring

editor is the person to regard as your connection with the rest

of the staff, but in a small press, the manuscript editor may ﬁll

this function. As a result, I will sometimes refer simply to “the

editor.”

Commercial Scholarly Publishers

The commercial scholarly or “professional” publisher issues

books for scholars in certain disciplines or for speciﬁc profes-

sional groups, such as practitioners in the behavioral, medical,

physical, and life sciences; in business; or in engineering. One

subgroup is sometimes referred to as “STM publishers,” an

abbreviation for scientiﬁc, technical, and medical. They often

publish books in series. Academic Press, Wiley, Routledge,

and Addison-Wesley are good examples, as are some of the

European publishers, such as Elsevier, Methuen, and Springer.

Most of these European publishers have editorial ofﬁces in the

United States as well as in Europe. Commercial scholarly pub-

lishers compete with university presses for some books, so it

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

is important to understand the differences between the two

groups.

The selection processes of these publishers are similar to

those of university presses, except they do not have faculty

committees. Instead, individual editors and editorial commit-

tees make decisions based on referees’ reports. Their decisions

can therefore be made more quickly, although this is not always

the case. Some commercial scholarly publishers are not truly

selective. (The ones I have named are all highly reputable.)

Their peer review processes may be pro forma, and they may

accept virtually every manuscript submitted. They are likely to

ask for subventions from authors (see Chapter 5). It is therefore

extremely important to evaluate these presses carefully. Look

at a large sample of their books in your ﬁeld, and ask your

colleagues and deparment chair about their reputation.

The quality of editing and production among commercial

scholarly publishers varies greatly. Some expend a great deal

of effort on editing, while some do only the most cursory cor-

rection of punctuation. Some routinely win industry prizes for

design and production, while others add minimal design to

electronic copy supplied by the author. One complaint more

frequently lodged against some commercial scholarly publish-

ers than against university presses is that production time (the

activities between the completion of the editing and the appear-

ance of the book) is excessive. This may occur because a pub-

lisher has a small staff and a large backlog of manuscripts

or because of cash-ﬂow problems. (These problems are not

unknown among university presses, either.) On the other

hand, some small, new publishers have such technologically

advanced equipment and ﬂexible procedures that they can pro-

duce books in record time. Overall, there is greater variation

in quality among for-proﬁt publishers than among university

presses. This means simply that authors must do more research

and ask harder questions when selecting a for-proﬁt publisher.

Scholarly and professional publishers market their books

through well-developed mailing lists, exhibits at professional

meetings, and advertisements in relevant journals. Their mar-

keting focuses on well-deﬁned target groups, not the general

Handbook for Academic Authors

reader. The European publishers are experienced in selling

books outside the United States and are therefore especially

attractive to authors whose books have an overseas market,

as many books in the sciences do. Because they need to make

a proﬁt and are not subsidized, they often price their books

higher than a university press might, particularly highly spe-

cialized books and those for professionals used to paying high

prices, such as doctors and lawyers. They are also more likely to

pay royalties. Consider commercial scholarly and professional

publishers if they are active in your discipline, particularly for

books of a practical or an applied nature. Their efﬁciency in

decision making may also be useful if you are facing publica-

tion pressures for tenure or promotion. However, you should

make sure that the publisher is well regarded in your discipline

and among the senior colleagues who will be making decisions

about your future.

Trade Publishers

Academic authors may wish to work with a trade publisher.

Trade publishers issue nonﬁction that is of interest to the gen-

eral public. Their name comes from the fact that they sell their

books “through the trade,” that is, in retail outlets. If you have

written a book that will appeal to a broader audience than

do most monographs, either because of its subject or because

of your approach, you may want to try your luck with such

a trade house. The relevant publishers are most of the giants

(HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and so forth) as well as

some independent trade houses (e.g., W. W. Norton or John

Wiley).

Trade publishers’ reviewing procedures vary, but their deci-

sions are usually more prompt than those of university presses.

However, an unsolicited manuscript will often get short shrift

from a trade house. It may be discarded unread or simply

added to a stack of manuscripts to be read when and if

someone has the time. Unless you have an agent, can get

some sort of introduction to an editor, or make sure through

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

correspondence that your manuscript is expected and desired,

submission to a trade publisher may not be a good idea.

Prestigious trade houses generally carry the same clout with

college administrators as does a university press. The dean

may be less impressed by run-of-the mill publishers. If you are

worried about promotion or tenure, check out the attitudes of

thepowersthatbe.

For marketing, trade publishers are likely to place magazine

advertisements, and they employ salespeople to visit book-

stores and libraries. They view bookstores and online book-

sellers as the main outlets for their publications. They are good

at reaching the general public but do not generally target spe-

ciﬁc audiences. Large university presses with experience in

marketing general interest or professional books are just as

effective at marketing such books as are the trade houses.

Smaller university presses generally do not do as well, because

they lack the experience, the contacts, and the budget. How-

ever, if a smaller press views your book as a potential best-

seller (on a university press scale), it may go all out and make

an exceptional marketing effort. This is particularly true for

books with great local or regional sales potential.

Trade publishers pay royalties and sometimes offer cash

advances. An “advance against royalties” is simply payment

to the author of a speciﬁed amount that the publisher subse-

quently deducts from royalties. It is not money in addition to

royalties. Only a handful of academic authors receive six-ﬁgure

advances, but even a small advance may help defray research

expenses. The amount depends on what the publisher expects

the book to earn, and the timing will depend on the author’s

reputation and how badly the publisher wants the book. An

established author with a salable idea may get an advance or a

partial advance on the basis of an outline and a sample chapter.

More commonly, the advance is paid on delivery of the com-

pleted manuscript. If you get an advance for an incomplete

manuscript and do not ﬁnish the job (or do not ﬁnish it to the

publisher’s satisfaction), the publisher may ask you to return

the advance, as your contract will state. In fact, publishers usu-

ally insist on this only if the amount is large, but it is unwise to

Handbook for Academic Authors

count on their sympathy. Should the publisher misjudge your

book’s marketability and not sell enough copies to pay off your

advance, that is the publisher’s problem; you cannot be asked

to return the advance for that reason.

You should approach a general trade publisher only if you

honestly believe that your work is of interest to people outside

academe. Otherwise, you are wasting both your time and the

publisher’s. Chapter 9 discusses trade books in more detail.

University Centers and Learned Societies

Often, university-afﬁliated institutes and centers publish

books in their special ﬁelds, although sometimes their publish-

ing is limited to research they have sponsored. This is a good

way to publish your book for a small, specialized audience. The

production varies in elaborateness from paperbacks or spiral-

bound books typeset with a laser printer to regular typeset,

casebound, jacketed books. Some series are refereed; others

are not. Some of these groups have distribution arrangements

with university presses. Some pay royalties. You should not

neglect these organizations, particularly for specialized works.

The most reputable ones will impress a dean as much as a uni-

versity press will.

To get information about a center or institute, ask about its

publishing program, refereeing procedures, and recent pub-

lications. The best way to evaluate a university center series

is to ﬁnd out how colleagues in your ﬁeld regard it. Are the

books reviewed in the best journals? Does the series have a few

well-known authors? Just ask around.

Similarly, some learned societies, museums, libraries, and

state historical societies publish monograph series that are

suitable for a manuscript that will sell too few copies to inter-

est a university press or are highly specialized. These are all

respectable, and many are extremely prestigious. Some pub-

lish books for general readers that sell very well and receive

national attention. They range in scope from large interna-

tional scientiﬁc organizations to local historical societies. Go to

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

the library or the organization’s Web site to see what sorts of

things it is doing and the kinds of books it is interested in.

Vanity Presses vs. Self-Publishing

Vanity presses, sometimes called subsidy publishers, charge

authors money to publish their books. If the author is will-

ing to pay, they are willing to publish. No editorial or expert

judgment enters the picture. For this reason, publication by a

vanity press carries no prestige and no clout with tenure com-

mittees. Nor does it bring riches, because you are paying all the

production costs plus a proﬁt to the publisher. Your book will

not be reviewed in reputable publications or stocked by book-

sellers. If you just want to see your work printed and bound

and can afford to pay handsomely for it, there’s no harm done.

But there’s no beneﬁt, either.

How do you spot a vanity press? Anyone who advertises,

“Writers! Publish your book in no time ﬂat!!!” is a vanity pub-

lisher, and vanity presses are not listed in Literary Market Place,

the annual directory of publishing houses and other literary

services. If you do not detect the nature of the press earlier, it

will certainly be clear in the contract.

Some publishers sit on the border between genuine schol-

arly publishing and vanity publishing. They claim to offer

peer review, but in fact their review procedures are nominal

and their editorial committees are rubber stamps. They require

author subventions on virtually every title they publish. If you

are in doubt about a publisher, either steer clear or ask hard

questions. For example, what percentage of the manuscripts

submitted to them do they publish? Will you receive referees’

reports? On what ﬁnancial assumptions are subventions based

(see Chapter 5)? Also ask your department chair and dean

whether publication by that press will count in your favor.

Self-publishing is cheaper than vanity presses, but like van-

ity presses it offers no prestige and provides no independent

review of the quality of your work. It is designed for people

who are convinced they have written a best-seller and do not

want to cut a publisher in on the proﬁts, or for those who

Handbook for Academic Authors

want to have bound copies of a work of limited interest, like a

memoir or family history. Again, in the unlikely case that you

simply want your work in type and bound, self-publishing

will do just ﬁne.

There are three types of self-publishing services on the Web

that use print-on-demand (POD) technology: those that use

the vanity press business model, those that merely assist self-

publishers, and those that do not charge authors any fees but

ask very high prices for their books. The ﬁrst variety claims

services, which are usually limited to production. The sec-

ond makes no claims on the author’s copyright, charges a fee

for publishing services (editing, design, production, and mar-

keting), and helps the author create electronic ﬁles ready for

printing on demand. The third accepts without review disser-

tations, theses, and other academic manuscripts and prints

and binds them on demand. Editing and design are mini-

mal or nonexistent. They provide the author with a few free

copies and pay a small royalty on any books sold. They gen-

erally charge about $100 for their books, and it is unclear

who buys them. It is often difﬁcult to tell which sort of ser-

vice is being offered, and authors should proceed with cau-

tion. A useful guide through this maze can be found on the

Web site of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Amer-

ica: www.sfwa.org/beware/printondemand. What academic

authors must remember about all three types is that they do

not use a peer review system, so that work published with

them will not be helpful in tenure or promotion and is unlikely

to enhance one’s reputation. Publication in any of these modes

will also preclude later publication by a traditional press.

Choosing a Publisher

The most important issue in choosing a publisher is whether

the press publishes in your ﬁeld. No matter how good your

philosophy manuscript is, a press that has not published

philosophy for a decade is a bad bet. Make a list of ten or

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

twenty recent books in your ﬁeld and look up the publishers.

Also look through Literary Market Place and the Directory of

the Association of American University Presses. If you have

written an economics book, then a publisher that produces a

series in economics or that lists a staff member whose title is

“economics editor” is a likely prospect. The AAUP Directory

includes a grid that lists subjects and the presses active in them.

It is also available on the AAUP Web site, AAUPnet.org. Look

at publishers’ catalogs and check their Web sites. See which

publishing houses are advertising in the journals you read, and

evaluate the quality of their recent selections. Then compile a

list of a dozen likely publishers from those who are currently

active in your subject. Talk to publishers’ representatives at

academic meetings and conventions. They will not have time

then to look at a manuscript, but they can let you know whether

the press is likely to be interested. It is a good idea to arrange

such meetings beforehand. Send the editor a brief description

of your book by e-mail and ask when you might get together.

The next task – and it is a very important one – is to com-

pose a letter and supporting documents to send to prospective

publishers (this is sometimes called a prospectus). The letter,

a page or two long, should provide a brief summary of your

manuscript; the audiences to whom you expect it to appeal;

and what is unique, important, and exciting about it. It should

be written for an intelligent, critical, well-read lay reader (that’s

what a publisher is). This is a work of salesmanship and advo-

cacy; the goal is to convince the editor to ask to see your

manuscript. The letter should be honest and straightforward,

but this is not the occasion to express lingering doubts or deep-

seated misgivings. If a well-known scholar in your ﬁeld, one of

the press’s authors, or an expert at the press’s sponsoring uni-

versity knows the manuscript, suggest that the press consult

the scholar. Spare no effort in writing this letter. If it is muddled,

boring, semiliterate, or just thrown together, the publisher may

not even look at your manuscript, let alone publish it.

In addition to the letter, you should send the table of con-

tents, lists (or just numbers) of tables and illustrations, a brief

summary or narrative outline (sometimes the introduction will

Handbook for Academic Authors

serve), a sample chapter, and a curriculum vitae if yours is

impressive. The curriculum vitae is optional; skip it if you are

unpublished and unknown. If you do not include it, however,

use your letter to provide vital information such as where you

did your graduate work. Do not send more than this unless

you are asked.

Send the letter and documentation to the publishers on your

list. In a ﬁeld such as history, you may have a dozen prospects;

in the sciences, perhaps half a dozen. Address your materials

to a person, not a title. Get the appropriate name from a current

directory or the Web site – either the director or the acquisitions

(or executive) editor in your ﬁeld. If your book would be part

of a series, and if you know the series editor, you can send the

prospectus directly to that person rather than to a member of

the press’s staff. Personalize each letter and print it out; never

send a form letter. (Curricula vitae, tables of contents, and so

forth can be photocopies.) You want to show that you would be

a model author, so write carefully, type neatly, and proofread

thoroughly.

It is not legitimate to submit a complete manuscript to more

than one publisher at a time (unless both presses are aware of

the dual submission and agree to it), but it is perfectly all right

to solicit interest from several presses simultaneously. At this

stage, presses are generally not investing in readers’ reports,

and they do not expect exclusive consideration.

Letters of introduction or endorsement can be useful when

trying to interest publishers in your work. If a scholar who has

published with the press or who is well known in your ﬁeld

writes such a letter, the acquiring editor will pay attention. For

such a letter to be useful, however, the writer must be both

familiar with your manuscript and able to endorse it sincerely.

You will do more harm than good by forwarding a vague

letter saying only that you are an awfully nice person who has

undoubtedly done a good job.

Once you have gotten responses indicating interest in your

manuscript, you need to decide where to send it ﬁrst. You can

judge publishers by the quality of what they publish and how

well they market their products, so look closely at recent books

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

they have issued. Are they well designed and readable? Are

they well manufactured? Are they books that you would like

to see on a shelf next to yours? Have you received mailings or

seen advertisements for their books?

Ask people who have published with various presses about

their experiences. Was the refereeing handled promptly and

fairly? Did editing begin soon after acceptance? Were they

pleased with the quality of the editing? Would they submit

their next manuscript to the same publisher or go elsewhere?

Ask more than one author per press, because authors and expe-

riences vary. Weight the responses according to your needs.

For example, if you know you are a careless writer, you want

a publisher who will take the time to do a thorough job of

copyediting.

Another consideration may be the press’s ability to market

your book abroad. Some scientiﬁc and technical books can be

sold in considerable quantities in Europe and Asia without

being translated. A study of German history or society may be

a good candidate for translation into German. If your book has

such prospects, be sure to select a press that has the ability to

promote your book effectively in the relevant markets. Ask the

acquiring editor how the press would handle this opportunity.

In such cases, international commercial publishers may have a

clear advantage.

After considering these factors, list the interested presses

in the order of your preference and send your manuscript to

the ﬁrst one on the list. Ask the acquiring editor whether the

press would like two copies of the manuscript. (This permits

simultaneous review by either two referees or a referee and an

in-house editor.) Do not tell the other publishers that you are

sending it elsewhere ﬁrst; knowing that a rival rejected your

manuscript may color their decision.

Agents and Editorial Consultants

Academic writers often wonder whether literary agents can

help place their manuscripts. Usually the answer is no.

Handbook for Academic Authors

Literary agents receive a fee of 15 percent of the author’s roy-

alties. Because the royalties on most scholarly monographs

barely keep their authors in toner cartridges, there is little rea-

son for an agent to take them on. Textbook companies do not

usually deal with agents either. The only time an agent is likely

to be interested and useful is when you have written a trade

book, one for a general audience that should be published by

a commercial house. An agent who agrees with your assess-

ment of the manuscript’s potential may accept you as a client,

particularly if you have published other books, and having an

agent will certainly help you persuade trade houses to look at

the manuscript. Chapter 9 provides more information about

literary agents.

Editorial consultants, sometimes called author’s editors,

work directly with authors rather than exclusively for pub-

lishers. Some institutions, particularly hospitals and research

institutes, employ such editors to work with staff authors. Most

author’s editors, though, are freelancers. They offer services

ranging from manuscript evaluation (usually for a ﬁxed fee)

to copyediting (usually at an hourly or per-page rate). They

can be helpful to ﬁrst-time authors, revisers of dissertations,

writers for whom English is a second language, or authors

of manuscripts that present unusual problems. They can also

help when a manuscript has been turned down two or three

times and the author is unsure about how to revise it. However,

they vary greatly in their qualiﬁcations and experience. Many

people who have never worked for a publisher and who in

fact have little editorial experience of any kind put themselves

forward as editors. Should you decide to seek the help of an

independent editor, ﬁnd someone who has had at least three

years of editorial experience with a university press (on staff or

as a freelance editor) and who has worked in your ﬁeld. There

are many such people. Ask an editor at a nearby university

press to recommend someone if you need help, and be willing

to pay for the author’s editor’s services. You should be aware,

too, that your publisher will still copyedit your manuscript,

even if your own editor has done an excellent job.

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

Sometimes publishers will accept a manuscript contingent

on the author’s hiring an author’s editor to revise it. Presses do

this when they believe that a manuscript’s content is valuable

but that the writing and organization need more editorial work

than they are willing to contribute. This may be costly, but if

it is the only way of securing acceptance it will be worth the

expense. Ask the publisher to suggest two or three editors and

call each one. Ask how soon they could get to your manuscript

and what their fees are. (They will not be able to give you a ﬁrm

estimate of total cost without seeing the manuscript.) Hire the

one with whom you feel most comfortable. Make sure the pub-

lisher sends your editor the referees’ reports and in-house edi-

torial evaluations, as well as the name of an editor at the press

to consult during the work.

Submitting the Manuscript

Before submitting your manuscript to a publisher, you must

get it into the proper physical form. Chapter 10 explains the

correct preparation of manuscripts. Although journal editors

generally prefer electronic submissions, book publishers

require hard copy because that is what their peer reviewers

expect. When you do submit your manuscript, you need to give

the publisher some important information. First, you should

explain that others have expressed interest in the manuscript

and that you are therefore hoping for a prompt response. It

never hurts to let them know they have competition. Second,

if you want to suggest possible readers or warn them away

from readers you expect would be hostile, now is the time.

You should be honest about this. Do not recommend your dis-

sertation advisor, best friend, or sister-in-law. Do recommend

the best-qualiﬁed people in the ﬁeld, particularly if they are

known to be fair and open-minded. Publishers may not use

your suggestions, but if the same names come up when they

ask others, they will. Give complete names, current addresses,

phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. Valid reasons for asking

Handbook for Academic Authors

that they not use speciﬁc readers include personal animosity,

professional rivalry, or ideological disagreements. Third, if

there is anything peculiar about the manuscript that may raise

eyebrows, mention and explain it. This shows that you are

aware of the issue and prevents it from becoming a surprise

stumbling block. Such oddities might range from an unusual

notation system through the use of nonstandard editions to

your denial of the law of gravity. Finally, if the publisher has

sent forms to be ﬁlled out or has requested information, ﬁll

out the forms or answer the questions. Close the letter with

a request that they let you know when you may expect a

decision.

Keep at least one hard copy of the manuscript for yourself,

even if you have secure electronic copies. Never send the only

copy of a manuscript anywhere. Publishers are not responsi-

ble for things getting lost in the mail. Send the manuscript ﬁrst

class and certiﬁed or by a commercial delivery service. Certi-

ﬁcation makes a package easier to trace. Wrap the manuscript

carefully and seal it well in a sturdy box or a padded book-

mailing bag.

Refereeing

University presses and other scholarly publishers base their

publishing decisions largely on the opinions of consulting

scholars, and trade houses often consult outside experts.

Although the following discussion refers mainly to university

presses, it applies to other publishers as well.

When a publisher receives a manuscript, an editor reads it

to see whether it seems suitable for the press, to judge the

quality of the writing and the amount of editing likely to be

required, and to decide what sort of expert reader is needed.

A manuscript may be rejected on the basis of this reading,

usually because it will not ﬁt into the press’s publishing pro-

gram. (The submission of a prospectus, recommended earlier,

may enable the editor to make this decision before seeing the

whole manuscript, thus saving you some time and pain.) A

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

manuscript that requires more extensive editing than the press

is prepared to do may also receive an early rejection. Some

presses work up a ﬁnancial analysis of the book. They esti-

mate production costs and likely sales and see what the likely

investment and return will be. Other presses wait until they

have made a tentative or ﬁrm positive decision before doing

this analysis. A ﬁnancial analysis can result in rejection, par-

ticularly if your book is full of tables or illustrations and is

likely to have very limited sales. That is one reason to alert

the publisher to these features – and to your willingness to

reduce the number of illustrations – in your initial letter of

inquiry.

If the manuscript survives the in-house reading and ﬁnancial

analysis, it is sent to a specialist in the ﬁeld, known as a reader

or referee. The evaluation of the ﬁrst referee often determines

the press’s ﬁnal decision: A convincing, well-stated argument

for rejection usually carries the day. A positive review will

generally lead to a second reading. (Some presses will ask

for two copies of your manuscript so that they can send it to

two readers at once.) If the readers disagree, the press will

either seek a third opinion (sometimes sending along the two

conﬂicting reports) or else resolve the matter by making its

own evaluation of the two reports. Excessive, undocumented

praise or condemnation is suspect. A publisher wants a careful,

rational reading rather than a gut reaction.

Publishers often ask readers to ﬁll out questionnaires. Fig-

ure 1 is a list of questions often found on such forms. If you

can be sufﬁciently detached, try to give the answers you would

expect from a reader of your manuscript. This may help you

to anticipate criticism and revise your work accordingly.

Whether your work is accepted or rejected, you can expect to

get at least excerpts or paraphrases from the readers’ reports.

You will not be told the name of the reader unless the report

was positive and the reader has given permission. Nor should

you insist on getting the entire report. Contrary to popular

opinion, editors are basically kindhearted people. If criticism

seems excessively harsh, undiplomatic, or irrelevant, they may

withhold it. They will usually send anything they think may

Handbook for Academic Authors

Originality and value: Is the manuscript a contribution

to the field? Is it original? Is it important? Did you

learn something from reading it?

Scholarship: Is the scholarship sound? Was the research

well planned? Was it well executed? Have any major

sources been neglected? Is the documentation ade-

quate? Are the notes and bibliography in an ap-

propriate, usable format? Is the information the

manuscript provides, to the best of your knowledge,

accurate?

Purpose: What is the purpose of the book? How well

does the author accomplish this purpose?

Market: Is this work vital to specialists in the field?

Does it have any value as a textbook? Will it be of

interest to readers outside the immediate field?

Competing works: Are there any other books published

on this subject? How does this work compare with

them? What does it add to their coverage of the sub-

ject?

Style: Is the manuscript clearly written and readable?

Is the length appropriate? Did you find the style ap-

pealing?

Organization: Is the book well organized? Is there any

repetition? Is the argument easy to follow?

Special features: If the manuscript contains tables,

figures, or other illustrations, are they adequate? Are

they necessary? Are they easy to understand?

Do you have any suggestions for improving the

manuscript?

Do you recommend that the manuscript be published?

10.

Figure 1. Typical questions for manuscript readers.

be helpful to you. If you do not understand a comment, feel

free to ask for clariﬁcation.

Sometimes an editor will send referees’ negative comments

and ask the author to respond. This is generally a signal that

the press remains interested in your work but is reluctant

to forward the recommendation to the editorial committee

until it can reassure them about the reviewers’ misgivings.

They are giving you an opportunity to clarify misunderstand-

ings and correct errors. It is also an opportunity to point out,

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

diplomatically, where the reviewer is wrong and explain why.

You should frame a very careful response, because the tone

of your letter is as important as the content. You should con-

vey understanding of the issues raised, conﬁdence in your

own judgment, and willingness to make changes where appro-

priate. Although you may think the reader is an ill-informed

dullard, you must take all comments seriously and not display

your impatience (no matter how well justiﬁed it may be). If

you are able to remove the doubts raised by the referee, your

manuscript will probably be accepted.

Please note that rarely, if ever, does it do any good to protest

a rejection. Read the comments as calmly and objectively as

possible, make any changes you think are appropriate, and

send the manuscript off to the next publisher on your list.

Rejections are never heartening, but they can be useful if you

get good advice. You should not be unduly discouraged until

the number of rejections hits two digits. Think of rejections as

criticism or advice and do not take them personally. It is hard

to detach yourself from something to which you have devoted

so much time, but make the effort. You can learn from the

experience if you view it objectively. And always remember

that few books are published by the ﬁrst or second publisher

that looks at them; one publisher’s meat is another’s poison.

Getting a Prompt Answer

Whether your work is rejected or accepted, you want a prompt

decision. Screening prospective publishers to make sure they

are active in your ﬁeld, sending out prospectuses, and care-

fully choosing where to submit ﬁrst will help prevent time-

consuming, unnecessary rejections. Once you have submitted

your manuscript to a publisher, the best way to prevent delays

is to speak up. If you have not heard from a press within three

months, write a polite letter or e-mail asking when you may

expect a decision. If your letter is not answered within two

weeks, write again or call. You may be told, “We expect to

Handbook for Academic Authors

reach a decision by June 15.” When June 20 arrives with no

word, write or call again. Keep after them. Do not be obnox-

ious, just ﬁrm. A polite letter or moderately worded phone call

will do. But do not be afraid to be persistent. No publisher will

reject your manuscript just because you are assertive. Threats,

nagging, and tears, however, are counterproductive.

Should things get out of hand – your letters go unanswered,

your phone calls are not returned, and months slip by – take

ﬁrm action. Set a date by which you expect a response and

inform the publisher. If you do not hear by then, write a let-

ter withdrawing the manuscript from consideration and send

it elsewhere. Send postage and ask that the manuscript be

returned. If you like, you can write a letter of complaint to the

president of the university. This will not get your manuscript

accepted (and by now you probably don’t want to work with

that press anyway), but it will get a response and may prevent

future abuse of authors.

Authors have been known to submit a manuscript, hear

nothing for a year, and then meekly accept a form rejection

letter. Don’t do it! Be reasonable in your demands, but expect

responsive, responsible behavior in return.

Revisions

A publisher may accept your manuscript but ask that you make

certain revisions. Sometimes you will not get a contract until

the revisions are made. If you do get a contract, it will have

a clause about the acceptability of the ﬁnal manuscript. Make

sure that you and the acquiring editor agree on precisely what

revisions are required. “Please shorten the manuscript” is inad-

equate; get the number of pages to be cut, or a percentage, and

speciﬁc suggestions for cutting. “Fix up your notation system”

requires elaboration: Exactly how should the notes be done?

What style guide should you follow? “Clean up the tables”

should be accompanied by a sample of the proper format. If

you are asked to revise according to the suggestions of a referee,

make a list of the expected changes as you understand them

Finding a Publisher for the Scholarly Book

and ask your editor to conﬁrm its accuracy and completeness.

This is especially important if acceptance of the manuscript is

contingent on revision, but it is worth doing even if the changes

are merely suggested. Agree in writing on a realistic date for

completion of the revisions.

You may ﬁnd some of the requested revisions to be unac-

ceptable. You may feel that they threaten the integrity of your

work, that they are ill advised or irresponsible. If so, explain

your objections. Both your needs and the publisher’s can prob-

ably be accommodated. If not, you may have to ﬁnd another

publisher. The only guideline here is to make sure that the fuss

you raise is commensurate with the importance of the issue. It

is not worth going to the mat over footnote style or whether

the book will have ﬁve illustrations or eight. Do insist that your

ideas and argument remain intact.

If your publisher has not asked for revisions, but you feel

some are needed, discuss this with the acquiring editor. Explain

what changes you have in mind and how long it will take you

to make them. The manuscript editor will want to postpone

work until your changes are complete.

Chapter 5

Working with Your Publisher

I have dealt with a good many publishers, and while I have

found some few of them arrogant, discourteous, oppressive,

and generally abominable in both personal and business inter-

course, I desire to record my testimony that as a class they are

courteous and honorable gentlemen; fair and liberal in views,

intentions, and actions, and pleasant and intelligent in mind

and intercourse.

Frederick B. Perkins

When a publisher accepts your book, you are beginning a rela-

tionship that will last for years. Both of you will be happier if

you understand clearly what the publisher expects and what

you can reasonably expect of the publisher. The basic respon-

sibilities of both author and publisher are set out in the pub-

lishing contract, and you must read and understand that doc-

ument. You should also know how to work with the press’s

staff throughout the various stages of editing and production.

Finally, you should think about how you can help the publisher

promote your book.

The Contract

You will receive a contract when a publisher decides to pub-

lish your book. Most publishers send two copies, both signed,

with the request that you sign and return one copy. Others

will send a draft contract for your review. Even in the former

case, you should never sign a contract until you have read and

Working with Your Publisher

understood it. Nor, in the former case, should you conclude,

as many authors do, that the contract is nonnegotiable, that

you must simply take it or leave it. Within limits, contract pro-

visions can be altered, and you should not hesitate to discuss

your concerns with the publisher. This is now easier than it

once was, because contracts are often written in plain English

rather than in legal jargon. They are less mysterious, and it is

easier to see how their provisions affect you.

This section explains what you can expect from a contract

with a publisher. Although it will help you to interpret the

terms of a contract offered to you, it is not meant as a substi-

tute for a lawyer’s advice. If your book has unusual complica-

tions, if it has movie or TV possibilities, or if you are simply

uneasy about the whole process, ﬁnd a lawyer who specializes

in the law of intellectual property (copyright and patents) or

communications law. Your state bar association or a law school

faculty member can provide a referral. The sections that follow

describe the main elements of a publishing contract and some

typical provisions. Publishing contracts, of course, may vary

in format and organization.

Timing

A publisher may offer you a contract at any time from receipt

of your prospectus to acceptance of the ﬁnished, revised

manuscript. A ﬁrst-time author is unlikely to be offered a con-

tract for a mere prospectus, although this does happen occa-

sionally. Established authors may get contracts on the basis

of a prospectus alone, although publishers usually want to

see at least a chapter or two. As scholarly publishers have

become more aggressive and competitive in acquiring books,

the advance contract has become more common.

Publishers feel safe offering contracts for unwritten books

because all publishing contracts contain an escape clause. They

usually say something like “The author agrees to deliver to

the publisher a manuscript acceptable in form, style, and con-

tent.” In other words, even though you have a contract, your

Handbook for Academic Authors

manuscript is still subject to internal editorial review, review by

expert referees, and – in the case of a university press – approval

by the press’s faculty board. This clause is very broad and, as a

result, has been the subject of litigation between trade publish-

ers and authors. It is not a license for publishers to change their

minds arbitrarily but a way for them to ensure that the product

they ultimately acquire is of the quality they expected when

they made the offer. Imagine the publisher as someone who has

bought a house on the basis of an architect’s plans. A buyer

who approves plans for a house with four bedrooms, three

baths, and 3,000 square feet of livable space will not happily

pay for and take possession of one with three bedrooms, one

bath, and 2,000 square feet. This clause allows the publisher

to demand revisions, additions, excisions, and so forth. If such

clauses did not exist, it is unlikely that any but best-selling

authors would ever receive contracts for unﬁnished books.

A contract for an unﬁnished book – just like a contract for

a ﬁnished one – binds the author to sending the completed

manuscript to that publisher and bars negotiations with other

publishers. In that sense, it is unequal: The author has no escape

clause. However, an advance contract does offer certain advan-

tages for the author. It permits early and continuing collabo-

ration, so that you get an editor’s advice as you are writing,

perhaps avoiding massive revision later. It may include a cash

advance, which always comes in handy. It may be helpful in

securing tenure, promotion, or research grants. By relieving

you of the worry of ﬁnding a publisher, it may enable you to

work better. As a practical consideration, an advance contract

reached at an early stage may make it easier to produce the

book from your electronic ﬁles. Finally, although the contract

does have an escape clause for the publisher, it is nevertheless

an expression of commitment to your book. Some university

presses do not offer advance contracts without approval from

their faculty boards; clearly such a contract is a serious under-

taking. Others make the offer more casually. In either case,

however, I believe that publishers put more effort into helping

an author revise a manuscript that is not quite satisfactory if it is

under contract than they do if they are seeing it for the ﬁrst time.

Working with Your Publisher

Advance contracts do carry some disadvantages. The pub-

lisher you would most like to work with may not offer a

contract whereas another does. Then you will have to accept

the security of your second choice if you want a contract in

hand. Contracts always specify a delivery date, and if you do

not manage deadlines well, this can be a source of unwanted

pressure and anxiety. Publishers are almost always willing to

allow extra time, but contracts are sometimes canceled when a

manuscript is long overdue. (This is particularly true of books

that are marketable because of timeliness, such as those to be

published in connection with a centennial or other commem-

orative event.) Contracts also generally specify maximum or

minimum length, as well as a maximum number of tables,

illustrations, or maps. If you have not yet started the book,

or are not very far along, it may be difﬁcult to evaluate the

reasonableness of these limits. Again, no publisher will back

out of a contract because a manuscript has one extra table, but

if you promise a 300-page manuscript and deliver 700 pages,

you will likely be in trouble.

The best time to sign a contract is when you know with a

fair degree of certainty both what the book is going to be like

and when you can ﬁnish it – and when the contract is offered

by a publisher you think you will be happy with. Be wary of

offers from presses that you know little about and that have

seen little of your work. The possibilities of misunderstanding,

conﬂict, and disappointment are too great.

Purpose

The purpose of a publishing contract is to transfer some of your

rights as an author to the publisher in exchange for publication

and, generally, payment. When you write a book you own it,

just as you own any other sort of property. And what you

own is not merely the manuscript as a physical object (which,

indeed, you can sell or give away separately) but the right to

copy it, distribute it, translate it, ﬁlm it – to exploit it in a great

variety of ways. As an individual, you are not in a very good

Handbook for Academic Authors

position to take advantage of your book’s potential, so you

reach an agreement with a publisher to develop it.

Your rights to the book will last seventy years past your

death, according to current U.S. copyright law, a period dur-

ing which your publisher may also become defunct or possibly

be reincarnated as a subsidiary of a video game and fast food

conglomerate. A well-drawn contract will protect your inter-

ests, and those of your heirs, far into the future, when no person

now living will be around to recall what happened.

A contract, even when written in the stufﬁest legal prose,

is a living document. Before it is signed, it is the subject of

negotiation, of give and take, of bargaining. After the contract

is signed its full possibilities come to life. What looked like

a boilerplate clause about translation rights suddenly matters

when a French publisher wants to issue a French edition. Per-

haps the provision for a paperback edition that you ignored as

unlikely suddenly becomes crucial ten years later when your

book unpredictably becomes a standard text in undergradu-

ate courses. The provisions for electronic rights become reality

when a chapter of your book is included in a textbook Web site

or your publisher issues it as an e-book. A contract is designed

to provide for all contingencies, no matter how remote. As you

read it, make sure you understand what each clause means

and what it implies for possible future events.

To make sure that you and the publisher work together ami-

cably and efﬁciently throughout the book’s publication and

subsequent life, the contract spells out the rights and respon-

sibilities of both publisher and author. It provides remedies

for each party should the other fail to meet some requirement.

The purpose is not to enable the publisher to steal the proﬁts,

make you do all the work, or weasel out at the last minute.

Nor should the contract allow you to receive royalties when

the publisher is losing vast sums on your book, to avoid doing

jobs that are best done by the author, or to run off to another

publisher in the middle of production.

To some extent, as noted, the terms of a contract are nego-

tiable. Negotiations should be undertaken in a calm and objec-

tive frame of mind. Avoid paranoia. Explain why you want

Working with Your Publisher

to change something and be prepared to offer a concession

in return. This chapter will help you know what is usual and

reasonable, giving you a realistic view of which contract pro-

visions matter most, which you can expect to alter, and how

much change you can hope to negotiate.

Transfer of Copyright

As the author of your work, you own the copyright. Most pub-

lishing contracts require that the author transfer, or assign, the

yours become the publisher’s. These include, but are not lim-

ited to, the rights to publish the book in English and all other

languages, to publish excerpts or condensations in magazines,

and to adapt it for ﬁlm or television. It is not legally necessary

to transfer the copyright; you can instead grant only certain

rights to the publisher and reserve the rest. For example, you

might grant the publisher only the right to publish the book

in a hardbound edition in the English language. Some spe-

cialized publishers do ask only for cloth and paper publishing

rights because they assume that the books they publish have no

further commercial possibilities, and they have no interest in

pursuing the sale of translation, serial, and other rights. Most

publishers, however, will not accept such a limited grant.

It is not generally to the author’s advantage to retain rights

because such an arrangement would require the author to sell

all the other rights (paperback, translation, movie, and so forth)

separately. Aside from the fact that few of these rights are valu-

able for most scholarly books, authors are rarely equipped

to negotiate with paperback houses, foreign publishers, and

movie moguls. Publishers can do this better, and the share

they take of the proﬁts is generally well earned. Authors of

best-sellers, along with their agents, may try to reserve various

rights, but even they rarely succeed. For best-sellers, much of

the publisher’s proﬁt comes from the sale of foreign, paper-

back, serial, movie, or TV rights rather than from sales of

the hardback book. They are unlikely to give up these proﬁts.

Handbook for Academic Authors

For textbooks, few of these rights are relevant, though some

textbooks are used abroad and are translated.

By transferring the copyright, you do not give up your share

of proﬁts from nonbook rights. As we shall see, the contract

spells out how the proceeds from the sale or licensing of each

right are divided, and the percentages are negotiable.

Transfers of copyright are not eternal. They can be termi-

nated in two ways. First, the contract may provide for termi-

nation after a speciﬁed period or if the publisher allows the

book to go out of print (i.e., if the publisher no longer has

copies available for sale and declines to reprint). Second, even

if the contract does not mention termination, the copyright law

allows authors (or their surviving spouses, children, or grand-

children) to terminate the transfer during the ﬁve years begin-

ning thirty-ﬁve years after the date of the transfer and ending

forty years after that date (for publication rights, the ﬁve-year

period can begin either forty years after the date of the transfer

or thirty-ﬁve years after ﬁrst publication, whichever is earlier).

After thirty-ﬁve or forty years, however, most of the damage

is done, so including a termination clause in the contract is to

your beneﬁt. Termination returns to you only the basic publica-

tion right plus any others not yet sold or licensed. For example,

if your publisher has sold the Italian publishing rights, that con-

tract continues in force for its full term, despite your termina-

tion of the assignment of copyright from which it was derived.

Technology has complicated the termination clause, because

the meaning of “out of print” has become unclear. Until

recently, a book was out of print when the publisher had no

actual copies left to sell. Now, however, when a book is phys-

ically out of print, the publisher may license a company to

print copies from their electronic ﬁles when a bookstore or

individual places an order. These copies are often physically

indistinguishable from the original edition. Such “on-demand”

publishing renders the notion of out-of-print books obsolete.

Indeed, some books are published only on demand. Books

may also be published only electronically, so that all copies

(unless printed out by the purchaser) are virtual rather than

actual. These are never really “in print.” If this issue concerns

Working with Your Publisher

you, you might ask your editor for written clariﬁcation. There

seems to be no standard way of dealing with this question yet;

it is a subject of contention between publishers and authors’

associations.

Speciﬁc Rights

The most basic right involved in a book contract is the right of

publication, of offering copies to the public. The contract will

grant the publisher the exclusive right to publish your work in

book form; in return, the publisher will (usually) pay you a roy-

alty, as I explain shortly. Generally, contracts will include under

this right book publication in all languages throughout the

world. You must understand that by granting the publisher this

exclusive right you are promising not to allow anyone else to

publish your work as a book in any language anywhere in the

world.

How a publisher exploits this right will depend on its

view of the book’s market abroad and on its usual market-

ing arrangements. For example, a large Anglo-American press

is in an excellent position to sell your book in English in the

United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia –

throughout the English-speaking world. American publishers

are likely to seek British copublishers if they foresee the possi-

bility of sales in the United Kingdom. To exploit a non-English

market, presses sell translation rights. Some publishers are

more diligent about such activities than others, and some books

are more salable abroad than others. If you have ideas about

translations, share them with your acquisitions editor or the

subsidiary rights manager. More important, if a foreign press

or scholar approaches you about translation rights, respond by

explaining that the rights are held by your publisher and that

you will pass on the inquiry. The proceeds from such sales will

be divided between you and the publisher, as I explain shortly.

Some contracts specify that the publisher will consult the

author before selling foreign rights. If your book has potential

for translation, and if you are knowledgeable about the

Handbook for Academic Authors

publishers in the relevant countries, such a clause is valuable.

Similarly, if you are ﬂuent in a language, you may want to ask

for the right to review and approve any translation into that

language.

A closely related right that is sometimes listed separately

is that of publishing the book in paperback. The paperback

rights to best-sellers are generally sold (sometimes at auction)

to paperback houses for large sums. With rare exceptions, how-

ever, publishers of scholarly books retain these rights and pub-

lish the paperback edition (if there is one) themselves. Authors

are paid a royalty.

Rights other than publication and translation rights are

sometimes called subsidiary rights. One group of such rights

that the contract will specify is serial rights – the right to pub-

lish portions of your book in magazines, journals, or newspa-

pers. “First serial” rights refer to such publication before the

book appears; “second serial” rights apply to such publication

after the book is published. You need not worry if a reason-

able portion of the material in your book (roughly 20 percent)

has appeared in a journal, although you should certainly let

the publisher know. Once you have signed a contract, however,

you should not attempt to publish portions of your manuscript

elsewhere without consulting the book publisher.

Serial rights can be important in generating income, espe-

cially if they are sold to a periodical with a large general circu-

lation (e.g., The New Yorker or Scientiﬁc American). More often

their importance lies in their ability to generate sales by call-

ing attention to the book, even if the direct payment by the

periodical is small. As in the sale of foreign rights, proceeds of

such sales are divided between author and publisher, and the

contract may require the publisher to seek the author’s consent

before granting such rights.

The right to sell abridged, “digest,” or condensed versions

of your work may also be speciﬁed. Scholarly books are rarely

of interest to Reader’s Digest, but abridgments may be anthol-

ogized, and condensations of multivolume works are not

unheard of, especially when such condensation makes them

attractive as textbooks. You will probably want to ask for the

Working with Your Publisher

right to review and approve abridgments and condensations;

in fact, you may want to specify that you be asked ﬁrst to

do any condensation the publisher itself issues or licenses to

another publisher.

Excerpts from scholarly works are sometimes published in

readers or anthologies (print or electronic), and your contract

will mention such uses speciﬁcally. Usually the compiler will

want to use a chapter of your book, although sometimes an

abridged version is used. You are granting the publisher the

right to review such requests, to specify the conditions under

which the material can be used, and to set and collect a fee.

You may also want to review such requests, and the contract

will specify your share in the fee. Like you, the publisher will

be concerned about the way your material is treated in the

anthology; permission probably would be denied if your work

was to be used as a bad example or if the abridgment distorted

your argument. The publisher also will be concerned about

the effect of the compilation on the commercial value of your

work. For example, the inclusion of one chapter in an anthol-

ogy might increase interest in your book and enhance sales,

whereas publication of another chapter (say, the conclusion)

might actually reduce sales of your book. Any requests you

receive for reprinting part of your work in an anthology must

be referred to the publisher. You or your publisher may also

receive requests to include part of your book in an electronic

database or other nonprint medium. These requests should be

handled in the same way.

Similarly, the contract will specify that the publisher has the

right to grant permission to quote from your work. “Permis-

sions” are discussed brieﬂy later in this chapter and at length

in Chapter 10. When other writers want to publish portions of

your work that fall somewhere between a few words and an

anthology selection, they must ask permission. These requests

are a real nuisance, and you should be delighted that your

publisher is taking them on. If any fee is collected, it will be

shared according to the contract provision.

Book club rights increase circulation and sales of your book.

Although few scholarly books are candidates for the Literary

Handbook for Academic Authors

Guild or Book-of-the-Month Club, some may interest more

specialized groups. It is probably worth your while to look

through the book club listings in Literary Market Place to see

whether any group looks promising. If you ﬁnd one or two,

send the suggestion to your publisher. Authors generally

receive less money per copy on books sold through book clubs

(contracts generally share the proceeds of book club sales

equally between author and publisher, but book clubs receive

large discounts). Nevertheless, sales to book clubs permit pub-

lishers to take advantage of the economies of larger print runs

(see Chapter 11), and they do enhance the visibility and sales

of books.

The contract will also list speciﬁcally some rights that are

more exotic – and less likely to be sold. Even though your

monograph is unlikely to appear on Masterpiece or to be pro-

duced by Dreamworks, read the provisions and check on the

division of revenues.

As the writers’ strike of 2007–2008 demonstrated, electronic

and multimedia rights are the subject of dispute between

authors’ groups, on the one hand, and producers and pub-

lishers, on the other. Some publishers are issuing contracts

that require the author to assign all electronic rights; authors’

groups and agents argue that authors should retain such rights,

or at least a fair share of the revenues. The discussion is

important because no one knows how extensive electronic

and multimedia exploitation will be, what forms it will take,

or how much revenue these uses will generate. Publishers

want to know that authors will not take a proﬁtable use of

their work elsewhere; authors want to ensure that they are

not giving away something of value – especially if they fear

that the publisher will not know how to exploit electronic

rights.

There are no norms to follow on electronic rights, so you will

have to negotiate this on your own. Most publishers will want

the right to digitize your book for sale as an e-book, whether

from their own site or through a retailer like Amazon.com. By

analogy to all other rights, authors should earn a percentage

Working with Your Publisher

of the revenues from such sales. Thus, for any rights that you

do assign, the contract should specify the royalty rate you

will receive for electronic products issued by your own pub-

lisher and the percentage of revenues you will receive from the

sale or licensing of electronic rights to others. These percent-

ages should be comparable to those offered for print rights;

the Authors Guild recommends that revenues from electronic

rights be shared equally between author and publisher. If your

contract does not speciﬁcally assign electronic rights to the

publisher or contain a clause that says all rights not speciﬁ-

cally assigned belong to the publisher, then you have retained

these rights. The publisher may add a clause forbidding you

to use electronic rights in a way that would reduce revenues

from the print edition.

Despite the great variety of rights, their transfer to the pub-

lisher involves only a few important ideas that you need to

understand. First, the publisher will exploit only some of these

rights directly, selling or licensing most of them to others. For

example, an American publisher will sell to a French pub-

lisher the right to translate the book into French and sell it in

the French market; grant a movie producer an option to pro-

duce a ﬁlm version; and sell an excerpt to Vanity Fair. These

arrangements may be exclusive or nonexclusive (perhaps Elle

will buy another excerpt, or both Sony and Amazon.com may

sell e-books); indeﬁnite or for a speciﬁc period (movie options

expire and can then be sold to another would-be producer); and

worldwide or geographically limited (Spanish-language rights

throughout the world, for example, as opposed to English-

language rights outside North America). Also, although few

books can be fully exploited, every contract provides for all

rights just in case. Do not ignore these provisions, even though

they seem remote. Finally, even if you have assigned all rights

to the publisher, you retain a ﬁnancial and professional stake in

them. Pass along all inquiries about translations, anthologies,

and so forth, as well as any ideas you have about possible buy-

ers of various rights, to your acquiring editor or to the manager

of subsidiary rights.

Handbook for Academic Authors

The Publisher’s Duties

As explained earlier, you assign the copyright of your book

to a publisher in exchange for publication and payment. The

publisher’s most important obligation is to publish your book –

that is, to edit, design, produce, market, and distribute it. The

contract will make this clear, but it will not usually state how

quickly the publisher must do all of this. You may ask that the

publisher agree to publish the book within a certain time after

you submit a complete, revised manuscript; two years would

certainly be adequate. Most publishers would prefer not to

include such a clause, and they often have good reasons. But if

you are concerned about excessive delay, either because your

book is on a current topic or because the press has a reputation

for tardiness, you can ask. (Remember, however, that should

the deadline pass, you would have to start all over again to

ﬁnd another publisher. This is unlikely to get the book out

faster.)

The contract will require that the publisher copyright your

book and make sure that it is published in conformity with

Most publishers will print the standard copyright notice in

an appropriate place in the book, although the law no longer

requires this. Most will also ﬁle a form, send two copies of the

work (for deposit in the Library of Congress), and pay a small

fee to the U.S. Register of Copyrights. Although your rights are

protected without registration (i.e., your failure to register the

you cannot sue for copyright infringement until the book is reg-

istered. Because registration is simple and inexpensive, most

publishers consider it a wise precaution.

Upon publication of your book, the publisher will give you

a speciﬁed number of free copies (usually ﬁve or ten). Most

contracts also permit you to buy additional copies for your

own use (not for resale) at a discount of 40 to 50 percent. Many

publishers also offer authors smaller discounts on all the books

they publish.

Working with Your Publisher

Royalties and Other Payments

The royalty system is a ﬁnancial expression of the idea that

the fates of author and publisher are inextricable. If a book

succeeds, both parties share in the rewards. If it fails, neither

party makes any money. Why, you may ask, is the author’s

share on a scholarly book a measly 5 to 10 percent? Chapter 11

illustrates how that percentage compares with the publisher’s

proﬁt and, in fact, demonstrates that it is usually a pretty fair

share. For now, it is probably adequate to understand that

the publisher does not get the other 90 to 95 percent; most of

it goes to typesetters, printers, binders, paper manufacturers,

wholesale jobbers, and retail stores. The publisher’s share must

also pay salaries, rent, utilities, and other expenses.

Royalties, generally paid once or twice a year, begin some-

time after publication, depending on the publisher’s account-

ing year. The check is preceded or accompanied by a statement

of sales or revenues. The contract will spell out when royalties

are to be paid and should give you permission to inspect the

publisher’s records insofar as they relate to your book.

Some contracts provide for an advance to be paid on royal-

ties. As noted in Chapter 4, an advance is a cash payment made

to the author on signing the contract, on delivering an accept-

able manuscript, or at some other speciﬁed moment. It is not

money paid in addition to royalties or instead of them; it is sim-

ply a sum paid in advance and subsequently deducted from the

royalties the book earns. Obviously, publishers will not offer

advances of more than they expect a book to earn. Authors

of scholarly monographs can expect only small advances, if

any. Publishers may offer an advance to help you ﬁnish your

book more quickly (e.g., money for a research trip), to help you

pay for illustrations or other costs, or just to compete success-

fully with another publisher. You can ask for an advance, but

do not expect a large sum. For example, suppose the publisher

expects to sell 2,000 copies of your book (an optimistic estimate

formanyamonograph)at$50.00 a copy, paying you 6 percent

of the retail price in royalties. The most you can expect to earn

Handbook for Academic Authors

over the book’s lifetime would be $6,000, and the publisher

would probably balk at advancing more than half of that.

Royalty rates vary and are negotiable. They are calculated as

a percentage either of retail price or of net revenues (the pub-

lisher’s receipts) of your book. It is easy to estimate royalties

calculated on retail price: If a book sells for $50.00 and royalty

is 10 percent, you will receive $5.00 for each copy sold. When

royalties are paid on net revenues, the calculation is more difﬁ-

cult. Some books are sold directly to readers for the full $50.00;

others are sold to retailers and wholesalers at discounts rang-

ing from 20 to 40 percentormore(netting$40.00 to $30.00 or

less). Your 10 percent, then, is $5.00,$4.00,or$3.00. Generally,

royalties based on retail price will be paid at a lower percentage

than those based on net revenue. As a rule of thumb, 10 percent

of net is roughly equal to 6 or 7 percent of retail. The percent-

ages are negotiable, though the base usually is not: Publishers

prefer uniform accounting procedures. This means if you are

offered a royalty of 8 percent of net revenue, you may succeed

at bargaining for 9 or 10 percent of net, but you will not get 8

(or even 6) percent of retail.

Regardless of the base on which royalties are calculated,

the range of royalties begins at zero. Some publishers simply

do not pay royalties on some books. Some pay royalties but

only after a certain number of books (usually 500 or 1,000)

have been sold; this practice has become increasingly com-

mon. Some offer an escalating royalty schedule: As sales reach

certain speciﬁed levels, the percentage increases (say 5 percent

for the ﬁrst 2,500; 7.5 percent for the next 2,500;and10 percent

thereafter). Most offer one schedule for casebound (hardback)

books and another for paperbacks. The top of the scale for

scholarly books is probably 10 percent of retail; for textbooks,

it is around 15 percent. Feel free to bargain within this range,

but do not expect to raise an offer by more than a percentage

point or two.

One case in which it is appropriate to ask for higher roy-

alties is that in which you do work that is traditionally the

publisher’s. If, for example, you provide PDFs ready for print-

ing, you are entitled to higher royalties than if you had merely

Working with Your Publisher

provided an electronic typescript. Some publishers automati-

cally write this differential into their contracts, giving an extra

percentage point or two to the harder-working author. Others

might simply pay the author an amount based on the typeset-

ting charges saved. Alternatively, the savings can be used to

keep the price of the book down.

Most contracts list the types of transactions for which roy-

alties are not paid. These include books given away free as a

courtesy or for review, books that are returned by booksellers,

and books sold at or below cost. The ﬁrst category is obvious,

but the others require a brief explanation. Unlike most retail-

ers, booksellers have the privilege of returning merchandise

that they cannot sell. Thus, what registers on the publisher’s

ledger as a sale in January may appear as a return in June.

Alfred Knopf referred to this phenomenon as “Gone today,

here tomorrow.” Because returned books are never actually

sold, no royalties are paid on them. This may be reﬂected in

royalty statements, with an amount deducted from second-

year royalties for books that appeared to be sold – and on

which royalties were paid – in the ﬁrst year but that were sub-

sequently returned. Trade publishers may also deduct a certain

amount from royalties as a reserve against expected returns.

Books may be sold below the publisher’s manufacturing cost

when they are “remaindered.” If, after a few years (or a shorter

time, for trade publishers), a book is selling very slowly or not

at all, the publisher may offer it at a sale price. If it still does

not sell, the publisher may sell the remaining copies to a com-

pany that pays very little and then sells them for somewhat

more. (The obvious example is the giant coffee-table book on

the bargain table for $9.95.) Unsold hardcover books are often

remaindered when a trade book is issued in paperback. If the

book is sold to the remainder house at a price below the pub-

lisher’s cost, the author receives no royalty. After all, the royalty

is a share in the book’s success.

Many contracts provide that the publisher need not pay roy-

alties when the total due is less than a speciﬁed amount or

when fewer than a certain number of books are sold. This is

done because of the bookkeeping costs involved. Generally the

Handbook for Academic Authors

sum is held over until the next year, although sometimes it is

not paid at all. This is a reasonable provision if the amount

speciﬁed is reasonable – say, $25.00 or the sales needed to gen-

erate that amount in royalties. Sums beyond that should be

paid out. After all, it doesn’t cost that much to write a check.

Although royalty contracts are the most common, publishers

sometimes pay authors a fee, either at one time or in install-

ments (say, one-third on signing the contract, one-third on sub-

mitting the manuscript, and one-third on ﬁnal acceptance). The

advantage for the author is getting cash up front; the disad-

vantage is that in the end the author will get less than royalties

would have provided if the book does well. The fee arrange-

ment is most common for contributors to a collection of articles

or essays, where it is a practical and generally fair way of doing

business. However, a contract of this sort for a complete vol-

ume should provide for unanticipated success. For example,

the author should get an additional payment if the book is

reprinted, or a supplementary royalty schedule might kick in

after a certain (large) number of copies have been sold.

In addition to royalties or fees, an author may receive pay-

ments from a publisher that represent the author’s share of

rights sold or licensed to others. The contract will state what

percentage of the proceeds the author gets from the sale of

such rights. The variations are endless, but 50 percent is com-

mon. For serial and movie rights, the author’s share may rise

to 75 or even 90 percent. These shares are paid either when the

publisher collects them or in the annual royalty accounting.

In sum, the publisher’s job is to publish your book, exploit

its possibilities, and collect and share the proceeds of all sales.

What is the author’s job?

The Author’s Duties

The contract will tell you when you have to deliver the com-

pleted manuscript (if you have not already done so) and how

many copies of it. It may specify a minimum or maximum

length and the number of tables, maps, photographs, and other

Working with Your Publisher

illustrations that is expected. It may be very speciﬁc about the

physical condition of the manuscript. Most scholarly publish-

ers now require that you submit your manuscript electronically

as well as in hard copy. This provision may be very speciﬁc

about the software to be used and other details. Still other

contracts will require that you submit “camera-ready copy”

(pages that can be photographed as is, for printing), or the

electronic equivalent, a PDF. This is most common for books

containing material that cannot easily be typeset, such as Chi-

nese characters, or books with a great deal of mathematical or

chemical notation. If you are unable or unwilling to do this

kind of work, you must negotiate these provisions with the

publisher. The contract will also enumerate the tasks you must

do during production: reviewing the copyediting, proofread-

ing pages, and preparing an index. Chapter 10 discusses these

processes in detail. What you need to understand as you read

the contract is the ﬁnancial implications of these provisions.

The publishing contract speciﬁes at what stages in the pro-

duction process you will be allowed to make changes and

how extensive those changes can be. In reviewing the edited

manuscript, you are free to make changes quite liberally. In

fact, you should regard this as your last opportunity to make

changes. When you are reading proof, the number of changes

you can make is greatly restricted. Some contracts permit no

changes in proof beyond correcting the typesetter’s errors. Oth-

ers allow a small number, which is expressed as a percentage

of the total typesetting cost. This is a very difﬁcult number for

authors to interpret. Say the contract provides that you will

be charged for all changes that cost more than 5 percent of

typesetting costs. If the typesetting bill is $3,000, then you will

be allowed to chalk up $150 worth of changes without charge.

Changes made to proof are far more expensive than the original

typesetting, so that the $150 gets eaten up very quickly. In fact,

5 percent barely allows for normal human error. It would be

very unusual for a publisher to allow the author more extensive

free changes in proof. The only time this possibility would be

worth raising is the case in which a book is very timely and last-

minute changes in, say, election statistics are expected. In most

Handbook for Academic Authors

cases, the best way to avoid disagreements and expense is to

review the edited manuscript very carefully and make all your

changes then.

If you are submitting your manuscript electronically and

are responsible for entering editorial and authorial changes

or providing PDFs, this clause is rendered meaningless: The

typesetter’s bill will be reduced or even eliminated, and the

cost of making changes falls on you anyway. What is impor-

tant in these cases is that you not make changes without the

publisher’s knowledge. Although I have not seen an appro-

priate substitute clause, publishers should soon think of a way

to limit the timing and extent of changes that do not relate

to typesetting charges. Unfortunately, some publishers have

thrown up their hands and offer contracts that simply permit

no changes. However, this does not allow for correcting the

errors that creep into all books.

The standard contract provides for the author’s reading of

page proof only. If you wish to see later stages of proof, you

will have to negotiate such a provision with your publisher.

This is necessary only in the case of an unusually complex or

demanding work, such as a critical or documentary edition, or

a work with many illustrations or an elaborate layout; such a

request is unlikely to be granted in other cases.

Another duty that may fall to the author is to provide art-

work. This means that you must locate or create the art, get

written permission to use it, provide acceptable copies, and

pay reproduction charges and permissions fees. Chapter 10

provides detailed information on procuring illustrations. For

now, you should understand that, except for some textbooks,

the contract places this responsibility clearly with you. In the

case of a heavily illustrated book, you may be able to get the

publisher to advance such costs out of royalties so that you

do not have to come up with large amounts of cash. All these

possibilities should be raised and negotiated.

Most contracts stipulate that the author must provide an

index or pay to have one prepared. Chapter 10 provides advice

on preparing indexes. At the contract stage, however, if you

Working with Your Publisher

think you will want to hire a professional indexer, ask the

publisher to ﬁnd one and, if possible, advance the fee from

your royalties.

The clause that imposes a duty on almost every academic

author is the one that gives the author the responsibility for get-

ting permission to reprint other people’s work. This is an obvi-

ous task in the case of anthologies and for illustrated books,

but it occurs in dealing with unillustrated monographs as well.

Whenever you use someone else’s tables, ﬁgures, or words at

signiﬁcant length, you must get written permission and, if

requested, pay a fee. Chapter 10 provides guidelines, and your

publisher may have some suggestions as well.

You may be asked to give the publisher the “right of ﬁrst

refusal” on your next book. This means you must submit it to

the publisher ﬁrst, to accept or not. Most publishers will give

up this right if you ask them to do so. If the relationship works

out well, you will come back anyway; and if it doesn’t, they will

not want a hostile author. Some contracts simply stipulate that

you not publish any competing book as long as this one is in

print. This provision is relevant mostly to textbook publishing.

Some contracts have provisions about revised editions. Few

scholarly books have second editions, but every successful text-

book does. Generally, the contract requires the author to pre-

pare a revised edition when the publisher deems it advisable.

Should the author be unwilling to do so, the publisher may hire

someone else to do it, with that person sometimes acknowl-

edged as coauthor. For a textbook, you may want to reserve

the right to approve the choice of revising author, if possible.

Important Legal Considerations

In signing your contract, you represent that the work is your

own, that it is not libelous, and that you have not promised

it to anyone else. Sometimes you must agree to pay any

expenses arising out of litigation involving claims of libel,

Handbook for Academic Authors

are a combination of ethical commitments that we all hope are

universally understood and of legal considerations that require

some explanation.

Of course, if we all obeyed the ethical canons of our pro-

fessions automatically, they would not need to be written into

contracts. Rather than moralize, let me remind you very sim-

ply that you have an obligation to credit others accurately and

fully for their work. “Others” include colleagues whose work

you have used, students who have assisted with research, and

friends or informants who have provided information. “Work”

includes words, ideas, drawings, memories, data – all the raw

material of scholarship. All original work is built on the con-

tributions of others, and these contributions must be acknowl-

edged. I must remind you also that what you write should be

true – no falsiﬁed data, no ﬁctional notes, no creative quota-

tions. Also, do not sign more than one contract for the same

book.

Using someone else’s work without giving credit may go

beyond plagiarism into copyright infringement. As a respon-

sible author, you should understand the fundamentals of copy-

right law. Under U.S. copyright law, all works of an author –

whether published or not – are protected against unauthorized

use from the moment of their creation until seventy years after

the author’s death. (There are some variations on this for older

U.S. works because the current law went into effect in 1978;

see Chapter 10 for details.) “Works” include ﬁction, nonﬁc-

tion, poetry, letters, tables, graphs, paintings, sculpture, draw-

ings, photographs, music, and song lyrics. Works are protected

whether or not they have been previously published. The law is

designed to protect authors’ rights, not to restrict unnecessarily

the legitimate use of their works by others. Under the doctrine

of fair use, you can quote a “reasonable” (though unspeciﬁed)

amount from protected published works without permission.

If you wish to use more than that, or if you wish to quote

from unpublished works that remain under copyright, you

must get written permission from the copyright holder and, if

asked, pay a fee. Although this may seem a nuisance when you

are the quoter, you can appreciate its importance when you are

Working with Your Publisher

a potential quotee. Chapter 10 provides a summary of when

you need permission to quote and how to go about obtaining

it. The bibliography includes books that provide more detailed

information about copyright.

Libel is a legal problem that academic authors tend to ignore,

believing that it is something only journalists have to worry

about. Unfortunately, it is quite possible for a scholarly writer

to libel someone. You commit libel when you write something

about a living person that is both untrue and harmful. In libel

law, harmful statements are those that damage a person’s repu-

tation, business or profession, or social life. They include state-

ments or suggestions that someone is a criminal, communist,

Nazi, or bankrupt; suffers from a feared disease; or has behaved

unethically. There are of course many other possibilities.

Libelous statements need not be blatant. They can be as subtle

as the classic entry in a ship’s log: “Captain was sober today.”

Libel law is complex and changing. For example, the stan-

dards applied vary depending on whether the subject is an

ordinary person or a public ofﬁcial. Libel law is also much

stricter outside the United States, most relevantly in the United

Kingdom and Canada. If you are writing about controversial

events or subjects, you need to be sure that what you say about

living people could be proved in court. If you are not sure, you

need to write very carefully. Though you need not resort to the

journalist’s “alleged perpetrator,” you can avoid difﬁculty. For

example, instead of claiming that “Alderman X accepted bribes

from numerous contractors,” you may need to write, “Good

government groups have repeatedly charged Alderman X with

accepting bribes, but he has denied the charges. He has been

tried twice for bribery, but both trials ended with hung juries.”

You may also want to have a lawyer review your manuscript

for libel. Your state bar association can refer you to lawyers

experienced in the ﬁeld.

Even scholars writing about events that occurred hundreds

of years ago can commit libel by making careless accusations

against fellow scholars. In commenting on the work of oth-

ers, you should avoid hyperbole. If you consider a theory

far-fetched, limit yourself to a reasoned assessment of the

Handbook for Academic Authors

theory and do not call its originator a fool, an incompetent,

or a lunatic. Do not accuse your colleagues of plagiarism,

shoddy research, or unethical conduct unless you can prove

the charges. And even if you think you can, is it really worth

the expense and delay of a lawsuit? Litigation can keep your

book in limbo for years and cost thousands of dollars. It is best

to avoid the problem with careful research and writing.

Like copyright law, libel law is not meant to limit freedom

of expression. It is designed to protect against unwarranted

embarrassment and harm to one’s professional or personal

reputation. On the whole, compliance with the law beneﬁts

writing by making it more careful, accurate, and precise.

Signature

If there is anything in the contract that you do not understand,

ask the publisher to explain it. If some provision is extremely

important to you and is not spelled out, explain this to the

publisher and ask for a rider on the contract or a letter of

understanding. For example, you may wish to review transla-

tions, excerpts, or condensations for accuracy. Do not rely on

oral agreements or casual reassurances. When you understand

everything in the contract and are satisﬁed with it, sign one

copy and return it. Keep the other copy in a safe place.

If you are working with a coauthor or coeditor, both of you

will sign a contract with the publisher as “the authors.” The

publisher will hold you jointly responsible for reviewing the

editing, getting permissions, indexing, and so forth. You and

your coauthor may reach a separate understanding about who

will do what, but the publisher will not enforce it. In other

words, if your coauthor fails to live up to his or her side of

the bargain, you must do it. It is generally wise to draw up an

agreement in writing with your coauthor about who will do

what, with a provision for failure. For example, the coauthor

who decides not to read proof as promised might be obliged

to pay for the services of a professional proofreader.

Working with Your Publisher

Subventions

Many university presses receive subsidies from private foun-

dations or government agencies. For a long time, some presses

hesitated to seek outside money with strings attached, fearing

a loss of control or integrity. For example, if a foundation or

government agency offered a press $50,000 to publish books

in economics, might the publisher not select more economics

books than otherwise? Or even accept inferior works to avoid

losing the gift? This hesitation has largely been overcome as

the fears associated with limited-purpose grants have proved

unfounded.

Author Subventions

A more controversial form of subsidy is the author subven-

tion – a grant of money from the author to defray the costs of

publication. Because this practice raises the specter of vanity

publishing, it is controversial among publishers. In fact, it is not

the same as vanity publishing, but the differences can become

blurred. Remember that a vanity press will publish anything,

as long as the author pays for it. The author’s money is both

necessary and sufﬁcient for a positive editorial decision. Uni-

versity presses that request author subventions separate the

decision to publish from the author’s willingness to pay. If

the manuscript does not meet their standards, they will not

publish it, even if the author offers money. In other words, the

subvention may be necessary, but it is not sufﬁcient. Sometimes

it isn’t even necessary: The press may request a subvention but

publish even if the money is not forthcoming.

Another difference is the amount of money requested. A

vanity press requires the author to pay all costs plus a proﬁt to

the publisher. A university press will ask only that the author

share costs. According to a 1977 survey, the average subven-

tion requested by university presses was between $2,000 and

$5,000, with the range covering $1,000 or less through $15,000

Handbook for Academic Authors

(although it can go as high as $100,000 for books with color

plates).

Despite overall inﬂation, these numbers have not

changed very much. Finally, university presses ask for sub-

ventions not to enhance their proﬁts but to enable them to

publish books that otherwise would not make economic sense.

You may have written a book that will be of immense value to

a few hundred people. If it is to be published in an edition of

a few hundred copies at a reasonable price, a subvention will

be needed. A book of wider appeal – with potential sales of,

say, a thousand copies – that is expensive to produce because

of elaborate tables, many photographs, or difﬁcult typeset-

ting may also require a subvention. Presses do not routinely

request subventions, but many will ask for them when a good

manuscript cannot otherwise pay its way.

Having authors provide electronic manuscripts or camera-

ready copy is an indirect subvention in that it shifts costs that

have traditionally been the publisher’s responsibility to the

author. Providing an index, proofreading, and paying permis-

sions fees are also subsidies, although they are hallowed by

tradition.

Some commercial scholarly publishers, in lieu of a cash sub-

vention, ask for a commitment on the part of the author’s

university bookstore to purchase a certain number of copies,

presumably for sale as textbooks. This seems to me more prob-

lematic than a cash subvention. If the book really is a text-

book it should be published as such and should be used in

courses other than the author’s. Many universities require fac-

ulty members to get a dean’s permission to use their own

books as texts, to avoid abuse. Subventions can legitimately

come from authors, their institutions, or foundations but not,

I think, from students.

What should you do if a reputable press accepts your

manuscript but asks for a subvention? You can, of course,

John Hazel Smith, “Subventions of Scholarly Publishing,” Scholarly Publishing 9,

no. 1 (October 1977): 19–29, provides details on amounts and conditions of subven-

tions. In a more recent discussion, Fred Kameny suggests that the amounts of subsidies

have not changed and discusses ethical issues: “Authors with Deep Pockets: The Ethics

of Subsidies,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 29,no.2 (January 1998): 65–70.

Working with Your Publisher

refuse. They may agree to publish the book anyway, or you

can go to another publisher. But if the publisher is the one you

know you want to work with, if you are under pressure to

publish quickly, or if you have been turned down by several

other presses – and if you can come up with the money – you

may well agree to pay the subvention.

The subvention need not come from your own pocket. Some

universities are willing to pay subventions for faculty members

and have special funds for the purpose. Others are willing but

have to label the grant something else – research assistance,

faculty grants-in-aid, or some other blanket category. Still oth-

ers cannot give money for faculty publication but can provide

services, including production of artwork and photographs,

proofreading, keyboarding, preparation of an index, mailing

of advertising ﬂyers, and so forth. In specialized ﬁelds, a pub-

lisher may require you to provide camera-ready copy or PDFs

rather than typesetting the book (this practice is more com-

mon among commercial scholarly publishers and university

research centers than among university presses). Your univer-

sity may be willing to provide this service. Explore these pos-

sibilities with your publisher and your dean.

If you do agree to pay a subvention, there are four issues to

raise before signing a contract. First, make sure the amount is

reasonable. You can ask how it was computed, and look again

at the range of subventions given earlier. If your manuscript

is a fairly ordinary scholarly work – up to 500 manuscript

pages, without many tables or illustrations, and using no for-

eign alphabets – anything over $5,000 is probably excessive. If it

is illustrated, especially with color plates, if it has a lot of tables

or requires complex typesetting, the amount requested may

reasonably be much higher. Do not hesitate to bargain over the

amount. Remember, the publisher does want your book.

Second, the contract should provide for royalties to return

the subvention if the book miraculously sells enough copies to

repay the publisher’s investment. Publishers are not infallible,

and their pessimism about sales may be excessive.

Third, ask the publisher to cooperate with you in seeking

outside money. Publishers should be aware of funding sources

Handbook for Academic Authors

in ﬁelds in which they are active, and they should be willing to

spend some time looking for help. The next section provides

an introduction to this process.

Last, if your department or administration suggests that it

regards the subvention as a form of vanity publishing, the

press director should write a letter explaining that the decision

to publish was made on the basis of the manuscript’s qual-

ity, without regard to the availability of a subvention, that it

was subjected to normal refereeing procedures, and that the

subvention is requested only because of the work’s limited

salability. If you cannot raise the money and do not have it

yourself, say so. The press may well go ahead anyway.

Author subventions present publishers with a difﬁcult prob-

lem. On the one hand, they invite accusations of vanity pub-

lishing and the possibility of undue outside inﬂuence; on the

other hand, they make possible the publication of much valu-

able but unproﬁtable scholarship and make it less necessary

for presses to seek out semicommercial manuscripts. They also

make it possible to keep the price of a book low enough to max-

imize sales and readership. I cannot see any ethical problems

from the author’s point of view – although raising the money

is a practical problem. The book has been accepted on its mer-

its, and the subvention in no way detracts from its quality. Of

course, anyone would rather not pay a subvention, but it may

be a wise investment. If, for example, being promoted to asso-

ciate professor requires having a book published and brings

a pay increase, the average subvention pays for itself pretty

quickly.

Seeking Grants

Much academic research is supported by grants from gov-

ernment agencies or private foundations. Some of these same

agencies and foundations also provide grants for publication

costs, but most do not have special grant programs for this

purpose. Others do have subvention programs but limit their

grants to translations, critical editions, or other speciﬁc sorts of

Working with Your Publisher

publications. The same agencies that supported your research

may also provide a subvention for publication costs if they are

approached properly. It is worth reminding grantors that the

research they have supported is far more valuable if it is widely

disseminated through publication, even if such dissemination

is not likely to pay for itself.

The best time to approach a foundation or agency about

funding publication is when you apply for the research grant.

Depending on the regulations of the grantor, you may be able

to apply in your original proposal for such publication costs as

preparing illustrations; paying permissions fees; paying page

charges; hiring an editor, indexer, proofreader, or word proces-

sor; or preparing camera-ready copy. You may also be able to

request funds for a direct subvention to a publisher. But you

must anticipate and estimate all of these costs at the time of the

proposal.

If you do not ask for such funds along with your applica-

tion for research support, it may be possible to go back to the

foundation or agency with a request later. Even if the agency

does not list such expenses among those it will support, it may

do so if asked, particularly because the subvention is gener-

ally far smaller than the research grant. When making such a

request after the research is completed, you would do well to

have a publisher lined up who is willing to provide ﬁnancial

estimates justifying the subvention; most will do this happily.

Of course, if you are fortunate enough to have some money

left over from the original grant, you may be able to use that

for the subvention. Do not do so, however, without asking

permission.

It is also possible to ﬁnd support for publication costs from

fresh sources. If you are working with your home university

press, you can jointly investigate local foundations, corpora-

tions, or institutions that might provide support. At some uni-

versities, as surprising a source as the alumni foundation has

funds for such projects. Otherwise, you can seek help from

groups in your area, while the publisher looks for support in

its area. Your university’s ofﬁce of grants and contracts can

provide assistance in this task. A publisher who is active in

Handbook for Academic Authors

your ﬁeld should be aware of any national foundations that

support work in that ﬁeld. The publisher should also know

about national programs that support scholarly publication.

In any case, it is important for you and the publisher to work

together, or at least to keep one another informed of fund-

raising activities. It is embarrassing to the author and publisher,

and extremely annoying to foundations, when separate appli-

cations come from a publisher and an author seeking support

for the same book.

Working with an Editor

When your manuscript is accepted, with ﬁnal revisions com-

pleted, the acquiring editor and managing editor will review

it and decide whether it is ready to go into production. At

this stage, the manuscript must contain all your revisions and

responses to readers’ and editors’ comments. It must also be

in acceptable physical condition so that the manuscript editor

and designer can work with it.

Once your manuscript is judged ready for production, it will

be assigned to a manuscript or copy editor and possibly to a

production editor. The manuscript editor’s job is to help you

get the book into the most readable form possible. Depending

on the state of your manuscript, this work will range from very

minor corrections to extensive changes. You will have a chance

to review these changes and, if necessary, discuss them with

your editor. Throughout the editing process, keep four things

in mind: (1) This is your book, and the ideas and general style

should remain yours; (2) the editor is not an expert in your

ﬁeld but is an expert in scholarly publishing, and you should

listen to advice of that sort offered; (3) editorial changes should

not be taken as personal insults; and (4) you and the editor are

on the same side, and both of you want the book to be as good

as possible.

What sorts of changes will a manuscript editor suggest (or

insist on)? All editing, no matter how slight, attends to details

Working with Your Publisher

of grammar, usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.

Chances are that the editor knows a good deal more about

these subjects than you do, but if you see an error or do not

understand a change, point it out and ask for an explanation.

If your ﬁeld has stylistic peculiarities (like the philosopher’s

eccentric spelling of premiss), let the editor know ahead of

time.

Many words are spelled differently in the United States,

Canada, and the United Kingdom, and there is some variation

in usage and punctuation among these English-speaking coun-

tries. Publishers generally insist on the spelling and punctua-

tion accepted in their own country, although they sometimes

decide it is not worth the trouble to alter an author’s work. No

publisher, in any country, will allow a mixture of spelling sys-

tems. Books that are published in both the United States and

Great Britain will almost always use one system or the other

for both editions; rarely do publishers reset a book merely to

alter spelling.

You should also know about “house style.” This is a reference

not to writing style but to such details as what nouns should

be capitalized, whether terms should be in quotes or italicized,

how to arrange notes, how to deal with foreign words, when to

spell out numerals, and so forth. It is the kind of style referred

to in The Chicago Manual of Style, which is the bible of scholarly

publishing. An editor will make your book conform to house

style, to the style of your discipline, or to some consistent ver-

sion of your own style. If, under the shelter of house style, the

editor makes changes that conﬂict with the canons of your dis-

cipline, you should raise the issue. Another possible problem

with house style arises through misunderstanding of special

terms. In Paradise Lost, for example, Sin and Death are charac-

ters, so their names must be capitalized in a book analyzing the

epic. An editor who does not know this may lowercase them.

Fix them and explain why, lest they get changed back again. At

some presses, the copy editor sends a style sheet to the author

before beginning work, so that difﬁculties can be ironed out in

advance. Some presses also send one or two edited chapters to

Handbook for Academic Authors

the author for review before proceeding. British and U.S. styles

differ, so if you work with a transatlantic publisher, you may

ﬁnd editorial changes of this sort more obtrusive.

Your own style is another matter. Wolcott Gibbs, an editor at

The New Yorker, once instructed his editors to “try to preserve

an author’s style if he is an author and has a style.”

You may

or may not have a style in this grander sense of the word.

If your style includes verbosity, pomposity, or pedantry, be

grateful to the editor who refuses to preserve it. If you take

justiﬁable pride in your writing, then you probably will not

be subjected to excessive tampering. If you feel your work is

being overedited, say so.

Humor is a matter of style that deserves special comment.

If your editor tells you that a joke or pun is in bad taste, not

funny, or inappropriate, do not argue. Ninety-nine percent of

the time, the editor is right.

Do not ﬁght changes designed to make your manuscript

more accessible. It may be true that everyone interested in

corporatism in Brazil reads Portuguese, but if they are the only

ones who buy your book, you are in trouble. Readers interested

in corporatism outside Brazil may buy it if you make it possible

for them to read it. So when your editor asks you to translate

your Portuguese quotations, do so. Deﬁne terms when asked,

and change jargon to English. Plain speaking never detracts

from scholarly value.

You and your manuscript editor should deal diplomatically

with each other. A good editor will ask polite questions and

suggest changes without comment or with tactful comments.

If you have written a book about twentieth-century France and

misspelled de Gaulle, or called him Alfred, the editor will ﬁx

your gaffe silently, without pointing out what a dumb mistake

it is. You should also be polite in answering queries. Do not

write, “No!!! You moron!!! Don’t you know that cooking inac-

tivates the avidin not the biotin????” Just answer, “No, avidin

is right.”

Quoted in James Thurber, The Years with Ross (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959;rept.

ed., New York: Ballantine, 1972), 117.

Working with Your Publisher

Remember, too, that editors do not change things randomly.

They have reasons. Perhaps your sentence was awkward,

ambiguous, or just too long. When you do not like a change,

or the change has altered your meaning, try to locate the orig-

inal problem and offer an alternative solution. If you cannot

ﬁgure it out, explain what is wrong with the editor’s change

and work it out together.

Occasionally authors feel they have been saddled with an

incompetent editor. If you are having real problems, call or

write to the copy editor, express your misgivings, and explain

your reasons. If this does not work, get in touch with the acqui-

sitions editor who accepted your manuscript, who can then act

as a mediator.

You will get the copyedited manuscript back for review.

The physical form of this manuscript will depend on the pub-

lisher’s procedures and on whether your electronic manuscript

will be used for typesetting. You may receive ordinary hard

copy, with the editor’s changes written on it; this is the tradi-

tional process. Alternatively, you may receive “red-lined” hard

copy: a printout of the edited manuscript with alterations, dele-

tions, and queries printed out like text, but distinguished typo-

graphically by certain symbols (for example, angle brackets).

Queries may appear in the margins or at the foot of the page.

Each editing program uses different symbols, but they are not

difﬁcult to decipher. You may also be sent an electronic version.

This enables you to view, at your option, the edited electronic

copy with the red-lining either visible so that you can track

the editor’s changes, or suppressed so that you see clean copy.

The queries may be embedded in the manuscript so that they

become visible on screen. You may – though this is unlikely –

receive a clean, edited copy that shows only queries, not

editorial changes. Although some journals handle electronic

manuscripts this way, most book publishers would not do so

without consulting the author in advance. You may be asked

either to make changes and respond to queries on hard copy

or to do so in the electronic manuscript using software that

highlights your alterations and comments. (Chapter 10 pro-

vides further details about handling electronic manuscripts.)

Handbook for Academic Authors

After answering queries and reviewing the editing, give the

manuscript one ﬁnal, very careful reading. This is really your

last chance to make changes. In proof, changes – if permitted

at all – are costly, time-consuming, and risky. (The advent of

desktop typesetting has reduced the cost and the risks, but

they still exist.)

Some publishers employ production editors or project man-

agers who oversee manuscript editing, design, and manufac-

ture. The production editor is your liaison with the copy editor,

the designer, and manufacturers. The production editor is par-

ticularly important to authors when the press uses freelance

copy editors. Most presses use freelancers occasionally, and

some use them for nearly all copyediting. This enables the

publisher to maintain a smaller staff and to use editors who

specialize in certain ﬁelds. For example, a press may not pub-

lish enough books in biology to employ full-time a ﬁrst-rate

life sciences editor; a freelancer ﬁlls this need. Freelancers are

essential in textbook publishing, which is seasonal. If all copy

editors and production people were employed full-time, they

would spend several months a year twiddling their thumbs.

Some authors are insulted when their books are assigned to

freelancers, believing that they are not as good as in-house edi-

tors and their own book must have been relegated to second-

class citizenship. This is completely erroneous.

One of the production editor’s main functions is to keep your

book on schedule. To cooperate, you must be honest about

deadlines. If you are asked to review the edited manuscript

in two weeks, try to do so. But if you know this is impos-

sible, warn the copy or production editor immediately, so

that the editor can plan accordingly. Once the manuscript has

been sent to the typesetter, meeting deadlines is crucial. The

typesetter’s schedule is fairly inﬂexible, and if you are late in

returning proof, publication of your book may be considerably

delayed. For example, returning proof a week late may cause

the typesetter to miss the printer’s and binder’s deadlines,

adding at least a month to the schedule. Take deadlines very

seriously.

100

Working with Your Publisher

Manuscript to Bound Book

Once the edited manuscript goes off to the typesetter, you have

two responsibilities: proofreading and indexing. (Sometimes

indexing is done at an earlier stage. Chapter 10 explains the

timing and processes of these activities.) In the meantime, your

publisher’s staff is tending to production and marketing.

Typesetting, the ﬁrst stage of production, includes proof-

reading and corrections. With traditional typesetting, these

processes take three to four months. If the type is set directly

from the author’s electronic manuscript, several weeks may be

saved, but proofreading will still be necessary. Strange things

can happen between ether and paper. While ﬁnal proofs are

being prepared, the author must create the index, if it was not

done at an earlier stage. It is obviously important for the author

to keep to the schedule in proofreading and indexing. Most

authors, on completing the index, expect their book to appear

in a matter of days. Unfortunately, although the author’s work

is done, the publisher’s is far from ﬁnished. The printer has

to make plates and print the books; the publisher must check

ﬁnal proofs and folded and gathered pages; the same printer or

another must print the jackets; both pages and jackets must be

delivered to the bindery. The binder must manufacture a die,

stamp the binding, and bind the books. The quality of man-

ufacturing is just as important as the quality of the writing,

editing, and design, and all of these jobs must be done right.

The process involves a lot of suppliers and manufacturers,

so there are many possible sources of delay. For example, paper

may not be delivered on time, or shipping to the bindery may

be slowed, or the publisher may discover an error that neces-

sitates reprinting all or part of the book. The well-organized

publisher will minimize the chance of delays and will allow

for some slippage in the schedule. Nevertheless, if you do not

receive a copy of your book within a couple of weeks of the

date you have been given, call your editor to see what has hap-

pened. Publishers do not make a penny until the volume goes

on sale, so they are as eager as you are to get ﬁnished books.

101

Handbook for Academic Authors

The Ad in The New York Times

Published authors’ most frequent complaint is that their books

are not advertised enough. It is true that books do not sell if

they are not promoted, but it is not true that advertising in the

major media – or even in scholarly journals – automatically

increases sales. When did you last buy a scholarly book just

because you saw an ad for it? If you are like most academic

readers, you buy books after reading reviews or hearing about

them from colleagues. It is gratifying to see your book adver-

tised, but it is not necessarily cost effective. Every scholarly

book has a ﬁnite sales potential, because the number of experts

in the ﬁeld is not large and because the number of research

libraries is small. The publisher’s goal is to make sure that

every person who is likely to want your book is aware that it

exists. Usually, the best way to inform the readers of scholarly

books is to ensure that the book is widely reviewed and that

the people and libraries most concerned with the subject of

the book receive an announcement. Thus, university presses

spend their marketing budgets on sending out review copies

and doing mailings to appropriate lists. An ad in The New York

Times Book Review may sell Drew Gilpin Faust’s book on the

Civil War; it will not sell a monograph on archeological anal-

ysis or quantum mechanics. (Textbooks and trade books are

marketed differently; see Chapters 7 and 9.)

Authors can do a great deal to help publishers promote their

books. You are most likely to know which journals will review

your book, at which meetings it should be exhibited, and which

organizations have mailing lists that might be appropriate. You

can also suggest names of people who will offer enthusiastic

praise that can be printed on the dust jacket and in mailing

pieces. If your publisher (usually in the person of a marketing

manager or director) does not ask your advice on these matters,

give it anyway – preferably early, around the time you return

the edited manuscript. The marketing manager or your acquir-

ing editor may ask you to write a brief description of the book

and may send a detailed questionnaire. Write the description

and answer the questions, following the instructions provided.

102

Working with Your Publisher

Ask to see dust jacket, catalog, and advertising copy before it

is printed, and review it for accuracy. But try to be realistic in

assessing the breadth of readership.

You can also send your editor a list of prizes for which your

book is eligible. Literary Market Place lists the major prizes, and

your publisher probably knows about those. But there are often

less-well-known prizes speciﬁc to your ﬁeld that offer small

cash awards, prestige for you and your publisher, and some

free publicity. Be sure to decline membership on prize commit-

tees for the years in which your book may be nominated.

You will have to be realistic about how much the publisher

can spend on marketing your book. A monograph that is

expected to sell a few hundred copies simply does not war-

rant a major campaign. In the case of trade books, for which

demand is far more elastic, this prophecy may be self-fulﬁlling.

A novelist may be right in claiming that more money spent on

advertising or on a nationwide tour would have generated

more sales. Scholarly publishers, though, cannot expect to sell

to readers outside a small group that is usually easy to deﬁne –

and to reach – without using expensive campaigns. Your efforts

are best directed toward deﬁning the audience and suggesting

ways to reach it.

Keep your acquiring editor or the marketing department

informed well in advance of any activities such as speaking

engagements or participation in symposia that might generate

interest in your book. If you are speaking on another campus –

a lecture tour soon after publication may be worth arranging –

the marketing department will try to get copies of your book

into the campus bookstore. When you speak, mention your

book by title and publisher, whenever relevant, and display

it if possible. If you are unsure of the technique, watch a few

best-selling authors on TV talk shows.

Use your campus news ofﬁce to publicize your book. If the

book has any link to your region, local newspapers may do

an interview or feature story. Alumni magazines are another

source of publicity.

In matters of promotion, you and the publisher have the

same goal: to sell as many books as possible. The more help

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Handbook for Academic Authors

you can offer, the better. But when the marketing manager tells

you that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are out, believe it.

After Publication

Even after your book is published and it is being sold, your

relationship with the publisher continues. Journals will send

copies of reviews to the publisher, who will forward them to

you. You will get annual sales ﬁgures and royalty reports. You

probably will have some new ideas about marketing to pass

along.

Some of the reviews your publisher forwards to you will

be unfavorable, less favorable than you would have liked, or

at least unperceptive. Some may even seem extremely unfair.

What should you do when this happens? In 99 cases out of 100,

the wisest course is to do nothing. Authors frequently overreact

to criticism and feel the need to respond even to minor negative

points in an otherwise positive review. It rarely does any good

to object to a review. Even if the journal prints your objections

(which it need not do unless they are substantial or the review

was libelous), your response generally makes readers who may

not have read the review assume that it was worse than it was.

If you feel you must respond to a review, limit yourself to a

straightforward correction of errors. You may instead enlist a

colleague to respond in a measured way.

You may also discover errors in the book, either in your

own reading or through the keen observation of friends and

colleagues. Keep a record of these, on the chance that your

book is reprinted, and send them to your publisher from time

to time. Many scholarly books are reprinted, and if yours is

among them it may be possible to make minor corrections. For

textbooks, which are more likely to be reprinted than are mono-

graphs, students are good detectors of error. Faculty members

sometimes send students’ comments and corrections to pub-

lishers. Some publishers even include tear-out postcards for

students to use when they ﬁnd mistakes or wish to make sug-

gestions. If you write a revised edition of a textbook, such

104

Working with Your Publisher

comments can help you correct errors and clarify misunder-

standings.

Revised editions are less common than reprintings. A re-

printing is simply a restocking, the printing of additional

copies of the same book. A new edition incorporates major

changes – an added chapter, a revised conclusion, overall

updating, or the like. Only if your book is selling continuously

in signiﬁcant quantities, usually as a result of textbook adop-

tions, will a revised edition make sense.

The possibility of increased sales may also motivate your

publisher to issue your book in paperback. Among publish-

ers there is a great deal of debate and very little information

about the advisability of issuing hardback and paper editions

simultaneously, waiting six months to publish the paperback,

or waiting longer. For most scholarly books, there is no jus-

tiﬁcation for a paperback edition: Everyone who wants the

book has bought the hardback edition. If your book does come

out in paper, the price will be lower, and both the percentage

and the actual dollars per book paid in royalties will be smaller

(7.5 percent of list price is a common paperback royalty). If you

think there is justiﬁcation for a paperback edition of your book,

take the evidence to your acquiring editor. Market research can

determine whether the edition is worthwhile.

Your work may also be made available as an e-book, priced

lower than the print version. Again, your royalties will be

lower.

Your publisher will notify you if your book is being remain-

dered. This means that sales have diminished to the point that

it is not worth keeping the book in stock. The publisher will

try to sell the unsold copies to a remainder house that in turn

sells them at a large discount. Failing this, the publisher will

sell your book for pulp. Authors are understandably horriﬁed

at such euthanasia. You can take some comfort in knowing that

university presses postpone this moment of truth for quite a

while (much longer than trade houses), and they will probably

offer you the chance to buy the remaining copies at or near cost.

Alternatively, they may keep the book available on demand,

which is much less depressing.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Sometimes authors feel that a publisher has not given their

books a fair chance. If your book goes out of print and the

publisher does not want to reprint it, you can have the rights

revert to you (provided your contract contains such a clause,

as explained earlier). At that point, you can try to convince

another publisher to give it a second chance, either as a high-

priced, small-edition reprint or as a paperback.

When you have completed the research and writing of a book,

you are about two-thirds ﬁnished. You still must do a lot of

planning and negotiating, and you must be prepared to work

effectively with a publisher. Once your manuscript has been

accepted, you and the publisher become partners. You both

want the book to read well, look good, sell abundantly, and

attract favorable reviews and publicity. In addition to cooperat-

ing with the manuscript editor, therefore, you should provide

information and suggestions for promotion and advertising.

You should contribute your own abilities and expertise, and

your publisher’s staff should contribute theirs. A book may be

written and printed, but if it is not also distributed and read,

your efforts become a pointless exercise. If you and your pub-

lisher do your jobs in a spirit of cooperation, the relationship

will be rewarding for both of you.

106

Chapter 6

Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

I never could understand how two men can write a book

together; to me that’s like three people getting together to have

ababy.

Evelyn Waugh

Multiauthor books are of two sorts: collections of original

essays and anthologies of previously published material. The

ﬁrst sort of collection is usually published by a university press

or other scholarly publisher; it includes festschrifts, sympo-

sium proceedings, and commissioned volumes on current top-

ics. The specialized reference work is an especially complex

variant. Although such books may occasionally include one or

two articles that have been published elsewhere, most of the

material must be original. The second sort of collection is most

often prepared for use as a required or supplementary text for a

course and is usually published by a textbook publisher. Some

such anthologies, however – especially of literature and trans-

lations – are published by scholarly publishers. Because each

sort of volume is prepared very differently, this chapter dis-

cusses them separately. In each case, the compiler must deal

with legal or contractual problems, editorial problems, and

mechanical problems. The chapter is written mainly for the

volume editor or compiler, but contributors to such volumes

will also ﬁnd it useful.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Collections of Original Essays

Compiling and editing a collection of scholarly articles can be

one of the most nerve-racking experiences of a lifetime. You

are dealing with multiple egos, multiple addresses, multiple

problems, multiple missed deadlines, and multiple tempers.

You must negotiate between the publisher and the contribu-

tors, and that can be very difﬁcult. In this chapter I discuss the

problems that can arise and offer alternative solutions. When

possible, I suggest ways to prevent the problems from aris-

ing in the ﬁrst place. Certain procedures can make publication

quicker and relatively painless. No matter how careful you

are, however, the book will take longer to compile and pro-

duce than you think. If you picture yourself as an amateur

general contractor building a large house in an out-of-the-way

place with the help of plumbers, carpenters, electricians, plas-

terers, painters, and others from around the country, you may

be able to imagine the difﬁculties and delays that lie ahead.

Mechanically, the process is not difﬁcult. Contributors can

send drafts to the volume editor electronically; the editor can

easily make suggestions and revisions; and the completed elec-

tronic manuscript can be sent to the publisher. Collections of

articles generally do not sell as well as monographs, and to

keep costs down, publishers may ask volume editors to supply

camera-ready copy or formatted electronic manuscripts, gen-

erally as PDFs. Chapter 10 provides instructions for preparing

such material. A special difﬁculty arises in the case of multiau-

thor volumes, however. Contributors can prepare the copy of

their chapters, but unless they all use the same fonts and follow

directions carefully, the result may be very unattractive. If the

volume editor prepares the ﬁnal pages, the result will be more

consistent and pleasing to the eye, but this takes more work.

Problems

Collections of scholarly articles are usually generated by invit-

ing certain authors to contribute papers on designated topics.

108

Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

They are frequently invited to present the articles orally at a

symposium or conference, with publication to follow, although

sometimes no oral presentation is contemplated. Sometimes

contributors circulate drafts within the group and comment

on one another’s work, either at a meeting or long distance.

Such collections may be initiated by publishers, who contract

with an editor to assemble the volume. At other times the edi-

tor, as an individual or as the representative of an association,

will put together a proposal and ﬁnd a publisher.

In the latter case, the ﬁrst problem that arises is to interest

a publisher. Because of the difﬁculties to be discussed shortly,

publishers rarely commit themselves to an idea for a multiau-

thor book before seeing at least a complete table of contents

and some of the articles. Even if the topic is current and the

contributors are well known, the book remains a pig in a poke.

Ask your prospective contributors for suggestions about pub-

lishers; they can sometimes provide useful contacts.

Whether you or the publisher initiates the project, the con-

tract will be contingent on receipt of a manuscript satisfactory

in form, content, and style. In addition, an author-initiated proj-

ect will have to survive the normal refereeing process. (Even a

commissioned work may be peer-reviewed.) A publisher may

provide a list of topics to be covered and may even suggest

speciﬁc authors. Make sure you understand what is expected

in length, coverage, audience, and so forth. A misunderstand-

ing at this point may catch up with you when it is too late to

do anything about it.

You must also select contributors. You probably know who

is doing what in your ﬁeld and what their general reputations

are. That is a good starting point, but it is not enough. Read

prospective contributors’ recent publications and inquire dis-

creetly among colleagues about contributors’ reputations for

promptness and cooperativeness. When you write to the pro-

posed contributors describing the project, make it clear that

you are merely exploring possibilities.

Ask whether potential contributors would be willing to sub-

mit an article of n words on speciﬁc topic x within t months. If

they write back, “I have a marvelous article that’s tangentially

109

Handbook for Academic Authors

about x lying around; would you take that?” decline politely.

If the response is, “Your project sounds really fascinating, but

I’m terribly overcommitted and couldn’t get to it for at least a

year. Can you wait that long?” say no. If the answer is, “Well,

I’m not really doing anything along these lines, but I probably

could come up with something if you can’t ﬁnd anyone else,”

ﬁnd someone else. The lack of enthusiasm will show up as a

lack of quality.

If you are editing a specialized encyclopedia or similar ref-

erence work, you will also need to select an editorial board.

The board serves two purposes: to add prestige and credibility

to the enterprise and to help you deﬁne topics and select con-

tributors. Ideally, each member should provide both prestige

and advice; if they don’t, you will need a larger board. Ency-

clopedias are longer (sometimes multivolume), contain more

(usually shorter) articles, and involve more contributors. Sim-

ply keeping track of such a project can be difﬁcult, but the real

problems are the intellectual ones of setting the limits of the

subject and dividing it into manageable topics, with nothing

superﬂuous included and nothing necessary left out.

An encyclopedia is such a large undertaking that it is vital

to involve a publisher with reference book experience from the

outset. Indeed, most such projects are initiated by publishers.

If you have an idea for an encyclopedia or similar reference

work, you should seek a publisher very early on. You might

want to form a small editorial board and draw up a partial list

of topics and possible contributors, but it is unwise to invest

more time than that without a publisher’s commitment.

For any multiauthor book, once you have contributors lined

up, send each of them a letter of intent. Your publisher should

provide these, or you can draw them up yourself. The letter

should state the topic to be covered, the length of the article,

and the date it is due. It should make clear that you can demand

revisions or reject an unsuitable or unworthy submission. The

letter should point out that the publisher may also reject a sub-

mission or ask for revisions. In other words, publication is not

guaranteed. The letter should include an agreement by the con-

tributors not to publish their work elsewhere before the volume

110

Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

appears (and after it appears only with permission). The letter

should also state whether the contributors are responsible for

reviewing the editing of their manuscripts and for proofread-

ing. Finally, if a contributor is to be paid, the amount should be

stated and it should be clear when payment will be made (on

signature of the letter? after ﬁnal acceptance? on publication?).

The letter of intent should also grant book publication rights

to the publisher or to you as volume editor. For most books –

and certainly for reference works – the publisher will insist

on electronic rights. This provision should be included in the

letter to contributors.

When your list of contributors is complete, you may want to

set up an electronic discussion list or blog to share information,

answer questions, and develop a sense of camaraderie. At a

minimum, set up an electronic mailing list in your own address

book so that you can correspond easily with the entire group.

Just because you have contributors and a publisher, don’t

think your worries are over. What happens when a contributor

fails to write a chapter? If a contributor backs out early enough,

you can look for a substitute. Unfortunately, what usually hap-

pens is that the deadline arrives, the article doesn’t, and you

are left holding the bag. After all, you cannot force anyone to

write. The best thing to do is to notify the tardy scholar that the

agreement between you is canceled because the deadline has

been missed and then forget about that article. If the omission

of the topic is glaring, then you can use your introduction to

cover it as best you can. Let your publisher know that the essay

will not be forthcoming. You might be able to ﬁnd someone else

to write on short notice, but it is not likely.

To prevent this disaster, keep in regular contact with your

contributors, remind them of approaching deadlines, and ask

how things are going. They may not tell you the truth, but they

will at least have the task in mind. Periodic e-mails, letters, and

calls may give you enough notice of impending failure to ﬁnd

a substitute. In any case, make sure deadlines are explicit, and

make it clear that you intend to enforce them.

A more depressing problem is what to do with the article that

is delivered on time but isn’t any good. If the manuscript is not

111

Handbook for Academic Authors

salvageable, you should admit this and return it diplomatically

to the author. Never a pleasant task, it is better done early and

mercifully than dragged out in the unrealistic expectation of

a miracle. If the manuscript has some redeeming scholarly

value but needs work, tell the author speciﬁcally and clearly

what needs to be done and set a deadline for the work. Offer

consultation and assistance. In this case, you should make a

ﬁrm decision on the minimum quality you can accept and

stick to it. Do not let time pressures force you into accepting

garbage. The publisher’s reviewers will catch the lapse anyway,

and you will come in for a share of their criticism. The only

way to prevent this problem is to choose your contributors

carefully, as described earlier.

Unevenness in the volume often plagues multiauthor

works – unequal quality among the articles, contributors writ-

ing for different audiences, overlapping coverage of topics, or

gaps in coverage. These problems arise quite naturally, because

contributors are concerned exclusively with their individual

pieces. It is your job, as volume editor, to see the big picture,

to keep it in mind, and to convey it to the contributors. You

must decide the central theme of the volume and how each

article will contribute to it. You will probably write an intro-

duction that sets this out for the readers. At the outset, you

should write an overview that does the same for the contrib-

utors. Describe the prospective audience and deﬁne the level

of sophistication and speciﬁcity it demands. Tell each contrib-

utor what the other articles do and who is writing them. Try

to anticipate areas of overlap or conﬂict and settle border dis-

putes in advance. Encourage authors to keep in touch with

you and with one another (this is where the online discussion

list can help). Send regular progress reports and suggestions.

Periodically ask for outlines or preliminary drafts from each

author and ask permission to circulate these when appropri-

ate. Try to make the venture a cooperative effort rather than a

gathering of discrete projects.

If English is not a contributor’s ﬁrst language, you may need

to polish the article a bit (or a lot) before submitting it to the

publisher. Make sure the author understands and accepts your

112

Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

editing and be prepared to do the work. If you yourself are not

that good a writer, ﬁnd someone else to do it. If the author’s

English borders on the nonexistent, you may want to have

the article submitted in the author’s ﬁrst language and hire a

professional translator. (Always give credit to the translator,

whether professional or amateur.)

When the entire volume is complete, read it and edit it. It

is very tempting at this point to rush it off to the publisher.

Despite my admonitions and your efforts, the deadline has

probably passed. You have seen outlines and drafts and made

suggestions. Now read and edit again. This extra effort can

make the difference between a jumbled set of essays and a

coherent collection of well-written chapters.

Read each contribution separately and make editorial

changes and suggestions. Then read through the volume as

a whole. Does it hold together? Does the theme emerge logi-

cally and consistently? Does it seem reasonably even in tone

and sophistication, or do certain essays leap out as extraor-

dinarily difﬁcult or insultingly superﬁcial? Is there too much

overlap? Make further revisions in each article to solve these

problems.

Next, do what you can to weave the volume together. Make

sure your introduction sets out the theme of the volume,

explains how each article contributes to the whole, and cov-

ers any remaining gaps. If cross-references from one article to

another would be helpful, add them. Consider writing brief

introductions to each section of the book or to each essay.

If your review results in signiﬁcant changes to any article,

send it back to the author for approval. Only when this is done

should you declare the book ready for publication.

Contributor impatience can be a headache. An author who

submits a good manuscript on time wants a prompt publica-

tion decision and prompt publication. If the process is delayed

through the fault of others, the model author grows impa-

tient. The problem is that the impatience is justiﬁed. Your job

is to minimize the delay. First, make it clear from the outset

that the publisher’s evaluation will take time. Second – repeat-

ing myself, as you will have to do – establish deadlines and

113

Handbook for Academic Authors

enforce them. It is not fair that the cooperative author has to

wait around for the dawdlers. The author left out in the cold

because of missing the deadline may also be angry, but with

much less justiﬁcation.

You bear the responsibility for dealing with authors who

object to the publisher’s copyediting, who are out of the coun-

try when proof is to be read, and who forgot that they had to

supply artwork. Your initial letter should have spelled out

these duties, but chances are your contributors will forget.

Remind them in your regular communications. Whatever deci-

sions you make about editing and proofreading, you must keep

reminding contributors of their responsibilities and give them

enough advance warning to save time for their chores.

Money is the last of your worries. A collection of essays prob-

ably will not make much money, and the royalty rate offered

may be low. Because you will bear most of the responsibility

and do most of the work, the royalties (if any) should go to you.

Books that will generate more income may carry an advance

large enough to make payment to contributors possible. If you

do receive more than a token payment, you may want to offer

contributors a small honorarium. In no case, however, should

you pay some contributors and not others. You should not pay

contributors unequally unless they are making very different

contributions. For example, if you have some very long articles

and some shorter ones, you may want to pay the authors of the

long pieces more. Some publishers will offer a single payment,

in lieu of royalties, either to the compiler or to the compiler

and the contributors.

Reference works are priced to make a proﬁt, and the typical

ﬁnancial arrangements reﬂect this. The author is generally paid

an advance to cover the costs of compiling the volume (postage,

phone calls, secretarial help, etc.), as well as royalties. Members

of the editorial board usually receive a small fee, and contribu-

tors are usually paid. The amounts depend on the number and

length of the articles and range from a free copy of the book to a

few hundred dollars. The timing of any cash payment is impor-

tant. Publishers prefer to pay contributors on publication. From

the editor’s point of view, it is better to pay contributors when

114

Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

their articles are accepted. This arrangement motivates con-

tributors to meet their deadlines and makes them less likely to

complain about publication delays. However, these payments

add up to a substantial sum, and your publisher may not be

willing to change its policy. (It is also much easier to write all

the checks at once, rather than piecemeal.)

To summarize, here is a suggested procedure for working

with contributors to multiauthor volumes before the publish-

ing process begins. The next section outlines a procedure to

make things run smoothly during production. For an encyclo-

pedia, steps 2 and 3 should be reversed.

1. Deﬁne the topic of the book and draw up a list of chapters

needed.

2. Select potential contributors carefully and solicit their partici-

pation in a letter that describes the volume and their individual

contributions in detail.

3. Seek a publisher for the volume.

4. Once contributors are chosen, send out letters of intent. Include

a more detailed description of the book, the expected contrib-

utors and their topics, and what is expected of each author.

Provide instructions on manuscript and artwork preparation,

reference and note style, permissions, and other details. Tell

contributors what sorts of software you can accept.

5. When signed letters of intent are returned to you, send all con-

tributors the other contributors’ names, addresses, phone num-

bers, and e-mail addresses and remind them of deadlines. (This

step is not necessary for an encyclopedia.)

6. Regularly circulate progress reports on publishers’ interest, arti-

cles (or outlines) received, and deadlines approaching.

7. Telephone or e-mail contributors periodically to check on pro-

gress and to remind them that you are there.

8. When you receive outlines, drafts, queries, or ﬁnished articles,

read them carefully and respond promptly. Make your sugges-

tions as speciﬁc as possible and do not hesitate to reject the

unsalvageable.

9. Be diplomatic in dealing with contributors, answer all corre-

spondence promptly, and keep them informed of progress. The

more closely involved they are in the book’s creation, the more

productive and cooperative they will be.

115

Handbook for Academic Authors

10. Do your own careful reading, review, and revision, including

the composition of introductory and transitional material.

11. Once the manuscript is complete, notify all contributors that

it is going to the publisher and keep them informed of the

publisher’s response. Final acceptance of the manuscript calls

for a celebratory letter, phone call, or e-mail announcement.

Production

Once a publisher accepts the ﬁnal version of a multiauthor

book for production, the press will send it through the usual

sequence of editing, design, typesetting, proofreading, print-

ing, and binding. For an electronic publication, printing and

binding are replaced by putting the book online. You and the

publisher should decide jointly who will perform the chores of

obtaining permission to quote copyrighted material, review-

ing copyediting, gathering illustrations, and reading proof –

you or the contributors. Usually the publisher regards you as

the author, so that any failure of the contributors to perform

their jobs becomes your problem. The following division of

labor makes sense in that the person who can do each job most

efﬁciently is assigned the task. However, your book may be

different, or special circumstances (a contributor on sabbatical

in Tibet) may dictate changes.

You should write for permission to reprint copyrighted

material. The limit imposed on quotation under the “fair use”

clause of the copyright act is cumulative for the entire book.

Thus, if several contributors each quote a relatively small

amount from the same book, you may need permission even

though no single contributor would. You are the only person in

a position to sort out permissions problems, and your contract

with the publisher makes you responsible, so you should do

it. (See Chapter 10 for details on permissions.)

You should ask contributors to sign letters of agreement or

contracts with the publisher. These provide for the assignment

of copyright (see Chapter 5) and set out other conditions. Usu-

ally the publisher will provide you with such a letter, with

116

Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

enough copies for each contributor. Some publishers do this

electronically, via their Web sites. Alternatively, the sample let-

ter in The Chicago Manual of Style can be modiﬁed to make it

suitable for your volume.

Contributors should generally review the copyediting of

their own articles. However, because they have already

reviewed your changes, this is not crucial, particularly if the

copyediting is light. If time is pressing (as it usually is), you

might ask contributors to waive this right. If you do have con-

tributors review the editing, those who cannot do so should

designate a trusted colleague (preferably you) as a substitute,

in writing. Notify contributors of changes in style that you

have accepted, lest they change everything back. You should

be prepared to mediate disagreements between the copy edi-

tor and contributors if disputes arise and to enforce deadlines.

A contributor overly sensitive to your suggestions is likely to

take umbrage at a copy editor’s changes, so warn the editor

ahead of time. Similarly, the editor may want to work ﬁrst on

the contributions of the most dilatory, so that the contributors

will have more time for review without holding up the volume.

It is a good idea for contributors to return their manuscripts

to you. Then you can review them, handle queries from the

authors, prod the tardy, and make ﬁnal changes before return-

ing them to the manuscript editor. Schedule time for this in

your planning.

Contributors must provide drafts of their own artwork, but

you and the publisher must decide whether it is necessary

for all ﬁnal drawing to be done by the same artist. If not, the

publisher should provide speciﬁcations and directions and let

the contributors fend for themselves. If the art is to be uniform,

then hire an artist. Whether the contributors will take on the

cost will depend on the usual practice in your ﬁeld and on

the letters of intent you signed with them. In the sciences, for

example, where authors customarily pay journals page charges

plus art fees, contributors will probably not balk at paying. You

will have to negotiate such arrangements as early as possible.

You should generally take responsibility for proofreading.

Although there is some value in having contributors proofread

117

Handbook for Academic Authors

their own work, this is time-consuming and risky in that the

contributors may want to start rewriting when it is too late.

Let them know that the review of the copyediting (or of your

editing) marks their last chance to make changes and that they

will not see proof. If you are not a good proofreader, hire some-

one to do the work for you (the publisher can recommend a

proofreader). You should still read the proof for sense, but you

can rely on the proofreader for details. If your proofreading

raises questions that only the contributor can answer, a phone

call or e-mail should resolve the problem. For highly technical

manuscripts, however, the contributor may be the best proof-

reader. In this case, send contributors a copy of their individual

proof and keep a copy yourself. Set a ﬁrm deadline, and if a

contributor does not return proof on time, rely on your own

reading. If contributors make excessive changes or argue about

the style adopted throughout the volume, it is your job to tell

them that the changes they want will not be made.

You are responsible for the index (see Chapter 10)aswell

as for providing a glossary or bibliography if the publisher

requires it. In addition, you must gather biographical material

on the contributors to be included in the volume. You must

keep an up-to-date list of contributors’ addresses and academic

afﬁliations.

One ﬁnal note: If you are sharing the volume editor’s respon-

sibilities with a colleague, divide up the chores sensibly and

keep in touch. There is no point in wasting time and creating

confusion by duplicating effort.

Anthologies and Readers

Anthologies and readers may be produced in traditional print

formats, as online publications, or both. Although the tasks

involved in compiling them are similar regardless of format,

the technical chores of production are different. As long as you

are working with a publisher, you should not have to perform

these tasks. For a print anthology, the publisher is responsi-

ble for typesetting, printing, and binding. Similarly, for an

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Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

electronic anthology, the publisher should code and format

the material, put it up on a server, and maintain the site. The

intellectual and clerical tasks remain the responsibility of the

author.

The intellectual tasks to be performed in compiling an

anthology are selection and presentation. The clerical tasks

are permissions and physical preparation.

Before you can select materials for an anthology, you must

have a clear idea of your purpose and audience. In what

courses will the book be used? What time period should be

covered? What topics must be included? Are you presenting

one consistent view of an issue or illustrating conﬂicting opin-

ions? Is your book meant to supplement a text or stand on

its own? Is its purpose to provide information or stimulate

debate? What reading level and previous knowledge can you

assume on the part of your readers? How is your anthology

going to differ from existing ones? If you are preparing an

electronic anthology, you may also need to think about how

extensively it should be illustrated, how elaborate a system of

links should be incorporated, and how it should be navigated.

You should think through all these questions and prepare a

prospectus to send to potential publishers (see Chapter 7). First,

formulate criteria for selections to be included. The criteria

should reﬂect the goals you have set out. As you review mate-

rial for inclusion, check it against the criteria you have set. With

any luck, you will have more material than you need. You can

rank competing articles according to how well they meet your

criteria and on their secondary qualities. For example, perhaps

two essays ﬁll the same spot and are of roughly equal quality,

but one is half as long as the other. Come up with a list of

ﬁrst choices and back it up with some alternatives. (Your list of

alternatives can double as a list of supplementary reading.) For

your beneﬁt and that of an acquiring editor, you should write

a brief description of each article (author, title, date, length,

subject) and an explanation of its appropriateness for your col-

lection. A prospectus that includes your understanding of the

book’s purpose and audience, your selection criteria, and this

descriptive list should be all you need to sell the book.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

You also need to decide how to present the selections. Will

your written contribution be limited to a brief preface? Or will

you provide a lengthy introduction to the volume plus head-

notes for each selection? Will you write study or discussion

questions? Will you annotate selections? Does the book need

a bibliography? Does it need an index for print or the digital

equivalent for electronic texts? Get all these issues worked

out as early as possible. When you do ﬁnd a publisher, your

editor will want to review your selections and your decisions

about such matters as annotation and may suggest a number of

changes. Your list of alternative selections will be particularly

useful at this point.

As soon as you ﬁnd a publisher and have decided which

selections to include, you must begin to write for permission

to reprint. Your letters must state that you want to reprint the

selection in its entirety in an anthology and should explain

the book’s nature, whether it is print or electronic, and its

anticipated market. If the book is not intended for classroom

use and will have a small circulation, make this clear so that the

more for an electronic publication. Publishers may not always

be able to give permission for electronic publication but will

instead refer you to the author.

You must expect to pay a fee, but your letter need not men-

tion this; let the copyright holder ask for the fee. In most cases,

your contract will provide for your publisher’s payment of this

fee, either outright or as an advance against royalties. If you

are being paid a lump sum in lieu of royalties, the publisher

generally will pay permissions fees outright, up to a speciﬁed

total. This arrangement is more common when the publisher

initiates the project.

To determine who holds the rights to a selection, either look

at the original publication or see where someone else got per-

mission to reprint by checking the copyright page, acknowl-

edgments, or credit line in another anthology. Do not assume

that material is in the public domain simply because you found

it on the Web. Reputable sites will provide credit lines for art-

work, quotations, and reprinted material. Others reproduce

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Multiauthor Books and Anthologies

copyrighted material without permission, either deliberately

or through ignorance. Your publisher will need to know that

you have been diligent.

Your text should be drawn from the original source, in print

or from an authoritative electronic source, such as JSTOR. Be

leery of sites whose texts have been scanned and inadequately

proofread. Even Web sites that take pains to reproduce texts

accurately may use inferior editions simply because they are

in the public domain. Always work from the best available

printed text or a recent text on a high-quality Web site, such as

those of documentary or textual editing projects.

If you are abridging an article, specify in your permission

request what you are omitting. You may need separate per-

mission for illustrations in an article; check the credit lines in

each selection. As explained in Chapter 10, prepare each letter

in triplicate and send two copies to the publisher who holds

rights. If permission is denied or the fee is too high, substitute

another article and write promptly for permission. It is possi-

ble to bargain on permissions fees, and if you really want the

original article you should try to get the fee reduced.

Occasionally the restrictions placed on electronic use of art-

work makes its use impractical. For example, a museum may

require poor resolution so that works cannot be printed out.

Others may wish to give permission only for a limited term,

which may not be practical for your purposes.

Most publishers will require you to provide electronic ﬁles

or links to acceptable online texts. If you scan a printed text to

create a ﬁle, you must proofread it carefully. The same is true

if you rekeyboard it.

If the articles you are going to reprint contain ﬁgures or

photographs, you will have to get original art or glossy prints

for print publication. Electronic publication requires that you

use an existing electronic image or scan a high-quality print.

You can ask for prints or electronic images in your request for

permission. If adequate prints of graphs or cartoons are not

available, you may have to have them redrawn; check with

your editor about the possibility of duplicating the art from

reprints before going to such expense.

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You must read through your manuscript to see whether

mechanical alterations are needed. For example, you should

eliminate cross-references to material that appeared in the orig-

inal but is not included in your anthology and change cross-

references to material that is in your anthology but on a differ-

ent page. For electronic anthologies, you may wish to change

cross-references to links. You may have to renumber tables

and ﬁgures and alter the text references to them; in electronic

works, “see Table 4” should be replaced by a link to the table.

Footnotes may need renumbering; these too can be linked in

an electronic publication. You can correct obvious typograph-

ical errors in the original, but you should not make any other

changes without the owner’s written permission. You should

make only the deletions that you speciﬁed in your permissions

letter, and you must mark these with ellipses. (See The Chicago

Manual of Style for the proper use of ellipses.)

Before sending the manuscript to your publisher, check the

table of contents against the manuscript for the correct spelling

of the authors’ names and the correct and complete titles of

the selections. Check credit lines against permissions letters to

make sure you have all permissions and that you have placed

and worded the credits as required. Make these two checks

again in proof.

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Chapter 7

Finding a Publisher for the College Textbook

The book originated in the suggestion of a publisher, as many

more good books have done than the arrogance of the man of

letters is commonly inclined to admit.

G. K. Chesterton, on The Pickwick Papers

The College Textbook

A textbook is designed speciﬁcally to help an instructor teach a

subject and students learn it. Although scholarly monographs

and collections of articles are sometimes used as supplemen-

tary or even main texts in a college course, their primary pur-

pose is to disseminate new thought or research ﬁndings. Text-

books, by contrast, rarely represent the culmination of research

or what is traditionally considered “scholarly” activity. In-

stead, they summarize, organize, and analyze the accumulated

wisdom of an area of knowledge, presenting it in a way that

is accessible to students at a speciﬁc level of competence.

The writers of the most successful textbooks in a ﬁeld are

not necessarily – or even usually – at the cutting edge of

research. They are more often, though not always, extremely

good teachers. The skills required to write a good textbook are

those of organization, synthesis, explication, and communica-

tion. However, the ability to communicate orally in a lecture

class or seminar does not automatically translate into the abil-

ity to write effectively. As you write a textbook, you do not get

instant student responses of understanding or befuddlement.

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You cannot carry on a conversation or discussion. You must

decide, on the basis of logic, instinct, and experience, what

requires extensive explanation and what will be grasped

quickly.

In writing a textbook, you must consider not only the student

but also the teacher. After all, the teacher will decide whether

to adopt your text or a competing volume. This means that

your book must be easy to use as the foundation of a course.

To satisfy instructors, you must cover all the basic ground,

the core material of the discipline. If using your text would

force teachers to ﬁnd supplementary materials for important

subjects, they are not likely to adopt it.

At the same time, college faculty members are an indepen-

dent lot, and they do not like to be dictated to. Your book

should not, therefore, require a rigid course structure – partic-

ularly if it will mean that many teachers must radically revise

lecture notes. In organizing your book, you should keep this in

mind and, if possible, arrange the text in a way that permits it

to be used ﬂexibly. For example, it might be divided into units

that can be taught in different order and that can be presented

independently of one another. Your publisher will offer advice

on such matters.

Teachers also adopt books for less rational reasons. They may

like the way a book feels in their hands or lies on a lectern, or

they may prefer a fat, impressive volume to a thinner book

that uses less bulky paper and larger pages. They may prefer

brightly colored, illustrated bindings to plain bindings with

dust jackets. They may expect extensive online resources to

supplement the text. Publishers know about this sort of thing,

and you should not be surprised when they raise such issues.

Another general point about textbooks must be noted, too:

The amounts of money involved in textbook publishing are

far greater than those related to scholarly books. Textbook

publishers must make a proﬁt, and although they take risks,

they do not publish books that are likely to lose money. Even

textbooks for unusual or advanced courses are published in

larger print runs, with more elaborate design and larger mar-

keting budgets, than are most monographs. Books for popular

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Finding a Publisher for the College Textbook

introductory courses are large-scale undertakings. Textbook

publishers may invest a half-million dollars in launching a

basic text, and they expect to sell many hundreds of thousands

of copies over the years. This naturally means that authors can

expect to earn far larger royalties from basic textbooks than

from monographs. It also means that publishers must consider

very carefully where they are going to invest their resources.

Because textbooks with large anticipated sales demand large

investments of money and effort, publishers usually conduct

extensive market surveys and consultations with potential

users. Textbook publishers know the market, and their deci-

sions are based on economic considerations. A scholarly pub-

lisher may take a chance on an innovative bit of scholarship,

a well-written biography of an obscure ﬁgure, or an intrigu-

ing but off-the-wall philosophical treatise. Textbook publishers

cannot afford to take risks on excitement, experimentation, or

artistry.

Finally, the timing of publication is crucial in textbook pub-

lishing. It may not matter whether your monograph hits the

bookstores in July or November, but it certainly does matter

that faculty members see a textbook early enough to make an

adoption decision and that they can count on the books being

on the shelf in time for classes. Deadlines are important in any

kind of publishing, but they are doubly important for text-

books. The schedule for publishing a textbook may become

very rushed, and there may not be time to dot all the scholarly

i’s and cross all the academic t’s.

One result of the primacy of ﬁnancial considerations is that

textbook acquiring editors tend to be different sorts of peo-

ple from university press editors. Usually they have arrived

in the acquisitions department via sales and marketing rather

than through manuscript editing or academia. If all publishers

are on a continuum between the worlds of scholarship and

business, textbook editors are closer to the business end. A

psychologist talking to the psychology editor of a university

press will ﬁnd the conversation running toward psychology;

the same person talking to a textbook editor will end up dis-

cussing the market and rival texts. There are exceptions, of

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Handbook for Academic Authors

course, and some editors move between the two worlds. But

on the whole, you will ﬁnd that textbook publishing has an

aura far removed from that of academe.

Textbooks for advanced or specialized courses, particularly

those that represent one particular methodological or theoret-

ical approach, may be more attractive to a university press or

commercial scholarly publisher than to a textbook house. On

such projects, you would do well to approach both sorts of

publishers to see where the interest is greater.

Choosing a Publisher

The textbook industry has undergone a great deal of consol-

idation and reorganization over the past thirty years. Many

houses that were once independent are now owned by large

publishing groups, and some of the larger companies have

been bought by still larger news or entertainment conglom-

erates. Some of them were subsequently spun off and sold to

other companies. Although this has reduced authors’ choices

somewhat, the effect has not been as drastic as expected. Many

imprints remain editorially independent, and different divi-

sions of large conglomerates still ﬁnd themselves competing

against one another in some ﬁelds. Overall, the opportunities

for textbook authors do not seem to have diminished.

Many of the rules about ﬁnding a scholarly publisher also

apply to selecting a textbook publisher, but there are some

major differences. The most important is that textbook pub-

lishers rarely base their decisions on a completed manuscript.

They prefer to begin working with an author at the earliest

possible stage of the book’s development. You are free to shop

around and let publishers compete for your book; it is not like

scholarly publishing, with its expectation of exclusive review.

(Of course, once you have a contract, that’s it.) Because you

are not close to having a ﬁnished manuscript while you are

seeking a publisher, the prospectus for the college textbook is

far more important.

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Finding a Publisher for the College Textbook

The Prospectus

The textbook prospectus is a more complicated document than

the query letter for a monograph, but it has the same purpose.

As you write it, remember that you are trying to sell an idea –

and your ability to carry it out – to the publisher. You begin with

broad descriptive material. First, you must explain the topic of

your book and its theme or approach. Even an introductory

survey text has a theme that differentiates it from other texts.

A second important topic is coverage – which topics will be dis-

cussed and which omitted. You should provide a rationale for

any unusual inclusions or omissions. Third, what educational

approach does your manuscript incorporate? For example, do

you begin each section with an illustrative case study and then

go on to discuss the theories and processes it illustrates?

Next, you can cover market considerations such as the

courses for which the book is suitable, how commonly such

courses are offered, with what enrollments, and at what level;

the kinds of students the book is written for (community col-

lege, freshman nonmajors, junior majors); and how the book

differs from existing texts. This is the place to show your famil-

iarity with what is available and to explain how you can do

better. Some publishers expect a detailed comparison of your

proposed book with all existing texts. I think that is their job –

and one that they entrust to prospective authors at their peril –

but gaining a variety of perspectives can be of value to you

as you develop your own ideas. A general comparison with

major texts should be adequate, along with a demonstration of

differences in signiﬁcant details.

You can also include any special features you plan, such as

biographical sketches of notable ﬁgures in the ﬁeld or brief

ﬁrst-person accounts of famous discoveries.

You must also convince the publisher that you are qualiﬁed

to write the book. Do you have a record of publication? What

courses have you taught, and for how long? Have you received

teaching awards? Have you used any of the proposed material

in class, and with what results? If you can provide duplicated

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Handbook for Academic Authors

class material and written student evaluations, these will be

helpful.

Finally, estimate the length of your manuscript and the num-

ber of illustrations you expect to use, and explain the status of

your manuscript: How much is written, and when can you

ﬁnish it?

All of this material can be presented as a prospectus or as

a letter. If you write it as a prospectus, include a brief cover

letter as well. In addition to the prospectus or letter, enclose a

curriculum vitae, a detailed table of contents, chapter outlines

or summaries, and at least one sample chapter (the introduc-

tion plus two substantive chapters is ideal). You can send the

prospectus to as many publishers as you like, but it saves time

and money to select the ones most likely to be interested and

to do a good job.

Shopping Around

You must ﬁnd out which textbook publishers are active in

your ﬁeld. You can do this by looking at the texts you and

your colleagues are using, by surveying the textbook ads you

get in the mail, and by looking through the business cards of

the college representatives who visit you each semester. Do

not rule out publishers just because they already have a text in

your ﬁeld. Larger companies may publish several books in one

area, especially for courses with large enrollments. Perhaps the

current text is selling poorly or the publisher needs a text at

a different ability level or with an innovative approach. Any

company that publishes in your subject is a possibility.

College representatives (salespeople) for textbook publish-

ers are valuable contacts. Part of their job is to sniff out new

manuscripts. If you have a good idea for a textbook, they will

be delighted to take it back to an acquisitions editor. But you

do not need to wait for the college rep to appear at your door.

Write a note, send an e-mail, or make a phone call. If you have

been consistently unimpressed by a publisher’s sales force,

you may want to cross the publisher off your list. After all,

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Finding a Publisher for the College Textbook

they are the ones who will be selling (or failing to sell) your

book. However, there are other important considerations in

choosing a textbook publisher.

Money may be a major factor for you. Larger publishers can

offer larger advances, and that can certainly make a difference.

Remember, though, that the advance is not in addition to roy-

alties, just an early payment. Publishers will not advance you

more than they think the book will earn, so the larger advance

just means you get the money now instead of later. Royalties

on textbooks are at least 10 to 15 percent of list or net. If you are

not pressed for cash, you should evaluate the potential income

from each publisher according to the royalty rate and how well

and how long they will produce and promote the book. Read

the textbooks the publishers have on their lists. Are they good?

Would you use them? Do other people use them? Publishers

will tell you how well their texts are doing, but you should

look at those numbers critically and compare statistics. How

many copies were sold in the ﬁrst year? In the second year?

What share of the market does that represent? If the sales drop

off dramatically in the second year and disappear in the third,

that tells you something important about the quality of the

book and the publisher’s sales effort. There will always be

some reduction in sales owing to the circulation of used books,

but a good basic text that is well promoted and kept up to

date with revised editions should continue to sell year after

year.

Just as textbook publishing is expensive for the publisher, it

can also be expensive for the author. If you must pay for permis-

sions, illustrations, and indexing out of pocket, you will have to

come up with a considerable amount of cash. See whether the

publisher will pay permissions fees for quotations and illus-

trations. Will the publisher pay an artist to draw special art for

the book and a photo researcher to ﬁnd existing photographs?

Some publishers may offer to pay part or all of these fees, and

you should factor that into your calculations. For many text-

books, these costs can mount up to thousands of dollars. If

the publisher will not pay or share any of these costs, ask it to

advance the fees out of royalties so that you don’t have to pay

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Handbook for Academic Authors

cash. (Chapter 10 provides further information on illustrations

and permissions.)

Most textbook publishers employ developmental editors to

help authors turn ideas into ﬁnished manuscripts. They ﬁll

in the gap between acquisitions and manuscript or produc-

tion editors. Ask the acquiring editor how the developmental

editors work. How much support will they provide? Will they

read and comment on each chapter as it is ﬁnished? Will they

send chapters out for specialists’ suggestions? Can the devel-

opmental editor help with illustrations? Will the publisher

arrange classroom testing of material? Will it help you to do

so, or are you expected to do it without help?

You also need to know whether the publisher’s marketing

department can provide you with research reports on compet-

ing texts. If so, you and the developmental editor can decide

how to use the information to best advantage. Market research

can also help you determine the scope and level of the text

you write by telling you what prerequisites most students will

have had, what material they have generally covered in earlier

courses, and how advanced they are in basic skills and in your

academic ﬁeld.

Determine, too, what each publisher expects in the way of

supplementary materials, and whether you are required to

supply them. For example, will you have to write a lab man-

ual, instructor’s guide, sample exams, PowerPoint presenta-

tions, a study guide? Will someone else write them, for your

review? Will your textbook be sold with computer software,

such as self-paced exercises? Does the publisher want to offer

a CD-ROM or Web site with art reproductions, images of arti-

facts, or documents? Will you be expected to create podcasts of

lectures? How much technical help will you get in preparing

such sophisticated materials? Sometimes a collection of read-

ings is considered supplementary to a text, although it requires

enough work to be considered a book on its own. (See Chapter

6 on anthologies.) Introductory texts are increasingly being

viewed as packages, and you need to know just how much

work you are letting yourself in for.

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Finding a Publisher for the College Textbook

You cannot always judge the quality of manuscript editing

by reading a ﬁnished book. A good editor’s work is invisi-

ble, and if a book is well written you cannot tell whether the

credit should go to the author or the editor. However, a poorly

edited book is the publisher’s fault. If you can spot grammatical

errors, stylistic inconsistencies, excessive repetition, and simi-

lar problems, then the book was badly edited. If the quality of

your writing is important to you, ﬁnd a publisher whose books

are consistently well edited. Often a smaller publisher will

devote more effort to editing, but size is not an infallible guide.

Ask the acquisitions editor how copyediting is handled. Make

sure the publisher takes it seriously, allows sufﬁcient time,

expects you to review the editing, and provides advice on writ-

ing (and, if possible, written guidelines) to its authors. If the

acquisitions editor promises not to touch a word of your golden

prose, go elsewhere. No one’s textbook prose is that golden.

How high is the turnover in editorial staff? If editors keep

quitting, there may be something wrong, and the production of

your book is likely to be delayed. In addition, you may become

frustrated as each new editor thinks of new revisions for you to

make, or reinterprets previous understandings. Ask colleagues

who have published with a ﬁrm about their experience.

Look at the design and special features of a publisher’s

books. Are the books easy to read and use? Are they attrac-

tive? Do they demonstrate innovative thinking in study aids

and other pedagogic features? Are there enough illustrations?

Are the illustrations well drawn or reproduced haphazardly

from aging sources? Are elements like the glossary and index

of good quality? See whether the book is well made. Is the

paper of good quality? Is the printing clear, crisp, and even?

Are photographs clearly printed? Is the binding likely to sur-

vive a year of transportation in a backpack? (The ideal text-

book would fall apart immediately after the ﬁnal exam so that

it could not be resold, but no one has ﬁgured out a way to

perfect the timing.)

Ask the publisher how your book will be promoted. Does

the publisher have an adequate sales staff? Are they good at

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Handbook for Academic Authors

their job? What about mailings and convention booths? If you

have never seen a sales rep from a given company, probably

other faculty haven’t either.

Ask how soon the publisher would expect a ﬁrst draft and

when publication is anticipated. The publisher may be in too

much of a hurry for you. Finally, ask how long the publisher

keeps books in print and how often revised editions will be

issued. The genuine need for frequent revision varies from ﬁeld

to ﬁeld – computer science changes faster than metaphysics –

but you should be sure that the publisher is willing to revise

as necessary. The loss of sales due to resale of used books is

another motivation to revise, and most publishers plan to issue

new editions of successful books every two or three years.

Remember, of course, that if the book does not succeed on the

ﬁrst try, the question of revising will become moot. You will

not get any guarantees on this point, but make sure the ﬁrm’s

general practice is not to let reasonably successful books die

prematurely.

If you get more than one offer of publication, weigh all

these elements – money (advance, royalty rates, and sharing

of expenses), editorial support and capabilities, design talent,

production quality, sales record and potential – and choose the

publisher you would most like to work with. You will receive

a contract, which you should read very carefully (see the sec-

tion on contracts in Chapter 5). Given the amounts of money

at stake, you may want a lawyer to review it for you. Your

state bar association or a law school faculty member can refer

you to an expert in communications law or in the law of intel-

lectual property. As mentioned earlier, pay special attention

to provisions about illustrations and permissions, which are

an important part of textbook authorship. Whenever possible,

have the contract state that prepublication costs such as per-

missions fees, artists’ fees, and indexing are to be paid for by

the publisher or deducted from royalties rather than paid out

of your pocket. Now all you have to do is write the book.

132

Chapter 8

Working with Your Textbook Publisher

...Aswewereleavinghehinted

That a student could hardly do less

Than see how the volumes were printed

At the time-honoured Clarendon Press.

So I went there with scholarly yearning,

And I gathered from kind Mr. Gell,

Some books were to stimulate learning,

And some were intended to sell.

Oxford Magazine, 1892

Writing, reviewing, and revising a textbook manuscript are

very different from the parallel processes in scholarly pub-

lishing. As noted in Chapter 7, the purpose and content of

a textbook are not those of the scholarly monograph. Text-

books also differ in the level of difﬁculty, in format, and in the

degree of illustration. And as I also noted earlier, textbooks

must please your colleagues or they will not be used. A mono-

graph presents a unique viewpoint. If it is well documented

and convincingly written, it will be read (and sometimes appre-

ciated) even by those who disagree with its conclusions and

approach. But a textbook must try to be all things to all teach-

ers, and this necessitates a different review process and the

consideration of a new range of writing issues.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Writing a Textbook

A textbook must be credible and authoritative. The key element

in conveying credibility is, of course, your competence to write

the book. You must know your subject thoroughly. The basic

sources in your ﬁeld, as well as the current literature, must be

at your ﬁngertips. Let us assume, though, that you would not

attempt to write about a subject you do not know. Let us also

assume that you can write clearly, at least with the help of an

editor. What pitfalls must you avoid that can detract from the

authority you must convey?

The ﬁrst is exaggeration. Do not say all when you mean most,

or most when you mean many, or many when you mean some,

or some when you mean afew.If you must assign the status of

“most exciting discovery of the decade,” limit it to one discov-

ery – and make it a good one. In describing research, you will

often have to simplify conclusions, but do not exaggerate the

implications of a study or gloss over any signiﬁcant limitations

on its applicability.

A second threat to credibility is obvious bias, especially if it is

unacknowledged. Students may not notice this, but instructors

will. If your text is designed speciﬁcally to represent one school

of thought, that should be explicit. It should probably even be

part of the title: Economics: A Supply-Side Analysis; Psychology:

A Behaviorist Approach. But in a general, all-purpose text, all

schools should be represented evenhandedly. This does not

mean one school, one paragraph. It does mean that your expli-

cations of various arguments should be objective and fair, and

that respectable points of view are not neglected. Be careful not

to overrepresent theories simply because their bizarre nature

makes them more entertaining.

A third way to lose credibility is to make dogmatic and

arbitrary statements. This is largely a matter of tone. You can

say that there is only one right way to do something without

ridiculing the alternatives or those who believe them, which

might get you into libel trouble anyway. If you need to resort

to “this is so because I say so,” there is something wrong with

your argument. Students respond better if they feel that they

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Working with Your Textbook Publisher

have discovered the truth themselves, and they resist having

conclusions forced on them.

In addition to credibility, you must strive for general accept-

ability. Your book will be considered for adoption and will be

read by men, women, African Americans, Whites, American

Indians, Hispanics, Asian Americans, older people, teenagers,

Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists, fundamen-

talists of all faiths, and atheists – among others. It cannot be

all things to all people, and you do not want to be so fearful

of offending that you become tongue-tied. You can, however,

make an effort to be fair and to avoid such blatant offenses

as stereotyping or ignoring minorities, ridiculing religious or

political opinions, or misrepresenting arguments.

Many of these issues are much easier to handle than peo-

ple believe. A great deal of fuss has been raised about sexist

language, more speciﬁcally the incorrect use of the generic he.

Words such as he, man, mankind, and salesman do not include

women. Man and mankind can be replaced by human being,

humanity, or civilization; salesmen can be called salespeople, sales

agents, or sales representatives. To avoid the he/she construc-

tion, sentences can be cast in the plural, or you can use the

second-person you. A little imagination makes the problem go

away. Many publishers and professional organizations offer

guidelines on avoiding sexist language, and you can consult a

useful book by Marilyn Schwartz called Guidelines for Bias-Free

Writing or Rosalie Maggio’s Talking About People. If you do not

avoid sexist language, your copy editor will remove it for you.

Beyond the problem of language, you should avoid sex-

ism in your examples, case histories, and illustrations. If you

feel that making these elements gender-neutral renders them

too vague or even inaccurate, you can divide them roughly

equally by gender. When you do this, be sure that positive and

negative examples are equally distributed between the sexes,

unless of course the apparent inequities reﬂect genuine gender

differences.

Avoiding racist language is not difﬁcult, but there are more

subtle issues to watch for. White authors tend to assume

unconsciously that everyone is white. Remarks such as “Our

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Handbook for Academic Authors

ancestors came to America in search of freedom” become

absurd when you remember that ancestors were of several

colors besides white. You must, of course, avoid stereotyped

images, examples, and illustrations.

It is no longer safe to assume that your readers are all

between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. Many older

people are returning to college, and you cannot take for granted

that they share the vocabulary and experiences of the current

generation of adolescents. Of course, you may not share these

either, and it is a mistake to try to write as if you do. Any

teenager will tell you that no one over thirty can aspire to

coolness.

In some ﬁelds, religion is an issue. How and when the world

was created and the status of evolution are again matters of dis-

pute. These questions can be handled brieﬂy, but they should

not be ignored, dismissed, or ridiculed. On questions where

religious belief is a major factor and passions are strong – abor-

tion, for example – you must be extremely careful to present

opposing points of view fairly. Choose the strongest arguments

on each side and try to write matter-of-factly and without

emotion. This helps the instructor conduct a discussion that

is based on information and reason rather than on feelings and

faith.

Politics, the other issue we do not discuss in polite com-

pany, arises in many ﬁelds. You need not be bland, but you

should present at least two sides to every issue and not hold

any respectable argument up to ridicule. In textbook writing,

it may be difﬁcult to draw the line between fairness and “polit-

ical correctness.” Some elementary and high school texts have

been criticized for blandness and ridiculed for picturing not

only the right ethnic mix in a classroom but the right vegeta-

bles in a salad. Although the pressure is less intense at the

college level, authors need to be alert to editorial suggestions

that are well meant but incorrect. For example, gender-neutral

language may distort the account of a historical event or med-

ical experiment, and attempts to include people of color when

none were present will lead to justiﬁed criticism. Be fair, and

be accurate.

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On all of these issues writing a textbook can be an opportu-

nity for you to learn – to reexamine prejudices, to read authors

you have dismissed out of hand, and to rethink your position

on a number of substantial intellectual issues. If you regard

the problems of racial, sexual, religious, and political bias in

writing as a genuine challenge rather than as a series of minor

obstacles, you may ﬁnd yourself enjoying the task and growing

in its performance.

Reviews and Rewriting

Before you begin writing, you and your editor should work

out a schedule and a plan for review. You should agree on a

detailed outline and on a timetable for submitting chapters.

Make sure you understand the reviewing process to be used

and the kinds of revision you may have to undertake. Textbook

publishers use a very different system of review from the one

university presses employ, and the revisions they anticipate

are far more extensive.

It is also at this stage that you and your publisher, usually in

the person of a developmental editor, will set out the special

features and organizational details that will make your book

more useful and salable. As I noted in Chapter 7, the instructors

who will decide whether to adopt your book have a limited

amount of ﬂexibility. The published description of their courses

and the conventions of their disciplines determine what must

be covered, and their own energy limits how much they are

willing to revise a course from year to year. Usually, a text-

book should be organized to follow the order in which most

instructors teach the subject. A convenient way to ﬁnd out how

your colleagues teach their courses is to look at syllabi on the

Web. Many instructors have Web pages for their courses, and

these can be a very useful source of information on coverage,

texts used, supplementary materials expected, and so forth. It

is often possible, too, to organize a text in modules so that it

can be used in various ways. This possibility can be explained

to the instructor in the preface or the instructor’s manual, with

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Handbook for Academic Authors

alternative tables of contents spelling out the details. The more

ﬂexible the text, the more it may be adopted.

Almost every textbook includes some sort of special mate-

rial: glossaries, suggested readings, problems (both worked-

out and unsolved), answers to problems, chapter summaries

and reviews, inspirational essays by prominent ﬁgures in the

ﬁeld, brief biographies, brief essays to highlight controver-

sial or current issues – the possibilities are endless. You may

already have discussed these matters with your acquiring edi-

tor, but now is the time to determine the nature, number, and

length of these features. You and your developmental editor

can use market research results and reviewers’ comments to

come up with an appropriate group of supplementary features.

These details help attract students and instructors to the text,

increase the students’ interest, help them learn the material,

and occasionally inspire a few students to further study. They

are important selling points and also important learning aids.

Consider their use carefully and do them well.

It is also possible to use extra features to expand the market

for the book. For example, by providing exercises at different

levels of difﬁculty, you can make the book useful for classes

of varying abilities. Supplementary materials can also provide

ideas and challenges for more able or advanced students. Dis-

cuss all of these possibilities with your editor.

Although details may vary, the basic textbook editorial pro-

cess includes three types of review: market, content, and edito-

rial. The market evaluation is used ﬁrst to determine whether

a new textbook can be expected to sell. The publisher sur-

veys existing texts and tries to learn how well they are doing,

what faculty members think of them, which features make

them appealing, and where they are vulnerable. The results of

this research are then applied to your project, as the publisher

determines the appropriate length, subject coverage, extent

and type of illustration, level of difﬁculty, price range, and so

forth. Many of these questions are interrelated. For example, a

book for students who are not good readers may require heav-

ier illustration, and a long book of complex design cannot sell

for $24.95. Obviously, the market review must be done very

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Working with Your Textbook Publisher

early in the game, and the basic nature of the book must be

decided before you have done much writing. Authors can con-

tribute to this process, but the publisher is the real expert here.

If you and your publisher disagree seriously at this stage, you

should ﬁnd another publisher.

Content reviews take place when the text is ﬁnished. (Often

various sections of a manuscript will be sent off earlier to

experts in speciﬁc ﬁelds.) The reviewers are your academic

colleagues, and they are asked whether your manuscript is

accurate, balanced, up-to-date, authoritative, and complete.

They will be asked to offer suggestions for additions and dele-

tions, expansion and tightening, and other alterations. They

may point out some recent research that would enhance your

presentation or claim that you have spent too much time on one

topic and too little on another. If you have your facts wrong,

they will correct them (if you’re lucky). They may detect errors

in logic or confusion in arguments. The reviewers will be asked

whether they would use the book in their courses and, if not,

what is wrong.

Remember that the publisher will not take content reviews

as gospel. The reviewers are experts, but they are not infalli-

ble. In fact, they will often disagree among themselves. If ten

reviewers unanimously suggest the same change, your devel-

opmental editor (after recovering from the shock) will probably

insist on it. More likely, however, suggestions will be weighed

and evaluated, and some will be followed, while others are

discarded.

You are an expert, too, and you must participate actively

in this stage of the review. Your publisher has not solicited

and paid for reviews to show you up or embarrass you. The

purpose is to give you advice, to anticipate criticism, and to

improve your book. And it is still your book. If you think a

reviewer is dead wrong, say so. You may agree with a reader’s

criticism but offer a different solution. The most important and

difﬁcult task at this stage is to consider the reviews objectively

and use them wisely. You cannot do this if you are too eas-

ily insulted, too stubborn, not stubborn enough, or lazy. Ask

yourself why you are resisting a suggestion. Is it because you

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Handbook for Academic Authors

know it is wrong or unworkable? Because you worked really

hard on that section and – even though the change would

be helpful – you cannot face it again? Because you do not

like the tone of the criticism? Your developmental editor has

tried to get you the best advice available, but your reaction will

determine whether the advice will be put to good use. Remem-

ber, too, that the editor is on your side. You are in a hurry to

get the book into production, but so are the acquisitions and

developmental editors, production manager, and sales direc-

tor. They are offering suggestions not to put obstacles in your

path but to improve the ﬁnal product. Even if a reviewer’s

comments are sarcastic or belittling (and they rarely are), your

editor is not offering them in that spirit. Try to detach your ego

from the process, and it will go a lot easier.

Finally, the outside reviews are no substitute for your own

careful reading. Reviewers will catch some factual and logical

errors, but they will not catch them all. Your name is on the

book, and it is, in the end, your responsibility to ensure its

accuracy. If fatigue or haste led you to leave a quote or reference

unchecked, an allusion vague, or a statement unveriﬁed, go

back to the library and get it right. Someone will catch the

mistake, and it is best if you do.

The editorial review is concerned with issues of style, tone,

organization, and comprehensibility. The reviewer may be a

member of the publisher’s staff or an outside expert. Details

and speciﬁc changes will be taken care of in copyediting, but

alterations that require extensive reorganization or major writ-

ing problems that recur throughout the manuscript are best

taken care of now.

Let me offer some examples of the kinds of problem that

may be detected at this stage. In style, a reviewer may note

that you are inconsistent in your point of view, sometimes

referring to yourself as “the author,” sometimes resorting to

an editorial “we,” occasionally lapsing into a chatty “I remem-

ber....”Youmayrefertoyourreadersas“you”inonechapter

and “the student” in another, and include them in the “we” in

still other places. This problem is easily corrected, but it is best

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Working with Your Textbook Publisher

handled as a conscious decision made jointly by author and

editor.

A problem in tone might be a feeling on the part of the

reviewer that you are being authoritarian rather than author-

itative, that you are talking down to your readers by offering

dogmatic statements rather than reasoned arguments. Or a

reviewer might feel that your tone is too familiar and chatty,

that you are inserting your personality into places where it

does not belong. The reviewer will offer examples of these

problems. Now, perhaps you have chosen the familiar tone

deliberately and believe strongly that it makes your writing

and teaching more effective. If so, you will want to discuss this

with your editor. Chances are the editor will agree with your

general tack but suggest that you may have gone overboard

occasionally.

You are familiar with many kinds of general organizational

problems in writing, but one or two are speciﬁc to textbooks.

Here the reviewer may point out that students cannot under-

stand Chapter 5 until they have read the ﬁrst half of Chapter 12,

or that a ﬁgure in Chapter 7 uses terms not introduced until

Chapter 9. You will have to correct such problems. Similarly,

the reviewer may point out the difﬁculty of teaching a topic

(say, photosynthesis) before you have introduced certain con-

cepts (in this case, perhaps molecular and cellular structure).

Again, you will have to rethink your organization.

Comprehensibility includes the question of how easy it is to

understand various explanations in the text, but at this point

the reviewer is more concerned with the general level of your

writing and the adequacy of supplementary illustrative mate-

rial. If you are writing a book aimed at ﬁrst-year community

college students, your vocabulary and sentence structure must

be less sophisticated than you would use in a book for junior

or senior majors in the ﬁeld. It is easy to lose sight of this as

you write. On these questions, you should take the reviewer’s

advice very seriously. Of course you have no trouble under-

standing the material. The class you tested it on did just ﬁne,

too, because they listened to your lectures and asked questions.

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But you are not a good judge of how easy it is to understand

your own writing.

The reviewer may also point out places where you need an

extended example, a graph, or a diagram or suggest that certain

material be treated as optional detail and placed in boxes or

appendices. You and your developmental editor should con-

sider these suggestions and incorporate them when appro-

priate.

With all these suggestions ﬂying around, it is important to

decide exactly how you will go about revising your work.

First, make sure that you and your developmental editor have

the same understanding about what is to be done. Unless the

revisions are extremely limited, it is a good idea to put in

writing exactly what you are going to do – which suggestions

you will incorporate, which you will ignore, what you will

rewrite, what you will add, and so on. This ensures that you

and your editor agree, and it also gives you a set of goals and

a plan of attack.

Then do the revision. Tackle the major changes ﬁrst – the

additions, reorganization, and rewriting. Next make the minor,

speciﬁc changes that are needed. When this is ﬁnished, if you

have time, leave the manuscript alone for a week or two.

Finally, sit down, reread the whole thing from beginning to

end, and make sure you are satisﬁed with it. Then prepare a

ﬁnal manuscript, either according to the publisher’s instruc-

tions or following the general instructions in Chapter 10.

Working with Your Editors

After all the reviews and revisions you have completed, you

may be surprised to learn that yet another person is about to

have a go at your manuscript, but here comes the copy editor.

The earlier editorial review was designed to pick up general or

recurring problems. The copy editor, however, goes over your

work word by word, sentence by sentence. Grammatical and

spelling errors, awkward phrasing, and poor diction must be

corrected, and stylistic consistency will be imposed. Logical

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Working with Your Textbook Publisher

inconsistencies will be eliminated and ambiguities clariﬁed.

If an example does not make sense, or a process is poorly

explained, or chronology is unclear, the copy editor will catch

your lapse.

Copy editors sometimes ask what seem to be stupid ques-

tions. The copy editor working on a scholarly book tries to

view the work through a scholar’s eyes, but a textbook edi-

tor views your work through the eyes of a student. If your

textbook is for ﬁrst-year chemistry classes, an effective copy

editor will try to read your explanations as a freshman would.

If the editor cannot understand something, students will not

be able to either.

Review the edited manuscript carefully, checking changes

and answering all queries. Return the manuscript promptly,

so that production can begin.

In textbook publishing, the roles of author and editor overlap

in many places, and the relationship lasts for months or even

years. There are a number of ways to make communication

between you and your editors more effective and pleasant,

beyond observing the normal, everyday rules of civility and

decency.

As I have stressed before, remember that you and your pub-

lisher are on the same side. Conﬂicts may arise over copy-

editing, money, schedules, and other matters, but they will

be easier to resolve if you view them as arguments within a

sound marriage rather than as ﬂare-ups in a cold war. Be ﬁrm

on important issues, but do not dig in your heels at every

opportunity. Recognize your editor’s expertise in publishing

matters just as you expect your own professional knowledge

to be respected.

Now that I have released the dove of goodwill, let me tell

you how to keep it from treating you like a statue in the

park. Getitinwriting.Editors work on many books, and they

change jobs a lot. They may also promise more than their

bosses will want to deliver. Do not rely on phone conversa-

tions or casual assurances. Your basic guarantees are written

into your contract. Beyond those, summarize in writing your

understanding of subsequent promises and send it on. “It is my

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Handbook for Academic Authors

understanding that you will pursue permissions for the Love-

joy graphs,” or “In our phone conversation yesterday, you

agreed to deduct the indexer’s fee from my royalties rather

than having me pay it immediately,” or “We agreed that the

editorial changes in Chapter 4 to which I objected in my previ-

ous letter will not be made.” If the editor disagrees with your

interpretation, you will hear about it and you will be able to

straighten out the matter quickly.

Be prompt about permissions and illustrations (see Chapter

10) and meet your deadlines. Do not agree to a deadline you

know you cannot meet. Textbooks must be published on time,

and the publisher must work out a realistic schedule. Hon-

esty and realism on your side are vital. By the same token,

if you are expecting proof or other material and it fails to

arrive, call and check on it. Your editor should notify you of

delays, but things do get lost in the mail or sent to the wrong

address.

Finally, I urge you to express appreciation for work well

done. If the copyediting was brilliant, say so. Tell the designer

if you love the cover. When the graphs come out looking ten

times better than you hoped for, send thanks. Praise the editor

who saves you from mortiﬁcation by spotting a factual error

and the typesetter who spots a misspelling. If you are like most

people, you are quick to complain or criticize. It’s nice to be

nearly as quick to praise.

Textbooks for advanced courses, which sell many fewer

copies than those for surveys, may be produced differently,

especially in the sciences. Although these texts will be reviewed

and edited in the same way, authors may be asked to pro-

vide electronic camera-ready copy using software designed

for typesetting mathematics (e.g., TeX or LaTeX) or chemistry

(e.g., ChemDraw). In these cases, authors do a great deal of

work – everything from entering the copy editor’s changes

to laying out complex pages. The publisher, in turn, should

provide a great deal of speciﬁc written instruction and have

someone available to answer questions. The “Resources for

authors” section of the Wiley Web site (www.wiley.com) is an

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Working with Your Textbook Publisher

example of such instructions and resources. (See Chapter 10

for information on manuscript preparation.)

Supplementary Materials

In some ﬁelds, at least below advanced levels, a teacher’s man-

ual for your textbook is almost obligatory; in others, such

supplementary material is rare. You and your publisher should

share the decision on whether to prepare an instructor’s man-

ualand,ifso,whatkind.

A minimal teacher’s manual provides answers to the prob-

lems given in the textbook if these are not printed in the book

itself. Other possibilities include test banks (essay, multiple

choice, or true/false) with answers, discussion topics, take-

home exercises, paper topics, and lecture outlines. You should

also consider suggestions for collaborative learning exercises

and group projects. Faculty are being encouraged to include

such activities in their courses, and help will be welcomed.

Teacher’s manuals are not elaborately produced and feature

only the simplest design and binding. The production does not

take long and is usually begun at about the same time as the

index. Nevertheless, you should have the material written well

ahead of time. A teacher’s manual will have to be copyedited,

and it may take longer to write than you think. Follow the rules

for manuscript preparation in Chapter 10.

The main consideration in an answer key is, naturally, accu-

racy. Check and double-check your answers, and proofread

carefully, reading aloud with another person if possible. One

reason for preparing the instructor’s manual early is that you

may ﬁnd that the problems you wrote for the text contain

ambiguities – or even that they are unanswerable. That is a

good thing to discover before the problems are in print. In

proof, check and recheck all cross-references to chapters, pages,

and problems in the textbook. It is embarrassing to provide

answers to thirty-two problems when the text contains only

thirty-one.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

You and your publisher may also decide that you should pre-

pare a study guide for students using the textbook. This may

offer general study hints, summaries, study questions, review

outlines, and suggestions for supplementary reading. Study

guides are produced in the same way as teacher’s manuals,

and on a similar schedule.

It is very tempting to regard supplementary materials like

study guides and instructor’s manuals as unimportant or even

as minor nuisances. They certainly lack glamor. But if you have

decided to prepare one, do it right. Write carefully, be accurate,

double-check all answers, and proofread scrupulously. Many

instructors will ignore the manual, but those who rely on it

expect it to be accurate and useful. If it is not, they may never

use your text again.

Online supplements are also obligatory for many introduc-

tory textbooks. Depending on your discipline, you may need

to develop databases for students to use in statistical analy-

ses, document collections, images of artwork, musical exam-

ples, videos of laboratory experiments, audio or video ﬁles of

speeches, or other creative additions. Some publishers include

podcasts of lectures or laboratory demonstrations, and you will

have to participate in their production. If you undertake such

projects, you will work not only with your editor but also with

the publisher’s Web designers and technical experts. It is best

for the publisher to take on the task of acquiring permission,

in part because they may wish to use material in conjunction

with more than one book. You may also need some research

assistance to locate suitable material.

Marketing

Publishers market textbooks through exhibits at meetings,

direct mail, and visits by their sales representatives. Be sure

to review all printed marketing material and material for the

Web site very carefully. You may be asked to help with the

marketing by giving talks at meetings, or at least attending

receptions. You may also be asked to visit campuses with large

146

Working with Your Textbook Publisher

enrollments or to attend regional conferences. Another way to

promote a textbook is through webinars and Web conferences

in which you can present the innovative aspects of your book

and answer questions. These activities pay off in adoptions and

sales, or publishers would not use them. Be sure to prepare for

these events thoroughly.

Revised Editions

Textbooks are more likely to be revised and published in new

editions than are trade and scholarly books. One reason for fre-

quent revision is economic: There is a ﬂourishing trade in used

textbooks on which neither author nor publisher makes any

money. This is not the only reason, however. In many ﬁelds,

particularly the sciences, new information must constantly be

assimilated into textbooks or the books become obsolete. In

other ﬁelds, such as history, methodological and sociopolitical

changes require that texts be modiﬁed. For example, no survey

of U.S. history is now marketable unless it includes material

about the environment, immigration, and the roles of women

and minority groups; books on modern Russian and East Euro-

pean history must be updated. Sometimes books must be

revised because of trends in teaching (such as increased use

of discussions and collaborative learning in place of lectures)

or because the students have changed. The most notable exam-

ple of this last problem is the move toward simpliﬁed vocabu-

lary and sentence structure in lower-level texts in response to

reduced literacy.

You should begin working on a revised edition as soon as

you have ﬁnished reading the proof of the current edition. You

do not begin writing, of course, but you do begin a ﬁle of

articles to be added to the bibliography, ideas for new topics,

new illustrations, and so forth. You should not wait to do all

your catching up at once.

When you and your publisher decide to prepare a revised

edition, you should make sure you know the purpose of

the revision. Your publisher’s representatives will have been

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Handbook for Academic Authors

discussing your book with faculty members who use it and

should have some ideas about which features are consistently

praised and which are repeatedly criticized. Important omis-

sions will have been noted. Your editor will also know what

other publishers have been up to and how a revised edition

might increase your competitive advantage. At the same time,

you will have received criticism from colleagues and students,

and you will have developed some ideas about what you

wish you had done differently. You will also be aware of new

research that should be reﬂected in your book.

You and your editor need to sit down and agree on what sorts

of revisions should be made and how extensive they will be.

You should discuss the need for new illustrations. If the book

is to be redesigned and typeset from scratch, the production

process is just as time-consuming as if you were writing a

completely new book. However, if the revisions are minor or

are limited to a few parts of the book, only the affected parts

may be reset, and the whole procedure will be a good deal less

complicated (see Chapter 10 for instructions on preparing copy

for a revised edition). If the revisions are extensive, your editor

may want to have the new version reviewed all over again.

And, of course, you must set a schedule for revision that you

can follow and that will allow the publisher to get the book out

on time.

Preparing a new edition is not just cutting and pasting or

correcting errors. Even when you have made the revisions and

additions that you and your editor have decided on, you must

again read through the manuscript to make sure it is coher-

ent. Details to watch out for include cross-references to pages,

chapters, tables, and ﬁgures in the book that may be different in

the new edition; time-related references (“this decade,” “a few

years ago,” “in 2000 we will probably”); presidents who have

become former presidents; the use of the present tense with

people who have died or governments that have fallen; and

language or allusions that have become dated. Tables and ﬁg-

ures should be included in this check. The bibliography should

be reviewed for outdated material. If you used a notation sys-

tem with parenthetic author-date references in the text and a

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Working with Your Textbook Publisher

reference list at the end, you must make sure that new text

references have corresponding entries in the list and that refer-

ences completely omitted from the text have also been omitted

from the list. Check, too, for books or articles that were “in

press” or “forthcoming,” and put in the dates of publication

and page numbers.

Finally, sit down and read the whole book afresh (to the

extent that’s possible). Make sure you are happy with it. If you

do not have the time, energy, or imagination to do this now, be

sure to do it after the manuscript has been copyedited.

Textbook writing can be an intellectually and ﬁnancially

rewarding activity, but it is not as easy as it looks. It is very

difﬁcult to organize massive amounts of material, to simplify

complex ideas, and to provide explanations, examples, and

illustrations that help students learn. The review process can

also be trying, both physically and emotionally, because accept-

ing criticism and reworking what you thought was a ﬁnished

product are rarely pleasant. Your investment in time and effort

will be high.

Because of the length of time and intensity of the involve-

ment, you should make every effort to ﬁnd a publisher with

whom you can work comfortably. If you are writing with a

coauthor or as part of a team, make sure you like and respect

your colleagues. Be careful to see that everyone involved has

compatible ideas about the project and that responsibilities are

clearly assigned.

There are few publishing endeavors in which the gratiﬁca-

tion is delayed as long as it is in textbook writing. (The Oxford

English Dictionary comes to mind, but not too much else.) Be

prepared to work hard and to wait a while for both the praise

and the royalties.

149

Chapter 9

Books for General Readers

In the idea of literature one essential element is some relation

to a general and common interest of man – so that what applies

only to a local, or professional, or merely personal interest, even

though presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not belong

to literature.

Thomas de Quincey

Serious nonﬁction – whether written by journalists, profes-

sional writers, or academics – has become very popular. Allan

Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind and Stephen Hawking’s

Brief History of Time both appeared on The New York Times’ best-

seller list for weeks on end (Hawking’s for nearly two years),

and books by scholars such as Harry Frankfurt, Steven Pinker,

and Elaine Pagels have made frequent, if briefer, appearances.

Still more books by academic writers, though not best-sellers,

have sold in respectable numbers, sometimes for several years.

Academics have many reasons to write for general read-

ers. Trade books bring their authors more money than mono-

graphs do, though usually not as much as textbooks. They also

allow scholars to communicate with people other than their

colleagues and students. Writing for a nonspecialized audi-

ence conveys a researcher’s own discoveries, the state of a

discipline, enthusiasm for work, or the urgency of an issue or

cause to signiﬁcant numbers of people. It is another way to

make a difference: to inﬂuence public policy, interest people in

an important subject, reduce ignorance about a discipline, or

bring readers up to date on important research.

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Because books for a general audience are usually published

by trade houses, it is important to understand their acquisi-

tions, editorial, and marketing practices. When trade books

are published by university presses, they should be edited and

marketed differently than monographs. And, most important,

books for general readers must be written with a different

audience in mind.

Economic Realism

By dangling The New York Times’ best-seller list in front of you,

I may have created fantasies of wealth that – alas – I must now

dispel. The nonﬁction best-seller lists are dominated by books

about diet, self-improvement, life after death, or the deeds

and misdeeds of celebrities. Serious nonﬁction rarely appears.

No one can be sure which books will become best-sellers, but

there are some fairly good predictors of success for academic

authors. A nonﬁction book is most likely to become a best-

seller if the author has had a best-selling book before, has won

a Nobel Prize, has a television show airing when the book

is published, or receives extensive media coverage, usually

because the book is timely and controversial. Few authors meet

these criteria, and even if they do, their books may sell only

moderately well. The author’s previous best-seller may have

been a ﬂuke: The Closing of the American Mind was Bloom’s

only best-seller. A Nobel laureate in physics or chemistry may

have little idea of what would interest a general reader. And

even a much-discussed, highly controversial book may not

sell as well as you might expect: Controversial books are often

discussed apparently knowledgeably by people who have read

the reviews and news coverage, but not the book.

Of course, a publisher who believes a book has a good chance

to become a best-seller will risk a great deal of money to acquire

it. Some popular science books have brought their authors

advances of more than $250,000, and in many cases the pub-

lisher has not regretted the decision. Advances of $50,000 to

$100,000 are offered to signiﬁcant numbers of authors in the

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Handbook for Academic Authors

sciences. For most ﬁrst-time trade authors, especially those

who are not scientists, an advance of $10,000 to $25,000 is

more realistic, with university presses usually offering less.

Of course, if a book with a small advance really takes off, the

author will get additional royalties.

I would encourage every writer who wants to reach a large

audience to be optimistic, but it is a serious miscalculation to

think that you can retire on the proceeds of one moderately

successful trade book. Buying a new car, remodeling a kitchen,

or paying a year’s Ivy League tuition for one child is a more

realistic ﬁnancial goal. And you are unlikely to get a large

advance unless you have a literary agent negotiating for you.

Finding a Literary Agent

Finding a literary agent is much like ﬁnding a publisher, and

unless your manuscript shows strong promise of proﬁtability

you are unlikely to succeed. As explained in Chapter 4, literary

agents charge fees that are a percentage of the author’s royal-

ties. They cannot afford to spend time trying to sell manuscripts

that will bring them only a few hundred dollars. Nor are they

likely to take on a project that will require a lot of editorial

work before it can be submitted. Agents who handle nonﬁc-

tion are looking for well-written, salable manuscripts on top-

ics with a wide potential readership. As a result, most agents

accept fewer than 10 percent of the manuscripts submitted

to them. However, they almost always place the manuscripts

they accept and are able to convince publishers to offer better

terms and larger advances than an unrepresented author can

negotiate.

To earn their 15 percent fees, literary agents submit manu-

scripts to publishers, negotiate contracts, persuade publishers

to increase their marketing efforts, review royalty statements,

either sell subsidiary rights or encourage publishers to pursue

Information on advances and print runs is drawn from Laura Wood, “Targeting the

Educated Lay Audience: Publishers’ Perceptions and Strategies” (M.A. thesis, New

York University, 1994).

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Books for General Readers

such sales more aggressively, and generally act as the author’s

advocate. Agents may offer editorial advice, but they do not

do extensive revision. Some will refer an author to an editor, a

coauthor, or even a ghostwriter, all of whom charge separate

fees. In addition to their commissions, agents usually charge

clients for expenses such as photocopying and long-distance

phone calls.

A minority of agents charge fees to read manuscripts.

Although such fees may be substantial, they are not meant

to cover the cost of a thorough editorial review. Rather, the

fee pays for a reading that determines whether the agent will

take on the project and may include some general suggestions

for revision. The more selective and better-known agents gen-

erally do not charge reading fees, and authors’ associations

recommend that their members avoid those who do.

If you think you need an agent, the ﬁrst place to turn is

Literary Market Place, Literary Agents of North America (both

are in the bibliography and should be in your university or

public library), or one of the online listings you can ﬁnd on

the Web. These directories provide names, addresses, phone

numbers, and types of manuscripts handled; tell whether an

agent accepts unsolicited manuscripts (more about this in a

moment); and note whether an agent charges a reading fee.

Literary Agents of North America is more detailed and generally

lists commissions charged as well as typical or recent clients

and books. It is indexed by subject, location, policies, and size.

If possible, choose an agent who is a member of the Associ-

ation of Authors’ Representatives in the United States or the

Association of Authors’ Agents in the United Kingdom. Their

Web sites are listed in the bibliography.

Once you have identiﬁed a few agents who handle manu-

scripts in your ﬁeld, you must note carefully what each expects

as a ﬁrst submission. Few agents accept unsolicited complete

manuscripts. Rather, they want to see a query letter and a

prospectus, an outline, or perhaps a sample chapter. They will

want to know whether you have had other books published.

Your letter or prospectus should not only describe the book

but explain why it will appeal to a trade publisher and a lay

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Handbook for Academic Authors

audience. As in seeking a publisher, you may send queries to

more than one agent at a time, but if you are asked to send a

manuscript, you must send it to only one agent.

Reputable agents explain to prospective clients exactly what

they will and will not do for them and spell out all commissions

and fees. When they accept a client, they offer a contract that

sets out all these matters. You should read such a contract

even more carefully than you read a publisher’s contract. You

should clarify just how much advice an agent is prepared to

offer on your writing. Most will offer general suggestions, and

almost none make line-by-line corrections, but there are many

possibilities in between. Some agents are very comfortable with

the literary side of their work; others prefer to devote almost

all their attention to the business side. You must understand

the agent’s obligations and your own, and you must be able

to trust your agent with your money and your reputation. I

strongly recommend a personal meeting with an agent before

signing a contract.

Once you sign a contract with an agent, you must submit all

manuscripts through the agency unless you and the agent have

agreed otherwise. For example, the agent is unlikely to want

to handle your submissions to nonpaying scholarly journals

but will probably want to take care of submissions to popular

magazines. Any requests that come to you for foreign rights,

translations, or reprinting in anthologies must be referred to

your agent. Other issues to be clariﬁed include which commu-

nications with publishers may go directly to you and which

should go to your agent. All ﬁnancial matters are in the agent’s

province; copy editor’s queries are in yours. But many things

fall in the middle, including review of catalog and advertising

copy and jacket design. Most agents will want to participate in

decisions that relate to marketing.

The fact that most authors remain with the same agent

throughout their careers testiﬁes to the care that both parties

must use in establishing the relationship and to the trust and

respect it generates. If you plan to write more than one trade

book in the course of your career, your agent will become a

very important part of your professional life.

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Books for General Readers

Agents may accept clients on the basis of book outlines or

summaries, and they may secure a publication contract on

that basis as well. If a book is on a salable topic and there is

reason to think the author can live up to the promise of the out-

line, publishers are willing to make a commitment early on to

secure the manuscript. Of course, established authors have an

advantage here, but an agent may be able to get a contract and

an advance for an inexperienced author with a good idea. If,

however, your agent does not wish to seek a publisher until the

project is further along, you should be guided by that advice.

Writing for General Readers

When you write a monograph, your audience is your peers

and perhaps some graduate students. When you write a text-

book, your readers are undergraduates. But when you write a

trade book, the audience is harder to deﬁne. People who buy

and read serious nonﬁction are mostly college educated but

not professional academics. They may have developed certain

interests in college that they have retained but do not pur-

sue in their careers. A lawyer, for example, may remember an

astronomy course fondly, while an industrial chemist becomes

an amateur archaeologist because of a particularly interesting

freshman course. Other readers are seeking to ﬁll in gaps in

their education. Those who took physics as their laboratory

science may wish to understand heredity and evolution bet-

ter, or former English majors may want to catch up with their

teenagers’ more advanced knowledge of mathematics. Some

serious nonﬁction buyers are attracted to books simply because

these books are being talked about, despite a lack of per-

sonal interest in the discipline of the author. Television series

create spillover interest in their topics: Viewers of The Civil War

bought not only the book derived from the series but also other

books by Civil War historians and biographers.

It is vital to keep the audience in mind as you write, but how

can you keep a steady vision of so disparate an audience? One

way is to think of them as alumni – your students of ten or

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Handbook for Academic Authors

twenty years ago, for instance, back for a reunion with your

book instead of with you. As students, they varied in ability

and interest, so you must now write to appeal to as many as

possible. When they were students, of course, you had more

power over them than you have now, and you cannot require

them to buy your book. You must instead arouse their interest,

pique their curiosity, answer their questions, and keep them

reading.

Another way to think of your audience is to imagine a dozen

or so real individuals who might read your book: a colleague

in another ﬁeld, your tennis partner, your child’s teacher, a

cousin, a neighbor, a colleague’s spouse, your doctor, and so

forth. When you have to make a decision about how much

background to provide or how to explain a phenomenon, you

can imagine speaking to one or two of these people and then

write to meet their needs. You can even use them as guinea

pigs occasionally.

How do you deﬁne a subject for a trade book? A monograph

is usually the report of a research project, and a textbook’s

subject is deﬁned by the courses in which it will be used, but the

limits of a trade book are not set down anywhere. You cannot

say that a book for “general” readers should be more “general”

than a monograph: Many successful trade books are extremely

focused and speciﬁc. In history, for example, Natalie Davis’s

Return of Martin Guerre is simply a very effective recounting of

a single legal case, and Laurel Ulrich’s Midwife’s Tale: The Life

of Martha Ballard is an imaginatively edited diary from the turn

of the nineteenth century. To determine what to write about,

you must look at your reasons for writing and your audience’s

reasons for reading and then ﬁnd a solution that satisﬁes both.

What are the possible intellectual motivations for writing a

trade book? You may want to demonstrate the relevance of

your ﬁeld, explain recent developments and changes, set out

competing theories (or argue in favor of one), alert readers to a

serious problem that your work has uncovered, inﬂuence pub-

lic opinion and policy, or simply share an insight or discovery.

Each of these motivations would lead to a different kind of

book.

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Books for General Readers

Why might readers want to read what you have to say? Per-

haps they want to educate themselves concerning a ﬁeld about

which they know nothing: They will be looking for a book that

sets out the relevance, history, current approaches, and under-

lying knowledge of the ﬁeld. Other readers may want to know

what has happened recently in a ﬁeld in which they have some

background. They will be looking for books that set out new

developments in evolutionary theory, the impact of computers

on epistemology, or what “cultural studies” might be. Readers

may want to know what researchers think about controver-

sial public policy issues like immigration, global warming, or

international human rights. Some readers are looking for an

inside view of research: How do geneticists, forensic anthro-

pologists, or archaeologists go about their business, and what

sort of people are they? Books designed to meet these needs

are likely to succeed in a trade market.

Providing Context

Writing a trade book raises other questions that writing a

monograph or textbook does not. The ﬁrst is where to start.

How much context must you provide? How much knowledge

can you assume? The answer, of course, lies in that imaginary

audience. One way to think about context and background is

that it roughly substitutes for the literature review plus what

you assume your peers know. Whether it is called an introduc-

tion or something else, the relevant chapter or chapters must

provide all the information the reader needs to understand the

heart of the book, including competing theories, underlying

consensus, and basic terminology. It must also explain why

your subject matters, perhaps because it is new, important for

public policy, or just interesting.

“Humanizing” Your Subject

Many trade editors and authors emphasize the value of help-

ing readers relate to your subject. In many ﬁelds, this comes

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Handbook for Academic Authors

easily. One reason for the popularity of biography and his-

tory is that they are full of characters with whom readers can

develop relationships of admiration, empathy, disgust, or some

other strong emotion. But if you are writing about physics or

birds or fossils, creating an emotional connection requires more

imagination.

One possibility is to focus on the researchers, giving the

reader a sense of their excitement, doubts, ambitions, and rival-

ries. James Watson’s Double Helix is the best-known book of

this sort. This approach is commonly used in accounts of med-

ical discoveries, whose authors have casts of characters that

include researchers, clinicians, and patients. Oliver Sacks also

excels at this sort of narrative.

Another approach is to re-create imaginatively the condi-

tions of life in an earlier era. Geoffrey Bibby, an anthropologist,

did this in several of his very successful books, including The

Testimony of the Spade and Four Thousand Years Ago. The latter

book, published in 1961, was still in print when Bibby died in

2001. Richard Fortey took this technique one step further in

Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution by encouraging us to see the

world as these primitive creatures once did.

Perhaps the most sophisticated narrative approach to hu-

manizing material is to involve the reader in the search for

knowledge. By using the quest motif beloved of ﬁction writers,

and by making the reader a part of the expedition, nonﬁction

writers can engage readers both intellectually and emotionally.

This approach also resembles the murder mystery, because it

requires the author to disclose facts gradually, allowing the

reader to engage in discovery. Jonathan Weiner’s Beak of the

Finch is a superb example of such a book.

A common and effective approach to attracting readers is to

begin with a short, dramatic statement of the importance of

the topic, perhaps opening with an account of a recent event or

discovery and the controversy surrounding it or with the pos-

sibilities it creates. This becomes the introductory chapter, fol-

lowed by a longer chapter or section of necessary background

and explanations. Sometimes the ﬁrst chapter wins over read-

ers by showing the disastrous effects (on individuals or society)

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Books for General Readers

of failing to understand the subject of the book. However the

problem is handled, the author of a trade book has only a few

pages to attract readers and then perhaps a chapter to ensure

that they do not drop out before they get to the important part.

Structure

Organization is important. Most serious nonﬁction that suc-

ceeds in attracting readers and keeping them reading tells a

story. It may be a single sustained narrative or a series of

shorter ones, but it should have continuity and connections.

Like a novel, the nonﬁction story can use ﬂashbacks to pro-

vide background, side plots to provide suspense and enhance

interest, and hints about interesting things to come. When-

ever possible, it should have well-developed characters and

thoroughly described settings. In a scientiﬁc journal article,

you might summarize an earlier study in one sentence, but

in a trade book it might be worth several pages, including an

analysis of the researchers’ personalities and relationships, a

description of the laboratory or its setting, and a sense of the

excitement the results created among the researchers and, later,

their colleagues. Indeed, you might begin with the excitement

generated by the public announcement of the ﬁndings and

then ﬂash back to the work that went into the discovery. A

historical or sociological monograph might summarize eco-

nomic or demographic changes in a community with tables

and explanatory text. In a trade book, the author would do

well to choose a few individuals who experienced or typiﬁed

these changes and tell their stories.

Not every book can be organized as a sustained narra-

tive (although nearly every book can include “short stories”

now and then). Other organizational schemes may be geomet-

ric. For example, you may think of your book as a pyramid,

with a broad explanatory base underlying increasingly speciﬁc

understanding. Or perhaps your book is a series of concentric

circles of diminishing diameter, beginning with a broad sweep

and gradually focusing on particulars. Or perhaps you should

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Handbook for Academic Authors

begin at the center of the circles and work outward. Your book

may be a group of circles that overlap one another, or perhaps

a Venn diagram.

Your book may, in fact, not have very much unity. It may

be the nonﬁction equivalent of a collection of short stories

sharing a very general theme. In that case, you can organize it

by writing an introduction that sets out the theme, making that

theme apparent in each chapter, and ensuring that each chapter

is itself a coherent, interesting narrative. Mario Salvadori’s Why

Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down (written with

Matthys Levy) are good examples of this approach.

If you have written only journal articles or monographs, the

idea of “envisioning” a book in this way is probably new. With

monographs, we generally think in terms of outlines and do

not worry too much about the overall shape and motion of

the book. Monographs are frequently static. They are meant to

convey information to people who need it and expect to ﬁnd

it in a predictable package, and both publishers and readers

will be satisﬁed if they do this efﬁciently. Trade publishers and

general readers expect something more attractive and original,

and that expectation presents exciting opportunities for the

writer.

Tone

The next important consideration is the tone of the book. How

formal do you want to be? Trade books are supposed to be

accessible, and to many writers that means informal, casual,

or chatty. If you are comfortable with informality, and if it

suits your subject, then this approach will work well. You can

address the reader as you, for example, and throw in casual

asides and humorous anecdotes. This will not work if it is

forced or if it is inappropriate for your subject. Books about

morally sensitive issues generally require a degree of formal-

ity to be credible. A casual, chatty approach to a book about

genocide, for example, is unthinkable.

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Books for General Readers

When the subject matter can be treated at any level of for-

mality, the purpose of the book should help determine the

author’s approach. For example, John Allen Paulos’s Innumer-

acy, a book that seeks to allay math phobia and show people

that mathematics is useful and even necessary, works because

it is casual, friendly, and funny. John D. Barrow’s Pi in the Sky,

which is mathematically no more difﬁcult than Paulos’s book,

is also entertaining, but it is far more formal. Barrow assumes

that his readers are already interested in (though not neces-

sarily knowledgeable about) math and provides a history of

counting and of approaches to mathematics. The two books

cover many of the same topics, but reading them creates two

completely different reading experiences and impressions of

the authors.

You must also consider your own personality. If you are gen-

erally formal in your dealings with colleagues and students,

it is unlikely that you can write convincingly in a casual, inti-

mate style. The result would be forced and unnatural. If your

usual approach to writing and speaking is relatively informal,

an attempt to be more distant from your readers may end up

reading like a parody. You must write in a style that is natural

to you, or at least not uncomfortable.

Think about your subject, your audience, your purpose, and

the kind of relationship you want to establish with your read-

ers, and then decide how formal you wish your book to be.

This decision, in turn, will determine the voice and tone you

use.

How Much Is Too Much?

Trade book authors need to make certain mechanical deci-

sions as well. In trade publishing, short is better than long.

Although some historians and biographers ﬁnd publishers for

500-page books, it is safer to aim for no more than 300 book

pages (roughly 500 manuscript pages). If you write a long book,

you need a very strong unifying principle, tight organization,

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Handbook for Academic Authors

and a continually magnetic presence (yours or your subject’s) –

a performance hard to sustain over several hundred pages. It

is sometimes difﬁcult to distill what you have to say, but many

pages can be saved through discipline: ﬁnding a single, perfect

example rather than offering two or three weaker ones; seeking

out one crucial event to summarize or symbolize many; and

keeping a tight rein on digression and verbosity.

Editors and writers generally agree that equations, tables,

and diagrams deter readers. In the acknowledgments of A Brief

History of Time, Stephen Hawking pokes fun at this idea, while

at the same time following the advice it suggests:

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book

would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any

equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation,

Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc

. I hope that this will not

scare off half of my potential readers.

There is no magic formula for determining how many

equations or tables are too many. (If there were, I would

have included the equation.) Although their number probably

should be minimized, do not lose sight of the fact that we use

equations and other mathematical expressions because they

are the most economical way of conveying certain information

and relationships. As long as these elements are used for that

purpose and are thoroughly explained, most readers can cope

with a few numbers. The test is whether they are necessary for

the reader’s understanding, clearly explained, and better than

a nonnumerical alternative.

Footnotes and endnotes are also assumed to discourage

readers, but a strict rule against them would be silly. The fact

that you are writing for general readers does not reduce your

obligation to give credit to others. However, credit can be given

in the text, as I did with Stephen Hawking a moment ago,

reducing the need for source notes. Other uses of notes should

be avoided. Notes that amplify or qualify should either be

brought into the text (if needed) or omitted (if merely nitpick-

ing or overly ﬁnicky). Notes that are in fact brief bibliographical

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Books for General Readers

essays should also be eliminated. Some publishers suggest or

accept note systems that eliminate superscripts but provide the

sources in a commentary at the end of the book referring back

to the relevant pages and lines. This allows readers to proceed

through the text without being distracted but nevertheless pro-

vides the information they might want.

Drawings and photographs are generally considered to be

assets in a trade book. They should be carefully chosen and

executed to illustrate precisely the point you are trying to make.

A picture can be worth a thousand or more words, if it is

exactly the right picture. A trade publisher’s editor will want

to work with you, a photo researcher, or a graphic artist to

develop the most useful art. Think carefully about where in

your text illustrations can replace or enhance examples and

explanations.

A bibliography is useful in a trade book, but it should gener-

ally be brief and suggest further reading for those who want to

learn more about your subject. Supplementary materials like a

glossary, chronology, or genealogical table should also be con-

sidered if they will help the reader. An index is almost always

required. Indexes in trade books are usually shorter and less

detailed than those in monographs, but the main consideration

should still be the needs of the reader.

Language

In thinking about the needs of their readers, authors new to

trade publishing tend to focus on avoiding technical language

and jargon. That is a worthy goal, but it should not be over-

done. Nor should it be regarded as a panacea. Some words

that general readers will not understand must be used. You

will not get very far in writing a physics book without using

the word mass, but many intelligent, well-educated people do

not remember exactly what it means. Use it, by all means, but

explain it the ﬁrst time you use it and put it in the glossary if

you provide one. Use ordinary words when possible, but not

at the price of clarity or speciﬁcity.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Trade editors say they are looking for writing that is accessi-

ble, lively, and engaging. You can help make your work accessi-

ble by avoiding or deﬁning technical terms, but that alone will

not do the trick. It is easy to write inaccessible prose in every-

day words. Accessibility depends on clarity of thought and lan-

guage. The words composing each sentence must relate clearly

to one another; each sentence must have a logical connection to

the sentences that precede and follow it; each paragraph must

be a coherent whole and relate logically to the paragraphs sur-

rounding it. All this must be accomplished without obvious

signals, yet the reader must have a sense of motion – of getting

from A to B to C – and of accomplishment. If people read seri-

ous nonﬁction to learn something, then they should be able to

stop at the end of each chapter (should they wish to do so) and

explain brieﬂy what they have learned. Imagine your reader

as a passenger seated next to you in an airplane who puts your

book down at the end of a chapter and says casually, “Did you

knowthat...?”Ifareadercandothat,yourbookisaccessible:

well organized, logical, and transparent.

Liveliness depends on a number of qualities. One is brevity:

Short books are usually livelier than long ones. Brevity de-

pends on not repeating oneself more than necessary, avoid-

ing unnecessary words, and sticking to what is relevant (even

digressions should be purposeful). A second quality that pro-

motes liveliness is precision of language. The most speciﬁc

nouns should be chosen over more general ones, and adjec-

tives and adverbs should be used to make nouns and verbs

more precise. Speciﬁc words are usually livelier and more col-

orful than general words: Leap is livelier than move; anemone is

more colorful than ﬂower; Saturn evokes a clearer image than

aplanet.

You can ﬁnd all of these rules and suggestions in any good

writing handbook. The point here is that these rules apply

more strictly when you write for general readers than when

you write for your peers. Academic readers are tolerant of (or

resigned to) a certain degree of uniformity, or even drabness,

in their professional reading. As long as a book conveys the

information they need or explains the author’s thinking clearly,

164

Books for General Readers

they are satisﬁed. General readers are more demanding. Your

book will have to compete not only with similar books but with

other media. It has to be informative, but also entertaining

enough to convince readers to spend a weekend reading it

instead of watching television or going to a movie. You want

them to buy your book, begin reading it, ﬁnish reading it, and

recommend it to others. So you must choose words and put

them together thoughtfully and carefully.

Writing a trade book is very different from writing a mono-

graph. Most people ﬁnd the actual writing, though not the

research, far more difﬁcult. Selecting and deﬁning a subject,

organizing and controlling the material, and expressing infor-

mation and ideas clearly to nonexperts draw on skills that

many academic authors have not developed. For most, how-

ever, the opportunity to reach thousands of readers makes the

effort worthwhile.

Finding a Publisher for the Trade Book

Authors who have literary agents send their proposals or

manuscripts to their agents and let them handle submis-

sions and negotiations. Agents generally know which editors

at which houses are likely to be interested in a project and

can get quicker decisions from those editors than an unrepre-

sented author can expect. Agents keep their authors informed

about progress, though they do not report every detail. (Some

authors, in fact, like having an agent because they do not want

to hear about rejections.) Once an offer is made, the agent will

discuss it with the author and give advice on whether to accept

it. Even when represented by an agent, the author must make

the ﬁnal decision about whether to sign a contract.

Authors who are not represented by agents can also ap-

proach trade houses. In order to ﬁnd the right editors to

approach, you can ask colleagues who have had trade books

published or you can look at the acknowledgments in trade

books in your ﬁeld. You should then send a carefully written

query letter and prospectus to these editors. An editor may

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Handbook for Academic Authors

well ask to see the manuscript, and a contract may follow.

The advice on contracts offered in Chapter 5 still applies, with

some special cautions. A trade contract should always offer a

royaltyofatleast10 percent of retail or net on the casebound

edition. Carefully read the provisions for paperback rights to

see what royalty you will receive if the publisher exercises

these rights (5–7.5 percent or a sliding scale is usual) and what

percentage of the proceeds you will receive if paperback rights

are sold to another house (at least 50 percent). Also look espe-

cially carefully at provisions pertaining to sales of subsidiary

rights (serial rights, foreign rights, and so forth). If a television

production is even remotely possible, look carefully at those

provisions. If the book is to be illustrated, try to get the pub-

lisher to pay those costs. If you do not have an agent, you may

wish to consult a lawyer about a trade contract.

Trade publishers are more likely than university presses to

pay advances, and you should try to negotiate such a provision.

If you are not an established author and are not represented

by an agent, you may have some difﬁculty getting a signiﬁcant

cash advance on the basis of an outline or a partial manuscript.

It does no harm to ask, however, especially if a relatively small

advance would allow you to work on the book during the

summer and complete it more quickly. If you are writing on a

subject of great public interest or if you are well known and

respected in your ﬁeld, publishers are more likely to make a

ﬁnancial commitment. Sometimes publishers will agree to pay

a small portion of the advance when the contract is signed,

with the balance to be paid when the manuscript is accepted.

Occasionally, the advance will be divided into several parts,

payable when speciﬁed deadlines are met.

Trade publishers frequently seek authors to write on sub-

jects for which they feel books are needed. The advance then

becomes, in essence, a commission to write the book. (Addi-

tional royalties will still be paid, of course, if they exceed the

advance.) Trade editors will look for authors among the clients

of the literary agents they work with, but they will look beyond

that group by reading journal articles and news articles about

research in the ﬁeld. A publisher who commissions a book

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Books for General Readers

will provide a respectable advance and a great deal of advice

and guidance on writing. As we shall see shortly, writing a

trade book is almost always more collaborative than writing

a monograph, but this is especially true for books initiated by

publishers.

Even if your search for a trade publisher fails, your book

may ﬁnd a home with a university press that publishes books in

your ﬁeld for general readers. University presses publish many

successful trade books, including those of Edward O. Wilson,

John Rawls, and Peter Gay. In order to identify prospects, you

should see who publishes books in your discipline that are

reviewed in magazines like The New York Times Book Review,

The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Scientiﬁc American, and

the popular magazines in your ﬁeld. Also examine the shelves

of your local off-campus bookstores or check Amazon.com’s

recommendations. Then follow the procedure described in

Chapter 4, making it clear in your correspondence that you

view your work as a trade book. At most presses, the acquisi-

tions and review procedures are identical for trade and schol-

arly works. It is important, however, that you and your poten-

tial publisher have similar views on marketability and sales

potential.

If a university press agrees that your book should reach

a large general audience, you will be offered more generous

royalty terms than would be offered on a monograph, and you

may be able to get a modest advance. Your most important

concern, however, should be with the press’s commitment to

selling subsidiary rights and to marketing the book. A royalty

is simply a percentage of revenue, and a high percentage is

worthless if the book does not sell. Before signing a contract,

you should be convinced that the press will spend enough on

marketing and that it has a track record of selling trade books.

Publishers will not give you sales ﬁgures for a speciﬁc title (that

is no one’s business but the author’s), but you can ask them

how many copies they generally sell of their trade titles in your

ﬁeld, and you can ask for details of the marketing campaigns

they have conducted for their trade titles. As we shall see, trade

books are edited and designed differently than monographs,

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Handbook for Academic Authors

but the most important differences in their publication are in

marketing.

Editing and Design

Editors take two approaches to trade books. Some look only

for extremely well-written books that require very little edi-

torial work. Especially in large trade houses, few editors have

time for painstaking reviews of manuscripts, and schedules are

rushed. Other editors, especially those at smaller trade houses

and at university presses trying to build their trade lists, seek

out manuscripts that have sales potential because of their sub-

ject but that may require editorial work to make them attractive

to general readers. These editors may work directly with the

authors or hire freelance editors who are skilled at this kind

of effort. Each acquiring editor takes a different approach, and

even editors who prefer to avoid extensive editing may make

an occasional exception for an especially promising or inter-

esting manuscript.

Trade book editors who prefer to be actively involved fre-

quently ask to see early drafts so that they can provide sug-

gestions for extensive revisions before authors have invested

a lot of time on material that may not be included. These

suggestions are like those made by developmental editors in

textbook houses. Some university presses now assign devel-

opmental editors to books with trade potential as well. New

chapters may be suggested, and others may be deleted. Edi-

tors may want more (or less) background and context, more

(or fewer) examples, more (or less) formality, and more (or

fewer) personal asides. They may note that some features of

the manuscript do not work. They may suggest reorganizing

the whole manuscript or individual chapters. To the author

used to dealing with university press editors on monographs,

this level of editorial intervention will be unexpected and pos-

sibly insulting. Trade publishing is very much a collaboration,

a melding of the talents and knowledge of the author and those

of the editor. You know astronomy, history, or economics; your

168

Books for General Readers

editor knows readers’ expectations and how to meet them. The

editor could not write your book, but without editorial help

you cannot make it as salable as it must be. Expect a lot of

advice and take it seriously.

You should consult your editor as you revise, whenever

major questions arise. Do not be surprised if even a second

or third version comes back with a lot of suggestions.

When your editor thinks the book is ready, it will go to a

copy editor who will do a sentence-by-sentence review. This

editing is unlikely to require much revision on your part, but

it may take a lot of time to answer the editor’s queries and

review the changes. The copy editor may have been given a

speciﬁc charge beyond the normal instructions. For example, if

you have been unable to get the manuscript down to a desired

length, that job may fall to the copy editor. You will have an

opportunity to review the copy editor’s work, and you will

also have to review proof, as you would with a monograph or

textbook.

While your book is being copyedited, it is also being de-

signed. Trade books always have dust jackets, and these are

generally more elaborate than those for monographs. For trade

books, the jacket is a major marketing tool. It usually appears

in advertising, and it must appeal to booksellers and prospec-

tive readers. Your suggestions may be sought early in the

design process, and you may get to see several possible jack-

ets. You will probably be asked to send a photograph of your-

self for the back or ﬂap of the jacket and for other publicity

material.

The paperback edition of your book may use the same design

or start over. If it is to have a new design (most likely if the

paperback is issued by another publisher), you may again be

consulted.

The inside of the book may be more elaborately designed

than that of a monograph, too, with illustrated or ornamented

chapter openings or part-title pages. A paperback edition will

not be reedited, but it may be redesigned (less elaborately) for

the smaller, less-expensive format. At university presses, the

paperback edition is usually identical to the original hardback

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Handbook for Academic Authors

except for the binding. Larger-format paperbacks are called

“trade” paperbacks, as opposed to smaller, cheaper “mass mar-

ket” books. Some books eventually appear in all three formats –

cloth, trade paperback, and mass market – sometimes with two

or three different publishers.

The editorial, marketing, and design departments – and the

author – will all be involved in creating a title. Titles are very

important in trade publishing. A memorable title helps sales

in many ways: The person who reads a review goes into the

store and asks for the book by name instead of asking for

“that new book on the Civil War” and possibly ending up

with the wrong one. It is also easier to recommend a book

to a friend if you can remember the title. Trade book titles

must be memorable, but they must also be accurate and not

promise more than they can deliver. This seems to be a special

problem for university presses, which frequently use a title to

grab the reader’s attention and only in the subtitle disclose

the book’s limitations (an imaginary example: The Meaning of

Life: Deconstructing the Magazine’s First Five Issues). You should

contribute as many ideas as you can, offer your opinion on the

short list, and object if the ﬁnal choice does not really reﬂect

what your book is about.

Marketing

A trade book is sold to readers in bookstores and online, where

it competes with thousands of other new titles. The publisher’s

job is to get the book into the store, encourage the bookseller

to promote it, and make sure that as many customers as pos-

sible walk into the store or log onto the Web site and buy it.

Marketing departments work at these tasks from the moment

your book is accepted.

The marketing department will solicit information from you

about your book, who you think will want to read it, whether

you have any contacts in the review media or among book-

sellers, and whether any famous authors might be willing to

say something complimentary about the book for the jacket,

170

Books for General Readers

catalog, and advertising. Your literary agent’s help will also be

sought. You will probably be asked to write book summaries

of different lengths that the marketers will use as the basis for

jacket, catalog, and advertising copy.

If the publisher has grand expectations for your book,

you may be asked to participate more directly in its mar-

keting. Authors are occasionally asked to address the pub-

lisher’s salespeople, attend booksellers’ conventions, or even

make bookselling tours (autographing books in bookstores, for

example, or visiting Amazon.com’s headquarters). The mar-

keting effort may include trying to book you onto radio or

even television interview shows. An interview on NPR sells a

lot of books. You can help by telling the publisher about media

opportunities in your own city. But if you are not willing to do

any of these things, say so early. Shy people can be successful

authors, too.

Most of the marketing effort is less visible and demands far

less of the author. Marketers focus on writing good catalog and

advertising copy, selecting the best places to buy advertising

space, soliciting useful comments from well-known experts

or public ﬁgures, getting review attention, and encouraging

bookseller enthusiasm. Trade publishers may join booksellers

in paying for local advertising, for example, or offering a card-

board display that can be placed near the cash register or in

some other prominent place. When early reviews are favorable,

marketers may mail or fax them to major bookstores. (For seri-

ous nonﬁction, “major booksellers” often means the successful

independent stores as well as the superstore chains.)

A minimum marketing budget for a trade book is about

$25,000. That may sound like a lot, but advertising in the

major review media is very expensive. What really sells books,

though, is the kind of publicity that you cannot buy: lots

of favorable reviews, word-of-mouth recommendations, and

bookseller enthusiasm. Advertising can help all of this along,

but it cannot guarantee results.

The best thing an author can do to help sell a book is to offer

suggestions, cooperate with the marketing staff, and become

sensitive to promotional opportunities. Use your campus news

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Handbook for Academic Authors

bureau to help generate local media interest. An interview

in a local newspaper or on a local television program may

attract national attention, and booksellers in your city talk to

booksellers in other cities. Anything that gets the word out will

be helpful.

Are You Ready for This?

Most academic authors wait until they are well along in their

careers before writing for general readers. In part, this may be

because they do not feel ready before then, but it is also because

trade books do not usually help much in gaining tenure or

promotion. Some people claim that they actually detract from

one’s chances for academic advancement. The disdain aca-

demics express for “popularization” may come from misun-

derstanding, snobbishness, or just plain jealousy, but it does

discourage many younger writers. As universities become

more sensitive to their public responsibilities and image, and

more aware of the value of engagement with the community,

this bias seems to diminish. Of course, actually writing a trade

book is daunting. Yet most authors who write one successful

trade book write at least one more. A few authors write many.

Apparently the rewards are worth the difﬁculty.

172

Chapter 10

The Mechanics of Authorship

Describing the rhythm method of birth control in her latest

book, ...sextherapist Ruth Westheimer, Ph.D., incorrectly tells

her readers that “the safe times [for sexual intercourse] are the

week before and the week of ovulation.” While proofreading,

“I read the word ‘unsafe’ in my mind,” says the tiny tycoon.

“These things do happen.”

Newsweek, January 13, 1986

Many of the tasks involved in publishing are mechanical, unin-

teresting, and frustrating. They are also crucial. This chapter

does not make manuscript preparation, proofreading, index-

ing, and the like painless, but it will help the diligent author

perform these jobs efﬁciently and well. If you do not want to

fulﬁll any of these functions, your publisher can help you ﬁnd

people to do them for you, but the cost of delegating all this

work would probably be prohibitive. In many cases, too, the

author is the best-qualiﬁed proofreader and indexer.

Manuscript Preparation

Almost all academic authors now use computers to prepare

manuscripts for articles and books. Computers are easier to use

than typewriters, and they provide the author with a great deal

of assistance in writing and indexing. Publishers prefer to work

with electronic material because it makes editing and design

easier and saves time and money on typesetting. Textbook

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Handbook for Academic Authors

publishers are less likely to require electronic manuscripts

because of the complex layout and design of their books,

and because typesetting is a small percentage of their produc-

tion costs. They may well want to use electronic manuscripts

for supplementary materials, such as study guides, however.

Trade publishers may rely on traditional production methods,

even when supplied with an electronic manuscript, because,

as in text publishing, typesetting is not one of their larger costs.

(See Chapter 11 for a more detailed explanation of costs.) For

most scholarly books and journals, electronic manuscripts are

the norm.

Planning

Because efﬁcient use of computer technology requires com-

patibility of hardware and software, it is best to talk to your

prospective publisher as early as possible about preparing your

manuscript. If you sign an advance contract before you have

done much writing, you are in an ideal position to work suc-

cessfully with your publisher on an electronic manuscript. You

can agree on the software to be used and establish keyboarding

rules and standard treatments for headings, block quotations,

and so forth. You can decide how to handle the mechanics

of editing, who will enter the typesetting codes, and how to

handle other details. If you do not ﬁnd a publisher until your

manuscript is completed, all of this will be slightly more difﬁ-

cult. However, if you are going to do a signiﬁcant amount of

writing before ﬁnding a publisher, it will be especially impor-

tant to follow the keyboarding rules given in the next section.

Publishers who are experienced in using authors’ electronic

manuscripts generally send authors questionnaires about the

preparation of their manuscripts or instructions about their

preparation; they may also ask you to send a sample disk or ﬁle.

Figure 2 is the Cambridge University Press instructions. Such

questionnaires, along with samples from your manuscript, pro-

vide the publisher with enough information to work efﬁciently

with you.

174

The Mechanics of Authorship

electronic manuscript

questionnaire

general

Author:

Title:

Date:

computer/software

Computer Operating System (e.g., Macintosh OS X, Microsoft Windows XP):

Software including version number (e.g., Microsoft Word 2000, Word XP, LaTeX 2e):

Peripheral packages (e.g., BibTeX, Formulator, MacEquation):

Compression software, if any (e.g., StuffIt, Zip, gzip):

media

Provided on: 3.5

Floppy Zip CD-R by FTP Other (explain):

On your FTP site (details):

Formatted for: PC Mac LINUX Other (explain):

graphics

Number of graphics provided as electronic files:

Were the files: scanned electronically originated

File format: TIFF EPS Other (explain):

Resolution:

Software used to create files, including version number:

text

Does the text contain: – any technical notation, foreign accents, or other special characters (explain):

– an Index – if working in Word it is recommended that you create your index

using the built-in Word index tool prior to submission

Has your text been: spell-checked, grammar-checked, or other special checking (explain):

If it is possible for your book, would you prefer copyediting and review to proceed electronically?

*IMPORTANT*

THE HARD COPY MUST DERIVE FROM THE ELECTRONIC FILES SUPPLIED. PRODUCTION

PROCEEDS FROM THE FILES AND THE HARD COPY IS USED ONLY FOR CONFIRMATION.

comments

Figure 2. Electronic manuscript questionnaire.

The instructions for preparing an electronic manuscript are

the same regardless of whether you are writing a monograph, a

textbook, or a trade book. However, many publishers provide

their authors with speciﬁc instructions. If your publisher gives

you such instructions, follow them. If you have not received

175

Handbook for Academic Authors

instructions, request them. This will simplify the process for

you and your editor.

Keyboarding

Following some basic rules will make manuscript preparation

easier for you and optimize the usefulness of your electronic

manuscript for a publisher.

1. Select a commonly used word-processing program and, if pos-

sible, use the most recent version. Avoid systems speciﬁc to

your campus or your department, as well as free experimen-

tal programs. The most popular programs are the ones that

page-makeup and typesetting programs can adapt to most eas-

ily. Having chosen a program, do not switch software in mid-

stream. If you begin a book using one program, stick with it,

no matter how exciting a newer one may be. Even if material

prepared with the old program can easily be exported into the

new program, don’t do it. This process can create a variety of

minor, often unpredictable, problems later.

2. Organize ﬁles sensibly. Label them to show your name and

the contents of the ﬁles. Keep notes in a separate ﬁle (unless

you’re compiling a multiauthor book, in which case each chap-

ter should have a separate note ﬁle). Do not embed the notes in

the text unless your editor asks you to. The bibliography, too,

should be in a separate ﬁle, as should tables, captions, glossary,

and any other special elements. Save your copy frequently and

keep current back-up copies of all your work. It does not do

much good to have copies of only the unrevised version if later

ones are lost or destroyed.

3. Type carefully. Do not type zero for the letter oh, one for the

letter ell, brackets for parentheses, zeros for bullets, or any other

substitutions. If you use any special character (e.g., asterisks

before items in a list), use it for one purpose only. Use the word-

wrap feature, reserving carriage returns for places where lines

must also end in the ﬁnished book – that is, at the ends of

paragraphs, headings, lines of poetry, items in a list, formulas

or equations set off on separate lines, chapter titles, epigraphs,

and so forth. Double space the entire manuscript, including

notes, bibliography, and block quotations.

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The Mechanics of Authorship

4. Avoid your program’s bells and whistles. Under no circum-

stances should you use justiﬁcation or hyphenation features.

Do not break any words at the ends of lines except genuine

compounds with permanent hyphens (e.g., English-speaking).

Do not put notes at the foot of the page, even though your pro-

gram can do it elegantly. Type notes in a separate ﬁle, paragraph

style, with the numbers at line level rather than as superscripts.

(You can use superscripts in the text itself, however.) The bib-

liography should be in a separate ﬁle, typed in a hang-indent

style (ﬁrst line at left margin and subsequent lines indented;

select this option from your program’s menu). Because page

and line breaks will be different in the ﬁnal book pages, any

extra formatting commands will simply have to be removed

anyway. You will save time and prevent errors by not using

them in the ﬁrst place.

5. Type consistently. If you wish to indent paragraphs, use the

tab key to generate the same number of spaces for all para-

graph indents (or use your program’s special paragraph indent

command). Otherwise, a hard return will do. Ask the publisher

whether to use one space or two at the ends of sentences and

after colons. (Opinions vary.) If you put extra spacing above or

below headings (which is not necessary), always use the same

number of spaces. Never add spacing to avoid an awkward

page break.

6. Keep the manuscript simple. Do not put headings in italics,

boldface, or all capital letters; capitalize only the initial letters

of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. You can

differentiate levels of headings by centering the major ones,

placing the next level ﬂush left on a separate line, and running

the third level into the text. Do not use a different font or size

for block quotations, notes, or any other special element. For

the sake of readability, it is all right (though not necessary)

to center headings and to indent block quotations, but do not

do anything more elaborate. Use italics or underlining only as

necessary, for book titles, special terms, foreign words, and the

like. (Remember that underlining will turn into italics when

your manuscript becomes a book, because – in the absence of

good reasons to do otherwise – the commands for underlining

and italics will both be read as italics. To make the hard copy

that will be sent to referees more attractive and consistent, use

one or the other.) Do not add elements like running heads that

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Handbook for Academic Authors

are meant to make the manuscript look more like a book. A

manuscript should look like a manuscript.

7. Print the manuscript out on a laser or inkjet printer on high-

quality 8

-by11-inch paper. Manuscripts are subjected to a

great deal of handling, and lightweight paper may not survive.

Make a photocopy for yourself. (Referees receive hard copy,

and some editors work from it as well.)

An editor may return the electronic manuscript to you if it

has been prepared in a way that makes typesetting difﬁcult.

Failure to follow instructions (either the publisher’s or those

given earlier) might increase the amount of work for the pub-

lisher or typesetter to the point that the savings generated by

using your electronic manuscript would evaporate. In such

cases, the responsibility for revision is clearly yours, just as it

would be if you had submitted a single-spaced or messy type-

script. You might even be asked to make these changes before

editing begins. At whatever stage this occurs, follow directions

carefully.

What Software Can and Cannot Do

Although some word-processing features, such as automatic

hyphenation at the ends of lines, should be avoided in prepar-

ing an electronic manuscript, many of them are helpful. If you

can search the manuscript automatically, then you can correct

misspelled names, replace one term with a more precise one,

check for overuse of a word or expression, and check for con-

sistency. A novelist, for example, can easily make sure that the

hero’s eyes do not change from steely gray to melting brown

between chapters 2 and 5.

Remember, however, that the computer is not as smart as you

are. Monitor your use of such functions as search-and-replace

very carefully. At ﬁrst glance, for example, it seems reasonable

to tell the computer to replace, say, man with human – aquick

and easy solution to one problem of sexist language. If you do

not phrase your search precisely (in this case by searching for

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The Mechanics of Authorship

man surrounded by spaces), you will end up with such linguis-

tic marvels as comhumand, humandatory, ehumancipation, and

rohumance. Even if you tell the computer to make the change

only when man stands as an independent word, you are likely

to get strange sentences, such as those about the discovery

of Peking Human and Shaw’s play Human and Superman.Itis

safest to avoid such global commands in favor of searching out

each instance and making the individual decision to replace or

not.

Spelling checkers are also a boon to authors and copy editors.

If you are not a good speller or a good typist, the spelling

checker will ﬁnd your most embarrassing errors. It will not,

however, correct the sort of spelling error most common among

even careful writers – choosing the wrong homonym. Even a

good spelling checker will let you use discreet when you meant

discrete and allow you to “martial your resources,” although

the better ones will alert you to the possibility of error. Nor will

a spelling checker ﬁnd typos that happen to be correctly spelled

words – though not the ones you intended. For example, if you

type casual instead of causal, the checker will not take notice.

Nor will accidental plurals be spotted.

One drawback to spelling checkers is that their vocabularies

may be inadequate for specialized writing. Fortunately, most

of them allow you to add technical terms, proper nouns, and

so forth to their dictionaries. (Be sure to spell them correctly

when you add them.) It is probably a good idea to turn off

any automatic correcting features, because unfamiliar techni-

cal terms and names may be changed silently to a word that the

computer recognizes but has nothing to do with your meaning.

Spelling checkers remain too cumbersome to be of much use in

manuscripts that contain material in foreign languages or that

quote extensively from documents replete with inconsisten-

cies or misspellings, such as seventeenth-century theological

treatises. (This is another occasion when you must turn off

automatic correction.) If large parts of your manuscript are in

another language, you can use a spelling checker for that lan-

guage. These can be just as useful as English-language spelling

checkers, and they have the same limitations.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Software versions of thesauruses are available, but – like

their printed equivalents – they may not be very discriminat-

ing. Use them with caution.

Grammar checkers vary greatly in usefulness and sophisti-

cation. Most were designed for business correspondence and

reports and are inadequate for scholarly writing. Before pur-

chasing a grammar checker more elaborate than the one built

into your word-processing program, read the reviews in com-

puter magazines and on the Web and test the alternatives

carefully. The best test is to subject a brief manuscript to the

checker. See how long it takes (some are extraordinarily slow)

and how much of what it does is useful. For example, some

programs claim to spot “unusual” words or words that are

not readily understood by students in, say, their ﬁrst year of

college. Unfortunately, such a program may merely list every

proper noun (e.g., Bosnia) along with everything else that is

not in its vocabulary. Test, too, what it does when it ﬁnds a

problem. Does it highlight it in some way, tell you speciﬁ-

cally what is wrong (double negative, passive construction, or

whatever), offer suggestions, or provide all of these kinds of

assistance?

Neither spelling checkers nor grammar checkers will do any

good if you turn them off or ignore them. There is really no

excuse for turning in a manuscript with the kinds of errors that

a spelling checker can avert, so use these features cautiously,

but do use them.

What to Include

Make sure the manuscript includes the following elements:

1. A title page

2. A dedication if desired

3. A table of contents

4. Lists of maps, illustrations, and tables if needed

5. A preface, acknowledgments, and foreword if needed

6. The complete text

7. Maps, tables, and illustrations if needed

180

The Mechanics of Authorship

8. Glossary or list of abbreviations if needed

9.Notes

10. Bibliography

Note that the manuscript need not contain an index. Depend-

ing on the system your publisher uses, you may be able to mark

the manuscript for indexing at an early stage, or you may

need to wait for page proof. Your editor will provide technical

instructions, and more information on indexing appears later

in this chapter. Books that are indexed by numbered items

or paragraphs rather than by pages can be indexed ahead of

time.

The title page should contain the title and subtitle (if any)

and your name. It is advisable, though not vital, to include

the standard copyright notice: Copyright



2010 by Leslie J.

Author.

Dedications are optional. If you want to dedicate your book

to someone, by all means do so. But avoid ﬂowery, overly

personal, or cute tributes. A lot of people are going to read

your book, and few of them need to be told in detail of your

spouse’s adoration, your parents’ sacriﬁces, or your children’s

brilliance. Keep it short and simple. The dedicatees will be

grateful for the recognition, no matter how few the words.

The table of contents can be brief (just chapter titles plus

notes and bibliography) or more detailed. If your chapters

are long and have major subdivisions with descriptive head-

ings, include these headings if they will help the reader locate

material more easily or determine whether the book is of inter-

est. Only highly technical works need greater detail. When a

manuscript is divided into parts as well as chapters, the part

titles should be included in the table of contents. The Chicago

Manual of Style illustrates the varieties of tables of contents.

A preface is useful in explaining the inspiration for the book,

origin and evolution of the project, and so forth. It should be

regarded as optional reading, however, and should not include

anything such as methodology or theoretical background that

the reader needs to understand the book. Material essential to

the reader’s understanding belongs in the main text.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

A foreword is a preliminary essay written by someone other

than the author. You and your editor may discuss whether it

would be desirable to solicit one and, if so, from whom.

Acknowledgments, when included, should be brief and rel-

atively formal. Personal thanks, particularly if effusive, should

be handwritten in an inscription.

Be sure that your lists of maps, illustrations, and tables are

accurate – that is, that they conform to the actual numbers,

titles, and placement of the ﬁgures and tables.

The text should be complete. If you have left out a date, ﬁrst

name, or piece of data, ﬁll it in. You do not want to give an

impression of sloppiness or haste, and you are going to have

to complete it eventually anyway.

Each table should be formatted properly, with correct align-

ment of columns, and the tables should be placed in a separate

ﬁle. Tables should be numbered and titled. Short, simple tables

can be typed within the text.

Instructions for preparing and transmitting illustrations are

provided shortly. When submitting a manuscript for consider-

ation, however, you may simply send photocopies.

Type the glossary and list of abbreviations, if needed, in

proper alphabetical order, double spaced. Make sure such ele-

ments are complete and accurate and that they contain all the

foreign words, technical words, or abbreviations as they are

actually used in the book.

Notes should not be inserted at the foot of the text page. This

is true no matter where the notes will appear in the ﬁnished

book. Even if they are to be set at the foot of the page, the

copy editor and typesetter can deal with them more easily if

you prepare them as a separate entity. Type them like the text,

double spaced, each beginning as an indented paragraph with

a number typed at line level followed by a period (i.e., 32.,

not

). Make sure you have the same number of notes as you

have note numbers in the text. Number notes consecutively by

chapter, with each chapter’s notes beginning with 1.

The bibliography or reference list should also be double

spaced. Each entry begins at the left margin, with further lines

indented three to ﬁve spaces; it is best to use your program’s

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The Mechanics of Authorship

hang-indent formatting option to accomplish this. Although

indentation can be added later, it is easier for the author and

editor to check alphabetization if the typescript is prepared in

this format. Unless the norm for your ﬁeld is different, such

lists should be alphabetical, with author’s last name ﬁrst, and

entries should not be numbered. When more than one work

by the same author is listed, use three hyphens instead of the

name for all listings after the ﬁrst. The Chicago Manual of Style

illustrates form and style of bibliographies and reference lists.

Submission

The manuscript you submit to a publisher has almost always

been revised and reworked from an original draft. It should be

carefully proofread and corrected. Send hard copy in a sturdy

cardboard box (a padded bag is all right if you are not enclos-

ing artwork). When submitting a manuscript to a publisher

for review, you will rarely be asked for an electronic version,

which is needed only after acceptance. Use ﬁrst-class mail or

a commercial delivery service. Overnight delivery is seldom

necessary. Electronic manuscripts, when required, can be trans-

mitted as e-mail attachments or on CDs. The latter should be

mailed in protective cases.

Camera-Ready Copy and Electronic Page Makeup

When sales of a book are expected to be small, it is not uncom-

mon for publishers (especially university centers, professional

societies, and specialized technical publishers) to request that

the author submit camera-ready copy (hard copy that can be

photographed for printing as is) or the electronic equivalent

(an electronic manuscript formatted so that it is ready for print-

ing without further work, usually as PDFs). Sometimes this is

a condition for publication. Books that would be expensive

to typeset because of technical material or foreign alphabets

may also have to be provided in one of these forms, along

with teacher’s manuals and other materials supplementary to

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Handbook for Academic Authors

textbooks. Sometimes an author prefers to provide camera-

ready copy to keep control over the material; this is particu-

larly true for critical and documentary editions. And if you

have decided to be your own publisher, designing and laying

out your own book is usually the most economical alternative.

Preparing copy for a publisher. The well-equipped computer-

literate author can prepare camera-ready copy or the electronic

equivalent that will end up looking nearly as attractive as that

prepared by a publisher.

Most authors who prepare camera-ready copy use page-

layout or page-makeup software. These programs have three

major advantages over word-processing programs. First, most

of them allow you to see a complete page on the screen in

what is known as WYSIWYG form: What You See Is What

You Get. Especially for people with little design experience,

it is helpful to see how your design decisions are going to

turn out before printing. Second, once you make your design

decisions (or enter those provided by your publisher), most

programs follow the instructions ﬁle after ﬁle, chapter after

chapter, without your having to reinstruct them. Finally, page-

makeup programs allow you to incorporate graphics directly

into the text. Alternatively, they permit you a variety of choices

for placement of ﬁgures by allowing you to create “windows”

of different sizes. It is worth noting, however, that expensive

page-makeup programs are not vital to preparing camera-

ready copy. Especially if the book is of simple design, a good

word-processing program may be adequate – and you get to

use some of the bells and whistles that are so dangerous when

the book is to be printed using different software.

If you agree to prepare camera-ready copy or to provide

PDFs, you should get very speciﬁc instructions from your pub-

lisher. These instructions may be electronic: Your publisher can

select the desired options from those offered by your page-

makeup or word-processing program, providing a sort of elec-

tronic style sheet. The same instructions can be provided in

writing. For example, your program will ask you how many

spaces to use for a paragraph indent; your publisher should

184

The Mechanics of Authorship

tell you what to answer. If your manuscript is complex, these

instructions will be complex, too, but it will be much easier to

impart the publisher’s decisions to your software and printer

than it would be to make the design decisions yourself. The

end result will be more attractive, too, if a professional designer

has contributed expertise.

Also discuss with your publisher how graphics are to be han-

dled. If you have created simple charts or maps on a computer,

these can easily be incorporated into the text. Photographs or

halftones can also be incorporated by using a scanner, but the

quality may be poor. In most cases, you will be asked to leave

a speciﬁed amount of space in the manuscript (in the form

of a window, if you are using a page-makeup program) and

to provide glossy black-and-white photos. The publisher will

take care of incorporating the photographs into the text.

Allow yourself enough time to experiment with your page-

makeup program. Read the manual carefully and work

through the tutorials. If you ﬁnd the manual difﬁcult to use,

select one of the published guides to the program available in

your bookstore. It can walk you through the process one more

time, to give you some practice and conﬁdence. It is a good idea

to work through a shorter project before undertaking a book.

Also, get to know what resources are available on your campus

to provide assistance on your project. Some universities have

desktop publishing experts on staff to provide consultation.

Even if yours does not, you can probably ﬁnd someone in a

user’s group who has a lot of experience using the same pro-

gram you have chosen and who is willing to share the lessons

learned.

Alternatively, you can hire someone to turn your edited

disks into camera-ready copy. Someone experienced in desk-

top typesetting will produce pages ready for printing either

according to your publisher’s instructions or independently.

Because they must invest in expensive software and hardware,

and because their skills are much in demand, they will charge

what may seem like a high hourly rate. However, they gener-

ally work quickly and efﬁciently and can save you both time

and frustration.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

If you are self-publishing on the Web, your online service

will guide you through the process.

Camera-ready cautions. There is no reason why a book pub-

lished from an author’s camera-ready copy or PDFs cannot be

as good a book as one published by more traditional meth-

ods. The author’s research and writing are no different, and

the refereeing process is the same. A manuscript editor can

work equally carefully, and a designer can work within the

limitations of the technology to help create an attractive, read-

able book. However, desktop publishing technology creates a

temptation to take shortcuts that should be resisted.

If you can easily tell that a book has been prepared from the

author’s camera-ready copy, then the effort was not entirely

successful. In some volumes of conference proceedings, for

example, the papers have been produced individually by the

participants, so that each article has its own typeface and lay-

out. These books contain irregularities that publishers nor-

mally do not tolerate, such as facing pages of different lengths,

or irregular spacing between text elements. All of these prob-

lems can be avoided, however, if the preparer of the copy

knows the conventions of page layout and is willing to spend

the time needed to prepare the volume carefully.

More disturbing is the quality of the editing in some

camera-ready books. In some volumes, errors in grammar

and spelling are frequent. (In one book I checked, a seven-

line paragraph about the virtues of spelling and grammar

checkers included two grammatical errors, one spelling error,

and one stylistic error.) These problems are not inherent in

the technology. Rather, they are indicative of procedural prob-

lems. When an author submits laser-printed copy using page-

makeup software rather than an ordinary-looking double-

spaced manuscript for the publisher to edit, the editing may be

cursory. In the case of conference proceedings or other books

that are difﬁcult to bring together, require reasonably rapid

publication, and attract only a small audience, the temptation

to cut editorial corners is apparently strong.

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The Mechanics of Authorship

If you are preparing camera-ready copy and wish to keep

the editorial quality of your book high, make sure to submit

an ordinary double-spaced manuscript to your publisher ﬁrst,

and make sure that the publisher is going to edit it. If you

are working without a publisher, hire an editor to do the work.

Once the manuscript has been edited and revised, you can pro-

ceed with the preparation of camera-ready copy. This need not

slow down the schedule very much, because you can design

the layout and learn to use the program during the editing.

The use of camera-ready copy prepared by authors makes

practical the publication of much good work that might other-

wise not be available to scholars. With a few precautions and

no illusions about the speed or ease of the task, editorial and

production standards can be maintained along with economy.

Preparing Revised Editions

The method used to prepare a revised edition will depend on

the method used to prepare the previous edition. If the earlier

edition was typeset traditionally, your or your publisher will

scan it so that you can work on it as an electronic manuscript.

Even with a good scanner, though, the copy will have a lot

of typographical errors, and much of the formatting (including

that for tables and italics) will vanish. You will have to read

and correct the electronic version extra carefully, in addition to

making the changes for the new edition.

Before entering your revisions, ask your editor whether it

would be helpful to highlight changes by using the redlining

(or “tracking”) feature of your software program. (If you do

this, make a second copy in which you accept all changes so

that you can check your work on the easier-to-read clean copy.)

Depending on how you work best, you may want to print out a

copy of the unrevised manuscript, edit on that, and then enter

the changes into the manuscript; or you may prefer simply to

do your revisions only on screen. Your manuscript editor can

enter additional changes electronically as well.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

No matter what system you use, you will need to proofread

carefully and create new front matter and a new index. You will

also have to get permission to use copyrighted material that

you have added, and you may have to renew permission for

material used in the earlier edition as well. Check the permis-

sions ﬁle from the previous edition to see whether you need to

do this.

Illustrations

Whether your book is a biography with a frontispiece as the

only illustration, an economics treatise with a dozen graphs,

or a textbook with hundreds of illustrations, you need some

basic understanding of the acquisition and preparation of the

kinds of artwork you are using. If you are writing a heavily

illustrated textbook, you must also ﬁgure out a way to keep

track of all those graphs, cartoons, charts, and photographs.

You and your editor should discuss the number and kinds

of illustrations to be included at the very beginning of your

association, and before production of the artwork begins, you

must agree on this. Compile a very speciﬁc list, chapter by

chapter. Often the number and type of illustrations will be

stipulated in the contract; certainly the use of color illustrations

must be agreed on in writing, well in advance.

To work intelligently with your editor, you should learn

the technical differences among illustrations, discover where

artwork comes from, and understand exactly your responsibil-

ities for providing illustrative material that is appropriate and

of good technical quality.

Types of Artwork

From the point of view of printing technology, there are three

types of artwork: line drawings, halftones, and color plates.

In all likelihood, the artwork in your book will be either line

drawings or halftones. Line drawings are black and white,

with no shading (cross-hatching or dots may be used to

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The Mechanics of Authorship

simulate shading, however). Examples are maps, graphs, and

cartoons. Line drawings are the cheapest and easiest illustra-

tions to reproduce. Halftones are illustrations with gray tones;

examples include photographs and drawings with pencil shad-

ing. Some artwork can be reproduced as either a line drawing

or a halftone; the production editor will make this decision.

Few books require color illustrations, and because they are

extremely expensive, they are used only when absolutely nec-

essary, most commonly in art books. (You will often see color

printing in textbooks – headings in red or line drawings printed

in brown or blue. This is not the same process as printing full-

color photographs; it simply requires the use of two inks. It is

more expensive than using just one color, but it is not nearly

as costly as reproducing color photographs.)

Producing Artwork

Whether a given illustration is a halftone or a line drawing,

it does not come from thin air. You must produce it yourself,

have it produced, or acquire it from someone who already has

it. Producing your own artwork is not a good idea unless you

are an accomplished cartographer, graphic artist, or photog-

rapher. Sketches and snapshots will not do. Of course, you

will have to provide the content of the artwork: the data for

graphs, sketches for diagrams, subjects for photographs, and

so forth. These must be complete, accurate, drawn to scale,

and as detailed as necessary. You cannot just tell a cartogra-

pher that the Ohio River goes over here someplace. All keys,

labels, numbers, names, and any other text that is part of the

artwork must be legible and correctly spelled. It is a good idea

to provide a separate, typed list of these as well. You should

write out any additional instructions or explanations that the

artist might ﬁnd helpful, and, when possible, provide photo-

copies of similar art that shows what you have in mind. (Such

photocopies should be marked clearly “Not copy.”) Remember,

the artist cannot be expected to do your research, check your

facts, or clarify your data. If you submit inaccurate or vague

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Handbook for Academic Authors

sketches, incorrect or rough numbers, or maps with cities on

the wrong bank of the river, you will not get good illustrations.

Computer technology facilitates the production of maps and

graphs. Cartography programs are expensive, complex, and

difﬁcult to learn, so it is still best to have a professional pro-

duce maps. However, most graphs can easily be produced

with software in common use. You can do these yourself, or

hire someone familiar with a graphics program.

Textbook publishers usually prefer to have their own artists,

or freelance artists under their supervision, produce the ﬁnal

illustrations. If this is the case, working from the list you and

your editor developed, you must submit a sketch of each illus-

tration that is to be drawn from scratch.

The art editor and copy editor will review and revise these,

sometimes returning them to you with requests for further

information or clariﬁcation. The artist will then draw the ﬁnal

art, and you will get photocopies for checking. Depending on

the way your contract is written, you will be billed for all or part

of the artwork or the fee will be deducted from your royalties.

If you are paying for the artwork, you would be wise to ask

for an estimate before work begins and for an itemized bill

when it is ﬁnished. As I suggested in Chapter 5, it is a good

idea to try to get the publisher to share the costs of illustrations.

This should be done at the contract stage. When the bill comes,

it is a bit late to reopen negotiations.

If you decide to hire an artist on your own, that artist will

have to follow the speciﬁcations set by the publisher. These

vary, so you should get detailed instructions, including the size

the artwork will be in the ﬁnished book. To avoid confusion,

ask the editor to send speciﬁcations directly to your artist and

to provide advice to the artist when questions arise. Do not

have the artist begin work before your sketches have been

edited. It is a good idea to have the artist submit to your editor

for technical approval a sample of each category of illustration

before proceeding. You should check the ﬁnal artwork very

carefully for accuracy.

Perhaps some of the line drawings you need have been

drawn and published in other books or in journal articles.

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The Mechanics of Authorship

A very clear original from the journal may be adequate for

reproduction, but only if it is highly contrasted, unsmudged,

without ink from the other side showing through, and so

forth. It is much better to borrow the original artwork from the

author or the journal. In some cases, though, you will have to

have it redrawn or scanned. No matter which of these courses

you choose, you must get written permission from the owner

of the illustration, a procedure explained in the section on

permissions.

Photographs

Unless you have a large budget and a contemporary subject,

the photographs you use will come from existing collections.

Your publisher may have photo ﬁles, and you may have seen

usable photographs in other books or articles.

Photographs should not be reproduced from publications if

you can avoid it; you should obtain a black-and-white print

(preferably glossy), a negative, or a digital version. When pho-

tographs are printed in books, they go through a process called

“screening.” This is obvious in newspaper photos, where visi-

ble dots appear, but you can see it in ﬁner printing if you use

a magnifying glass. If you take a screened photo and rescreen

it, you get a moir

e pattern that can obscure detail. Therefore, if

you are using halftones, you must get prints from the original

publisher, the photographer, the photo service, or the deposi-

tory that owns them.

Finding appropriate, high-quality photographs can be very

difﬁcult. The Web is a convenient source for locating pho-

tographs, though not for producing them. Many photo collec-

tion catalogs can be searched online, and you may ﬁnd useful

artwork on sites related to your subject. Once you locate an

image on the Web with the original source listed, you can go

to the copyright holder for both permission and a usable print

or ﬁle. Although some illustrations can be downloaded from

the Web, many are deliberately presented at too low a reso-

lution to make them printable. If you do ﬁnd high-resolution

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Handbook for Academic Authors

illustrations on the Web, check with your editor about the form

in which they can accept them, and remember that you may

still need to get permission from the copyright holder.

It would be impossible to list the sources for photographs

in every academic ﬁeld, but here are some general ideas. First,

if you have seen the perfect photograph already in print, con-

sult the credit line or acknowledgments section of the book

for the source. If none is listed, write to the publisher. Sec-

ond, look through other books in your ﬁeld and see where

their photographs came from. You may not want to use the

same pictures, but you may get some leads. Third, try free or

inexpensive sources. These include federal agencies like the

Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Smithsonian

Institution, and NASA; public libraries, historical societies,

and museums; and trade associations, businesses, and various

countries’ information ofﬁces. Fourth, commercial photo agen-

cies will supply photos for a fee. United Press International,

Black Star, and Magnum are examples of such companies.

Literary Market Place provides a longer list.

To use any of these sources effectively, you must begin early.

The Library of Congress, for example, always has a backlog

of requests, and it may take several months to get your pho-

tographs. It is a good idea to call, write, or check the Web site

to determine each collection’s procedures: Must you send a

deposit for reproduction and mailing costs? Do they have a

catalog? (Many photo catalogs are now online.) What informa-

tion must you supply? What will they send initially – descrip-

tions, photocopies, or glossies? (You will need glossy black-

and-white photos for actual production, but photocopies may

be adequate for making your selection.) Can they recommend

a freelance photo researcher who knows their collection? Pro-

cedures vary, and advance preparation saves time.

The second key to success is to make your request as speciﬁc

as possible, including all relevant details. Do not just ask for a

picture of Franklin Roosevelt. Do you want an informal pose

or a portrait? At what age? Alone, with family, or with the Cab-

inet? In the White House or elsewhere? Instead of asking for a

photo of a mine, tell what sort of mine (coal? diamond? salt?),

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The Mechanics of Authorship

in what region (the American West? Appalachia? South Africa?

Siberia?), with or without people, when (now? mid-nineteenth

century?), and for what purpose (to show working conditions?

technology? environmental impact?). The more speciﬁc you

are, the more suitable the photos you receive will be.

You need to evaluate photographs not only for appropriate-

ness of content but also for aesthetic qualities such as compo-

sition and for technical qualities such as contrast and clarity.

Your editor, with help from the production staff, can provide

guidance on these issues. Before paying agency or permissions

fees, have your editor approve the photographs for inclusion in

the book. Photo agencies may charge a great deal of money, and

even the small reproduction fees collected by nonproﬁt agen-

cies can mount up, so make sure photos are acceptable to the

publisher before you invest. Also ﬁnd out when permissions

fees are due. Most agencies are willing to wait until publication.

A word of warning on photo fees is in order. Your publisher

may volunteer to provide photographs, but you may still have

to pay the fees (read your contract). When you are paying,

the publisher may not be as motivated to seek out free or

inexpensive photos. If you decide to let the publisher do your

photo research, ask for a list of photos, sources, and fees well in

advance. You can then take the time to ﬁnd cheaper substitutes

for expensive agency selections if necessary. If you do not do

this, you may be in for a shock when the bill comes. It may also

be less expensive for you to hire a freelance photo researcher

who can ﬁnd what you need and who will keep within a bud-

get you set. Literary Market Place has a list of researchers, and

many have Web sites that a search for “photo research” will

locate. Experienced researchers can compile a list of free or

inexpensive photos with amazing speed.

Keeping Track of Illustrations

Once you have acquired the line drawing or photograph you

need, you must make sure it is properly identiﬁed, placed,

and credited. Your publisher may provide a form, checklist,

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Working

no.

Final

no.

page

Description Source

Final

copy

Editor’s

Perm.

asked

Perm.

rec’d

Caption

written

Credit

written

Notes:

Figure 3. Art inventory form.

or database program for this purpose. If not, and if you have

many illustrations to keep track of, make up a form or use

a database program that you own. Ideally, such a program

should be able to renumber, reorder, and print out captions

and credits separately. Figure 3 shows a form you may ﬁnd

helpful. Use pencil rather than ink to ﬁll in whatever paper

form you use.

First, number each illustration. Do not put the number on the

front of a photograph. Use the back or a tissue overlay. If you

mark the back of a photograph, use a ﬁne, soft felt-tipped pen

or write the number on a sticky label and apply it to the back.

Pressure on the back of a photo from a pencil or ballpoint pen

will mar the front. Do not use paper clips; they, too, will mar

the photo. It is all right to number a line drawing in the margin.

If possible, though, be consistent about placement of numbers

(e.g., back, upper right-hand corner) so that they are easy to

ﬁnd. If your publisher has a system for numbering, use it. If

not, I recommend that you adopt a chapter-by-chapter double-

digit system (1.1, 1.2, etc.) rather than try to number straight

through the book. It is easier to make additions and deletions

194

The Mechanics of Authorship

that way. Your working number system need not correspond

to the published numbers, although it saves work if it does.

Now, go through the manuscript and note in the margin

where each illustration belongs. On your form, ﬁll in the

manuscript page number. When you have ﬁnished this, the

illustrations have been placed.

The next task is to write a caption for each illustration. A

caption should be a brief identiﬁcation of the subject of the

illustration. In addition, it may have to explain the process

being illustrated or identify detail. Perhaps it will state the

conclusion drawn from the illustrated data. If the illustration

is not vital but simply emphasizes a point in the text, then the

caption may simply restate the point being made. The caption

should include the ﬁnal ﬁgure number (just leave space for this

if you do not know it yet), and the working number should be

written in the margin. When you have completed the caption,

indicate that on your checklist.

Now write the credit lines. Check the permission letters. If

a letter requires a certain form, use it. If not, adopt a simple

formula: “Courtesy of the Library of Congress,” “Used with

the permission of National Sticky Wicket.” Federal agencies

or museums may provide photographs free, but you should

nevertheless acknowledge their contribution.

Finally, type up the captions and credit lines, chapter by

chapter, double spaced, in a separate ﬁle. Type or write your

working number in the margin and leave space in the caption

itself for the ﬁnal number: Figure ___. George Washington, in

a portrait by Charles Willson Peale. Courtesy of the Pennsyl-

vania Academy of Fine Arts.

Preparing the art manuscript or art package for a textbook

can be a nightmare if you are disorganized. Here is a summary

of the procedure that may help you keep things straight:

1. Work with your editor to develop a list of illustrations, specify-

ing whether a photograph or drawing is preferred.

2. Compile the artwork:

(a) Prepare sketches of all new line drawings; submit them for

editing; have them drawn to the publisher’s speciﬁcations;

proofread all ﬁnal artwork.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

(b) Locate existing line drawings; write for originals and per-

missions; make changes, redraw, or scan if necessary.

make sure you can afford fees; write for permission and

glossy prints or electronic ﬁles.

3. Organize artwork, using a checklist:

(a) Number each illustration.

(b) Indicate placement of each illustration in the manuscript.

4. Pay permissions fees when due.

Permissions

Whenever you quote or otherwise draw on someone else’s

work, you must acknowledge the source. That is a simple

matter of honesty and good scholarship. When your quota-

tion exceeds what is vaguely deﬁned as “fair use” (explained

shortly), you must obtain written permission from the copy-

right holder. Obtaining permission is vital for the writer of

any book or article, and your contract will make clear that it

is your responsibility. It is especially complicated for the text-

book writer because textbooks are written for proﬁt (one of the

considerations mentioned in the copyright law) and because

they tend to draw on a greater number of sources than do

monographs.

When to Request Permission

Permission is not needed when your quotation is “fair use,”

but there is a good deal of debate about what this means. The

brief, I will quote it:

§107. Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106,thefair

use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduc-

tion in copies or phonorecords or by any other means speciﬁed

by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news

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The Mechanics of Authorship

reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom

use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copy-

right. In determining whether the use made of a work in any

particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall

include

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such

use is of a commercial nature or is for nonproﬁt educational

purposes

2. the nature of the copyrighted work

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation

to the copyrighted work as a whole

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value

of the copyrighted work

These four factors are generally interpreted in terms of the

nature of your use (a free class handout versus a proﬁtable

textbook); the nature of the quoted work (a speech versus an

unpublished letter, a news release versus a limited-circulation

investors’ letter); the proportion – whether by length or sig-

niﬁcance – of the original work being reproduced (a single

paragraph from a lengthy novel versus an entire sonnet; an

example of an author’s style versus the author’s summary

of an original theory or technique); and the potential eco-

nomic effect of the use on the owner of the original work

(will people decide not to buy the poet’s own slim volume

if the most famous poem is reproduced in your paperback

anthology?).

The important point to note is that the law gives no maxi-

mum number of words or other hard-and-fast rules that you

can rely on. Any such guidelines – including those that follow –

are simply collections drawn from practical experience. Few, if

any, have been tested in the courts.

Your publisher will give you at least rules of thumb about

when you need to request permission, and the bibliography

lists handbooks on copyright law. A brief summary follows

that combines the variety of rules I have heard over the years. It

is not a lawyer’s advice, which you and your publisher should

seek in difﬁcult cases. The best general advice I can give is to

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Handbook for Academic Authors

remember that permissions are your responsibility, and when

in doubt, err on the side of caution – especially if you are writ-

ing a textbook. Transgressions by authors of textbooks are con-

sidered much more serious than those committed by authors

of unproﬁtable monographs.

1. When do you need permission for quotations from works not

in the public domain?

In the case of a monograph, for quotations of a total of 500 or

more words of prose from any published book or book-length

document

In the case of a textbook, for quotations of a total of 150 or

more words of prose from any published book or book-length

document

For shorter quotations of prose from shorter works (e.g., 50

words from an article of 1,000 words)

For quotations of three or more lines of poetry or eight mea-

sures of a song

For any exact reproduction of a table, graph, or other illustra-

tion, including photographs of paintings or sculpture (data

may be used without permission, though the source must be

credited)

For any unpublished material (letters, diaries, manuscripts;

recent court decisions have construed this very strictly) unless

the author has been dead for at least seventy years. If the

material was published for the ﬁrst time seventy or more

years after the author’s death but before the end of 2002,itis

protected until at least 2047

For material obtained in interviews (ideally, a release should

be obtained from the subject at the time of the interview)

For examples, problems, or the like written by your students,

friends, or relatives

For your own work published by another company

2. When do you deﬁnitely not need permission?

For quotations from material published in the United States

whose author has been dead for at least seventy years

For unpublished material whose author has been dead for at

least seventy years

For quotations from material ﬁrst published in a U.S. govern-

ment publication (but watch for reports by individuals; these

are sometimes protected)

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The Mechanics of Authorship

For help in determining whether a given work is protected

by copyright, see the useful ﬂowchart developed by the

law ﬁrm of Bromberg & Sunstein, available at http://www

.bromsun.com/practices/copyright-portfolio-development/

ﬂowchart.htm or the more detailed chart at http://www

.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/

3. When have you done enough?

When you have received written permission and paid any

required fees

Remember: Be cautious, begin early, and keep good records.

How to Request Permission

Your publisher may provide a form letter for you to use in seek-

ing permission. If not, The Chicago Manual of Style provides a

sample letter. At a minimum, you must give the author, title,

and publication date of the work from which you are quot-

ing; the pages of the original on which the material appears;

any changes or deletions you propose to make in the quoted

material; the author, title, and approximate length of your own

book or article; and the publication date, price, and size and

type of edition (paper and/or cloth) of your book. If a future

paperback edition is likely, ask permission to quote in that,

too. Ask your publisher whether the book is to be sold outside

the United States. If so, you will have to obtain “nonexclusive

world rights in the English language.” If your book is likely

to be translated into a foreign language, you can also ask for

these rights so that you can sell foreign rights without com-

plications. This can be postponed, however, until someone is

actually interested in doing a translation.

Some publishers go through the manuscript and provide

you with a list of material requiring permission. If your pub-

lisher does not do this, or does not do it early, you yourself

should compile such a list. To make the job easier in the case

of books requiring large numbers of permissions, use index

cards or a database program instead of a single list. That way,

you can compile the list as you go through the manuscript

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Handbook for Academic Authors

and then order the requests by publisher or journal to facilitate

letter writing. After that, you can more easily check the status

of each request. Make at least three copies of each letter: one

for your ﬁles, one for the ﬁles of the publisher granting per-

mission, and one for the publisher’s signature, to be returned

to you.

As in compiling illustrations, the keys to obtaining permis-

sions are starting early and staying organized. Begin the per-

missions process as soon as you have a book contract in hand

and send follow-up letters if you do not get responses. The

author or publisher may deny permission (this is rare but pos-

sible) or ask for an excessive fee, or you may have difﬁculty

locating the person or company that holds the rights. You may

have to send a copy of the pages in which the material appears,

or the publisher may send you a form to complete. All of this

takes time. As soon as you run into trouble, ask your editor’s

advice; do not wait until the last minute.

Proofreading

If you want your book to appear with all the words spelled

right and in the right order, with no words missing, and with

the pages in the right order, you must proofread carefully. Your

publisher may or may not provide proofreading (university

presses are more and more frequently leaving this entirely up

to the author). If you don’t do it, it is quite possible that no

one will.

Even if proof has been set from your electronic manuscript,

it must be read carefully. Many possibilities for error remain.

After all, your manuscript may not have been error free, even

after your careful preparation and your editor’s careful read-

ing. When you see the type set in its ﬁnal form, the errors

may be easier to catch. Also, this is the ﬁrst time that you can

actually see the results of coding errors. You must read care-

fully to see that headings, italics, chapter titles, block quotes,

and other elements have been set properly – and that they

end where they are supposed to. Your editor will check all

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The Mechanics of Authorship

of these technical matters carefully, but you should look out

for them as well. Remember, too, that electronic typesetting

is prone to nonhuman errors, resulting from static electricity,

faulty disks, gremlins, and other mysterious causes. Proofread-

ing remains important. Always proofread hard copy; if your

publisher sends electronic proofs, such as PDFs, print them out

before reading. Proofreading on a screen does not work nearly

as well as reading from paper.

Proofreading is not intellectually challenging. It merely re-

quires good eyesight and patience. The Chicago Manual pro-

vides detailed instructions, and I will explain when you have

to proofread and what to expect, as well as offer some pointers.

Page proof usually appears between one and three months

after you see the edited manuscript. Your publisher will give

you advance notice.

Proof will arrive either alone or with the edited manuscript,

depending on the practice of your publisher. (If you know

in advance that your publisher will not send the edited

manuscript, you may want to make a photocopy when you

review it.) You will also receive instructions, which you should

follow to the letter. If you do not get the edited manuscript, then

all you need to do is read the proof very carefully and mark it

for corrections. If you do receive the edited manuscript, then

you must compare the manuscript and the proof, to make

sure the typesetter has reproduced the manuscript exactly. The

best way to do this is to recruit a friend to read with you.

The person holding the manuscript should read aloud, and

the person holding the typeset pages should mark the correc-

tions, using the standard proofreaders’ marks found in The

Chicago Manual or any good dictionary. No marks of any kind

should be made on the edited manuscript. Nor should you

attempt to rewrite your book. If you see an error that you

should have caught earlier, ﬁx it; but do not make optional

changes. Such changes will cost you money (remember the

contract clause about alterations to proof), delay the book,

and increase the chances that new errors will be introduced

when the corrections are made. In theory, vital changes can be

made up to the last minute before the book is printed. In fact,

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Handbook for Academic Authors

however, they must be awfully important to be done after page

proof.

If the typesetter didn’t, you can now ﬁll in page numbers in

the table of contents and the lists of maps, tables, and illustra-

tions and possibly in the running heads for the notes section.

Any cross-references to other pages of your book must also be

ﬁlled in (these will usually be set as “see pp. 000–000” and can

now be completed).

Some authors believe that the best way to proofread is to

read backward – from the last line to the ﬁrst – with the line

above covered by a card or ruler. The theory is that you are

less likely subconsciously to read in correct spellings or punc-

tuation instead of accurately seeing errors. This practice (if,

indeed, anyone has ever practiced it) is either masochism or

sadism, depending on whether you read alone or with a com-

panion. I do not recommend it. Reading frontward through the

proof, checking carefully against the manuscript, is far more

effective.

A few commonsense hints will improve your proofreading.

Work at it for no more than two hours without a break, and

when you take time off do something that does not tax your

eyes or your concentration. Pay special attention to the follow-

ing error-prone areas: chapter titles and headings, tables, num-

bers, proper names, foreign words, block quotations, footnotes,

and bibliographies. If parts of your manuscript were heavily

edited, read the proof set from them one extra time. Make sure

all your corrections are legible and complete; for example, if

you have deleted a word that has a comma after it and the

comma should stay, make sure that the comma is saved and in

the right place. Use a dictionary to check words that have been

divided at the ends of lines.

The typesetter and your production editor will check type

size and technical details, but if you see anything of that sort

that looks peculiar – a heading that should be italic or larger

or centered, for example – point it out in a query to the editor.

Do not mark splotches or lines that are clearly the product of a

dirty photocopying machine.

Finally – again – return the proof on time.

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The Mechanics of Authorship

Generally, the editor takes care of subsequent stages of

proof – revised pages, bluelines (or the equivalent photo-

graphic proof), and folded and gathered pages. For a very few

kinds of books, it may make sense for the author to check these

as well. Books in this category might include documentary or

critical editions, in which apparent errors are in fact correct.

They might also include highly technical works with many

symbols if page proofs contained many errors, or heavily illus-

trated books if the illustrations and captions did not appear in

page proof. If you wish to read later proof, you should include

such a provision in your contract. And because adding autho-

rial readings for later proof extends the schedule by a week or

two, make sure that you have reminded your editor about this

well ahead of time.

At any stage in proofreading, if you have a major question,

or if something appears to have been done consistently wrong,

call your editor and discuss the problem. Sometimes the appar-

ent error is just a technical shortcut, and you can save yourself

a lot of worry and time by checking.

Indexing

Indexing is a way of providing your readers with intellectual

access to your work. The end product may be the traditional

back-of-the-book index or it may be an invisible network of

links to your text created by embedding tags. In fact, even

an ordinary back-of-the-book index can be generated by this

more technologically sophisticated process. No matter what

system is used, indexing is an analytical, intellectual process

that you need to master if you are going to index your own

book.

If you do not want to prepare the index, ask your editor to

recommend a professional indexer and ask for a cost estimate.

Indexing fees are reasonable, and many authors prefer to spend

money rather than time.

You must ﬁrst decide what kind of index is appropriate

for your book: The main possibilities are a name index plus

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Handbook for Academic Authors

a subject index or an index in which names and subjects

are combined. Sometimes a name index alone is adequate.

The combined index is the most common, although separate

indexes may be helpful in a long, complex work. Separate

indexes might also be added for titles of works (musical, liter-

ary, or artistic); ﬁrst lines of works (as in poetry anthologies);

or authors cited (separate from people as subjects). The nature

of your book should determine which sort of index(es) you

compile, and your acquiring, manuscript, or production editor

can provide guidance.

Your publisher will probably supply some indexing guide-

lines, and The Chicago Manual and Judith Butcher’s Copy-Editing

have sections on indexes. Nancy Mulvany’s Indexing Books is

a thorough guide to the process. If you want to compile an

index of professional quality, you should read it. You might

also want to look at indexes of books similar to yours to see

their general approach, strengths, and weaknesses.

I will not attempt to duplicate Chicago or condense Mulvany,

but I can add some practical advice. Most authors overindex

their own books. They include everything – even things that no

one will look for – and they provide too much detail in suben-

tries (e.g., “Communism, Reagan speaks frequently against”

instead of “Communism, Reagan on”). If you compile your

own index, here are some things to omit:

1. Items that people will not look for in the book. For example,

a biology text tells the story of John Dillinger painting a gun

carved out of a potato with iodine, so that the potato turned

steel gray; iodine is a test for starch. You do not index Dillinger,

John. (There is an argument for including it, however: this is a

textbook, and Dillinger’s name may be the only thing a student

remembers.)

2. Items that will not give the reader any relevant information

when looked up. For example, a book on Watergate has an index

entry for the Taft-Hartley Act. When you look on the page given,

it reads “Cox . . . had become close to John [Kennedy] when they

worked together on revisions to the Taft-Hartley Act.”

3. Mere mentions without content. For example, the only entry for

Good Neighbor Policy turns out to be “Historians instinctively

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The Mechanics of Authorship

employ many insidious analogies without a second thought –

or maybe even a ﬁrst one. All of the following examples have

caused trouble: [32 names], Good Neighbor Policy, [58 more

names].”

4. People and institutions mentioned only in the acknowledg-

ments.

5. Mere source citations, such as authors of articles cited in notes

(in some disciplines these are included).

6. Tables and illustrations. These will be included in the entries

for the text where they are mentioned. The exceptions are art

books and any book in which the illustrations will be sought

independently, as in a botanical manual or ﬁeld guide.

7. Part and chapter titles.

As you make decisions about what to index and how to word

your entries, always keep the reader in mind. Omit entries

that will be useless or even annoying; duplicate or use cross-

references if that will help readers ﬁnd what they are look-

ing for.

You can create an index that is adequate for a printed book

the old-fashioned way: by using index cards. This is a very

straightforward process, but it can only be done after you

have page proof, because you need the page numbers. For

that reason, you will have only two to four weeks to create

your index, and you must proofread during the same time.

Working from the page proof, you will write out a card for

each entry or subentry. The card will have entry, subentry,

and page number – for example, indexing, methods of, 27–28.

Then you alphabetize the cards, combine identical ones, add

cross-references, and type it up. One careful editing of that

draft should be adequate. Even if you are using cards, you

can search the electronic version of your book for items you

may have missed and then ﬁnd them more easily in the page

proof. If your book is to be published in digital form, however,

the index created in this way will be inferior to one generated

using a computer program.

Many publishers advise their authors to use the indexing

function of Word to create an index at the manuscript stage.

(Dedicated indexing programs work better, but the learning

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Handbook for Academic Authors

curve is too steep to make them worthwhile for anyone except

professional indexers.) This should be done earlier than page

proof, though you should not attempt it until your editor has

provided instructions and told you that the time has come.

It’s a good idea, though, to familiarize yourself with the pro-

gram ahead of time. You must still make all the intellectual

decisions about what to index and how to phrase each entry,

but the program will help with a ﬁrst pass at the mechanical

aspects of alphabetizing and combining. You will still have to

edit the results carefully. The biggest mistake authors make

in using an indexing program is to overestimate what it can

do. Like all software, indexing programs take things literally,

so you must use them carefully. Your publisher will probably

supplement the instructions in the program’s help section with

useful advice based on the experience of other authors. Your

work will result in a normal-looking index for the print ver-

sion of your work and a sophisticated tool for readers to use

in searching the digital version.

A third system, the most technologically advanced, is used

by a few publishers. It requires the author to tag the manuscript

according to a system compatible with XML coding. This can

be done electronically, using PDFs, or manually on hard copy,

followed by typing a list of index terms. Few publishers offer

this system as an option, and few authors choose it, but it is

extremely efﬁcient. If your publisher wants you to use this

system, your editor will provide complete instructions and

examples.

Once you have sent in your index and returned your proof-

read pages, your production responsibilities are probably over.

Some publishers send authors typeset index pages to proof-

read, but usually the editor will read the index when it comes

back from the typesetter, and the book will then go on to the

printer.

206

Chapter 11

Costs and Prices

I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intel-

ligent fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I’ve got

their number now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques

at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies

rally round and do the real work.

Bertie Wooster, in P. G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves

One of the questions publishers are asked often is “Why are

books so expensive?” The answer is not simple: It involves

the interacting elements of production costs and overhead,

pricing and discount policies, and markets. This chapter

presents a simpliﬁed explanation of these topics that should

console authors and book buyers – or at least quell their

suspicions.

Another question that comes up often is “Are

books doomed to extinction?” For the scholarly monograph,

this question is as much economic as cultural. In this chap-

ter, we look at the ﬁnancial implications of publishing without

paper and ink. In the ﬁnal chapter, we will explore the creative

possibilities of digital publishing.

For an extensive, detailed discussion of the economics of scholarly publishing,

see Herbert S. Bailey, Jr., The Art and Science of Book Publishing (Austin: University of

Texas Press, 1970). The costs in this chapter are estimates based on ﬁgures provided

recently by university press directors and production managers, book manufacturers,

chambers of commerce, commercial-space realtors, and utility companies.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Costs

In publishing a book, a publisher incurs direct costs and indi-

rect costs. Direct costs are those clearly attributable to publi-

cation of a speciﬁc title, such as the cost of having the book

typeset.

Indirect costs are overhead items, including rent, utilities,

salaries, and supplies. They are the publisher’s general oper-

ating costs: costs that must be incurred to publish any books at

all but that cannot readily be assigned to a particular title in a

way that is not arbitrary. For example, how much ofﬁce space

and air conditioning are needed to publish a particular book?

Or consider the time of an acquiring editor, who may review

several hundred proposals and dozens of manuscripts in a

year, in addition to traveling to conventions, calling prospec-

tive authors, attending meetings, reviewing budgets, and tak-

ing care of administrative duties such as hiring and planning.

Very little of this time can be shown to contribute to the publi-

cation of a given book, yet all of it is necessary to produce all

the titles in the ﬁelds for which the editor is responsible.

Some costs may be either direct or indirect, depending on

the circumstances. For example, if a publisher has a book copy-

edited and designed by freelancers (professionals who are not

employees and are paid an hourly or per-job rate), the free-

lance fees can easily be assigned to the book and are thus

direct costs. However, if this work is done in-house, the costs

can be assigned accurately only if the editor and designer keep

track of the time they spend on the book, something they rarely

do. Copy editors may be doing a preliminary reading of one

manuscript, copyediting a second, dealing with author’s revi-

sions on a third, checking proof of a fourth, writing summaries

of books for the marketing department, helping an author with

permissions problems, and attending to general administrative

details – all in one week. It would be possible to record all this

activity and assign most of the time to the relevant titles, but

little useful information would be derived from the exercise.

Keeping track of time in this way does not get books pub-

lished faster, better, or cheaper, so no one bothers. Therefore,

208

Costs and Prices

in-house copyediting and design are normally included in the

publisher’s indirect costs.

It is sometimes useful to allocate indirect costs to speciﬁc

titles. To do this, a publisher takes the total of such items for

some period, usually a year, and then, according to some for-

mula, assigns a portion of the total to each book published

during that period. The result is a somewhat artiﬁcial, but nev-

ertheless illuminating, attribution of general operating costs

to speciﬁc titles. For our purposes, this exercise helps to show

what it really costs, taking everything into account, to publish

a book. Accountants generally allocate overhead costs in pro-

portion to revenue. In our example, however, I will simplify

the technique and divide annual overhead costs by the number

of books published in a year.

Direct Costs

The most signiﬁcant direct costs are production costs. They

are also the easiest to estimate. Production costs divide into

two types: plant costs and manufacturing costs. Plant costs

include typesetting, the preparation of artwork for printing,

and the preparation of printing plates; manufacturing costs

(or “running” costs) include paper, printing, and binding. They

differ in that plant costs remain constant no matter how many

copies of a book you print, whereas manufacturing costs do

not.

You might compare plant and manufacturing costs to the

costs of typing a paper and having it photocopied. You will pay

a typist perhaps $1.00 per page, no matter how many copies

Harald Bohne and Harry van Ierssel provide accounting guidelines and sam-

ple balance sheets, proﬁt-and-loss statements, and the like in Publishing: The Creative

Business (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973). One Book/Five Ways: The Pub-

lishing Procedures of Five University Presses (Los Altos, Calif.: Kaufmann, 1978;rept.

ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) illustrates a variety of cost-estimating

procedures and other worksheets that university presses employ. Chapter 7 in John

Dessauer’s Book Publishing: A Basic Introduction (New York: Continuum, 1989)also

details accounting practices. None of these books has up-to-date ﬁgures, but the prin-

ciples still apply.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

of a paper you eventually make; but you will have to multiply

the photocopying charge, say 5 cents per page, by the number

of pages and the number of copies. For a thirty-page paper,

thus, the typing will cost $30.00, whether you eventually make

one photocopy or one hundred. The photocopying cost, by

contrast, will be $1.50 foronecopybut$150 for one hundred.

To carry this analysis a few steps further, as we do shortly for

publishing costs, the total production cost for the original plus

one copy will be $31.50; if you make one hundred copies it will

be $180. Now, suppose that you keep the original in a drawer

and distribute the photocopies to your colleagues. Your total

production cost per distributed copy, or unit production cost,

is then $31.50 in the former case ($31.50 divided by 1)and$1.80

in the latter ($180 divided by 100). Clearly, the more copies you

print, the lower the unit cost.

Let’s return now to book publishing and consider an imag-

inary scholarly monograph of 300 ﬁnished book pages with

no tables, illustrations, or other complications. The plant costs

will be typesetting and plate preparation. We will assume that

the book is being set from the author’s electronic manuscript

(as most scholarly books are), so that the cost of typesetting

is limited to XML coding, which embeds design instructions

and other details in a form recognized by high-end printers,

Web software, and other digital applications. The cost will be

around $5 per page, for a total of $1,500. Plate making, changes

in proof, and other one-time costs might total $1,500. Thus, total

plant costs will be $3,000.

These costs can vary, of course. If the author supplies PDFs,

typesetting costs are eliminated, although plates must still be

made. (The typesetting cost is actually being transferred from

the publisher to the author, not really being eliminated.) At

the other extreme, the publisher might decide not to use the

author’s electronic manuscript because of the complexity of

typesetting and layout. This might well be the case for a text-

book. The typesetting costs might be doubled, to $3,000,and

the cost of layout and additional proofs might raise the plant

cost to $5,000 or more. A book that needs to be produced

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Costs and Prices

quickly because it is timely or must be ready for a deadline

may also cost more to prepare for printing.

To estimate manufacturing cost (paper, printing, and bind-

ing), we have to know how many copies of the book will be

printed. Let’s assume a print run of 1,000, which is high for the

average monograph but makes the math simpler. Paper would

cost about $1,000 (obviously the quality and price of paper vary

enormously) and printing about $1,000. For simplicity, suppose

that we are publishing a clothbound book with a jacket and no

paperback edition. On that assumption, binding would cost

about $1.00 per copy, for a total in this case of $1,000, and jackets

(depending on how elaborate they are) about 35 cents apiece,

for a total of $350. Our total cost for paper, printing, and bind-

ing, then, is $3,350. To this we must add the cost of shipping

ﬁnished books to the warehouse, say $500. (Freight costs, too,

vary enormously. Sometimes printed pages must be shipped

to a bindery, as well as the bound books to the warehouse. Dis-

tances also vary. If the printing and binding are done locally,

there may be no shipping cost.) This brings our total manu-

facturing cost to $3,850 and our total production cost – plant

cost plus manufacturing cost – to $6,850 ($3,000 plus $3,850).

To simplify the calculations to follow, we’ll call it $7,000.

We can now determine the unit production cost of each book

sold.Ofthe1,000 copies printed, 100 will be given away – to

the author, potential reviewers, and the Register of Copyrights.

We will therefore divide the total production cost ($7,000)by

the number of copies available for sale (900), yielding a unit

production cost of $7.78. This is an important ﬁgure, because

many publishers take the unit cost, multiply it by some ﬁxed

number – anywhere from 4 to 8 – and use the product as a rough

guide to determine how much to charge for the book. This

calculation is supposed to allow, in an approximate way, for

overhead and marketing costs, bookseller discounts, royalties,

and proﬁts – or, in other words, for all the factors that might

bear numerically on the pricing decision.

Having determined the total and unit production costs of our

imaginary monograph, we may now consider nonproduction

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Handbook for Academic Authors

direct costs – those costs for activities other than production

that are easily assigned to a single title. Returning to that typed

and photocopied paper, let us assume that you are selling the

copies rather than giving them away. As you will recall, if

you made one photocopy, the unit production cost was $31.50.

This means that, if you wanted to break even on production

costs, you would have to sell the copy for $31.50.Ifyoumade

100 copies to sell to your students and wanted only to break

even on your $180 production cost, you would price them at

$1.80. But suppose that you also wanted to cover your non-

production direct costs: the costs of researching and writing

that particular paper. If you are a philosopher or a theoreti-

cal physicist, you may have incurred no travel or equipment

expenses (your time and ofﬁce space we will consider as over-

head or indirect costs). If you are a historian, your research for

this paper may have included a trip to China that was devoted

to nothing else. If you are a nuclear physicist or a radiologist,

you may have to charge for, say, a week’s use of a cyclotron or

a CAT scanner. In other words, the nonproduction direct costs

may be very small – or astronomical.

The range of nonproduction direct costs in scholarly pub-

lishing is not nearly so great, but the costs exist and must

be calculated. We must include the costs of acquiring, edit-

ing, designing, and marketing a particular book. Suppose that

the press paid two specialist readers $200 each to read the

manuscript and that, after a careful consideration of editing

requirements, it gave this work to a freelance copy editor. If our

300-page monograph (about 450 manuscript pages) requires

an average amount of editing, this might cost about $1,250,or

$25 per hour for about 50 hours of the freelancer’s time. (The

freelancer’s work will have to be reviewed, of course, and the

manuscript ﬁnally readied for production, but we will treat in-

house editorial time as part of overhead.) An equally common

use of freelancers is for book design, that is, for the design of

the text itself (what the pages look like), the binding, and the

dust jacket. If the book is not unusually difﬁcult to design, a

freelance designer will probably charge about $600. (In-house

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Costs and Prices

design and production time are considered part of overhead.

Using a generic format would save the $600.)

Marketing costs are another category of nonproduction

costs. Under this heading, the costs of particular actions like

running an ad in a journal are direct; the time of the marketing

staff that designs and places the ad is part of overhead. Direct

marketing costs can range from next to nothing to sky-high.

We will assume that our imaginary book is displayed at con-

ventions (sharing the cost of the booth with the other titles

being shown), included in the publisher’s Web site and cata-

log (bearing a small portion of the cost of its production and

distribution), advertised in two or three inexpensive journal

ads, and sold through direct mail. The marketing budget for

this book will then be about $4,000. (As a point of reference,

note that a full-page ad in The New York Times Book Review

costs about $40,000.) Our nonproduction direct costs thus total

$6,250.

Indirect Costs

We must now estimate the indirect costs of publishing our

imaginary monograph. Let’s return again to your typed and

photocopied paper. Suppose that you want to cover not only

your direct costs (production and nonproduction) but also your

indirect costs: the relevant portions of rent and utilities for your

ofﬁce, of your research assistant’s salary and tuition waiver, of

your salary and fringe beneﬁts, and so forth. It is clear that

these costs would vary from author to author (compare the

salary of a full professor of law to that of an assistant professor

of philosophy) and paper to paper (depending, for example,

on how much of your time was devoted to it). It is also clear

that you would have a hard time coming up with an accurate

ﬁgure (how much ofﬁce space was used to write the paper, as

opposed to teaching your courses?). Similarly, indirect costs in

scholarly publishing vary from book to book and publisher to

publisher, and they are difﬁcult to compute accurately.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

The simplest way to calculate indirect costs is to estimate

the total cost of operating the publishing house and allocate

an appropriate portion of it to this book. The simplest way to

allocate is to take the total operating cost for the year of publi-

cation and divide it by the number of titles published that year.

This method is adequate for our purposes, but it is obviously

oversimpliﬁed. Some manuscripts need more work than oth-

ers, and both acquisition and copy editors distribute their time

accordingly. Similarly, publishers may spend more time mar-

keting one book than another. An elaborately designed book

with many illustrations will take more time in the design and

production departments than a simple monograph. Also, if the

press uses freelancers for some books and not others, this will

further skew the distribution of in-house efforts. To cope with

these factors, accountants employ a formula that allocates indi-

rect costs in proportion to actual or projected revenues from

book sales. We may evade these complications by supposing

that our imaginary monograph is a representative product of

the press, so that a crude per-book averaging of indirect costs

will do.

Let us assume that our book is being published by a medium-

sized press located in a middle-sized city in the center of the

United States. This publisher has 15 employees and publishes

40 titles a year. The salaries for the 15 employees, ranging from

the director’s $75,000 to the secretary’s $25,000, total $500,000

per year. Fringe beneﬁts amount to 25 percent of salaries,

or $125,000. The press’s total annual personnel cost is thus

$625,000. Because of size, the press does not employ its own

sales force or have many administrators (such as a personnel

director, lawyer, or treasurer) that a larger house would need.

The press has adequate but not spacious quarters: It has

ofﬁce space of 3,000 square feet and warehouse space of

10,000. Ofﬁce space in the city rents for $15.00 per square

foot on average, with warehouse space going for $3.00.Using

these ﬁgures, we can estimate that the press will pay $45,000

per year for ofﬁce space and $30,000 for warehouse space,

for a total of $75,000. Annual telephone expenses are $8,000,

we assume, and other utilities total $12,000. Supplies and

214

Costs and Prices

equipment cost $6,000. Postage and shipping (excluding ship-

ping of books to customers, which customers traditionally pay,

and mailing of advertising material, which is covered in our

marketing estimate) run $5,000. The travel budget is $9,000.

Association memberships, subscriptions, and book purchases

addupto$5,000. (This includes membership in the Association

of American University Presses.) If we add $5,000 for miscella-

neous expenses (such as readers’ fees for books not eventually

published) and the inevitable unexpected expenses, the press’s

nonsalary overhead comes to $125,000.

We can now total these ﬁgures and allocate them to the 40

titles published annually:

Salaries and beneﬁts $625,000

Rent 75,000

Utilities 20,000

Supplies 6,000

Postage 5,000

Travel 9,000

Subscriptions, etc. 5,000

Miscellaneous 5,000

Total

$750,000

Dividing by 40 yields $18,750, which we may then allocate to

each title.

How much, then, will it cost to publish 1,000 copies of

our 300-page monograph? A total of $32,000, summarized as

follows:

Production costs $7,000

Nonproduction direct costs 6,250

Allocated indirect costs 18,750

Total

$32,000

Dividing by 900 copies, this comes to $35.55 per copy, which

we may call the unit publication cost (as distinguished from

the unit production cost of $7.78). Unfortunately, this does not

mean that the publisher can price the book at $35.55.Ifall

costs had been ﬁgured accurately, and if all copies were sold,

this price would enable the publisher to break even. However,

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Handbook for Academic Authors

it would not cover the author’s royalty, bookseller discounts,

publisher’s proﬁt, or margin for error. All these elements must

be ﬁgured into the retail price.

From Costs to Prices

All the costs discussed so far are incurred by the publisher

before publication; we may call them publication costs. But the

sale of each copy of a book must repay not only the publisher

but also others with an investment in it. These include the

author and, in many cases, booksellers, both wholesale and

retail.

The author’s investment is repaid through royalties. As

explained in Chapter 5, royalties are calculated as a percentage

of either retail price or revenue. The publisher collects royalties

when books are sold and pays them out annually.

Bookseller discounts are based on selling price. They repre-

sent a portion of the list price (what the customer pays for the

book) that the publisher never receives. Publishers allow retail

stores and book wholesalers (often called jobbers) to buy books

at a discount. The jobbers and bookstores then charge cus-

tomers more for the book (in the case of bookstores, the recom-

mended retail price); that is how they pay their costs and make

a proﬁt. Each book publisher has a different discount schedule,

and most offer a complicated variety of discounts, depending

on the number of books ordered and the type of purchaser.

For example, jobbers generally receive higher discounts than

retailers, and large orders command higher discounts than do

small ones. Some publishers vary their discounts according to

the type of book in question, with trade titles that will be sold

mainly in retail stores offered at a higher discount (usually

40 percent) than those expected to sell mainly to libraries and

individuals (a short discount, usually 20 percent). Textbooks

commonly sell at a 20 percent discount. In addition, some pub-

lishers hire commissioned salespeople who charge a fee of 5 to

10 percent of the list price. On the other hand, when copies of a

book are sold directly to readers or libraries, generally through

216

Costs and Prices

mail order, no discount may be given. Rather than try to guess

how many books will be sold at each discount, we will use an

average discount of 30 percent.

Because royalties and discounts are calculated as a percent-

age of the book’s price, we cannot estimate them without pric-

ing our imaginary monograph. To do that, let us go back to our

calculation of unit production cost ($7.78) and take the sim-

plest pricing formula (which requires that we use an arbitrary

multiplier, say, 6) to give us a ﬁrst shot at a price. This yields a

retail price of $46.68, which we will round up to $50.00. Let us

see whether that will allow us to cover our costs.

Now we can calculate the royalties and discounts. The author

is receiving a royalty of 10 percent of the list (retail) price, or

$5.00 per copy. We will ﬁgure an average discount of 30 percent,

or $15.00 per copy. At $50.00, each sale would produce the

following results:

Unit publication cost $35.55

Royalty 5.00

Bookseller discount 15.00

55.55

Price 50.00

Publisher’s proﬁt (or loss) ($ 5.55)

If the publisher is to make a proﬁt, then our monograph must

sell for more than $50.00.At$60.00, the publisher would net

$.45 – not a comfortable margin. In fact, the book would need

to be priced at $65.00:

Unit publication cost $35.55

Royalty 6.50

Bookseller discount 19.50

61.55

Price 65.00

Publisher’s proﬁt $3.45

Note that increasing the price by $15.00 increases the pub-

lisher’s net revenue by only $9.00; that is, the publisher gets

60 percent of the increase.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

In fact, the “proﬁt” may prove to be simply a margin for

error. Suppose, for example, that the publisher can actually

sell only 800 copies of the book at $65.00. This small miscal-

culation will create a loss of $800 ($32,000 in publication costs

against $31,200 in revenue, less discounts and royalties). Or, if

the publisher underestimates costs even slightly, this can cut

into the proﬁt. For example, if coding were more complex and

therefore cost $6 per page, or if an unusual number of alter-

ations were required in proof, the typesetting cost per book

would be 40 or 50 cents more; if the book ran a few pages

longer than expected, requiring the printing of another signa-

ture (8, 16,or32 pages), the per-copy printing bill might be

25 cents higher, and so forth. This may sound like nickels and

dimes, but remember that the potential proﬁt at $65.00 is only

$3.45. It is clear that our imaginary monograph is not going to

produce impressive proﬁts.

In the absence of reliable ways to forecast the market, pub-

lishers must leave themselves some room for error, and prices

must reﬂect that uncertainty.

Prices

Despite its crudeness, the method of setting the price by multi-

plying the unit production cost by 5 or 6 brings us surprisingly

close to what a university press like the one we have imagined

should charge. Many publishers do in fact use an arbitrary

multiplier; those who must make a proﬁt and offer larger dis-

counts use 6, 7,or8, whereas not-for-proﬁt houses use 4 or

5. Usually, however, the multiplier method is just a starting

point, with other considerations coming into play.

Prices and Markets

Deciding to publish a book is one thing; deciding how to publish

it is another. In scholarly publishing, the initial decision to

publish is based mostly on the quality of the book, with costs

218

Costs and Prices

and markets as subsidiary considerations. Once that decision is

made, however, most of what a publishing house does turns on

its perception of the market. In deciding how to proceed, a wise

publisher looks carefully at who is likely to buy the book and

at how prospective buyers will be inﬂuenced by such things as

the book’s appearance, price, and promotion.

Publishers who expect a title to sell almost entirely to

libraries know a number of things. The ﬁrst is the number of

standing orders they have – that is, how many libraries auto-

matically order everything they publish. They also know how

many other libraries are likely to buy a book from them on this

subject. They believe, with some evidence, that libraries will

pay $75 to $100 for a monograph without protest. Finally, they

know that libraries almost universally discard dust jackets and

are not overly concerned with the design of the scholarly books

they purchase. Publishers also know that certain prepublica-

tion reviews, particularly those in Library Journal and Choice,

strongly affect library sales. If these reviews come out in time,

publishers may alter a print run somewhat. For some titles

with small print runs, library purchases account for more than

half the sales, so this is an important market to understand.

Publishers who anticipate signiﬁcant sales to individuals

are somewhat more concerned about keeping prices down.

If they believe that most such sales will be achieved through

direct mail, they may not worry too much about design and

dust jackets and spend money instead on attractive ﬂyers. If,

however, they expect to sell mostly through retail bookstores,

they will want the books to be as eye catching as possible, so

that prospective buyers will take them off the shelves to look

at them. In setting the print run, publishers will also try to

estimate the number of individual buyers. Such estimates are

based on past sales of similar books or on the size of available

mailing lists. The more specialized a book, the smaller the

audience.

One of the things that makes publishing interesting is that

predicting the market is so difﬁcult. Most editors are conﬁdent

of their ability to recognize good scholarship and good writing,

but if a fairy godmother offered them a single (professional)

219

Handbook for Academic Authors

wish, it would probably be the ability to predict sales. The pre-

diction is both difﬁcult and vital, because it determines how a

book will be published. A prediction of poor sales is often a

self-fulﬁlling prophecy, and it is impossible to know how many

books have not been sold because a publisher underestimated

the market. A prediction of high sales can in fact increase sales

because it may result in a more extensive advertising cam-

paign and more attractive design – though an upper limit is

imposed by the book itself. For example, if you have written

a monograph on nematodes, a good marketing campaign can

ensure that every nematologist hears about it. But no amount

of advertising will increase the number of nematologists or

create interest among purchasers of bodice rippers. Underes-

timating the market means losing money that one might have

made; overestimating it means losing money, period. An accu-

rate estimate is needed to establish both the print run and a

price at which publication is ﬁnancially worthwhile.

To some extent, then, price is a marketing decision: Regard-

less of what it costs to produce this book, here is what we can

sell it for. Some books – almost always those with higher print

runs and, consequently, lower unit costs – can be priced sig-

niﬁcantly in excess of what costs would require. Using similar

reasoning, publishers sometimes raise prices for backlist titles

(those published in earlier years that are still in print). A pub-

lisher may have issued a monograph several years ago, when

both costs and book prices were lower, and priced it at $19.95.

The book is still selling reasonably well and would continue

to do so even at $29.95. Why not, then, raise the price? The

only danger is miscalculation: By raising the price you may

reduce sales to the point where you make less money overall,

even while making more per copy. Another reason for raising

prices on backlist books has to do with the costs of running

a publishing house. Publishers must pay current costs out of

revenues from books already for sale. Publishers that rely on

backlist titles for much of their income must ensure that those

revenues keep up with current costs. Thus, raising prices on

backlist titles increases their proﬁtability and enables the pub-

lisher to keep the books in print longer.

220

Costs and Prices

By contrast, marketing considerations sometimes require a

lower price than would costs alone. Recall our example of the

typed paper. If we include in its price the cost of a well-paid

full professor’s trip to China, then even if we are distributing

100 copies, it might take a price of several hundred dollars per

copy to break even. Although this price would be rational in

the light of costs, no one would pay it. For a publisher, this

kind of situation would mean that the book should not be

published, that it must be published at a loss (a loss that must,

in turn, be offset by greater proﬁts from other books), or that

costs must be reduced or underwritten.

If we are dealing with a not-for-proﬁt publisher, our imagi-

nary monograph should, in theory, at least break even. It would

be extremely difﬁcult to make each book come out exactly with

neither proﬁt nor loss, and publishers do not try to do this.

Instead, they set prices to make at least a small proﬁt on each

title. Some books will lose money despite careful projections;

others may make more than expected. If a noncommercial pub-

lisher makes a lot of money on one title, that proﬁt will simply

offset the losses on others. What the publisher hopes for is to

break even overall, or to come out slightly ahead. This ﬂexibil-

ity also allows the press to publish some titles that do not make

economic sense, that cannot possibly sell enough copies at a

reasonable price to break even. Similarly, proﬁt-making pub-

lishers must make enough of a proﬁt overall to keep owners or

shareholders happy. There is probably not a single publisher

that has not lost money on at least one title. Publishers stay in

business not by being right every time but by being right most

of the time. Given the choice, any publisher would rather make

money on a title than lose it. But for scholarly publishers, proﬁt

is not necessarily the only – or even the strongest – motive.

In setting prices, most publishers consider some combina-

tion of costs, what competing titles sell for, and what the market

will bear. The notion of “competing titles” is not very useful

in pricing monographs, which are generally not considered to

compete with one another. (Each is, after all, unique.) For trade-

oriented books and textbooks, however, this is an important

concept. If, for example, you have a choice of three textbooks of

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Handbook for Academic Authors

roughly equal quality for a large undergraduate class, you will

likely choose the $39.95 text over those priced at $49.95 and

$54.95. Scholarly publishers do concern themselves, however,

with what the market will bear. For small print runs, libraries

represent a large percentage of buyers. Publishers have a pretty

good idea of what price will raise a librarian’s eyebrows, and

they may raise the price of a book to something just short of

that ﬁgure. Similarly, they will think twice before setting the

price any higher: If this is the sort of book that no university

library can afford to pass up, the price can be higher; if it is

likely to be considered an optional purchase, pricing it lower

will produce more sales and greater revenue.

When publishers order a larger printing, they are anticipat-

ing sales to individuals through direct mail and bookstores.

Individuals raise their eyebrows sooner than do librarians, so

such books may be priced lower. This is partly a marketing

decision, but it can be justiﬁed by the lower unit cost of books

generated by printing more.

To see how this works, let’s suppose that the press prints

3,000 copies of our imaginary monograph instead of 1,000.Its

manufacturing (paper, printing, and binding) and shipping

costs will increase; the other expenditures (plant costs, non-

production direct costs, and overhead) are constant regardless

of how many copies are printed. At 3,000 copies, the pub-

lisher is printing a sufﬁcient number of copies to realize some

economies of scale in manufacturing costs; they will increase

from $3,850 to $7,800, for a (rounded) total production cost

of $11,000 rather than $7,000. Because all other costs remain

constant (with the possible exception of marketing costs), total

publication cost will increase far less dramatically, from $32,000

to $36,000. This means that our unit publication cost will

be much lower: Dividing $36,000 by 2,850 (we’ll give away

150 copies) yields a unit publication cost of $12.63 –consid-

erably less than the unit cost of 900 copies, which was $35.55.

Also, with a printing of 3,000 the unit production cost will

decrease from $7.78 to $3.67 and the price suggested by the

arbitrary multiplier of 6 will drop to $22.02, which would prob-

ably end up as $25.00. There are clear interrelationships among

222

Costs and Prices

market size, price, and costs. More prospective buyers mean

larger print runs, lower unit costs, and the possibility of lower

prices. The larger printings and lower prices are practical, how-

ever, only if the market estimate is accurate. If a publishing

house prints 3,000 copies, lowers the price, and then sells only

1,500 copies, it will lose money – despite the lower unit cost.

Not only does the publishing house lose money, but it has

invested more scarce cash in production and is left with an

inventory of unsold books to store.

Why Prices Vary

With this understanding of costs, prices, and markets, let’s look

at the mystery of why some books that seem comparable are

priced very differently. Everyone has had the experience of

seeing two monographs on similar subjects and of the same

length published by two different presses at astoundingly dis-

parate prices – say, $39.95 and $75.00. When car prices vary that

much, consumers can point to differences in features such as

horsepower, air conditioning, or four-wheel drive. In clothing,

quality, style, and the cachet of a label account for the differ-

ences. In publishing, there are no such visible differences, but

there are still many possible explanations.

The most obvious explanation is that the two monographs

are not, in fact, comparable. The examples in this chapter have

been based on an imaginary 300-page monograph with no

illustrations, no tables, no equations, and no foreign language

material. Typesetting or coding becomes more expensive when

tables, mathematics, or foreign alphabets are introduced. Costs

for page makeup, or layout, are increased by the use of tables

and illustrations of any kind. The use of photographs will

increase printing costs and may require the use of more expen-

sive paper. Color plates are extremely costly. In addition, two

books that both end up at 300 pages may not really be the

same length. One may have been set in a narrow typeface and

smaller type, with wider lines of type, less white space, and

more lines per page, while the other has larger type, more space

223

Handbook for Academic Authors

between lines, wider margins, and so forth. Typesetting costs

for the ﬁrst book will be considerably higher because there are

more characters per page, thus more labor per page.

Another reason for the difference in price may be that the

two presses estimated the market differently. This can happen

because one publisher is more optimistic than the other for

very good reasons. For example, the publisher with a series of

books in the ﬁeld and a large number of standing library orders

can reasonably expect to sell more copies than the publisher

that is new to the ﬁeld. Or the more expensive monograph may

be the revised dissertation of an unknown assistant professor,

which is likely to sell fewer copies than the third monograph of

an established scholar whose ﬁrst and second books sold well.

As you recall, the total cost of producing greater quantities is

not much higher than the cost of producing fewer. It is the cost

per book (the unit cost) that affects the price most dramatically.

For this reason, the publisher’s estimate of the market – a factor

that is invisible to the book buyer – is crucial.

The nature of the market, as well as its size, affects price. Pub-

lishers who expect to sell most books directly to consumers at

full price (publishers of professional books are a good example)

may be able to price their books lower because they do not have

to allow for the bookseller’s 40 percent discount; that leaves

$26.00 worth of maneuvering space on our $65.00 book. (How-

ever, they may also have a smaller market, which keeps the

price high.) By contrast, the publisher who anticipates mostly

library sales through jobbers must price the book high enough

to cover that discount.

The publisher who anticipates selling few books at a dis-

count, then, can afford to price books signiﬁcantly lower. The

$65.00 book could be sold proﬁtably at $45.00;the$25.00 book

for $20.00. Even if the average discount turned out to be

20 percent, prices could be lowered several dollars. However,

to sell large numbers of books, the publisher needs the help of

jobbers and booksellers. Only a very small printing could be

sold without discounts.

Another factor that affects price is the rate at which royalties

are paid. Obviously, if an author is earning 10 percent of the

224

Costs and Prices

retail price on every copy sold, then 10 percent of the price (and

a greater percentage of the actual revenues) is not coming back

to the publisher. The less the author earns, the lower the price

can be. If the author will give up royalties, or receive them at a

reduced rate, the price of the book can be lowered.

Even if there are no differences in production costs, antici-

pated sales, discounts, or royalties, the two presses may have

very different overhead costs. The one in Manhattan, New

York, that is paying higher rent, utilities, and salaries may have

to charge more for its books than the one in Manhattan, Kansas.

Presses in desirable locations where there is a lot of competition

for jobs may underpay employees. One press may do a more

thorough – and costly – job of manuscript evaluation and copy-

editing. One press may have its costs more extensively under-

written by its sponsoring institution. Indeed, one monograph

may have been underwritten by a foundation or a govern-

ment agency. For our 1,000-copy edition, a $10,000 foundation

grant would reduce the unit publication cost to $24.44, allow-

ing the book to be priced at $50.00 or $55.00 instead of $65.00.

Perhaps one press is more efﬁcient than the other, with efﬁ-

ciency measured by the number of titles published per dollar

of overhead expense. The more books you publish, the fewer

overhead dollars you need to allocate to each title. To illus-

trate the possibilities, take one press with ﬁfteen people and

3,000 square feet of ofﬁce space that is producing twenty-ﬁve

books per year and another the same size that produces forty-

ﬁve; the latter is more efﬁcient and can apportion its overhead

among more books. Using the total overhead ﬁgure from our

example, the allocation in these two cases would be roughly

$30,000 and $16,667 per title – a difference of nearly $14.00 per

copy if 1,000 copies are printed. This does not necessarily mean

that one press is staffed by slow-moving incompetents. It may

mean that the more efﬁcient press includes reprints among

its annual output, along with titles copublished with a British

house that require almost no staff time. It may also mean that

the less-efﬁcient publisher does not have the operating capi-

tal – the cash to spend on typesetting and printing – to utilize

its staff and facilities efﬁciently.

225

Handbook for Academic Authors

Another explanation is that one press may publish a few

trade-oriented titles that earn more money and can be used

to offset the costs of less-proﬁtable monographs. Some univer-

sity press catalogs include cookbooks, reference books, novels,

anthologies that are used as texts, and other fast-selling items

along with their monographs.

One possible explanation is that one press thinks – or has

learned by experience – that buyers will pay higher prices for

its books and therefore routinely charges more. This publisher

can publish marginally proﬁtable books that might be impos-

sible for another press, and it can use its proﬁts on some titles

to subsidize others.

The $35.00 difference between $39.95 and $75.00, then, is no

longer such a mystery. Look at the possibilities we have seen:

some combination of a larger print run, lower discount, lower

royalty rate, a subsidy from a foundation, and slightly greater

efﬁciency on the publisher’s part (or simply lower overhead)

can easily reduce the price by a signiﬁcant amount.

Subtracting Paper and Ink

How does electronic publishing affect the cost and pricing of

books? Now that we have calculated the costs of publishing

a traditional monograph, it should be fairly easy to ﬁgure out

which costs can be eliminated in paperless publishing.

The cost for typesetting from the author’s electronic manu-

script remains the same: $1,500 for coding. All the indirect costs

remain the same, too, because the book must pay its share of

overhead. Nonproduction direct costs – peer review, editing,

design, and marketing – are about the same. We can omit the

$3,850 for paper, printing, binding, and warehousing. We will

still pay the author a royalty and allow some sort of discount

to retailers.

However, we will have some new costs. Someone must put

the book online in the chosen format, make sure that customers

or distributors can actually download it from the site, and

perform periodic maintenance. This will be a fairly well-paid

226

Costs and Prices

employee with a high-end computer. We can estimate this cost

at $1,000 over the lifetime of the book (assuming that the press

is producing many electronic books), with most of the cost at

the beginning.

As is the case for traditional books, these costs are extremely

variable. They can be reduced to nearly zero if the book is

very simple and the electronic version is being published in

addition to a print version, in a static format. This is the way

books on electronic reserve are put online, and the result is a

text that the user can read and print out but cannot manipu-

late or annotate. Such publications entail minimal costs for the

publisher and minimal advantages for the reader. At the other

end of the spectrum are digital publications that fully exploit

the medium by providing hyperlinks, electronic annotation

and glossaries, maps that can be overlaid, illustrations that can

be enlarged, and so forth. These have extremely high produc-

tion costs, they often are mounted on their own servers, and

they require regular maintenance and customer service. For an

ordinary monograph, the appropriate electronic enhancements

might be footnotes accessed by clicking on the superscripts,

similar treatment of terms in a glossary or other appendix, and

ordinary maps and illustrations that did not appear in the print

version. These would add to both the utility of the electronic

book and its cost.

We need not do much math to see that for scholarly books

printed in small numbers, little is saved by omitting paper and

ink, because printing represents such a small percentage of the

cost. In fact, digital tchnology has lowered printing costs for

short-run books dramatically. And this means that electronic

books cannot be priced much lower than printed ones.

Will a consumer pay nearly as much for a virtual book as

for a printed one? A library might, especially if the cost of

printing out all or part of the book fell to the library’s patrons.

An individual buyer might do so, however, only if the digital

version offered signiﬁcantly more convenience or usefulness.

If having a book in electronic form offers no functional advan-

tages (such as linked footnotes and searchability), readers may

expect a large price advantage. If the publisher must add such

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Handbook for Academic Authors

features to appeal to customers, the production costs – and the

price – will go up.

All of these predictions are speculative. We do not yet know

what scholarly book buyers expect from electronic books or

what they might be willing to pay for them. It seems likely,

though, that the most successful electronic books (like the

already successful electronic journals) will provide features

that traditional books cannot offer – searchability (beyond

what an index provides), links, updating, archiving, quick

access, reader annotations, and extensive illustration, to name

a few possibilities. Electronic books that are no more than tra-

ditional books in virtual form are unlikely to save much money

or attract enough readers to make economic sense. In order to

exploit the market, e-books will have to exploit the technology.

The most recent incarnation of the e-book, Amazon’s latest

Kindle, offers electronic books at prices substantially lower

than those of print editions. Whether this pricing policy will

last remains to be seen. In any case, it is most promising for

books with large markets. Scholarly publishers cannot afford

to sell their books for $9.99.

Paperback and Reprint Editions

Most monographs are published originally in a hardcover edi-

tion. Sometimes a paperback edition is manufactured simul-

taneously, to be issued at the same time or after six months

or a year. Sometimes the decision to publish a paperback edi-

tion is made later, and the book is then reprinted. Occasion-

ally, a monograph is published only in paperback from the

outset.

Paperback books are almost always priced signiﬁcantly

lower than casebound books. If you recall the manufacturing

costs of our imaginary monograph, you will see immediately

that this difference cannot be explained by the lower cost of

paperback binding. We estimated casebound binding at $1.00

per copy, plus 35¢ for each jacket. The paper cover will cost

about as much as the jacket, and paperback binding will cost

228

Costs and Prices

anywhere from 10¢to25¢ depending on the quality and quan-

tity. In other words, we are cutting costs by only 75¢to90¢

per copy. The lower price is made possible by a larger print

run, which is in turn made possible by conﬁdence in a larger

market.

Publishers who manufacture cloth and paper editions simul-

taneously, increase the print run, and reduce unit costs gener-

ally maintain a higher casebound price and use the extra proﬁt

to reduce the price of the paperback, which may then be more

attractive as a textbook. The decisions on how to price the edi-

tions are interrelated and are dependent on the view of the

market.

When a publisher decides to issue a paperback edition after

the casebound edition is out, the book will have to be reprinted.

The cost of the paperback will be lower than that of the ﬁrst

printing (excluding differences attributable to size), because

plant costs (typesetting and plates) and such nonproduction

costs as editing and design have been covered by the hardback

printing. In addition, although our method of allocating indi-

rect costs would require us to add the book’s share in again, it

will in fact require very little in the way of salaries and other

expenses. These facts, plus the larger sales that the publisher

presumably is counting on to justify a paperback edition, make

a lower price possible.

A reprint of a successful book need not be a paperback, of

course. If a ﬁrst printing sells more rapidly than anticipated

and the publisher thinks that the estimate of the market was

too low, a second casebound printing can be issued. In this

case, too, the publisher’s costs will be reduced because the

plant and other one-time costs have been absorbed and real

overhead costs are small, but the manufacturing costs will be

the same (again, disregarding differences attributable to the

size of the print run). For practical reasons (including the need

to avoid infuriating customers who paid the original price),

the price will be the same or slightly higher. This means that

the publisher must reprint a large enough number to make a

proﬁt at something close to the original price. Digital printing

technology makes this possible, even if the print run is small.

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Handbook for Academic Authors

Sometimes the demand for a small reprint edition arises

years after original publication. The book is out of print, but

some libraries and a few individuals would like to have it.

Then the original publisher or a reprint house that has bought

the rights may bring out a small casebound edition (perhaps

a hundred copies) at a relatively high price. More likely, the

publisher might take advantage of recent technology and offer

the book for sale on demand, producing books from electronic

ﬁles only when a customer places an order.

Another sort of reprint edition is justiﬁed by dramatically

increased demand of the sort that occurs when a book is

adopted for textbook use. This results in a large paperback

edition with a price low enough to make it attractive as a text.

The publisher’s decision to issue a paperback edition or

to reprint the hardcover is based on demand. In the case of

paperbacks printed at the same time as the original casebound

edition, the publisher is relying on an estimate of anticipated

demand. For reprints, no matter what their timing or binding,

the publisher will want demonstrated demand: back orders,

planned text adoptions, inquiries from prospective buyers of

out-of-print books, and so forth. If you have evidence that a

reprint or paperback edition of your book would sell, take it

to your publisher, who can then do some market research and

make a decision.

Your contract will spell out a royalty schedule for any paper-

back edition. A reprint edition that occurs while the book is

in print or soon after it sells out is governed by the original

rate unless the contract speciﬁes a change. When a book has

been out of print for years, however, the publisher may want

to renegotiate the royalty rate before deciding to reprint. The

nature of the edition is likely to be quite different – small and

high-priced – and a lower royalty rate is appropriate.

Textbooks

The same principles we have examined for scholarly mono-

graphs apply to the costs and pricing of textbooks. Just as in

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Costs and Prices

scholarly publishing, text houses must price books to cover

direct costs, indirect costs, royalties, and discounts – plus a

proﬁt. And prices must be comparable to those of competing

titles. The main differences between the two kinds of publish-

ing are in the scale: Textbook publishers spend much more

money on each title and take far greater risks; they publish

more elaborately and in much larger print runs; if they do

well, they and their authors make much more money.

Textbook publishers incur large developmental costs. They

pay more readers higher fees for more detailed evaluations,

and they spend much more of their acquisition editors’ time

and developmental editors’ time working on each manuscript.

Because the books are longer and more complicated, much

more manuscript editorial time is required. It would not be

surprising for a copy editor to spend ﬁve or six hundred hours

on a major textbook. Design and production are much more

elaborate, and artwork – whether original or borrowed – is

expensive. Print runs are much higher, and the books must be

available for faculty examination long before the publisher can

expect to sell a single copy. Teacher’s guides and other sup-

plements must be produced and given away. In other words,

the text publisher not only must spend much more money on

typesetting and printing (because of the more elaborate format,

greater length, and larger print runs) but must spend it well in

advance of revenue. That means borrowing money and pay-

ing interest – a cost that scholarly publishers generally avoid.

Textbook publishers also maintain large sales staffs and dis-

tribute large numbers of examination copies. It is common for

a textbook publisher to spend $250,000 on a single text before

selling a copy, and $500,000 is not unheard of.

Textbooks are sold at a short discount (20 percent) because

the bookseller takes little risk and makes only a small invest-

ment. The retailer knows that the books will be sold because

they are required for courses, and although textbooks take up a

lot of space, they do not require elaborate displays. This helps

keep prices down somewhat. Real pressure comes from the

sale of used textbooks, which provides no income to publisher

or author. (Perhaps the availability of this source of revenue

231

Handbook for Academic Authors

is some consolation to the bookstores for the short discount.)

For a textbook to continue making money, the publisher must

develop revised editions every few years. Costs are somewhat

lower on the revised editions, and they prevent the sale of used

books from cutting into proﬁts – at least for one semester.

Trade Books

The same equations that apply to monographs and textbooks

also apply to trade books. However, the various costs assume

different proportions, and a high print run is the key to pricing

and proﬁtability. Marketing is extremely important because it

creates the demand that justiﬁes the high print run. Finally,

income from sources other than book sales can provide addi-

tional revenue.

When a book is published in a small print run, plant costs

and overhead represent a large part of the costs. That is why,

for example, an author’s preparation of camera-ready copy

can make a scholarly book ﬁnancially viable. When a publisher

expects to sell many thousands of copies of a book, by contrast,

plant costs and overhead are divided among so many units

that their signiﬁcance decreases. The importance of spending

in other areas increases, however.

Trade books must be more attractive than scholarly mono-

graphs because they must appeal to retail consumers. (Some

scholarly monographs are extremely handsome and elegantly

produced, but that is not their major selling point.) Trade

publishers therefore invest heavily in design and produc-

tion, sometimes commissioning more than one potential jacket

design, for example. Four-color jackets are almost universal,

and interior design may be more lavish. Paperback covers may

feature metallic foil, die-cuts, and embossing.

The most important investment trade publishers make is

in marketing. Trade publishers send out large numbers of

complimentary copies to potential reviewers and to inﬂuential

booksellers. Often they manufacture specially bound copies of

232

Costs and Prices

page proofs for this purpose, to generate early enthusiasm and

encourage advance orders. They advertise in trade and con-

sumer magazines, which is far more expensive than advertis-

ing in scholarly journals. They may share the cost of advertising

in local newspapers with an area’s booksellers. The marketing

department will also seek free publicity on radio and televi-

sion, most often by booking authors onto interview programs.

They may also sponsor regional or national author tours or fea-

ture authors at booksellers’ conventions. All of these efforts are

time-consuming, and many of them are expensive. The $4,000

allotted (rather generously) to marketing our typical mono-

graph would be totally inadequate for a trade title; ten times

that much is common.

Much of the marketing done by trade publishers is directed

at retail booksellers, because they are essential to the success

of trade titles. The relationship with the bookseller inﬂuences

design decisions, as we have seen, and it also affects pricing.

Booksellers receive a discount of at least 40 percent on trade

titles, so publishers must be able to make a proﬁt (and pay

royalties) on revenues of 60 percent or less of the retail price.

Logically, that would push toward higher prices, but bookstore

customers will not pay the prices that are acceptable to libraries

or purchasers of professional books. So the publisher must

price trade books at around $ 20.00 to $25.00, charge the retailer

$12.00 to $15.00 for them, and still make money. The only way

to do this is by printing and selling a lot of copies.

Another book industry practice creates pressure for high

print runs but generally reduces the publisher’s proﬁts. Retail-

ers are permitted to return unsold books to publishers for

credit. This gives the retailer little incentive to order prudently

or even realistically. As a result, returns on trade titles can run

as high as 50 percent, leaving publishers with large numbers

of unsold books in the warehouse after demand has peaked.

These books end up on remainder tables and in discount cata-

logs. Although publishers have complained about the returns

system for decades, it seems to be the best way to get book-

sellers to devote shelf space and sales efforts to new authors

233

Handbook for Academic Authors

and risky titles. So publishers must factor returns into their

ﬁnancial projections.

Another signiﬁcant expense for trade publishers is authors’

advances. Although most trade authors receive modest

advances of $10,000 to $25,000, a few authors with good track

records or highly desirable manuscripts can demand advances

of $100,000 or more. (Celebrity authors may receive advances

in the millions.) Proceeds from the book must pay for these

advances, and that means very high print runs and sales, and

intense marketing efforts. Also, advances are paid well ahead

of sales revenue, so publishers must either give up current

income from the cash, or borrow and pay interest.

In most cases, revenues from clothbound books are not ade-

quate to pay off multimillion-dollar investments, so trade pub-

lishers seek income from other sources. Even for books with

more modest prospects, sales of rights can increase publishers’

and authors’ incomes signiﬁcantly.

The most common additional source of income is paper-

back sales. The publisher may issue the paperback, thus real-

izing income from additional sales. But some trade publishers

prefer to sell paperback rights to mass-market houses like

Ballantine or Penguin. In this case, the paperback house pays

a cash advance, sometimes even before the casebound book is

published. The advance, shared between author and publisher,

helps to offset the publisher’s expenses, or adds to proﬁts.

Trade publishers also try very hard to sell book club rights.

Book clubs do not usually pay enormous sums to publishers,

but they make their decisions on the basis of the manuscript,

pay early in the publication process, and allow publishers to

increase their print runs by thousands of copies, further reduc-

ing unit costs. Book clubs also help advertise their selections

and, through their endorsements, increase bookstore sales.

Sale of serial rights can also boost income and provide addi-

tional publicity. Consumer magazines pay signiﬁcant amounts

for excerpts and bring books to the attention of thousands of

potential readers. They may also generate television and radio

publicity.

234

Costs and Prices

Foreign rights can also provide impressive revenues. There

is a large market for American nonﬁction – especially popular

science – in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan. Foreign

publishers are willing to pay for rights and, when necessary,

to invest in translations. For the most part, however, sales of

foreign rights do not affect the costs of the American edition

(as book club sales do) or increase U.S. sales (as serial rights

sales do); they simply bring in additional revenue.

Trade publishing is far riskier than scholarly publishing,

but the potential proﬁts are far greater. Trade publishers must

put their efforts into marketing both the books and the rights

attached to them. Their ﬁnancial success depends on produc-

ing and selling large quantities, rather than on cutting costs or

precisely targeting small audiences.

Financial Partnership

Throughout this book, I have described publishing as a part-

nership between author and publisher. The ﬁnancial analysis

in this chapter demonstrates that the partnership is more than

an intellectual one. If authors are to make money, publishers

must, too.

As the author of a scholarly book, your job (beyond writing

a book that people will want to buy) is to help the publisher

ﬁnd the real market for your book by alerting your editor or

the marketing manager to organizations, review media, and

other outlets that the publisher might not know. You should

also help your publisher to locate possible sources of grants.

If your publisher is trying to cut costs, you should cooperate

by giving up a dust jacket, resisting the urge to make changes

in proof, and being realistic about royalties. If you are curious

about how well your book is doing (and you certainly should

be), you can ﬁnd out what you need to know from your royalty

statements, which often list the print run and current sales

ﬁgures. Royalty statements are generally issued annually, so

you might want to ask for interim sales ﬁgures at six months.

235

Handbook for Academic Authors

Sometimes the nature of the book is such that neither author

nor publisher will make any money. Usually, at least for schol-

arly books, they both will proﬁt modestly. Sometimes they both

will do very well. But unless a publisher has offered an uncon-

scionable contract, and the author has accepted it, it is unlikely

that one will proﬁt at the expense of the other. Publishing can-

not be played as a zero-sum game.

236

Chapter 12

Born Digital

You have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects, but we

also have to look for things that ordinary books can’t do.

Jeff Bezos

Technology has revolutionized scholarly communication,

changing the way we study everything from Egyptian papyri

to the human genome to musical composition. Using com-

puters and the Internet, scholars have created new research

tools and methods; in some cases, the innovations amount to

entirely new modes of enquiry. Computers’ capacity for storing

vast amounts of data and manipulating them at extraordinary

speeds has enlarged the scope of manageable research, and

the Internet has admitted new minds and voices into scholarly

discussions. Access to scientiﬁc data, archival material, and

both established and recent scholarship has been expanded

and accelerated. Ideas can be developed, tested, reﬁned, or

abandoned with the help of invisible colleagues around the

world. Collaborative scholarship is taking hold in disciplines

where it was rare or unknown.

Communication between faculty and students has changed,

too. Many faculty members teach unseen students via the

Web. Others enhance their on-campus courses with elaborate

Web sites that provide access to readings, images, lectures,

and laboratory demonstrations. Course sites are typically

linked to other sites that provide opportunities for students

to expand their reading, listening, viewing, and thinking. At

least one major research university, the Massachusetts Institute

237

Handbook for Academic Authors

of Technology, is offering all of the course material on its Web

site free to anyone who wishes to use it.

Most electronic publications – e-books and e-journals – are

simply the paperless incarnation of a print product, with

enhanced searchability and links to notes, bibliography entries,

and sometimes related sites containing illustrations or other

supplementary material. They are more convenient and acces-

sible, but they are recognizably books and journals. The pub-

lishers of e-books, in particular, have designed them to look

and act like books, though they don’t yet have that new book

smell. Publishers add a great deal of value to such products by

putting them into digital formats, and they invest in new tech-

nology and stafﬁng for design, publication, and maintenance.

Yet, as earlier chapters note, e-books and e-journals make few

(if any) new demands on authors. For readers, these products

are often a great improvement, but their use and conventions

are easy to deduce from experience with print.

Publications that are “born digital” are different: They are

often not recognizable as books and have no print equivalent.

Indeed, their real value lies in creating something that is

possible only because of digital technology. A good exam-

ple of such a publication is The William Blake Archive (www

.blakearchive.org/blake), edited by Morris Eaves, Robert

Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. This site offers users Blake’s works,

usually in multiple copies held by libraries all over the world;

searchable text and images; a scholarly edition of the prose and

poetry; a biography; glossary, chronology, and other informa-

tion; notes and commentary; and the ability to enlarge images

for study or to compare multiple versions of the same page

simultaneously on the screen.

Another category of digital publication begins in print but

uses technology to enhance the print version dramatically.

Perhaps these works should be called “reborn digital.” The

University of Virginia Press’s Rotunda project, for example, is

designed to bring together related print editions into a textbase

that is easily searchable. The project began with two collec-

tions. One of these, the American Founding Era, is planned

to include the documentary editions based on the major

238

Born Digital

ﬁgures and institutions of the early republic, beginning with

the papers of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jeffer-

son, and Alexander Hamilton. These papers exist in multivol-

ume print editions, but Rotunda will bring them into a single

searchable archive. Instead of wading through the indexes of

several hundred print volumes (which, because they are still

in progress, do not have cumulative indexes), researchers can

enter a search term once and be directed to all the references

in all the editions.

Material that is born digital overturns many of our assump-

tions about books simply by eliminating the book’s organizing

principle: the page. Because The Papers of George Washington

was designed for print, it has series, volumes, and pages. Had

the project begun in the 1990s, it would have none of these. It

would have no single organizing principle because it would

not matter whether the material was arranged chronologically,

topically, or in some other way. All the documents would be

there, with notes and apparatus, and the textbase would be

structured so that users could consult the documents and order

them in a variety of ways. Citations would be made to docu-

ments rather than to the nonexistent pages.

Once you eliminate the page, you eliminate most of the con-

ventions of the book: table of contents, list of illustrations,

numbered footnotes, index, cross-references, glossary, run-

ning heads, and appendices. The functions of these elements

remain, but they are performed invisibly. For example, instead

of listing terms and concepts in a traditional index, authors

enter tags that allow readers to search for them. This makes

life easier for readers, but far more difﬁcult for the author and

publisher.

Publications that are born or reborn digital are so new and

so varied that it is difﬁcult to provide advice of the kind that

I have offered for authors of books and journals. There are

as yet no general agreements about who is responsible for

which tasks; about how such publications will be evaluated,

either before or after publication; about who will pay for the

initial investment, how that investment will be earned back,

or how proﬁts will be divided; or about who is responsible for

239

Handbook for Academic Authors

maintaining and updating the site. I hope that the following

pages will provide some useful guidance and examples, but

any digital publication will require a lot of thought – not just

in its creative aspects but also in the very practical details of

ﬁnding and working with a publisher.

Finding a Publisher for Digital Work

Most digital work so far has fallen into one of two categories:

resources for teachers and resources for scholars. Textbook

publishers are developing digital materials directly related to

their products, mostly as supplements (see Chapters 7 and 8).

Teaching materials for more general use, though, are generally

published by nonproﬁt groups. Resources for scholars have

attracted a number of types of publisher. One caution: It is not

entirely clear what the term “publisher” means in this context

beyond its classic meaning of “one who makes public.” Pub-

lishers of digital material may or may not hold the copyright;

they may or may not provide substantial funding; they may

or may not sell the publication; they may or may not provide

editorial, design, technical, and marketing services. The only

functions they all seem to serve are to decide whether to take on

the project and to distribute the work by providing a Web site.

Scholarly publishers, both university presses and com-

mercial houses, have published numerous digital scholarly

resources. Most of these fall into the reborn digital category:

digital collections of Victorian periodicals, documentary edi-

tions (like Rotunda), historic newspapers, or textual editions.

Perhaps book publishers are most comfortable with products

that are most like their traditional offerings.

The best publisher for a digital publication may be your own

university. If you are working with scholars at other universi-

ties, their institutions may be interested as well. The Virginia

Center for Digital History publishes The Valley of the Shadow,

a prize-winning Web site by Edward L. Ayers that provides a

wealth of documents, maps, census data, church records, and

newspapers for students to use in studying the Civil War. The

240

Born Digital

center also publishes several other collections of documents,

television footage, maps, and other materials related mostly to

the history of Virginia and the South. The Walt Whitman Archive,

edited by Ed Folsom and Kenneth Price, is published by the

Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the Univer-

sity of Nebraska–Lincoln, and it receives substantial assistance

from other universities and libraries. The William Blake Archive

is sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hill, though it has received signiﬁcant support from other insti-

tutions. A consortium that includes museums, universities,

and scientiﬁc organizations, with foundation funding, is cre-

ating the online Encyclopedia of Life. Many organizations with

a Web presence are possible publishers, too: several libraries,

museums, and state historical societies offer digital publica-

tions related to their missions and collections. The Library of

Congress has a number of digital offerings based on its own

collections and those of other repositories.

Academic and professional societies also have begun to get

involved in digital publishing. In addition to making their

journals available online, they may offer teaching and research

resources. The American Political Science Association, for

example, publishes online simulations for teaching. Several

professional societies in astronomy and physics have created

a Web site called Compadre (www.compadre.org), which pro-

vides access to digital teaching resources created by individual

scientists and generally published by them, their departments,

or their universities.

In choosing a publisher for digital work, then, authors need

to ﬁrst consider exactly what they want the publisher to do – a

step that is unnecessary for print publications. Do you simply

want a host for your Web site, or do you want institutional

assistance with its creation, funding, and maintenance? Will

you own the copyright and the publication, or will you trans-

fer it to the publisher? You need to think about what you bring

to the project and what you lack. How much technical help

do you need? For example, do you know how to choose hard-

ware, software, and markup languages? Do you know how

to use them? Are you familiar with standards for scanning

241

Handbook for Academic Authors

and image quality? You must also consider which of the pub-

lisher’s traditional functions you need. You probably want the

help of a developmental editor, a copy editor, a technical editor,

a designer, and a marketing department. In all likelihood, not

all of this help can come from the publisher, as we shall see in

a moment. Financial arrangements are also an issue. Do you

want to make money from the project? Do you want to dis-

tribute it free of charge or sell it? You are more likely to ﬁnd a

compatible publisher, and to establish the kind of partnership

you want, if you are very clear about all of these matters at the

outset.

Working with a Digital Publisher

Many of the traditional stages of the publishing process remain

essential in creating digital works. Any text you write will need

a copy editor, and that part of the process will work pretty

much as it would for print publication. But you may also want

a developmental editor to look at the whole publication to see

whether the concept makes sense and is carried out in a logical

and usable way. Obviously, this would be done very early in

the process. For digital publications, “editing” includes testing

to ﬁnd out whether the publication does what it is supposed

to do and does not frustrate or irritate the user. This is not a

task that most publishers’ editors are trained to do, so you will

need a different sort of editor to carry it out.

Text and images must be encoded. Most scholarly editions

use eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Even if you do not

do the encoding yourself, you will have to decide what is to be

coded and how, and you will have to supervise and check the

coders’ work.

All text needs to be proofread in one way or another. Orig-

inal text and rekeyboarded material need to be proofread tra-

ditionally, of course, but even documents or text scanned as

images will need to be checked to make sure the image is

what it is supposed to be and that the image is complete and

correct; scanned images often must be cleaned up and cropped.

242

Born Digital

Captions, descriptions, credit lines, and annotations must be

proofread and linked to the correct images. In addition, all

encoding must be parsed, and links must be checked. The

internal links and other navigation tools must be tested not

only before publication but periodically afterwards as well. If

you link to other sites, you should limit yourself to stable URLs

and check frequently to ensure that they are working. In addi-

tion to a regular proofreader, then, you will need someone to

do the technical proofreading and to make necessary changes.

In place of indexing, the publication must be tagged for

searching (this is part of the encoding). Like indexing, this kind

of tagging has both a challenging intellectual component and

a tedious mechanical one. You can safely delegate the latter to

someone else in your employ or the publisher’s, but the author

is best equipped to do the intellectual tasks of deciding what

tags should be attached to each passage.

Permissions may be an enormous burden. One of the best

reasons for creating a digital publication is to take advantage

of a format that accommodates a large number of documents,

images, speech, music, and video. All of that content belongs to

someone (unless it is in the public domain), and you will need

permission to use it. You will have to identify and locate the

owner, write for permission, follow up, and pay the fees. You

will also have to include credit lines and copyright notices on

the site to comply with the terms of the permissions. Generally,

you will be asking for a nonexclusive license for use on the Web

in all languages and all countries. The fees you are charged will

depend largely on the business model you and your publisher

adopt for your work.

Funding and Evaluation

In traditional publishing, authors rely on colleagues and peer

reviewers to evaluate their work and provide advice. This

system needs to be enhanced for digital publications. Most

digital projects are collaborative, with at least two directors.

Every major digital publication also has an advisory board or

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Handbook for Academic Authors

group of consultants to help with questions of content, presen-

tation, and technology. Scholars from other institutions will

be valuable for decisions about content and standards. You

will also want to invite scholars who direct successful digi-

tal projects similar to your own. Their experience and knowl-

edge about funding, technology, and presentation are invalu-

able. For technological advice, many projects in the humanities

disciplines work with the Institute for Advanced Technology

in the Humanities (IATH; www.iath.virginia.edu), which pro-

vides training, consulting, and technical assistance. Your own

institution may have experts and facilities to help with techni-

cal matters.

An advisory board is crucial if you are seeking funding, and

major digital products are so expensive that you will need it.

Granting agencies and foundations will want to know that

you are not making intellectual or technical decisions in a vac-

uum. The advisory board reassures them that the people who

can beneﬁt from your work – the eminent scholars in your

ﬁeld, their junior colleagues, and graduate students – agree

with your choices and that you are receiving the technical

advice you need. Digital publications are too complex, time-

consuming, and expensive to be solo projects.

For digital projects, peer review occurs most often when

directors seek funding. Government agencies and private

foundations subject all proposals to review by subject and

technical experts. Once a project has been funded through this

process, universities and other institutions become far more

enthusiastic about adding their own support. Federal funding

agencies have become eager to sponsor digital projects because

of their visibility and accessibility. Many have set aside funds

speciﬁcally for this purpose, and they will use reviewers and

panels well versed in digital technology. You need to be sure

that your proposal will pass muster.

A major concern among faculty members has been whether

they will receive adequate credit for digital work. Often senior

colleagues do not understand the process, and they may under-

value the products. However, if your project attracts agency or

foundation money, recognition of its value by your colleagues

244

Born Digital

will follow. In addition, a number of groups now offer awards

for outstanding digital publications, and winning one of these

will also demonstrate the value of your work.

To Sell or Not to Sell

A mantra of digital communication has been that informa-

tion wants to be free. It would be more accurate to say that

Internet users have come to expect that information, as well

as creative work and scholarly resources, will be free. Even

some of the material on the Web that is not free appears to

be, because the fees are paid by libraries and are invisible to

their patrons. In fact, though, many complex, expensive digital

publications are available free to users around the world. The

William Blake Archive, The Walt Whitman Archive, The Valley of

the Shadow, and many other research and teaching sites charge

nothing for the truly remarkable resources they provide. All

of these projects, however, have received substantial subsidies

from the National Endowment for the Humanities, from pri-

vate foundations, from individual donors, and from their own

institutions. They are, in a sense, the Public Broadcasting Sys-

tem of the Web.

Some digital products are not free. Rotunda, the University

of Virginia Press’s electronic project, charges subscription fees.

The many collections of historical periodicals published by

commercial scholarly presses also charge subscription fees,

generally higher than Rotunda’s. It is likely that any “reborn

digital” project will have to charge fees, because the digital

product will undercut the sales of the print version. (Most of

the free digital publications are based largely on public-domain

material.)

You and your publisher will have to decide what kind of

publication you are creating. If it is a resource to be used by

professionals used to paying for online services (lawyers, doc-

tors, accountants, investment advisors, etc.), you will probably

develop a business model that will include fees to pay back

your investment and generate a proﬁt. If it is a resource to

245

Handbook for Academic Authors

be used by students and scholars in the humanities, you will

probably seek underwriting and plan to offer it free. If it falls

somewhere in between – for example, an online simulation for

classroom use – you will need to do some market research.

Remember, though, that no scholarly publisher that makes an

investment in your work can afford to give it away. Free publi-

cations will, in all likelihood, be published by institutions that

are in some other business.

Marketing and Maintenance

Another mantra of the Web has been “if you post it, they will

come.” They won’t. Resources on the Web must be marketed,

often aggressively, especially if they are not free. For many sub-

jects, there is a vast amount of free second-rate material on the

Web that competes with authoritative, high-quality resources.

For example, you can ﬁnd outdated, inferior editions of some

Founding Era projects on the Web free because they are in the

public domain. Students and scholars are much better served

by the newer editions, but these are not always free. Most high

school or college students (if they are even aware of more than

one version) will settle for the free, readily available, albeit

inferior, edition. Libraries will pay subscription fees for better

editions because they recognize the value, but you must make

them aware of your publication and its superiority.

Free publications, too, must be marketed. Scholars, students,

teachers, and general readers need somehow to be made aware

of the availability of the publication you have worked so hard

to create. This is where working with an experienced publisher

is a real advantage: Publishers know how to market publica-

tions. If you are working with your own university, you will

need to collaborate with the news and public relations ofﬁces,

and you may want to hire a marketing consultant. Writing

about your project in professional journals and newsletters

will advance the effort, as will giving papers at conferences

of scholars and teachers. Presenting workshops to show how

your publication can be used for teaching will also help to

246

Born Digital

promote it; these can be produced as podcasts to be consulted

whenever teachers need them. You will also need to take all

the steps necessary to ensure that search engines will direct

users to your site. If journals in your ﬁeld review digital publi-

cations, be sure to send them press releases and other publicity

about your work.

You will need a good system to keep track of how many

people are using your digital publication and which parts are

most popular. Certainly in the initial stages, you will want to

offer a way for users to provide feedback. This will demonstrate

that the publication is being used, provide useful information

about the functioning and problems of the site, and document

praise to pass along to donors and sponsors.

To be successful, a digital publication must work smoothly

and must continue to work. No one has to maintain a book, but

a digital publication must be maintained and monitored. Links

have to function, pages must be legible, the server can’t go

down too often, and so forth. You or your publisher must take

on this responsibility. Generally, it should be an institutional

responsibility rather than an individual one.

In addition, digital publications must be updated, cor-

rected, and expanded. The editors of The Walt Whitman Archive

expressed this graciously in one of their applications to the

National Endowment for the Humanities: “One healthy aspect

of electronic scholarship, of course, is that criticism of projects

like the Archive becomes therapeutic rather than purely judg-

mental: if a review of a book edition points out errors in tran-

scription or errors of omission, there is nothing to do but cringe;

if a reviewer of an electronic edition points out problems, how-

ever, that reviewer in fact becomes a collaborator.”

Updating

and correcting is not just a possibility; it is an obligation. The

author of the publication must accept this responsibility and

provide for a successor to continue the work.

Digital publications are complex and expensive. Those who

undertake them must learn a great deal about technology. In

many cases, the commitment to such a project requires the

www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/refmaterialsamples/whitmannebraska.pdf.

247

Handbook for Academic Authors

postponement of other scholarly work. Creating a digital pub-

lication often demands that an author learn to work collabora-

tively and supervise a staff. It almost invariably means spend-

ing a great deal of time writing grant proposals, soliciting insti-

tutional support, and learning to manage a large budget.

Digital publications are also intensely rewarding. They gen-

erate and support new and exciting scholarship, they provide

nonexperts of all ages with access to your discipline, and they

attract a far wider audience than any other form of scholar-

ship. Authors of digital publications have the opportunity to

work with others who share their interests; to expand their

own knowledge; and to travel to libraries, laboratories, and

museums that they might never otherwise have seen. Digital

publishing is still a pioneering effort, and it generates excite-

ment among its practitioners as well as its users.

Thinking Big

I began this book by talking about the reasons scholars write

and publish. I would like to end it by urging you to think about

the ways both traditional and emerging media can help you

meet the different goals you have as a researcher, writer, and

teacher. Every idea can develop in myriad ways. That was true

even when the media available for dissemination were limited

to paper and ink. An idea might turn into an article for one

of several journals; it might end up as a classroom lecture; it

might expand into a book. Now, with sources easier to acquire

and manipulate, and with potential collaborators as close as

your computer terminal, research projects can be more ambi-

tious and their outcomes can be disseminated in a variety of

ways to multiple audiences. Academic authors must still think

about – and work at – the small stuff: careful writing, proof-

reading, accurate citations, indexing, and all the other details

that make their discoveries and ideas clear to others. But the

source of academic writing has always been the big things:

the questions, answers, alternatives, ideas, evidence, and

248

Born Digital

arguments that scholars think and write about. Now the oppor-

tunities for creativity extend beyond the beginnings of a project

through to its dissemination. Authors, and their publishers,

can now be as creative in presenting knowledge as they are in

discovering it.

249

Bibliography

Basic References

Association of American University Presses. Directory. Annual. Dis-

tributed by the University of Chicago Press. Names, addresses,

and descriptions of the publishing programs of the member

presses.

Butcher, Judith, Caroline Drake, and Maureen Leach. Butcher’s Copy-

Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Copy-Editors and

Proofreaders. 4th ed., fully rev. and updated. New York: Cam-

bridge University Press, 2006. The British equivalent of Chicago,

but more clearly organized and concise.

The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2010. The bible of scholarly editors. The Web site of the

University of Chicago Press includes a Chicago Manual of Style

FAQ feature that allows you to query the editors about matters

of style that the manual does not cover or does not cover clearly.

Dessauer, John P. Book Publishing: A Basic Introduction. 3ded.New

York: Continuum, 1989. A classic description of publishing, from

acquisition through sales, that focuses on trade, textbook, and

small press publishing.

Journal of Scholarly Publishing. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Quarterly. (Formerly Scholarly Publishing.) An excellent source of

information on current problems, trends, and ideas in scholarly

publishing, along with useful advice from editors on practical

topics.

Literary Market Place (LMP). New York: Bowker. Annual. A directory

of U.S. and foreign publishers that provides names, addresses,

and other useful information. Also includes listings for transla-

tors, literary agents, awards, and review media. Limited access

251

Bibliography

to this volume is provided on the Web, or your library may

subscribe to the full Web version.

Publishing Research Quarterly. New York: Springer. (Formerly Book

Research Quarterly.) This journal covers trade and textbook pub-

lishing, as well as scholarly journals and books.

U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Style Manual, 2000. 29th ed. Wash-

ington: GPO, 2000. Also available via the Internet from the GPO

Access Web site. Especially helpful for style matters involving

government, international affairs, politics, and currencies.

Dictionaries

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 4th ed. Boston:

Houghton Mifﬂin, 2006. An authoritative dictionary with help-

ful usage notes and illustrations.

Chambers Dictionary. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 2008. Excel-

lent for British spelling and usage and for archaic words. This

dictionary is organized around root words and is the best of the

lot for browsing.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springﬁeld, Mass.:

Merriam-Webster, 2003. The most generally accepted desk dic-

tionary.

Oxford American Dictionary. 2d ed. New York: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 2005. A convenient dictionary with helpful usage

notes.

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language,

Unabridged. Springﬁeld, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1986. The most

generally accepted unabridged dictionary, but it does not give

advice on grammar and usage.

Writing and Usage: General Guides

I have listed only a few of the many such guides available. If you ﬁnd

another that is both authoritative and helpful to you, use it.

Bernstein, T heodore M. The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English

Usage. New York: Atheneum, 1995. More detailed than Strunk

and White, less difﬁcult than Fowler.

252

Bibliography

Fowler, H. W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. 2ded.,rev.by

Sir Ernest Gowers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Old-fashioned, opinionated, and fun to read.

Garner, Bryan A. Garner’s Modern American Usage. 2d ed. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2003.

Maggio, Rosalie. Talking About People: A Guide to Fair and Accurate

Language. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1997. Although you may occa-

sionally disagree with the author’s characterization of a word as

biased, this book provides sensible guidance and alternatives.

Schwartz, Marilyn. Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1995.

Stainton, Elsie Myers. “Writing and Rewriting.” Scholarly Publishing

10,no.1 (October 1978): 75–83. Still sound advice on writing and

revising.

Strunk, W., Jr., and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. Boston:

Allyn & Bacon, 2000. The one writing manual you must own.

It is available in several editions, including one illustrated by

Maira Kalman: New York: Penguin, 2007.

Subject-Related Writing Advice, Style Manuals,

and Guides to Journals

Agriculture

American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America,

Soil Science Society of America. Publications Handbook and Style

Manual. 2d ed. Madison, Wis.: ASA, CSSA, SSSA, 1998.

Art

Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. 9th ed. Upper

Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2007.

Biological Science

Atlas, Michel C. Author’s Handbook of Styles for Life Science Journals.

Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1996.

Pechenik, Jan A. A Short Guide to Writing About Biology. 6th ed. New

York: Longman, 2006.

253

Bibliography

Zeiger, Mimi. Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers. 2ded.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

See also Sciences

Chemistry

American Chemical Society. The ACS Style Guide: A Manual for Authors

and Editors. 2d ed. Janet S. Dodd, ed. Washington, D.C.: ACS,

1997.

Ebel, Hans Friedrich, Claus Bliefert, and William E. Russey. The Art of

Scientiﬁc Writing: From Student Reports to Professional Publications

in Chemistry and Related Fields. New York: VCH, 1987.

See also Sciences

Communication

Knapp, Mark L., and John A. Daly. A Guide to Publishing in Scholarly

Communication Journals. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004.

Economics and Business

Thomson, William. A Guide for the Young Economist. Cambridge,

Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.

Education

Wepner, Shelley B., and Linda B. Gambrell, eds. Beating the Odds: Get-

ting Published in the Field of Literacy. Newark, Del.: International

Reading Association, 2006.

Health Professions

American Medical Association. AMA Manual of Style . 10th ed. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Barnum, Barbara Stevens. Writing and Getting Published: A Primer for

Nurses. New York: Springer, 1995.

254

Bibliography

Byrne, D. W. Publishing Your Medical Research Paper: What They Don’t

Teach You in Medical School. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams

& Wilkins, 1997.

Daly, Jeanette M. Writer’s Guide to Nursing Periodicals. Thousand

Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2000.

Fondiller, Shirley H. The Writer’s Workbook: Health Professionals’ Guide

to Getting Published. 2d ed. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones & Bartlett,

1999.

Heinrich, Kathleen T. A Nurse’s Guide to Publishing: Dare to Share.

Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett, 2007.

Huth, Edward J., M.D. Writing and Publishing in Medicine. 3ded.

Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1999.

Sheen, Anitra Peebles. Breathing Life Into Medical Writing: A Handbook.

St. Louis: Mosby, 1982. Excellent advice on writing clearly and

precisely. Although the examples are medical, the book is useful

to all academic writers.

Zeiger, Mimi. Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers. 2ded.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

See also Sciences

Language and Literature

Mackesy, Eileen M., and Karen Mateyak, comps. MLA Directory of

Periodicals: A Guide to Journals and Series in Languages and Lit-

eratures. New York: Modern Language Association of America.

Biennial. Also available online via SilverPlatter and as a CD-

ROM.

Modern Language Association. MLA Style Manual and Guide to Schol-

arly Publishing. 3d ed. New York: MLA, 2008.

Olson, Gary A., and Todd W. Taylor, eds. Publishing in Rhetoric and

Composition. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Law

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. 18th ed. Compiled by the

editors of the Columbia Law Review,theHarvard Law Review,the

University of Pennsylvania Law Review,andtheYale Law Journal.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Law Review Association, 2005.

255

Bibliography

Mathematics

Krantz, Steven G. Mathematical Publishing: A Guidebook. Providence,

R.I.: American Mathematical Society, 2006.

Music

Irvine, Demar. Writing about Music. 3d ed., rev. and enl. by Mark A.

Radice. Portland, Ore.: Amadeus, 1999.

Wingell, Richard J. Writing About Music: An Introductory Guide. 4th

ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2008.

Nature Writing

Heintzman, J ames, Michael G ross, and Ronald Zimmerman, eds.

Making the Right Connections: A Guide for Nature Writers. Stevens

Point, Wis.: UW-SP Foundation Press, 1988.

Philosophy and Religion

Hoffman, Eric. Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy. Bowling Green,

Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center and the American

Philosophical Association, 1997.

Watson, Richard A. Writing Philosophy: A Guide to Professional Writing

and Publishing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,

1992.

Physics

American Institute of Physics. AIP Style Manual. 4th ed. New York:

AIP, 1990. Available free online at www.aip.org.

See also Sciences

Political Science

Yoder, Stephen, ed. Publishing Political Science: APSA Guide to Writ-

ing and Publishing. Washington, D.C.: American Political Science

Association, 2008.

256

Bibliography

Psychology

American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the Amer-

ican Psychological Association. 5th ed. Washington, D.C.: APA,

2001.

Journals in Psychology: A Resource Listing for Authors. 5th ed. Washing-

ton, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1997.

McInerney, Dennis Michael. Publishing Your Psychology Research: A

Guide to Writing for Journals in Psychology and Related Fields. Thou-

sand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2002.

Sternberg, Robert J., ed. Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Sciences

Council of Science Editors. Scientiﬁc Style and Format: The CSE Manual

for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. 7th ed. Reston, Va.: CSE, 2006.

Day, Robert A. How to Write and Publish a Scientiﬁc Paper. 6th ed. New

York: Greenwood, 2006.

Hancock, Elsie. Ideas into Words: Mastering the Craft of Science Writing.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Katz, Michael J. From Research to Manuscript: A Guide to Scientiﬁc

Writing. New York: Springer, 2006.

Montgomery, Scott L. The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Social Sciences

American Sociological Association. ASA Style Guide. 3d ed. Washing-

ton, D.C.: American Sociological Association, 2007.

Becker, Howard S., and Pamela Richards. Writing for Social Scientists:

How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article. 2d ed. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Journals: General Information

Axtell, James. “Twenty-Five Reasons to Publish.” In his The Pleasures

of Academe: A Celebration and Defense of Higher Education, pp. 48–

68. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. An articulate

257

Bibliography

discussion of the relationship between research and teaching

and comments on the rewards of writing.

Budd, Louis J. “On Writing Scholarly Articles.” In The Academic’s

Handbook, ed. A. Leigh DeNeef, Craufurd D. Goodwin, and Ellen

Stern McCrate, pp. 291–305. 3d ed. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univer-

sity Press, 2006. A well-written essay on working with editors of

humanities journals, with much practical advice.

Irizarry, Estelle. “Redundant and Incremental Publication.” Journal

of Scholarly Publishing 25,no.4 (July 1994): 212–20. A discussion

of the ethical issues and suggestions for editors and authors.

National Science Foundation. “Federal Support of Scientiﬁc and

Technical Publication.” Publishing Research Quarterly 14,no.4

(Winter 1998/99): 9–23. Reprint of a 1976 report on regulations

relating to page charges and a survey of practices.

Page, Gillian, Robert Campbell, and Jack Meadows. Journal Publish-

ing: Principles and Practice. Rev. ed. New York: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1997. A thorough introduction to journal publish-

ing that is concerned with nuts and bolts.

Penaskovic, Richard. “Facing Up to the Publication Gun.” Scholarly

Publishing 16,no.2 (January 1985): 136–40. Good advice on ﬁnd-

ing ideas and publishers for journal articles.

Scal, Marjorie. “The Page Charge.” Scholarly Publishing 3,no.1 (Octo-

ber 1971): 62–9. An explanation of journal ﬁnancing and the role

of page charges. Includes a discussion of rates and policies on

waivers.

Strain, Boyd R. “Publishing in Science.” In The Academic’s Handbook,

ed. A. Leigh DeNeef, Craufurd D. Goodwin, and Ellen Stern

McCrate, pp. 306–14. A concise summary of considerations for

authors of scientiﬁc articles.

Thyer, Bruce A. Successful Publishing in Scholarly Journals. Thousand

Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1994. A brief guide to submitting and revising

articles.

Zink, Steven D. “Journal Publishing in the Field of U.S. History.”

Scholarly Publishing 11,no.4 (July 1980): 343–59. Suggestions

for improving communication between authors and editors of

scholarly journals.

Refereeing

DeGeorge, Richard T., and Fred Woodward. “Ethics and Manuscript

Reviewing.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 25,no.3 (April 1994):

258

Bibliography

133–45. A good review and discussion of the obligations of

authors, editors, and publishers.

James, M. R. “Casting the Runes.” In The Ghost Stories of M. R. James,

pp. 235–7. 2d ed. London: Arnold, 1974. A memorable argument

for referees’ anonymity.

Stieg, Margaret F. “Refereeing and the Editorial Process: The AHR

and Webb.” Scholarly Publishing 14,no.2 (February 1983): 99–122.

A case study of how refereeing and editorial evaluation actually

work.

Zuckerman, Harriet, and Robert K. Merton. “Patterns of Evaluation

in Science: Institutionalization, Structure, and Functions of the

Referee System.” Minerva 9 (1971): 66–100. A classic study of the

history of refereeing, a case study of The Physical Review,and

conclusions about the system.

Reviewing Books

Budd, John. “Book Reviewing Practices of Journals in the Human-

ities.” Scholarly Publishing 13,no.4 (July 1982): 363–71.How

journals select reviewers.

Cortada, James W. “Five Ways to Be a Terrible Book Reviewer.” Jour-

nal of Scholarly Publishing 30,no.1 (October 1998): 34–7. A warn-

ing against bad practices in refereeing and reviewing.

Hoge, James O., ed. Literary Reviewing. Charlottesville: University

Press of Virginia, 1987. This thoughtful volume discusses the

duties, problems, and ethics of literary reviewing. Topics covered

include reviewing criticism; literary history; literary biography;

bibliographies; and editions of letters, journals, and diaries.

Simon, Linda. “The Pleasures of Book Reviewing.” Journal of Scholarly

Publishing 27,no.4 (July 1996): 237–41. Why and how to be an

active reviewer.

Dissertations

Fox, Mary Frank. “The Transition from Dissertation Student to

Publishing Scholar and Professional.” In Scholarly Writing and

Publishing: Issues, Problems, and Solutions, ed. Mary Frank Fox.

Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985. A very short essay on

developing habits of work and of thought that will contribute to

scholarly productivity.

259

Bibliography

Germano, William. From Dissertation to Book. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2005.

Harman, Eleanor, Ian Montagnes, and Siobhan McNemeny, eds. The

Thesis and the Book: A Guide for First-Time Authors. 2ded.Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Luey, Beth, ed. Revising Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editors.

Updated ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Zerubavel, Eviatar. The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing

Theses, Dissertations, and Books. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1999. Excellent advice on disciplining oneself to

write and revise.

Finding a Publisher

Day, Colin. “The University Press: An Organic Part of the Institu-

tion.” Scholarly Publishing 23,no.1 (October 1991): 27–44.An

excellent review of the state of university presses.

Hawes, Gene R. To Advance Knowledge: A Handbook on American Uni-

versity Press Publishing. New York: American University Press

Services, 1967. Although written in a period of rapid university

press expansion and optimism, this book remains an articulate

exposition of the purpose and workings of university presses.

Metro, Judy. “Is It Publishable? The Importance of the Editorial

Review.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 26,no.3 (April 1995):

168–72. A brief description of the manuscript review process at

a university press.

Parsons, Paul. Getting Published: The Acquisitions Process at University

Presses. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989.Astudy

of decision making at a university press.

Legal Issues

Bunnin, Brad, and Peter Beren. The Writer’s Legal Companion: The Com-

plete Handbook for the Working Writer. 3d ed. New York: Perseus,

1998.

Crawford, Tad, and Tony Lyons. The Writer’s Legal Guide. 3ded.New

York: Allworth, 2002.

Jassin, Lloyd J., and Steve C. Schechter. The Copyright Permission and

Libel Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide for Writers, Editors, and Pub-

lishers. New York: John Wiley, 1998.

260

Bibliography

Kozak, Ellen M. Every Writer’s Guide to Copyright and Publishing Law.

3d ed. New York: Holt, 2004.

Norwick, Kenneth P., and Jerry Simon Chasen. The Rights of Authors,

Artists, and Other Creative People: The Basic ACLU Guide to Author

and Artist Rights. 2d ed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University

Press, 1992.

Strong, William S. The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide. 5th ed. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. The classic in the ﬁeld.

Subventions

Jones, Barbara G. “Changing Author Relationships and Competitive

Strategies of University Publishers.” Journal of Scholarly Publish-

ing 31,no.1 (October 1999): 3–19. A survey of publishers that

included questions about cash subsidies as well as increased

author responsibilities.

Kameny, Fred. “Authors with Deep Pockets: The Ethics of Subsidies.”

Journal of Scholarly Publishing 29,no.2 (January 1998): 65–70.A

survey of practices and a discussion of the ethical issues.

Smith, John Hazel. “Subvention of Scholarly Publishing.” Scholarly

Publishing 9,no.1 (October 1977): 19–29. A survey of university

press subvention policies and practices.

Multiauthor Books

Horowitz, Irving Louis. “The Place of the Festschrift.” Scholarly Pub-

lishing 21,no.2 (January 1990): 77–83. Useful ideas to improve

the genre.

Nederman, Cary J. “Herding Cats: The View from the Volume and

Series Editor.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 36,no.4 (July 2005):

221–8. A discussion of the value – and problems – of essay col-

lections.

Textbooks

Arnold, David L. “Faculty Perceptions of the Scholarship and Utility

of Writing College-Level Textbooks.” Publishing Research Quar-

terly 9,no.2 (Summer 1993): 42–54. A study that surveyed

faculty and department chairs to determine their evaluation of

261

Bibliography

the scholarship required to write a textbook and the likelihood

that such work will be rewarded.

Heilenman, L. Kathy. “Of Cultures and Compromises.” Publishing

Research Quarterly 9,no.2 (Summer 1993): 55–67. A discussion of

the conﬂicts between the culture of academe and that of textbook

publishers, with suggestions for resolving them.

Trade Books

Callenbach, Ernest. Publisher’s Lunch: A Dialogue Concerning the Secrets

of How Publishers Think and What Authors Can Do About It. Berke-

ley: Ten Speed Press, 1989. A series of conversations between an

acquiring editor and a prospective author in which each sets out

typical concerns and attitudes.

Kendall-Tackett, Kathleen A. How to Write for a General Audience: A

Guide for Academics Who Want to Share Their Knowledge with the

World and Have Fun Doing It. Washington, D.C.: APA Life Tools,

2007.

Knauer, Joyce. “Scholarly Books in General Bookstores.” Scholarly

Publishing 19,no.2 (January 1988): 79–85. Although directed

toward university press staff, this article is a useful description

of the lay audience and the bookseller’s role in reaching it.

Luey, Beth. “University Press Trade Books in the Review Media.”

Scholarly Publishing 25,no.2 (January 1994): 84–92. An evaluation

of presses’ effectiveness in getting their books reviewed in the

popular media.

Norton, Scott. Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers,

Authors, and Publishers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2009. Norton explains how a developmental editor works – a

process that authors might also use to expand the reach of their

work.

Rabiner, Susan, and Alfred Fortunato. Thinking Like Your Editor: How

to Write Great Serious Nonﬁction and Get It Published. New York:

Norton, 2003. An excellent guide to writing for general readers.

Agents

Association of Authors’ Agents. www.agentsassoc.co.uk.

Association of Authors’ Representatives. www.aar-online.org.

262

Bibliography

Sambuchino, Chuck. Guide to Literary Agents. Cincinnati: Writer’s

Digest Books. Annual.

Mechanics

Design

Hendel, Richard. On Book Design. New Haven: Yale University Press,

1998. The author has designed many prize-winning scholarly

books.

Lee, Marshall. Bookmaking: The Illustrated Guide to Design, Production,

Editing. 3d ed. New York: Norton, 2004. Although this book

provides more detail than an amateur designer needs, it is easy

to follow.

Williamson, Hugh. Methods of Book Design: The Practice of an Indus-

trial Craft. 3d ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.This

book is meant for professional designers, but it does provide an

introduction to the principles of book design.

Illustrations

Brouwer, Onno. “The Cartographer’s Role and Requirements.” Schol-

arly Publishing 14,no.3 (April 1983): 231–42. How to work with

a professional cartographer.

Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

Cheshire, Conn.: G raphics Press, 1983. An elegant, detailed book

about the use and abuse of graphs. Vital for the writer in statis-

tical ﬁelds and fascinating for others.

———. Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press,

1990. Another superb volume, this time with more color and

discussions of electronic media.

Bielstein, Susan M. Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about

Art as Intellectual Property. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2006.

263

Bibliography

U.S. Library of Congress. Copyright Ofﬁce. “Copyright Basics.”

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce, n.d. Avail-

able free on the Copyright Ofﬁce Web site. An ofﬁcial summary

of the law.

———. “How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work.” Wash-

ington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce, n.d. Available

free on the Copyright Ofﬁce Web site. An explanation of how

to determine whether a work is still protected by copyright and

who holds the rights.

Indexing

Mulvany, Nancy C. Indexing Books. 2d ed. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2005. For the author who wants to learn more

about the theory and practice of indexing.

Economics

Bailey, Herbert S., Jr. The Art and Science of Book Publishing. Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1970. A detailed analysis of the busi-

ness side of publishing.

Broderick, John C. “The Cost of a Bad Book.” Scholarly Publishing

18,no.2 (January 1987): 83–8. Broderick computes the costs of

researching, writing, publishing, cataloging, and storing a mono-

graph.

Potter, Clarkson N. Who Does What and Why in Book Publishing: Writ-

ers, Editors and Money Men. Secaucus, N.J.: Birch Lane Press, 1990.

The last chapter is a very clear explanation of some publishing

business practices.

Digital Publishing

Crane, Gregory. “‘Hypermedia’ and Scholarly Publishing.” Scholarly

Publishing 21,no.3 (April 1990): 131–55. A description of the

conception and development of the Perseus Project, originally

a CD-ROM for the study of classic Greek texts, now available

online as the Perseus Digital Library.

264

Bibliography

Kasdorf, William. The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing. New York:

Columbia University Press, 2003.

Robbins, Robert J. “Biological Databases: A New Scientiﬁc Litera-

ture.” Publishing Research Quarterly 10, 1 (Spring 1994): 5–27.A

thorough, thoughtful analysis of the impact, advantages, and

problems of scholarly database publishing.

265

Index

abbreviations, list of, 182

abridgments, 76–77, 121

abstracts, 19

acceptability clause, 66, 69–70,

109

accuracy, 13, 146; see also

proofreading

acknowledgments, 182

advance contract, 69–71, 155,

174; see also contract

advances

for encyclopedias, 114

for scholarly books, 48, 70,

81–82

for textbooks, 129

for trade books, 53–54, 151–52,

166, 167, 234

advertising, 28, 29, 102, 171, 213,

233; see also marketing

agents, literary, 59–60, 152–55,

165, 262–63

anthologies

compiling of, 118–22

permissions for, 77, 120–22

production of, 121–22

publishers for, 107

as textbook supplements, 130

articles, see journal articles;

journals

artists, freelance, 190

artwork, see illustrations

Association of American

University Presses, 46, 57,

215

audience

for anthologies, 119

for book reviews, 31

for dissertations and books,

35–37

estimates of, 219, 224

for journal articles, 25

for textbooks, 124

for trade books, 155–57

author’s alterations, 85–86, 201

author’s editors, 60–61

authorship, deﬁned, 18

backlist, 220

best-sellers, 73–74, 150, 151–52

bias, 134–37

bibliographies, 40, 118, 120,

148–49, 177, 182–83

binding, cost of, 211, 228–29

book clubs, 77–78, 234

book reviews, see reviews

booksellers

advertising by, 171, 233

discounts to, 216, 224, 231, 233

267

Index

camera-ready copy, 19, 82–83,

85, 108, 144–45, 183–87,

210

captions, 195

cartographers, 189–90

CD-ROMs, 130

citations, accuracy of, 13; see also

bibliographies; notes

coauthors, 90

coding, of digital publications,

242

coeditors, 90, 118

complimentary copies, 6, 27–28,

80, 83, 211

condensations, 76–77

conference proceedings, 25, 186;