Publishing an academic book with a US press

• Locating an appropriate press
  • Use the internet to research possibilities
  • Determine where similar work has been published
  • Learn from publisher's web page, if possible, what the preferred submission procedure is
  • If you cannot find out, send a proposal first
  • Be persistent: if the first five publishers don't want your book, try a sixth
  • Don't get angry at rejection -- it's not personal. Sure, it's your brain child, and others may not appreciate it as you do, even if it is first-rate work. Many rejections come not because the work isn't publishable, but because it just doesn't fit into the publisher's established categories (too long, too technical, wrong theoretical framework, etc.)
• Understand the constraints on publishers
  • Severe economic problems in US academic publishing
  • This creates overwork on publishing staff
  • Many people are doing publishing work as a sideline too
  • Journal publishers have very rigid deadlines to meet. Books are looser, but not absolutely free of deadline pressures
  • There is a hierarchy of desirability among book manuscripts. For Slavica this means:
    • Textbooks/ref works > scholarly monographs > thematic article collections > random article collections
    • Russian/E European area studies > literature > linguistics
  • We cannot afford the staff time or money required to drastically improve a manuscript which has genuine scholarly potential but problems in presentation (poor English, inadequate scholarly apparatus, extensive graphics to create, etc.)
  • Two types of printing used in small-press scholarly publishing: traditional (offset) printing and publication on demand, with different rationales.
    • Offset printing requires up-front investment for entire printing costs, and is cheaper for larger print runs (> 500 copies), and produces higher quality results, especially if photographs are included in a book
    • Publication on demand has higher unit costs and noticeably lower quality of graphic resolution, but makes it possible to print very small quantities (100 or even 50 copies at a time) without large initial investment
    • We use offset printing when we know the demand for a book in advance (esecially. for textbooks), and when the contents require it, but we use publication on demand for most small-tirage books
• Preparing a proposal
  • Cover letter
    • 1 page maximum
    • 1 paragraph characterization of the research
    • 1 paragraph background info about yourself
    • Completely honest assessment of state of the project
    • Avoid name-dropping ("Noam Chomsky read my manuscript and thinks it should definitely be published")
    • Don't criticize yourself or your work; there will be plenty of people willing to do that for you
    • Email is a perfectly fine way to communicate with most publishers
  • Proposal per se
    • 2-15 pages
    • Synthetic summary of research methods and results
    • Relation to other current literature in the field
    • If possible, some "hook" to give the editor or publisher a sense of why this book should be published (esp. important with research tools)
  • curriculum vitae
    • Important if the publisher is unlikely to know who you are
    • Emphasize US experience, previous publications, integration into field
• What to expect the publisher to do
  • Acknowledge submission within a few weeks
  • Have one or more paid outside readers review the manuscript (not necessarily double-blind); this may take up to six months
  • Send the review to you with a final or tentative decision
  • Offer a contract soon after a final decision to publish has been made
  • Publisher may copy-edit or typeset, or may require the author to prepare camera-ready copy
• What you will have to do yourself
  • Prepare an index
  • Check bibliographic references and general scholarly apparatus
  • Have someone (or several people) read and correct your English
  • Provide computer files in necessary format (usually MS Word and/or .pdf files; some fields want TeX)
  • Read one or two sets of page proofs quickly, using more or less standard proofreading mark-up
• Subventions
  • A subvention is a payment to the publisher to cover some or all of the publication costs
  • In some fields some publishers have a policy of requiring subventions (esp. in W. Europe)
  • It seems like a dubious practice, but it is not necessarily evil
  • Even a publisher with a stated subvention policy may make exceptions. You may ask, but don't keep asking if they say no
  • Slavica policy on subventions: we solicit support for unprofitable publications (mostly Festschrift volumes), and accept money if offered for "better" books, but do not require it.