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Deciding to write a book and getting published: some questions

Brian Leiter

A young philosopher writes:

I’m a recently tenured associate professor at a strong liberal arts college.  I have a decent number of articles published at solid journals.  I’m somewhat known in the areas I work in, but I’m far from a big name or rising star.  I’ve been thinking of writing a book for a few years now, but have hesitated to do so, primarily because it seems so risky.  There are many strong journals, so even if a paper doesn’t make it immediately, there’s a decent chance of it finding a good home.  But with books, it seems there are far fewer strong publishers.  I would be very grateful for any advice from your readers, particularly with respect to the following questions…

1)   I have a few friends who have been approached by leading presses to submit manuscripts.  How common is this, and do those of us who have not been so approached stand much of a chance?  Is there any sense of how important it is to be well-known already in a given area?

2)  Relatedly, the book project I’m currently most interested in pursuing is not in the area where I’ve published most of my work.  I have published a few articles, but am relatively unknown by those who work in this other area.  Should I stick to working on a manuscript more squarely in a field where I’m at least somewhat more established?

3)   I’d be especially interested to hear from readers who wrote a book manuscript but failed to find a publisher.  Does your work on the manuscript seem like a waste of time, or do you feel that it was still worthwhile?  In retrospect do you think it would have been wiser to work on a series of articles instead?

4)   More broadly, I’d welcome any thoughts on the wisdom of attempting to write a book manuscript for someone at a tenured, mid-career stage.

 Advice from readers?  Signed comments preferred, but every comment must have a valid e-mail address.

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18 responses to “Deciding to write a book and getting published: some questions”

  1. Kathryn Norlock

    Like many, I could use the answers to these excellent questions as well. I do wish to offer a brief answer to (3). I have drafts of some of the chapters for a proposed monograph that got about three-quarters of the way through a review process and then stalled out at a key juncture; I ended up withdrawing the proposal. Indeed it was still a very worthwhile process! The efforts clarified my thinking on topics I care about, the feedback at early stages really helped punch up my work, and some of the material found its way into an article, conference presentations, and some invigorating new teaching. Writing the drafty bits has never seemed like a waste of time. It has kept me in some good habits. (Like you, I was mid-career; this was all in my second year after tenure. It partially impeded other publishing, but it was very fruitful in other ways.)

    Alas, regarding your (2), the proposed manuscript was in an area out of my specialty, and I think that was part of the problem. Editors reviewing the proposal pressed me to articulate counterarguments that I felt revealed insufficiently worked-out commitments on my part. I still think monographs outside one's comfort zone worth doing, but given the long-term research commitments they involve, perhaps they are not a great substitute for journal articles that one needs for that next promotion. I'm quite possibly wrong about this, however, so I await the answers of those with expertise.

    Reply
  2. Untenured Professor

    I am very glad to have these questions asked. May I add a few others?

    5) How much does having already published some or much of the content of a planned book help or hurt in the process of finding a publisher? I.e., do publishers look favorably on journal publications that will be turned into book chapters (perhaps after significant revision) as evidence of the value of one's ideas, or is previous publication thought to hurt book sales, or …?

    6) Is it worth asking one's advisors to put in a good word with editors whom they have worked with before, or is this unlikely to have any positive effects?

    7) If one is at a relatively early stage in one's career, how important is it to have significant portions of one's manuscript already written before one approaches a publisher? I.e., are they likely to demand to see this before coming to any sort of contract?

    8) True or false: A book proposal should be sent to only one potential publisher at a time. I have gotten mixed messages on this issue.

    Thanks in advance to those who chime in.

    Reply
  3. Brian

    I'll take a stab at some of these, starting with the most recent:

    5. For a relatively young author, having some of the material in print in good journals is a plus, not a negative, but one question a book proposal must address is how that material will be incorporated into the book–a publisher is less likely to want what is really just a collection of reprinted essays from a younger author.

    6. It's worth asking–but not just advisors. It's better if the favorable input comes from established scholars in the area who are *not* your dissertation advisors.

    7. It's usually importnat to have a lot of written material the less established you are.

    8. It depends on the publishers–if the submissions are cold, more than one at a time seems to me wise. But a cold submission in general is not as promising as one where there's some initial interest–and where there's initial interest, the publisher may want single submission (in return for a timely review and response from the publisher).

    Reply
  4. Neil

    With the well-run academic presses like OUP, the process is something like a journal submission. It is fine to contact them with a proposal; if they are interested in the project (that is, if their referees are reasonably supportive), they will ask for more material. They might ask for several chapters and have them refereed. If the author is not known in the field, they might ask for the whole book (and they might do both, first several chapters than the ms). Given that the process is dependent on referees, being unknown or less well known is not an insuperable barrier (but bear in mind that refereeing of books is not blind). Multiple submissions are fine.

    Which presses are well run? In my limited experience, the big name American university presses are not. None of them ever bothered replying to emails or snail mail proposals I sent them. This did not prevent them asking me to referee manuscripts for them. My experiences with OUP, New York and UK, have been uniformly positive.

    Reply
  5. Steven Hales

    I strongly recommend that if you are interested in shopping either a proposal or a manuscript that you contact some target presses in advance of an APA meeting and arrange to meet their respective editor for coffee. I have had editors tell me that the reason they go to APA meetings is not to sell books but to talk to authors and prospective authors. Make your pitch in person and show them that you are not pompous or insane; publishing a book is a long, drawn-out business and editors want to work with decent human beings. Be prepared to discuss the market for your book– presses actually want to sell copies of it, unlike journals who mostly don't care. Emphasize how well you respect deadlines. You're not going to get a contract from a meeting over coffee, but you might get your proposal sent for review. As others have noted, some presses are better run than others. Out of the six presses I've published with, I can say unequivocally that my best experience has been with Wiley-Blackwell. FWIW; I've not published with OUP, which others have praised.

    Reply
  6. Tristan Haze

    I'm a young philosopher writing a book, and would like to raise a further issue which people here may know something about:

    9. Free online availability:

    For those writing primarily for a pre-existing scholarly audience this may be less of an issue, but I want my book to have a chance of reaching a more widely scattered readership, and to be the sort of book which might attract new people to the area. Secondly, I'm not concerned to make money off the book. (That would be nice of course, but getting it out there seems more important.)

    Free online availability thus seems like an important thing to have in place. It's unclear to me how to go about having this, as well as some kind of peer review. Hence these questions:

    9.1. How common is it for philosophy book publishers to allow for free online availability? (Obviously they have good reasons not to allow it.)

    9.2. How, if at all, is the situation changing?

    9.3. What prospects are there for another peer review mechanism for book-length works? (E.g. one not involving publishers nor any other party whose object is to make money by providing access to the content. Print copies could then be offered through a non-selective print-on-demand service.)

    Reply
  7. Steven Hales

    Tristan, it costs a publisher between $40k and $50k to bring out a book (copyediting, artwork, typesetting, salaries, advertising, keeping the lights on). They aren't going to give away their products for free because they will go broke immediately. That's not going to change for obvious reasons. You are certainly free to give away your work if you want; just post a big pdf file on your website. But, as you note, it will not attract many readers since it is not vetted and has no imprimatur of quality. It is a big job to review manuscripts, which is why publishers pay people to do it. I don't see how to attract peer reviewers to take on manuscripts by unknown authors not just for free, but when those manuscripts haven't even had even a preliminary assessment by an editor.

    Reply
  8. Aidan McGlynn

    On the issue raised by Tristan Haze and Steven Hales, it's perhaps worth noting that Andrew Cullison's Sympoze project may in time offer a way out of the impasse described by Professor Hales, by exploiting crowd-sourcing to secure refereeing for works (even book-length works) that will then be freely available. I don't pretend to know if this is remotely where the future of peer-review and academic publication lies, but it does seem worth exploring alternatives to the current model, and Andrew has taken several concrete steps towards giving us one such alternative. The project's website is here: http://www.sympoze.com/

    Reply
  9. Stuart Elden

    I'm not in a philosophy department, though I have published in philosophy lists. I've posted some reasonably detailed comments on the initial questions and the ones in the comments here – http://progressivegeographies.com/2011/08/30/bookspublishing/

    Reply
  10. David Chalmers

    I've learned a bit about these things in 11 years editing a book series for OUP. Although a caveat in advance: every press is different, every author's experience is different, and any generalizations in this area should be taken with a grain of salt.

    One important thing is that book publishing is somewhat less risky than you'd think. That's a consequence of two things:

    (i) Acceptance rates: while top journals accept 5-10% of what is submitted to them, top book publishers accept a significantly higher percentage. I don't know the exact number, but i believe that for many presses it is higher than 50%, at least among professional submissions that get to the review stage. It's true that many manuscripts are rejected by press editors before the review stage for obvious flaws. But if your manuscript is competent and sophisticated in your area and has something worthwhile to say, it has a good chance of being accepted. My experience is that while journals editors are looking for a reason to reject articles, press editors are looking for a reason to accept books.

    (ii) Number of publishers: there are a lot of good publishers. In analytic philosophy there's a clear top group: the big four UK publishers (Oxford, Cambridge, Blackwell, Routledge) and the big four US publishers (MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Chicago). my sense is that Oxford, Cambridge, Routledge, and MIT publish more monographs by relatively junior authors than the others. Even sticking to those, that's four shots at a very good publisher. Then there are any number of perfectly respectable publishers outside that group, many of whom are hungry for decent books to publish. Publishing with those may not give your career as much of a boost as publishing with the top group, but if the book is good and the publisher is respectable, people in your field will know about it.

    As a consequence of these things, if your book is good and you're willing to persist with it, it should get published. Though some caveats:

    (iii) It's enormously easier if you have a reputation in the area in which the book is written. It needn't be a huge reputation; even a small reputation helps. Most book refereeing is not blind, unlike journal refereeing. And when what's being reviewed is a proposal rather than a full manuscript, reputation of the author make a huge difference in reviewers' and editors' confidence that the proposal will be fleshed out well to a book. If you don't have a reputation in the area, then unless you have a pretty high reputation in another area, you'll probably need to submit a full book manuscript, and things get chancier. In my experience a rough rule of thumb is that people with large reputations can get contracts based on proposals, people with small reputations can get contracts based on half-manuscripts, people with no reputation need to submit a full manuscript. If the book is good, someone should realize this, but reputation certainly provides a large helping hand. Furthermore, if people know your articles in the area, your book is more likely to be noticed once published. so if the area is new to you, it's very much worth publishing articles in the area first. Publishers don't mind a little recycling of articles for a book — in fact, the prior publication usually is taken as evidence of quality.

    (iv) I don't think anyone should write a book for the sake of writing a book. Write a book because you have something to say. plenty of books are published and then die without much trace. If you don't really have something you need to say, the chances of that happening increases, and in addition, the value to you decreases. Perhaps the very existence of the book will still help you professionally, and perhaps a few readers get something from it, but the value to you won't compare to that of a book that you just needed to write. Books written for tenure are a special case here (a few places demand at least one, though this is becoming less common), but even then a publisher can often sense when a book proposal has been put together for that purpose. After tenure, if you have an itch to write a book without something distinctive that you have a burning passion to say, consider writing it as a sort of introduction to a topic. There's always a market for those, many presses are keen to publish them, and the expected number of readers, even among professionals, is much higher. And for that sort of book, competence is more important than passion.

    At the same time: if there's something you need to say, and if it takes a book to say it properly, then by all means say it. If you say it well, the book will be published, and the world ought to notice. Even if the world doesn't notice, you and the world will be better for the book's existence.

    Reply
  11. David Chalmers

    Thanks to Peter Ohlin and Peter Momtchiloff at OUP for feedback on the above (which was slightly edited in response to the feedback), and for permission to post their comments, below.

    Peter Ohlin (OUP US):

    You might want to make a distinction here between everything that gets submitted to an editor, and then either pursued or rejected; and the acceptance rate for books that proceed to peer review. In terms of the former, most editors get a lot of very poor or mediocre submissions from people you've never heard of or on topics that are of no interest to the press, and taking those into account, the acceptance rate overall is probably (off the top of my head) 15-20%. A good editor knows good projects when he/she sees them, and reviews accordingly, so it's not surprising that a lot of those reviewable projects get accepted, probably at the 60-75% range. But again that's if you make it to the reviewing stage.

    This seems right to me [regarding number of publishers]. The number of presses in philosophy is pretty healthy. Despite the economy and the digital transition, the number of philosophy books being published continues to rise.

    This is all quite true [regarding reputation]. I think many authors are surprised that their work is not evaluated purely on the basis of what's in the book, and that their reputation and background do figure in. The author's reputation or publishing record makes a difference to sales (even if only to libraries) and to the book's impact on the field. Few readers are willing to waste their precious time (and especially money) on an author they've never heard of. Your comment about senior authors being able to submit less material than junior authors is accurate. It's also worth noting that authors should try to avoid proposing books that are over 125000 words especially if they are junior. Brevity is a virtue and most projects ideally should be in the 75000 to 125000 word range.

    I think this is right [regarding reasons to write a book]. Clearly many books by junior authors are written to get tenure. I assume better departments don't require a book, but for other departments it can help. This is why editors see many revised dissertations from younger folk, most of which they reject. This is a longstanding problem in academic publishing. I reject most books that are clearly being submitted too early (and are clearly revised dissertations) just for a tenure file.

    If there's one cliche that I think is really true in publishing and that everyone should keep in mind, it's the question "what's your audience"? Who will be interested in the book? Is there a core audience of metaphysicians and philosophers of mind, or is the discussion spread too thin for the sake of interdisciplinarity that it falls through the cracks? Does the book fall uncomfortably between genres, not a scholarly monograph but not a textbook? Does it say anything new and move the discussion forward, not too narrowly focused and engaging with current scholarship, or does it too narrow and/or sit outside the discussion? Even monograph authors should have a strong handle on those issues before approaching a publisher.

    Peter Momtchiloff (OUP UK):

    I agree with what you say about articles versus books. I often advise junior authors not to seek to publish a book until they have published some articles on the subject in good places. This is partly because it gives them a chance to roadtest their ideas in a public forum, but also because I believe people working in the area are far more likely to take the time to attend to an article by someone whose work they don't know than they are to take the time to attend to a book by someone whose work they don't know.

    Another thought: part of the reason why book acceptance rates are high is that editors are likely to feel no general requirement to spend time considering a submission. So (unlike a journal editor) I can concentrate my energies on the proposals/manuscripts that I think are the most promising. Others I simply take a quick look at and decline to pursue.

    In fact, not only can I be highly selective, I have to be. To obtain even a brief expert opinion on a proposal takes time, and thus takes time away from something else I might be doing. How many new proposals/manuscripts do I have time to consider in a year? A couple a week, maybe more if I work hard at it. How many serious book possibilities do I come upon in a year? At least twice that number. So it falls to me to decide which ones to spend time on. My main criterion in making this decision is an essentially conservative one: which projects do I think the established experts in the field would be likely to consider the most valuable ones? I don't have time to ask experts about every project, so I narrow the projects down to a shortlist using my own judgement, and then I consult experts in order to determine which of that shortlist I should actually publish.

    So an acceptance rate of 50 per cent of the proposals that are given expert assessment might be an acceptance rate of less than 20 per cent of proposals received.

    Much of my time is spent not on the process of deciding whether to take on projects but on the process of seeing projects through to publication. So if I increase the number of projects I accept, this will increase the amount of time I have to spend on seeing-through, and reduce the amount of time I then have for obtaining and publishing new projects. This constraint effectively limits the number of books I can take on. If I am managing efficiently with fifty new books per year, but the next year I undertake sixty, then in the following year(s) I will have to devote a higher proportion of my time to seeing-through, and thus a lower proportion of my time will be available for new possibilities.

    All this is not by way of self-justification, I just thought it might be illuminating.

    Another thought: I often (maybe half the time) make a publishing agreement with an established author on the basis of a complete manuscript, rather than at an earlier stage. Sometimes this is because they prefer to write the book first; sometimes it is because it's not possible to make a confident judgement about the book on the basis of a proposal. (And of course all this applies even more to authors with smaller reputations.)

    Final thought: I wouldn't myself want to suggest that seeking to publish a book is relatively low-risk. In assessing the risk involved, one shouldn't just make a straight comparison of book/article acceptance rates, but one should also consider whether the author is wise to concentrate such a lot of time and effort in one endeavour. If an article doesn't get accepted, or gets ignored, or is unfavourably received, well, the author probably has other articles that may fare better. But a book may represent most of one's research activity for several years. And, as you say, plenty of books die without much trace. I have always thought that one of the good things about the philosophy part of the academic world is that philosophers don't necessarily have to write books in order to achieve career success.

    Reply
  12. Brian

    Thanks to Dave and the two Peters for very informative comments. Regarding the top philosophy presses, we ran a poll on this awhile back:
    http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_e8e7901396c1cb8a

    In the poll there was a significant drop-off after the top 7, though for certain areas (like philosophy of science and some history of philosophy), Chicago has a strong presence as well.

    Reply
  13. chris

    Is there a strong professional (not prudential) reason why book manuscript reviews aren't blind? This seems like a significant lapse in the fairness of a review process relative to journals (let's assume that journal peer review is actually blind in practice, and that manuscript reviews could be).

    If it's just a prudential reason – e.g., it's difficult to anonymize manuscripts – shouldn't books be thought of the same way that non-blind journal articles would (presumptively of less scholarly merit)?

    Reply
  14. John Schwenkler

    I take it that author reviews aren't blind because the identity of the author is relevant to sales, which are inescapably a factor in publishers' decisions.

    Reply
  15. Remy Debes

    Thanks for starting this thread, Brian and anonymous Young Philosopher. And thank you Prof. Chalmers and the two Peters for very helpful comments. As someone who is keen on turning to a book project after tenure (so, next year), this is all very timely for me.

    So here is my follow up question to the above comments: What does a good book proposal look like – i.e. one that you might send to an editor or give them over coffee (say, at the APA, as Prof. Hales suggests)? What does a proposal need if it is to avoid a first cut on grounds of being clueless as to the minimum desiderata? For example, I assume one wants an outline of the chapters, but should each be briefly described? What are some of the essential sections of such a proposal (e.g. should there be a section on target audience)? How long should it be (or not be)?

    I guess this is more than one question. Anyway, my thanks to anyone who answers.

    Reply
  16. andrew

    Chris, I think this has been addressed above, but I can repeat: book publishers are in this for a profit, while journals usually are not. You may say its not fair, but I don't think John Searle needs to produce an entire ms before getting in contact with a publisher, while I would need to have something a little more substantial before I did. This makes sense to me, at least.

    Reply
  17. Kathryn Norlock

    Remy, in my experience with separately proposing both an anthology and a monograph, I can attest that the publishers' guidelines for submission on their websites answer all these questions very excellently, and often rather differently from each other, so that it is tough to generalize. Best to go to the source(s)!

    Given the need to market the book to an audience, however, here's one safe generalization: I cannot think of a publisher I contacted who did not want a section on target audience. They all wanted this. The only variation was how much or how little marketing information they required. They all found the minimum amount of marketability info essential.

    Reply
  18. Jay Kennedy

    Much of the previous discussion has been about presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Chicago, but I’d like to suggest considering submitting to the up and coming presses.

    After some of my research got some attention in the media, I sent a sketch of a book proposal to one of the big presses and to Acumen Publishing, which in the UK is — with Oxford, Cambridge, and Routledge — a leading publisher in philosophy. Before the bigger press had even responded to my email, Acumen was back with enthusiasm and an invitation to submit a formal proposal.

    Acumen is quick and entrepreneurial. They offered (i) to bring the book out within months of manuscript submission, (ii) to publish simultaneously in the UK and US, (iii) to bring out the hardback and paperback together, and (iv) to keep the paperback price lowish ($30/£19). The referee reports on my manuscript taught me a lot, and Acumen’s copy editor (a specialist in philosophy with some background in mathematics) spent an enormous amount of time improving my manuscript in many ways. The book itself was printed on lovely paper with, I think, a handsome cover. Acumen has sent out copies for review to some thirty journals.

    The world of publishing is changing rapidly. The big presses can take one or more years to bring a book out. What matters to authors and to scholarly debate generally is the effective dissemination of ideas. That means quality editing, speed, promotion, and access. Given my experience, I would recommend considering presses like Acumen.

    BL COMMENT: It is useful to know of Dr. Kennedy's good experience with Acumen, but I would caution any young author about publishing with Acumen over the better-established presses.. Acumen needs to promote works vigorously precisely because it doesn't, yet anyway, have the reputation that guarantees attention to what it publishes.

    Reply

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