Author: Badia Ahad, PhD
As a graduate student, I had a lot of difficulties writing the dissertation. I was told by my readers that I needed to “bolster” my language, that my analysis could be pushed “further,” and that my arguments were too diffuse. These kinds of criticisms are not uncommon for dissertation projects, but the painstaking labor to correct these issues produced a great deal of insecurity and a healthy dose of imposter syndrome. I was left with this project that was “defended,” but I still wasn’t certain that it was “good.” Or, at least book-worthy. And yet within months after graduation, I was in my new tenure-track job attempting to learn how to teach, how to be a good committee member, how to reserve books for my class, how to use the department copy machine, how to turn this dissertation into a book, and how to convince others that it deserved to be published.
Hoping for clear guidance, I hesitantly approached a few colleagues about the process. I was told: “You need to write a proposal,” “You need to talk to editors,” “You need to shop the project.” This advice was disseminated so matter-of-factly that I was nervous to follow up with the simple question—“how?” I thought that asking this question might betray that I didn’t know what I was doing and that I didn’t belong in that job or even in academia.
After months of trying to write a proposal without even a good sense of what a proposal looked like, I reached out to a colleague at another institution. This is where I found the answers that I needed. Were it not for that person’s time and intellectual generosity, I honestly do not know how long I would have tread the labyrinthine process of publishing my academic book manuscript.
Once I was on the other side of that experience, I thought about how many pre-tenure faculty members were likely fumbling and bumbling their way through a process that is so singularly important to not only the development of one’s scholarly identity but, in many cases, to one’s very livelihood.
I have had the privilege to share my experiences and, more importantly, the lessons that I’ve learned along the way with over 1000 academics who have participated in my Book Proposal Boot Camp over the past 7 years. I’m elated that faculty still find my workshop useful, but this also signals that valuable resources in academia are often invisible or are virtually inaccessible to the people who need them the most. I developed the Book Proposal Boot Camp because I didn’t want other faculty, particularly minoritized faculty, who are rarely the beneficiaries of formal and informal mentoring networks within academia, to experience the shame and embarrassment that marked my journey to publishing my first academic book.
As you prepare to publish your first scholarly manuscript, I have a few words of advice that I hope will help to clear the path towards publication:
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask…for Sample Proposals, For Help, For Readers
As a coach with NCFDD’s Faculty Success Program, I have had the privilege of working with faculty across institutional types, ranks, and disciplines for the past 8 years. What I have witnessed in that time is that faculty across institutional types, ranks, and disciplines are nervous and afraid to ask for the help that they need. I get it. We all know how busy we are, and we don’t want to infringe on others’ time. We are anxious that we will get rejected or ignored. I can’t guarantee that someone might say that they are too busy to assist with your proposal or that they don’t have time to meet with you to talk about academic publishing. That’s fine. Acknowledge that reality, and keep it moving—try your bestie from grad school, your former dissertation advisor or committee member, your colleague next door, the scholar with whom you shared a panel and a great conversation last year. My point is that you should not let the fear (or the reality) of being told “no” prevent you from seeking a “yes.” Know this—scholars participate in these kinds of intellectual exchanges ALL THE TIME. Yes, your prolific senior colleague does it too. You will not be inventing the wheel by asking someone to read your proposal or by asking someone who has a book sitting on the shelf if you can use their proposal as a model.
The All Important “Through-Line”
Each part of the proposal is important. The proposal should clearly convey the contours of your project (the argument, evidence, your role existing critical conversations, what is at stake in the work, etc.) and, in most proposals that I read, authors tend to do this very well. However, one element of the proposal that is often overlooked or understated is a clear explanation as to why your project should exist as a monograph rather than a series of journal articles. This may be evident for some topics, but the idea that your project offers a coherent and compelling narrative over the course of 200 or so pages may not be intuitive to readers of your proposal. In the Book Proposal workshop, I share with participants feedback from one of my reader’s reports in which a reader commented that “this chapter seems inconsistent with the previous two, and moreover, does not appear to be clearly connected to the coherent book project.” Yikes. Fortunately, I was able to clarify this connection more explicitly in my response to the reader’s report, but it serves as a good example of why it is crucial to demonstrate how each part of the book fits together as a seamless project.
Make the Right Choice…for You
We recently had the pleasure of having Dawn Durante, Senior Acquisitions Editor at the University of Illinois Press, do a lively Q&A with NCFDD members about all things academic publishing. In that dialogue, one participant asked, “How do you know what press is the best press for you?” Dawn responded by advising this participant to think about the academic books they are reading and engaging in their own work. This is so important. I think we often get the message to publish with a TOP press, but what may be the top press for someone working in Anthropology might be different from a scholar in Political Science or Literary Studies. Select a press that will support your book, that has a healthy list in your field and, ideally, an editor who sees the value in your work and can be a champion for it. Again, you have spent YEARS bringing these ideas together and you’ve likely sacrificed quite a bit along the way. You want your book to have a good home—one in which it is welcomed, supported, and celebrated.
The road to publishing your academic book will be difficult: you will likely receive reader’s comments that will, upon first read at least, produce a familiar combination of dread/anxiety/anger; you will run into multiple unexpected roadblocks with the chapter that was supposed to be “easy” to revise; or, the term in which you thought you were going to make a ton of progress on the book is now saddled with last-minute departmental service obligations and/or disgruntled students. Even in the absence of the aforementioned scenarios, even when everything runs relatively smoothly, it is still a process that takes longer than we would like. In addition to the book’s necessity for professional advancement, I invite you to think about your project as an expression and validation of your innovative ideas, your compelling arguments, and the new knowledge that you are making available to us all. Your book deserves a place on the shelves of your students, colleagues, family and friends. You got this.