Writing the Book Manuscript
*Transcript cleaned by Kaitlyn Gastineau


0:09
I dropped two really helpful resources in the chat the first is a site Ask UP
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which is a website created by the Association of University Presses with
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um organized around a Q&A format to answer all of the questions that
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prospective scholarly authors often have about the book publishing process so I
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highly recommend you check that out there's also um questions and answers regarding
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journal publications as well and then the second
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um link I dropped in the chat is a um subject area grid and basically it is a
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giant Excel spreadsheet or PDF depending on what you download that lists
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um every press that is a member of the Association of University Presses and the areas they publish in and so my
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biggest piece of advice to prospective authors whether it's their first book or their second book is to spend some time
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researching the presses you're interested in publishing with and making sure that they um they actually still
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publish in your area uh the best way to do this is to look at recent books books
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published within the last three to four years look at the presses that they're um or yeah look at the presses that are
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publishing those books and then sort of build your list from there don't necessarily rely on the books or presses
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that published uh your favorite books from like 10 or 20 years ago because the
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that the press may not necessarily be publishing in that area anymore and so when you reach out and express interest
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in publishing with that press they might have to say well sorry your project's not a good fit for us not because there's an issue with your project but
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just because they don't publish in that area anymore um the one other thing I wanted to mention
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or piece of advice I wanted to provide um that is particularly pertinent I
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think for first-time authors who are revising dissertations for into book manuscripts
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is um really take your time the dissertation
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is so different from a um a book and I loved that Kishonna actually really took
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everything that she had dropped from her dissertation and turned that into a book if we could all do that that might make
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for their first books um but take your time with revising I'm happy to provide I can provide some
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more books on revising dissertations in the chat but um really think so with the
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dissertation is sort of all about demonstrating your training and your knowledge to a group that is already
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immersed in your field right the book is more about making an argument making your claim and so as
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you're revising really as much as you can feel empowered to actually make your
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argument you are you are the expert here now um you should this is the time to really
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what do I want to say strut your stuff to really
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um feel confident in the work that you've done in in what you have to say that's when um when people ask like what
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are acquisitions editors looking for in a proposal or in a project it's not necessarily about the argument being
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cutting edge or super new it's about the author making an argument that alone can
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do a lot will do a lot of work for you can you unpack that more because I think that was something that we aren't
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prepared for in graduate school like just the book writing process right um so I didn't realize how long it would
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take and I think that's the thing where especially for folks like you as you're thinking about like tenure clock and I'm
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not sure of the audience here you know let me know the audience you know here Catherine um but especially for like those of you know especially for folks
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junior folks who've lost time during like covet and you know they're thinking about like the timing to get things out for third year review or you know mid to
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your review or whatever you know a lot of folks are not aware of how long how much time like that it actually takes to
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get the book from from ideation phase proposal like so maybe it could be useful you know for for the folks just
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to understand that because I had no idea I had no idea that's a great point I mean and I think in the process is going
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to be a little bit different based on institution and whether or not you're at a place that requires a book for your
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tenure so I'm at an institution that does right so I was required to publish
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a university press book and that's a really important thing I think we've said a couple of times that's important
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to point out some distinctions in that we keep referencing university presses because for a lot of institutions to get
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tenure your book must be published with a university press and in addition to it
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being a university press some universities have specific presses that they value in different ways uh versus
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others so it's really important to have those conversations very early on in your career but what is an acceptable
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press for me to publish with or uh for the process of tenure I think for many
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of us the idea is that by the third year review so three years out that we would
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have a contract in place with a press which means your proposal would be
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complete and it would have been submitted to a price and we're going to talk a lot about yeah that's a great
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point Pete I wrote this does not count at a lot of institutions there's other great presses quality that are
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publishing fantastic [] etc this is a really really important point um that can be scholarly presses but are
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still not considered university press and the rationale behind that is that many folks believe that the review
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process is a little bit different with the university presses than it is even with scholarly or commercial process
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right so they're looking for the same rigor of review that would happen in a journal article in your field for the
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book process and it doesn't mean that books that are not published with university presses aren't rigorous it just means that that is the kind of
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criteria of our some tenure committees have set forward um so the proposal is kind of the first
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thing that has to happen once folks have some notion of what they're going to write about they want to approach a
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university press they've maybe done some of that research and looked up what presses are published in their area and
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then there's this new prospect of writing a proposal and the proposal for the book is so different than the
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dissertation proposal so would you all mind jumping in and talking a little bit about what a book proposal looks like in
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this place go ahead Raven
6:47
I was just gonna say um the proposal absolutely is totally different from the diss in that it's for
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me was more concise and not just like obviously in terms of length but
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um in terms of your argument like I had to be much clearer much sooner like first page of the proposal what am I
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arguing how is it different than what's out there and almost like layman terms
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right so um rather than you know flowery language and you have
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all this time to think with your diss the proposal is like cut and dry this is what it is
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um this is why it's important this is why I'm excited about it and that was kind of freeing like I liked
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um sort of distilling yeah drop the jargon distilling my
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argument to to like a clear framework um yeah I've often heard folks describe
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writing the book proposal um as a marketing venture as much as it is anything else uh maybe Caitlin you
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could speak to that a little bit yeah I'll just echo what Raven said um
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from my perspective I I am a nerd I am interested I'm in
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scholarly publishing as opposed to commercial publishing because I I love talking to scholars about all their
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little specific nerdy ideas but when it's come when it comes to reading a proposal I love proposals that right off
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the bat in that first paragraph say this is what I'm arguing this is not
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even how it's different necessarily but like how it's contributing or how it's intervening
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um on conversations happening in my field right now
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um and the clearer you can be up front the more to me it will seem like you have you have a solid book project in
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mind in development um I just wanna share some like really basic stuff so
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for MSU press and for most um university presses a proposal is a
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I'll say like three to five page um project description and a lot of presses including us will
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ask for an annotated table of contents and then two sample chapters ideally
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from the core of the project so not like obviously your intro and your conclusion
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that doesn't really give us a good sense of um sort of how you handle evidence how you write
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um and then a CV so those are just like sort of the bare bones of what we expect
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from a proposal so listen what I propose for
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Intersectional Tech is not what Intersectional Tech became I'm terrible
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with proposals because and I also think that I ran into the issue of writing
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um especially especially since I struggled I wanted to write something that I thought an
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acquisitions editor would want to hear you know I was like I think they might like this you know instead of thinking
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about what my project is I'm like this seems hot and sexy and I think they might like this and that's completely
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the wrong way to like do it you know and I think that's probably why like I had struggles you know because people I'm
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writing about it and then people are like oh Kishonna is this really what you want to do I'm like I don't know is it do you like it you know so you know I
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struggled you know like a little bit with that you know just trying to like get my com- my book writing confidence up you know because book writing is
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completely different from like you know like article all article writing right um and I will say you know because I did
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want to want to mention this might be a good place to talk about that the only reason why I did those edited volumes is
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that I got the advice I don't know if it was good advice or not good advice but I did Woke Gaming because there wasn't
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there was a I don't know if it was an acquisitions editor or somebody that said you know Kishonna since there's not
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really like a field around this you know critical race and gaming an edited volume is like a good way to like get
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that out in the world so that's one of the reasons that you know like you know we we did Woke Gaming you know so people
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could see that there was like this critical race you know feminist intersectional perspectives you know that were happening like around gaming
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and then having that book be legible you know would make it a little bit easier so people could say hey there's something to latch on to so that's
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really the reason that I did edited volumes so they didn't count they they don't count for anything you know on you
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know with pretend you're in promotion you know so you know I did that one and also like feminism and play you know
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because there's just like some voids you know I think you know gaming studies had had not caught up so like these critical
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perspectives and ways of thinking inside game study so that's the only reason why I did those but I would say they they
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were they they they helped a whole lot but you know that first proposal for like Intersectional Tech you know I knew
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that I wanted to you know to focus a lot like on intersectionality you know I wanted to focus on what black folks were doing inside the gaming space
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um but I didn't know what that story would be especially because you know my methodology like is ethnography you know
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so I'm like you know there I can I can you know take a snapshot of some data at any point but you know the snapshot you
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know from 10 years ago looks different from five years ago that looks different from like a year ago so I think it was really hard I'm like I don't know what
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story I'm trying to tell right now um and I think you just got to be honest with yourself so whenever when I started out writing I didn't know how
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Intersectional Tech was going to end up you know I I just didn't I just trusted the process I trusted myself but I also
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trusted that you know the data is there I'm just trying to make that legible to these academic audiences you know apply
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some frameworks you know to it and you know I think that it turned out okay now it was a very stressful process right
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especially like when you're thinking about like putting the stories together and putting the pieces together like a
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lot of times they it don't seem like that they're going to fit at all but trust yourself and just keep writing you
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know and I think as long as you have like good drafts you know you can always go through and you know figure out like you know that narrative and that that
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weaves together like the whole argument um but also for me I was just waying and taying in the wind a lot of times
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I'm gonna be totally honest I'm gonna be totally honest I'm just writing Kishonna acts as though she's not a prolific author so frequently
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as she's as she's working on like book number five or six right now but I think
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you know she raises an important point about the distinction between a monograph and an edited volume that's
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important for us to just quickly get to and I know Kishonna means don't do an edit volume as your first book maybe
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right was kind of the advice um because if that doesn't count for tenure but I think what you point out was so important that edited volumes do do
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important work for careers even if they don't necessarily get you tenure right so Kishonna is so well known in the field
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because she's the person who edited the collections on her area right that everyone had to know her in order to get
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their work published and so they can serve some really valuable um networking possibilities and some
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really like field and groundbreaking possibilities and also you know a way to get to know senior scholars in your area
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um as you know letters are required for the tenure process as well so a lot of reasons to do those but maybe a lot of
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reasons to not that's not be the first thing that you do you said something that I would love um to be teased out a
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little bit more which is that writing a book of course is so different than writing a journal article and I'm not sure
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that we all totally understand that right so maybe many of us here have only written journal articles so far what is
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so different about writing a book than writing a journal article
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you want me to answer that you want me to speak to that sure sure and then maybe Raven can jump into it yeah I think um the biggest
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difference that I saw was that whenever I'm writing books um I feel like I'm I'm telling stories you know like really in
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like this narrative prosey kind of way you know it's it's almost like you know like uh let me yeah I always talk about
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you know Tyrell Tyrell is like you know one of the like and the anchoring story like an Intersectional Tech and I was
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like I just want to tell your story you know one day you know Tyrell he played the game and then this happened and this happened like it was really like you
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know kind of like narrative you know storytelling um which which is why I love I kind of fell in love with like
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writing books because I I valued that you know whenever I think about like article writing it seems so prescriptive
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is prescriptive like the way where it's like a template like you have to have the intro then you have to have you know
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the theoretical framework then you have your method section how did you design it you know so it seemed too too much
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like technical writing like for just for me um articles are very um technical
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writing but it's also it was also when I got that advice it was also very very useful for me
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um because then the right writing of an article wasn't so tedious because I was like okay it's you know I just fill in
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the blanks here I'm gonna fill in the blanks here you know whereas you know book writing was completely different you know I have more feelings and
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emotions you know whenever like I'm I'm doing the book you know because you know I'm telling like like these stories I
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hope that helps that's just how I see it like from my perspective I would just add to that everything
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Kishonna just said I would just add I actually got reader reports from my sample chapters saying
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um the sample chapters read too much like a journal article they wanted more stories to Kishonna's point they wanted
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more um like feeling into it so it's kind of freeing like I liked I I don't think I
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had ever written before adding my like what do I feel about this and and I can sort of add my subjectivity to it to
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give an example um a concrete example one of my chapters has focus groups
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um with black women talking about care networks online and the reader wanted
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um stories about how the focus groups came together which is not something you
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would necessarily put in a journal article I mean you would say how you recruited the women but you wouldn't
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necessarily say the story about who the women were right not demographics but
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how they related to each other who the women were like that sort of a nuance and detail I was able to put into the
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book and I hope it makes it you know a richer project in some technical ways
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can you talk about Caitlin the process of after you submit the proposal what should you
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expect what does that process look like going forward what comes to you we talked about contracts and advanced
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contracts you talk about reader reports then you've got to map out that process
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of course and I'll just say up front that uh the process is a little different at every press and so you
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should definitely ask whenever you speak with an acquisitions editor but
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generally you submit your proposal your proposal comes with should often
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includes um a couple sample chapters um some process so uh for MSU press
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since this is an if you are submitting a project on Black Digital Studies this is
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an area um I'm familiar with it's an area we're building a list in and so we would evaluate the proposal internally for us
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that takes about um eight weeks uh I read it and then I present it to
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um the my colleagues and acquisitions as well as my colleagues in marketing and
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production and we sort of talk through the project um my acquisitions colleagues will raise
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any concerns they see from a content perspective production will raise any concerns for example if you want to
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include 50 images that might be an issue for reasons I can explain uh but then
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after we've talked if we think it is a solid project if you have a a strong
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argument or to circle back to what Kishonna was saying if even if the project
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we don't necessarily necessarily need the proposal to match the final product but if we can get if I get some sense
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that like your brain is really exciting that you think in a really cool way
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um then I invite the um I invite the full manuscript for
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consideration and I can talk more about like timelines and
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all that if anyone has any questions about that some presses including uh
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some presses if you want an advanced contract we'll send the proposal out for
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um what's called external review best practices is um are to send the proposal
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out to two reviewers in the US we do single anonymous review which means they
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often know who you are you won't know who they are um as Raven experienced you can get um
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hope I hope it was helpful feedback on the proposal evaluation uh and then that
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also that's sort of some initial vetting for the acquisitions editor to go and go ahead and offer you an advanced contract
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MSU press doesn't necessarily do that but that is something that some um presses do and then if you don't do an
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advanced contract usually um the contract will be offered after
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your um manuscript has been through review received two supportive peer review
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reports and then been presented uh to what is called the University Editorial
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Advisory Board once they sign off on it then at that point I would say most if not all presses are
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at that point comfortable with offering you a contract um and yeah there's a lot that happens
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in between there I'm happy to answer any more specific questions that's super helpful there's a question
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in the chat about why someone might want an advanced contract I think the
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answer is specific to the individual and the institution that they're at for some folks having that advanced contract
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before your third year review is really useful some folks um can actually negotiate uh with other you know presses
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or things like that so it's really individual to the process some presses don't offer an advanced contract at all
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and they require sending a full manuscript out um but for a lot of folks it's a it's
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about where what institution you're at and what they are expecting so it's a way of showing that you're making good
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progress toward publishing your book so if your chair says an advanced contract would be helpful by year two or be
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helpful by year three then you're shooting for the advanced contract what do you do when you're writing about something that's particularly topical or what's topical
20:57
in 2021 and then pretty much things are moving so quickly like how do you
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address that if you would specifically looking at the time period I'll let folks on the panel want to get to
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that yeah if I if I if I heard you right it sounds like you said you know what do we do like the timeliness of like topics
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and themes is that what the question was right um for academics
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Academia is slow you listen we still ain't wrote nothing about Vines you know
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we still got to write that just because Vines came and went don't mean that they're they're not significant you know
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I'm thinking about like all the innovations like with with the Xbox there were so many changes and so many things happening so many impacts on
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culture just because it came and went like we can still speak to those kinds of things because those are like you
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know those are like the building blocks for like the things that we talk about now like we can't be talking about TikToks if we don't talk about Vines you
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know all those things like you know like feed like into into one another and so we also have to remember that Academia
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is a slow entity it is not like a new it's not news it's not journalism we can always go back and talk about MySpace
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and Black Planet like none of these things ever get old they're always significant because there's something that can always like be told I hope I
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understood your question right the best phones like getting back to the proposal right because how do you then
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make it relevant I always remember my professor and thing that like we don't write about something because it's
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happening right now because if we write just like Twitter's happening right now and this tweets going on in 20 years well maybe in five Twitter won't be a
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thing maybe in five months Twitter won't be a thing right but the way that people interact with the platform should still
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be relevant like what your argument is is not that this uh platform exists it's
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that there's something that someone's doing with it that we need to talk about for a long time as a graduate
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student I was really like imma do what I want to do but now that I have to sort of have this document this book
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proposal document um that sort of claims what fields and positions myself in relationship to fields I'm feeling
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some tension with that and just having I guess my question is around how do you negotiate that within a book proposal is
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it based on specifically the press that you are proposing your book project to
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um and how do you negotiate those tensions perhaps doing a bit more research on the presses that you're reaching out to so
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for example um if you're if you have an
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interdisciplinary project one place to start it's to look for presses that publish in both of those disciplines
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because then they're going to be more open to um projects that right that
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straddle those disciplines um and from an acquisition's perspective what I'm thinking when
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um I see an interdisciplinary project is can I do I have the connections to scholars in
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both of those in both of these fields to make sure that the manuscript is going to get adequately assessed from both
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perspectives and also do I to put it in Bbunt terms like do we cater to both of
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these markets so for example MSU press um
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I acquire in African American studies but we also publish in this very small subfield called Mimetic Studies and I
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was able I'm working with an author who is um developing a project on um
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it's um African American studies but then also engages with the Mimetic studies has
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to do with the theories of this French Philosopher René Girard and so it's very interdisciplinary but because we do
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publish in both of those areas that's not a concern for us because we can't again like I just said we can cater to
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both of those markets we I know I'm going to be able to get feedback from scholars who are experts in both of
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those areas and so that would be my advice I'm interested to hear what other people have to say though
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go ahead think about who's reading it and you're writing about that right so I talk about
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how it might look like touch of digital studies touches media studies such as feminist studies such as black studies
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and so I wrote that about like one of the questions I usually ask is like what classes could you see this being taught
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in right and so I would think about like I would see a graduate seminar feminist studies using chapter four I could see
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uh digital studies methods class using chapter two right like and so being that
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a level of specific I think shows a little bit of work on your part and then also having a varied list of reviewers
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um if you can who can speak across as Caitlin said those differences and my question is about presses and tenure
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standards so uh more particularly on the type of institution that you're at so
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I'm in a teaching institution um that may accept a trade press publisher for the tenure process however
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I'm trained in you know in in R1 spaces and so I shoot my bar higher to
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university presses and so my question then is you know do I aim for you know
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with the tenure where I'm at or do I start you know just go ahead and go towards I guess university presses
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um just in case I make a move somewhere else I'm so glad you asked that Dr. Nix
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um you publish um to keep yourself marketable
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um so I I think that um especially some of my missteps early on along the way which you know a lot of people are like
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why are you why are you publishing so much why are you doing so much I'm like I'm trying to get out of EKU you know I
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was at a teaching institution as well and I wanted to get out of there and so that's one of the hardest things like to jump from like teaching institutions for
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to like R1 but if we've got the research behind this and the publication record and if we're hitting those metrics that
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are you know our counterparts and our peers like at R1s are doing then of course they they can't take your work
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away you know that you know K-State or not you know he cannot you know none of that none of that matters because your work is going to be gonna be speaking
26:49
for you so I would say you always you know just do you know we and we were all trained at R1s right you know so you
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just continue to to hit those metrics that that we were trained for um you know so especially because I want
27:00
you to be able to be marketable I want you to be able if you want to leave K-State I don't want you to leave Kentucky but if you want to leave you
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know I want you to be able to do that like you know like if you want to do that yeah absolutely and also we have
27:12
our own personal goals right you know I have aspirations I would love to see you know some of my work in one of these
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beautiful top fancy presses you know one day you know I would love for it for that to happen and so I I my own the
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metrics that are set for me for my personal goals that you know that I have for myself and not you know based on
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what you know somebody like P&T says right you know because I was also at a place like when I was at EKU they're like Kishonna you're shiny enough
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whatever you do is just fine I'm like okay that's cool you know whereas when I was at like UIC you know I had like you
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know colleagues that were like well Kishonna LSU press is fine Intersectional Tech is cool we like it but we need to
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see Duke we need to see NYU like they actually told me like the presses that they would like to see my next book if I
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wanted to go for full um so you know a lot of it is is you know Institute institutional you know your institution matters P&T matters but
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also like your own personal goals and you know your your personal you know desires you know matters well
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Kishonna put it so perfectly for everything we're aiming for the tenure that we want at the institution we want wherever we currently are right and
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so tenure is your goal somewhere else and you're aiming for their standards of tenure wherever you are right now I was
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at Colorado State and they said you have to publish a book to get tenure here you write a couple articles you get tenure here and I was like great I'm gonna work
28:24
on my book um I'm gonna write the articles to work on that goal but I'm going to work on the book quietly on the side
28:30
you're looking to write a book until after tenure every institution is different I got here and they're like a book plus six articles and the press
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needs to be of a high power right because it needs to be here or above in order for that to count and so if I had
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stayed with what the requirement was in my previous institution I would have been far behind where I needed to be
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when I got to this space can I just only quickly add same I was
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at Gonzaga's teaching institution everything um Catherine and Kishonna are saying I will only quickly add because the
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teaching load is so high at those institutions I would find a way to
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scaffold the book into your classes that you're teaching so like the same ideas
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right into your syllabus or obviously like adding readings to your syllabus that you need for the book anyway I did
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a lot of talks on campus at my teaching institution to like get some ideas out
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there right so like use your time so you can work on the book on the side for
29:30
sure and Kishonna's point about your personal goals really matters I mean I I didn't
29:36
want to be in a big name press for the sake of it I knew they had some resources also awesome right so um some university
29:42
presses like MSG press like UCLA like so the press we published with um they put your books out for
29:47
awards they market your book they send them off to libraries you end up seeing your book in places because they have
29:53
whole departments that can cater to that and some smaller presses don't have that capacity and so there's nothing wrong
29:59
with the smaller press but they're still publishing really great work but they may not have the same capacity to market
30:05
the book to have the same editorial staff right they might not have to be giving the same amount of feedback
30:11
etc um even being fully transparent in these spaces because nobody was transparent with us
30:18
It's important to us to talk about that and I also see a green hand up I wanted to say quickly too that Caitlin mentioned
30:25
alternative forms of publication for digital projects and so we don't get back to that we really want you to
30:31
have time to speak to what um other kinds of projects can look like that are not monographs
30:37
um published in a traditional way with this press
30:42
so I'm gonna give you some space to do that and then we'll talk about the money and we'll get to brief questions okay well so I will say for anyone who
30:50
is thinking maybe a traditional print monograph is not the best form for your
30:56
um your dissertation or your second book or what have you uh more and more presses are getting into what is called
31:04
digital publishing which can include um sort of uh enhanced eBooks so sort of
31:11
what looks like a traditional book but links out to audio files or has more
31:17
embedded digital images um and then there are some presses including Michigan uh Michigan State but
31:25
also um Stanford and um Brown has a press type thing who are doing more born
31:32
digital publications and what that means is that you the project doesn't have to be like
31:40
a book but online it can be um for example I'm working with a
31:46
scholar or a team of scholars right now who have created an archive of documents
31:52
that relate to um perspectives on Africa published in the
31:58
US during the during the 19th Century as Africa was
32:05
being colonized by other nations and um so I'll just throw that out there it
32:10
does it is a lot of work it's definitely a situation where you want to reach out to press to acquisitions editors who
32:17
publish in those publish those types of projects as early as possible because they can help
32:22
temper your expectations I might say and give you a sense of how you can approach
32:28
these sorts of projects but if it's something that you're interested in if for example
32:33
you um you do work with a lot of data visualizations a lot of maps or something like that you use GIS then
32:39
those opportunities are available and you can please feel free to reach out to me I will actually drop my email in the
32:45
chat because I'm happy to talk about that I come from a DH background and so it's something I want to see more of I
32:51
want to create more space for it within scholarly publishing
32:57
okay the question was about money um do you get paid publishing the books
33:03
[inaudible] started to answer this in the chat which is that you do sign a contract there's a legal contract that
33:08
details in a lot of depth how much you'll get paid for every copy of the
33:14
book that is sold in paperback form and hardcover form that sold overseas versus sold in the United States versus
33:21
um if there's a translation of it so there and it's in legalese right and so this is going to be I think an abrupt
33:27
wow for a lot of folks when you get your first contract because we're not we don't know how to read these like is that appropriate is that the right
33:33
amount the first thing I would say is have a mentor who has published a book before and has done pretty well
33:40
um that will help you look at your contract to know if this is kind of standard um what you can how much you
33:46
can negotiate is depending on the Press depend on who you are and whether you've published a book before or not right a
33:53
lot of presses um not MSU of course but a lot of presses are like you need you need us
33:58
more than I do you right if you're a author who needs tenure like how much negotiating power do you have with the
34:04
Press I need this in order to get tenure so how much can I ask for here but um you know frankly yeah you know
34:10
digital background medicine has done pretty well and so like I I get I get a check uh once a year based on how much
34:16
is sold but what you should assume is that you're not gonna make a lot of money I think it's a pretty good
34:22
assumption that academic presses one do not pay university presses do not pay so it's cents on the dollar for every book
34:29
that sold and you're not going to make a ton of money but maybe because Kishonna is falling out and I don't know so let me
34:34
see you well I was gonna say like you know early on I think by the time Intersectional Tech came around like I
34:41
was able to like negotiate so like I'm thinking like Woke Gaming like maybe every every couple every I think it's
34:47
quarterly if I can remember Caitlin I think you all pay out like royalties you know it's based on like maybe quarters like sometimes but I feel like like for
34:53
Walt gaming I get like a like a thousand every quarter you know for for Woke Gaming and for Intersectional Tech so
34:59
those I mean those are it's also based on the numbers that you got to do so you see me I'm constantly pushing the book
35:05
out there hey you need this for your class you need this for this hey it makes sense for that I've we got to do
35:11
our own you know like especially I'm at like an LSU Press you know I'm not at a place that has like a lot of money you
35:17
know LSU doesn't they don't have a lot of money to be able to do this so I have to do like my own publishing so but every semester you're gonna see me
35:22
pushing these books so people can get it on their syllabus their institutions will buy it you buy it for your mama and you
35:28
granny you know we I'm gonna do all that we're gonna do all that it's a hustle it's a full hustle
35:34
it's a selling on like having good social media presence and going to classes and talking about it because 
35:39
They'll buy your book for everyone in the class if you go and have a conversation with it book tours and from my perspective we're
35:44
not put on my press creating my own book tour right which was like do you need me to come and give a talk send me a DM
35:50
this is what my rig is I'll come give a talk some places I'm going to talk for free because it's a good press for people to
35:56
come out and buy the book um and I think a lot of the money that some folks make on their book is also talks right
36:02
it's through going places and talking about it uh oh yeah I just had a quick question sorry Brie I mean it was just
36:08
about the the money thing so um I thought this would be a good time to quickly ask about the trade book
36:15
versus academic publishing thing I know that um trade books are useless for tenure
36:21
right pretty much but um as far as I'm aware like with academic publishing the royalties is like what like sometimes
36:28
like seven percent yeah that's that's incredibly low really really low it sometimes shoots up you know it can be
36:34
lower than that what happens is usually after you sell a certain number and the amount that you get per book would go
36:41
higher right so that's at this time my contract works is after I sold the first let's say like 250 hard copies in the
36:48
first 500 paperbacks then the amount that I make on the book goes up after that because they're trying to make their
36:54
money back first of all it costs a lot of money to print our books it's a long process so they're really at first
36:59
they're trying to make their money back they invest a lot of money in the process of upgrading our books well I was just wondering is there do you see any
37:06
benefit like as them exit to trade publishing I know that there's like some I've got some
37:11
friends who are doing some going the trade route instead like is there anything that you would
37:17
sort of say like you know money market and everything so like is there any thoughts about like by the trade after
37:22
you get tenure I would say do it after you if you're trying to get tenure an academic institution you need to put that trade book off
37:29
um because like they listen it could be a New York Times bestseller that it won't count for tenure
37:36
um you might could write a little statement about it like in your impact statement but they do not care
37:41
um but but also you have to think about the route and your pathway you know you could do that route you know if you're okay you know like with that but I would
37:48
say you you're not don't do none of that until like after tenure you can look at some of the public scholars you know that in black and
37:55
digital studies that I wouldn't say all the names of but they that have done trade books and they've had really
38:00
popular trade books trade books that people read quite frequently um but their pathway to tenure at their
38:07
institutions has been fraught right so some of the biggest names of people who are on TV and pundits and stuff like
38:13
that didn't have tenure at their institutions while they were incredibly bright so it's just it's a choice
38:19
right of what thing matters to you I want to get this book out I want it to be for this audience versus I want an
38:25
academic career and I want to get tenure on an R1 institution and I guess our guidelines are what they are they're not
38:31
going to bend them for me what constitutes a good contract so
38:36
um it's been really great to you know understand the process to get to the contract but I'm even interested to see
38:43
like what constitutes a good contract once you do get it and it is and because
38:48
of that contract is there something that would be beneficial to know in the book proposal process when you're
38:54
shopping for um publishers in the first place so is there something that
39:01
is in the contract that would be best to know about what different type of presses
39:07
um I'm just trying to like you said be as transparent I want to know all the things um to now going into this process what
39:14
that all looks like so most presses their contracts are
39:20
standard templates that have been approved by the university's general counsel and so your ability to negotiate
39:26
is really limited um which by that I mean don't
39:32
think and also don't set don't feel like you have to go line by line and edit a
39:38
contract I've seen some first-time authors do that and really that just there's nothing we can do there are a
39:45
lot of the language that we've we think through a lot of the language um like Cat mentioned earlier often with most
39:53
books we're just trying to break even we're not trying to or at least I hope most presses aren't trying to exploit
39:58
you we're not trying to trick you um but in terms of things that you can negotiate
40:05
um I think we talked about um scaling royalties I think Cat mentioned that earlier so um usually for
40:12
first-time authors royalties are going to be like around five to seven percent but you can
40:17
you can see if they if they can bump it up once you've sold uh usually it starts
40:23
at like a thousand books or um something like that the advice I got about scaling that I didn't know existed but
40:29
um Scott told me that right and was like and you can't change the fact that they have a scale but you can maybe say like I
40:36
want the bump at 500 versus a thousand and see what they say right 250 versus
40:41
500 and see what they say um so you know those small kinds of changes were at least possible yeah
40:48
um you can also ask this these are all really small things because we're it's small stakes in some regards but um you
40:55
can ask for more author copies usually you get like 10 I'd say and then after that you you can buy more at a 40 percent for us
41:02
anyway 40 discount um but you can ask for more if you feel
41:07
you want more um you can pay attention to we've been talking so much about the proposal
41:13
process about the writing process one other thing to keep in mind is that's only the first half of the publishing
41:18
process once your book goes into production you still need to handle copy editing
41:24
um some presses will ask you to review proofs stuff like that and so another thing I recommend to authors is look at
41:32
your personal schedule and look at the timeline laid out in your contract see if you want more turnaround time to
41:37
review copy edits if you want more turnaround time to review proofs um you don't want to ask for too much
41:43
time but if like an extra week would help like now's the time to ask for that and it
41:50
just it'll give you more space to make sure your book's as published as possible um and I'm sure I'm forgetting oh um
41:57
the other way to make money off of books is licensing and so this is a small
42:04
thing too but if you have images in your books when you're asking for permissions make sure that you get permission
42:10
none you want non-exclusive rights in perpetuity for all for world and all
42:16
languages because what that means is that when the press is selling it's licensing out your book to other
42:21
publishers they then don't have to worry they don't they don't or if uh rather if
42:28
a foreign press asks for rights to your to publish your book for example I work on African Studies so we get requests to
42:35
publish the book in Africa I don't have to say like oh no we can't actually give you the rights to this because this one
42:40
quote we only have permission to publish in the US or something like that so just
42:45
do what you can to make it easy for the press to sell your book to license your book to other presses and I'll stop
42:52
there that's some really nitty-gritty stuff something relevant contract-wise is some presses have a
42:57
right to first refusal for your next book project written into a contract so think about it that's something that is important to you um if you're with a
43:04
press that you like you want to keep working with maybe that's fine but if maybe you didn't have the greatest experience and you want to try out a new
43:10
press you just don't want to be beholden um you can talk about that right of first refusal and have that that costs
43:15
in some places um and also increasingly if you're writing a book that you think you have
43:21
this inkling and everything thanks to this it's not true that it's going to be a popular audience that's going to like your book too right we all think this
43:27
like every academic is like but my book is the one that crosses over no it's like it stops and that's it right but
43:33
like but like we all think that like someone's gonna really want to do something with this but something that she told me was that uh about licensing
43:40
first like a reporting right so like how much you'll get paid if they turn into an audiobook or if it gets licensed out
43:46
to become a part of a film which Algorithms of Oppression did right so we saw that happen and so it's not unheard
43:52
of academic texts can actually end up in a motion picture it can enter right you
43:58
don't see that coming so this is not a huge concern it's probably not going to be relevant but that right first
44:03
refusal is something that I had in mind too in terms of what I wanted to published my next academic press book with that same publisher so
44:11
It's gonna be you