"Will I ever write a book?"

[Parasaurolophus]

You've posted something that looked like "sectioning" in the research thread, related to your book project--can you say more about that?

I was trying to figure out if it would be a useful way to think of parts of what I'm working on, but wasn't sure if you meant what I was taking from it.

M.

Probably not useful, no--it's a teaching and research aid built around fifty puzzles in the subfield, which they want to extend to all subfields in the field. So a 'section' is just one of these fifty puzzles.

[apl68]

Not academic, but...now researching and outlining a novel that I hope to begin actually drafting next week.  My creativity that has been missing so completely for the past two years had suddenly returned!  It is supposed to be historical fiction, so my academic training is actually coming in useful.

That sounds fun. Happy writing!

Thanks, traductio!

[mamselle]

You've posted something that looked like "sectioning" in the research thread, related to your book project--can you say more about that?

I was trying to figure out if it would be a useful way to think of parts of what I'm working on, but wasn't sure if you meant what I was taking from it.

M.

Probably not useful, no--it's a teaching and research aid built around fifty puzzles in the subfield, which they want to extend to all subfields in the field. So a 'section' is just one of these fifty puzzles.

OK, thanks.

I was thinking about some way of using either word count or some other means of sub-dividing text into manageable segments.

Back to the keyboard...!

M. 

[Morden]

In my field, articles are usually between 5000 and 7000 words, so I have carried that over into my book chapters.

[glendower]

I don't think the Internet Archive ever saved any sub-threads from the old fora, only the front page.

I have turned up this from my files, attributed to Hegemony; it might be from the thread I was asking about, though I didn't record that. I hope it'll be useful or enjoyable for people checking out this thread:

'You have a special challenge in that you need to keep up a publication record as if you were at an R1 while coping with a heavy teaching load.  The model I was taught to aim for was 2-2-4: two articles and two smaller pieces every year, and a book every four years.  Now, I actually think most people fall short of that.  But if you want to move, you'd want to aim for an equivalent of that, in the most streamlined and efficient way.  The first advice I'd give is to drop the second "2" -- the smaller pieces (generally book reviews, can also be encyclopedia entries or whatnot).  Those are a luxury.  The articles and books are the most important.  So here are the rules as I see them:

1. Piggyback your current research on your last research.  Use the same kind of materials, but viewed from a different angle or expanded.  You can see the prolific scholars doing this already.  For instance, the first book will be about Lincoln's White House staff, using the appropriate archives.  The second book will be about women in Lincoln's White House, using the same archives.  The third book will be about Lincoln's ideas of hierarchy, using the same archives. In every case, pick only an idea that's interesting to you, but pick strategically.  Also pick something in which you don't have to embark on a whole new set of secondary reading.

2. Don't put every single thing you learn and think on the subject in the book.  Save self-contained nuggets of findings for separate articles.  For my last book, I finished the book and then wrote a spin-off article in three days. I had all the quotations right in front of me and knew the material so thoroughly that it just flew onto the page. If you can get four or five extra articles out of your book, that would be excellent.  Don't feel the need to jam it all in; use this to plant articles in good journals.

3. Make every piece of writing earn its keep.  Don't publish in edited collections; they count for less on the CV. Submit every article to a top-tier journal and work your way down the food chain. Position your book for the top presses.  Don't make my mistake and give your book to lower-tier presses just because they ask for it and you think, "Phew! Someone will publish this!"  Try all the top-tier presses first.

4. Find the CVs of the top people in your field and keep tabs on them. Keep track of how you measure up.

5. Minimize the busywork your job asks for as much as possible.  Where possible, give assignments that are swift to grade; streamline teaching prep; keep extensive records so you don't have to redesign your classes every year.
Then try to get in 90 minutes of academic writing every workday; 45 minutes should be your minimum.  Don't save it all up for a long weekend stint, which may or may not be possible when the time comes.  The research shows that the most prolific people write for shorter periods and often.

6. Take Sundays off; ideally Saturdays too.  Do not stay up working till midnight.  Burning yourself out won't get the job done and also makes the job not worth doing.  Your goal is to work smart, not exhaustively.'

[mamselle]

Wow.

Thanks to both of you.

M.

[Morden]

When I realized that I wanted to write a book, I didn't have a topic yet. I just had a long-smoldering desire; even putting the desire on paper seemed risky. I started by identifying the types of things I would need to do in the next few years in order to make writing a book more possible. And I deliberately used conference presentations to help develop ideas/content that became different chapters.

[Faith786]

I don't think the Internet Archive ever saved any sub-threads from the old fora, only the front page.

I have turned up this from my files, attributed to Hegemony; it might be from the thread I was asking about, though I didn't record that. I hope it'll be useful or enjoyable for people checking out this thread:

'You have a special challenge in that you need to keep up a publication record as if you were at an R1 while coping with a heavy teaching load.  The model I was taught to aim for was 2-2-4: two articles and two smaller pieces every year, and a book every four years.  Now, I actually think most people fall short of that.  But if you want to move, you'd want to aim for an equivalent of that, in the most streamlined and efficient way.  The first advice I'd give is to drop the second "2" -- the smaller pieces (generally book reviews, can also be encyclopedia entries or whatnot).  Those are a luxury.  The articles and books are the most important.  So here are the rules as I see them:

1. Piggyback your current research on your last research.  Use the same kind of materials, but viewed from a different angle or expanded.  You can see the prolific scholars doing this already.  For instance, the first book will be about Lincoln's White House staff, using the appropriate archives.  The second book will be about women in Lincoln's White House, using the same archives.  The third book will be about Lincoln's ideas of hierarchy, using the same archives. In every case, pick only an idea that's interesting to you, but pick strategically.  Also pick something in which you don't have to embark on a whole new set of secondary reading.

2. Don't put every single thing you learn and think on the subject in the book.  Save self-contained nuggets of findings for separate articles.  For my last book, I finished the book and then wrote a spin-off article in three days. I had all the quotations right in front of me and knew the material so thoroughly that it just flew onto the page. If you can get four or five extra articles out of your book, that would be excellent.  Don't feel the need to jam it all in; use this to plant articles in good journals.

3. Make every piece of writing earn its keep.  Don't publish in edited collections; they count for less on the CV. Submit every article to a top-tier journal and work your way down the food chain. Position your book for the top presses.  Don't make my mistake and give your book to lower-tier presses just because they ask for it and you think, "Phew! Someone will publish this!"  Try all the top-tier presses first.

4. Find the CVs of the top people in your field and keep tabs on them. Keep track of how you measure up.

5. Minimize the busywork your job asks for as much as possible.  Where possible, give assignments that are swift to grade; streamline teaching prep; keep extensive records so you don't have to redesign your classes every year.
Then try to get in 90 minutes of academic writing every workday; 45 minutes should be your minimum.  Don't save it all up for a long weekend stint, which may or may not be possible when the time comes.  The research shows that the most prolific people write for shorter periods and often.

6. Take Sundays off; ideally Saturdays too.  Do not stay up working till midnight.  Burning yourself out won't get the job done and also makes the job not worth doing.  Your goal is to work smart, not exhaustively.'

Thank you for posting these!!
I've been doing most of them, and will follow the remainder now that I've learned about them!!

[euro_trash]

I don't think the Internet Archive ever saved any sub-threads from the old fora, only the front page.

I have turned up this from my files, attributed to Hegemony; it might be from the thread I was asking about, though I didn't record that. I hope it'll be useful or enjoyable for people checking out this thread:

'You have a special challenge in that you need to keep up a publication record as if you were at an R1 while coping with a heavy teaching load.  The model I was taught to aim for was 2-2-4: two articles and two smaller pieces every year, and a book every four years.  Now, I actually think most people fall short of that. 

This is it! Thank you very much!

Larryc also had a great post about moving

[glendower]

In my field, articles are usually between 5000 and 7000 words, so I have carried that over into my book chapters.

Thanks, that's useful. I have been wondering what the differences are, if any, between articles and book chapters. I knew one of my incipient books had to be a book when I started trying to write it as an article and the first section came in at 6000 words. I've done a series of related articles that could have been a book if I'd shaped it a little more carefully and dealt with one more text, but the extra text was a doozy and I didn't feel up to it.

[traductio]

3. Make every piece of writing earn its keep.  Don't publish in edited collections; they count for less on the CV.

This is good advice, but I wanted to add some nuance. It's true that in the humanities and social sciences, chapters in collected works tend to be "worth" less than articles, but so much depends on how you measure worth, as well as who's editing and publishing the collected work, and the journal. A chapter in a collection that people will read because it's edited by a big-name scholar is worth more than an article in a journal that no one will read. And catching the attention of that big-name scholar editing the book — that type of networking can be invaluable.

As for "worth" — this really depends on your goal. If you're a tenure track prof at a big name school, a book from Oxford UP (or whatever the top press is in your field) will be worth more than a book at a press perceived as less prestigious. But that Oxford UP book might be published only in hardback and cost $100 or more, which means you'll reach only a rarefied audience.

What if you are at a compass-point public school? In that case, the Oxford UP book, great as it might be, might not be what you want. Maybe you're a regional historian in Mankato, Minnesota, and you want to write a book that people will read and value. In that case, the Minnesota State Historical Society publishes a specialized series that would be exactly what you want. (Plus it'll get you tenure, probably, if you're tenure track. And if you're an independent scholar, this historical series might be even more attractive — you'll reach your audience a lot better.)

What if you have tenure, and you want to write books aimed at third-year undergraduates because you realize they're the people you're most likely to reach in a meaningful way? (I'm describing myself here, of course.) I went out of my way, in the case of my most recent book, to find an open-access university press. There are a handful, some more prestigious as others. The one I published with is not necessarily prestigious (although I think it punches above its weight), but the press was open to the experimental nature of the book. (I won't go into details because they're not interesting here — I'll just say I had way more fun writing, which means I threw out any convention I didn't care to follow.) Even though the press isn't prestigious, the e-book is free, and I've had people write me from India, China, and Mongolia to say they appreciated it.

What if you have a dissertation you want to turn into a book, but the topic is too focused for a conventional university press? Here I'm thinking of a student who went to Lexington Books because Lexington is willing to publish books with narrower appeal. (Of course, they're expensive as heck.) He teaches at a tiny school in a rural state (where he's quite happy — it's his home state), and a Lexington book will be far beyond anything most people there publish.

I think the only publishers I personally would tend to avoid (and even this comes with a caveat) are those like Routledge (I'm not a big enough name to have them publish one of my books in an affordable way) or Palgrave (their books are expensive as heck, too). But here's the caveat — Palgrave Pivot books (which in their paper form are $100+) are relatively well distributed electronically, and if you have access to a university library, you can probably get the e-book through the library's subscription, so you'll still find readers. A handful of really interesting books in one of my subfields have come from Palgrave lately.

And then there's my friend who breaks every publishing rule and wins prizes anyway. He self-published his first book (!) because he refused to yield any creative control. Then the book was picked up by a small publisher and won a major prize in the field of philosophy. His most recent book is similar — he got a revise-and-resubmit from a university press and turned it down because he refused to yield creative control. Brill just picked up the book, so it'll be expensive, but Brill took the manuscript as-is, and I'm sure it'll win more prizes. He can get away with this because his work is, in fact, brilliant, but I'm way more flexible. I wouldn't recommend this unyielding approach, but I always hold up his work as an effective counterexample to received common sense.

I am on board with this advice, though --

Submit every article to a top-tier journal and work your way down the food chain. Position your book for the top presses.  Don't make my mistake and give your book to lower-tier presses just because they ask for it and you think, "Phew! Someone will publish this!"  Try all the top-tier presses first.

-- as long as you think about what "top-tier press" means with respect to your goals for writing.

[Hibush]

CHE has a new piece about how not to get your book published. A to-not-do list if you will. But it also says what to do instead. Does it add anything that hasn't been covered here already?

I note that the #1 thing is to make a point that is clear. Why is that? "Stating a clear purpose or takeaway about your topic makes your book more marketable, because it provides a 'unique selling proposition' that the marketing team at your press can use to pique the interest of readers, librarians, and retailers."

In other words, when you start putting your book idea together, write down your "unique selling proposition" on a sticky note so that you don't lose your focus on marketability. I suspect that advice will be appealing to <0.1% of academic book authors.

[Hibush]

For TLDR or paywall issues, here are the points:
6 Types of Book Proposals That Don't Get Contracts" by Laura Packwood-Stacer, a publishing consultant whose new book on this topic is published by Princeton University Press.

• The Topic-Without-a-Point Proposal
• 
  The Idea-Without-Evidence Proposal
• 
  The Still-a-Dissertation Proposal
• 
  The Too-Unique Proposal
• 
  The Proposal That Belongs at a Different Press
• 
  The Proposal They Never See

[Sun_Worshiper]

I'm in a field where articles or books are acceptable for t&p at most places. Books carry some prestige, but they are not well read and jr people are increasingly going the article route. I have not written a book and have not seriously tried, but it is something I'd like to do eventually (maybe soon, since I'm hoping to be tenured by this time next year - fingers crossed!). However, being in article mode for the last several years makes a book project seem incredibly daunting. Advice for moving out of the article structure and into book-thinking?

[darkstarrynight]

I had a difficult time with my co-authors and my publisher, so next time I will definitely write a book solo. I have thought about it, and one of my ideas for a longer review article that I shared with a mentor could lead to a book, but I think it is too niche for anyone to read. I am just so glad I negotiated the first right of refusal clause to be removed from the book contract so I am not stuck with a crummy publishing experience again. I did see a really great twitter thread on self-publishing and saved it for the future: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1401533042355851271.html