- I can give you some considerations that you should think about, or you may wanna think about at least, in making the decision. So one key consideration is, how much would it help
your academic career? And that will vary a lot by field. Some fields are so-called book fields, where it is pretty much expected that you will write at least
one book and possibly more, and in some fields in
history are like this. On the other hand, at the other extreme, there are fields which are
primarily article fields, where you're gonna be
judged mostly by articles, and there is no expectation
that you will write a book, people might even think
that you're weird or strange for trying to write one, and
a lot of fields are in between where it's not necessarily essential that you can write a book, but it may be, something that will help
your career in any event. If you're not sure what kind of field you're
in, in that respect, the best approach is to
ask more senior scholars, and ask them what they think. You may also wanna take a look to see, who are some of the most
successful scholars in your field over the last 10 or 20 years. If those people are primarily
known for their books, most of them, that's a sign that it's a field where books are
important to advancement. If on the other hand are mostly
known for their articles, that might be evidence
in the other direction. So, how much this would
advance your career will depend a lot on, in your field. There are also some issues which are, advantages of the book
format over to conventional academic article format
that you should consider. One of them obviously is
the book can be much longer, and discuss an issue in greater depth. So, if you wanna look at
a really big question, or really a sophisticated and complex one, then sometimes it makes
sense to write a book. You could potentially write
a series of articles instead, but a book can be better integrated. Another situation where the
book format has advantages is, if you want to write an
interdisciplinary book that appeals to people in
multiple different fields. For example, my book, "Democracy
and Political Ignorance," which was previously mentioned, it appeals obviously to
people in my own field of law, because there's some issues there about constitutional design, but it also has interest to
political scientist, economist, and others, had I published this, in a series of law journals in my field, maybe other law professors
would have read it, but it's very unlikely to
people in those other fields would have read it, whereas
for various reasons, people are more likely to read a book that's not exactly in their field or a book that's interdisciplinary, than to read an academic
journal in an article, or in a journal, which is
not from your own field. So for instance, very few law professors, will read very many economics
or history journal articles, very few economists will read law journal articles and so on. And this is one of many places where, I would take the opportunity
to remind you that, this is a talk about, the
world of academic publishing, the world of academia
as it actually exists, not necessarily as it should be, so you might say, "Professor
should read more articles outside of their field,"
But many of them are lazy, and, or just simply don't
have time, and so they don't. The book format can help you
break through that barrier, and indeed, that did work for me, with "Democracy and Political Ignorance," I was able to reach a much
wider audience within academia, than I otherwise would have. As another advantage
of the book format is, if your topic is at all one that you hope will reach,
not only academics, but interested members
of the general public, those people are far more
likely to read a book, than they are to read an
academic journal article. Very, very few academic journal articles, ever get read by anybody
other than other scholars, and to get many of them, won't even be read by other scholars. However, with books, there is
a higher proportion of them that can break into the
sort of mainstream markets, so to speak, or at least
the market of readers who are very interested in the topic, but are not themselves scholars, and that certainly was the case with "Democracy and Political Ignorance," and also with my most
recent book, "Free to Move," where I had the self-conscious
goal of reaching the, for a large community of people, who are interested in issues of migration, issues of constitutional design, other questions that I
addressed in this book, which is about, voting with your feet, both through international migration, but also voting with
your feet domestically. And finally, of course, this
book is an example of how you can cover a wider range of material, and have a greater sweep
to your argument in a book, than you can in an
article, there is no way that I could have covered
this range of issues, in just an article without
being very superficial and crude in the book, maybe I was
still crude or superficial, you can judge that for
yourself if you read the book, but I was at least weasel
than I would have been, had I tried to just put
this all into one article, which is much shorter. So, these are the potential
advantage of writing a book. There is one big
disadvantage, and that is, what economist call, opportunity cost, that you, the it, books take
a very long time to write, it's a lot of effort. Some people analogize writing
a book to raising a child, is not quite that time consuming, but the analogy is not entirely misplaced. So, early in my career, I thought that if a book was
the same as five articles, then it should take about
the same amount of time to write as five articles, but in reality, it's actually more time than that. So if the book has the same
length as five articles, it may well, instead of
taking the same length of time as those articles, it may
actually take twice as long, or the like, so, you
have to thinks carefully, you what will most benefit
your career, writing that book? Or writing the several articles as you could have
written in the same time? And similarly, you have to think about, where you are in your life in general, if you have very small children as I do, then, you know, obviously that is another
consideration to some degree, that raises the opportunity
cost of writing a book, and so, those cost are high, but I think in some
cases they're worth it, you will have to weigh for
yourself whether they are or not. But let's assume that you've decided, you do want to write a
book, congratulations. The next step to consider
is, choosing a publisher, that there are dozens of
academic publishers out there. Many of them are university presses, press or they're associated
with a particular university like Harvard or Yale or
Chicago or Oxford or Cambridge, they're also so-called,
Commercial Academic Publishers, which are independent
at any given university. They're independent usually
for profit institutions, but many of them specialize
in academic types of books. So as a general rule, when you submit a
proposal or a manuscript, my view is you should try to submit to three or four publishers at once. So you have to decide, which
ones you're going to pick. And the simplest initial answer is that, at least in my field of law, and also in major social
science and humanities fields, related to it, like history,
economics, political science, and so on, the biggest name
publishers in the academic world are these ones, up on
the screen right now, Oxford, Chicago, Princeton, Harvard University Press,
Yale and Cambridge. I'm not saying they're actually the best in some objective sense,
what I'm saying is that they're the best known
and most prestigious, at least in these fields
and I'm familiar with, and therefore, if your
goal is to get a publisher, that will be a big name
on your CV or your resume, and it will be impressive
to other academics then these presses are the ones that you should look to first, at least if you're in any of the fields, that I'm familiar with. After that, it's much more difficult to tell there are a few other publishers, which you might think of
as just below this level, like Stanford University,
Press University of Michigan, and some others, as a crude general rule, the prestige of a university press, is gonna be closely
correlated with the prestige of the university that's
it's associated with. So, Ivy League University Press
will have a higher standing than Podunk University
Press, and that's true, regardless of whether Podunk
does an as good or better a job of actually producing and editing the book than Ivy League University Press. Most academics don't know that much, about the ins and outs of
particular academic presses. They will judge it just by
the prestige of the press or often just by to prestige the university associated with the press, again, this is another area where, maybe things should be different
from the way that they are, but this is actually how they are. Similarly, with commercial
academic presses, as a general rule, the
commercial academic presses, even the best ones, are prestige wise, a little bit below these
top six publishers, but some of them, are
nonetheless quite prestigious. I think though that with the
commercial academic presses, the degree of their prestige,
varies a lot by field. So for instance, Routledge,
which is a well-known one, has very high standing
in political theory, but not as much in some other
fields that I'm aware of. If you're not sure where
presses stand in your field, then again, consult more serious scholars, ask them what they think about it, and you'll get an answer that way. I should note also that
sometimes a given press, will have a series a
in a particular field, or as particularly well-known for publishing books in
your field, so for instance, the University of North Carolina Press is well known for its
series on civil war history, the university of Kansas
Press, of which I'm a big fan, they have a great series on legal history, and another one in
American military history. So, people who are clued-in, and in to know, they will
know things like that, but sadly, many academics
will not know that. Many academics would just say, "Oh, university of Kansas Press,
that's a university I know, mostly because of its basketball team. So the press can't be all that good." So to your extent that
you care about prestige, what it will look like on your resume and the like or your CV, you
will want to pay attention to these kind of crude prestige orderings. There is obviously also some
variation in terms of quality, production values, how good
the editing is and so on, to my mind that varies less by press, than it does by the individual editor that you're working with,
so, what you may wanna do, if you have a choice and
several options is to try, find out who the editor in your field is, and see what that
person's reputation it's, hopefully find other people in your field who published with that press, and see how they liked
working with the editor there, but in some ways, the particular person may often be more important
in that respect than the, you know, sort of the press
that you're working with, but in terms of prestige rankings, it is roughly as I indicated, though there is gonna be some variation in particular fields,
and if you're unsure, again, talk to more senior scholars, or if you can't talk to them, look at who the most prestigious academics in your field publish with. If a lot of them are publishing with, say, University of Kansas, that's a sign that maybe that press, has unusually high standing in your field. But again, in most cases, this general pecking
order I mentioned earlier, that is the way it works, maybe it shouldn't work that
way, but it is, at least, that's true with respect to
American academic presses, and the American ones are also well-known in
most other countries, at least for, academics
follow literature in English. If you wanna talk about British or Canadian academic presses,
I know a bit about them, and I can talk about them in questions if people are interested. All right, so, having decided, where you're going to
submit your manuscript, I'd like to talk a bit about the issue of, how do you get your manuscript, or your proposal, actually
accepted by the publisher, which seems like a pretty
important part of the process, because your book will not get very far, if no one wants to publish it. And when you submit the
book, roughly speaking, you have two options that you can go with, you can actually write
an entire manuscript, or you can submit a proposal. I'm gonna talk mostly
about the proposal route, because with the manuscript, a lot will just depend on
the quality of the manuscript as a whole, so of course,
they'll just be reading that, and with the manuscript, you'll mostly just be
sending a short cover letter, but, I will note that there are
advantages and disadvantages to both the proposal route
and the manuscript route. The advantage of the proposal route, is that you have to write
only a much shorter document. It's usually about no
more than 10 or 15 pages, and therefore, if the project fails, you won't have used up such
an enormous amount of time. On the other hand, if you
write an entire manuscript, and for whatever reason,
you can't get it published, then you've lost a huge amount of time, and I've seen this happen, I was once peer reviewer for a
press where, you know, other, the person submitted like
a 400 page manuscript, and it was totally terrible
and completely unpublishable, and whoever wrote that thing, they spent an enormous amount of time and got nothing out of it. The advantage of doing the
manuscript route is that, you probably only have to
go through peer review once. So, they'll send it out to peer reviewers and they'll rule on it, and they'll decide yes
or no, on the manuscript. On the other hand, if
you did a proposal route, the proposal will have
to go to peer review, but then when you get a contract, and you eventually produce
the actual manuscript, then it will usually have to
go through peer review again, and it can happen that, the proposal passed peer review,
but the manuscript did not, and that can be a painful moment, though you potentially can still, publish the manuscript
with another publisher, if your initial one
decides to throw it out. So, I'm gonna focus, for the most part now,
on the proposal route, and I'll talk about, what
should be in your proposal? And there's many different possible ways to write a proposal, in my view, I don't think there's
one form of organization that it's best for everyone, and I've seen a lot of different types of organization work for people. So I'm not gonna tell you, you know, "If paragraph one must say this, and paragraph two must say that." Or like although, there are
guides to proposal writing that go into that level of detail. What I will tell you instead,
is four things that I think, absolutely must be in almost any proposal that is likely to succeed. First, it must say what your thesis is, like, what is the main point
or argument of your book? You might say, "Well, it's pretty obvious that that should be in there." But I have read proposals
in a number of occasions, where it's not at all
clear from the proposal, what argument or what point
the person is trying to make. If it's unclear to the peer reviewer, as I was in those cases, it, probably the proposal
will probably be rejected. So you wanna be very clear
about, "This is what I'm doing." Second, you should explain,
why the idea is new, and how it's different
from existing literature. Because in the academic world, we reward people for original scholarship, not just for repeating or restating what other people had said. And if necessary, you will need
to include a section saying, "These are previous
books on related topics, but here's why my is, mine is different. It's doing something that those
other writers did not do." Third, you should explain,
why is this topic important? Why should people care? Again, in some cases it's obvious, you know, when I wrote the book on "Democracy and Political Ignorance," it's relatively obvious why
political ignorance matters and why the voters being poorly
informed could be a problem. In some cases, it may not be obvious, but still, the less obvious it is, the more clearly you have to explain, "This is why this matters." Maybe it only matters, because specialists in
the field care about it, but even then, if it were if possible, you should try to explain,
why getting this issue right, can have an impact in the wider
world, even if it's an issue that only a few specialists
will understand. And finally, you should explain, what the audience for the book is, and what the potential market is. It may be in some cases, that the audience is only other experts in the field. If so, you should explain, at least explain those experts
are likely to buy the book. If it can reach out to
people in other fields, or reach to the general public, or if it can be used as
a textbook in a class, make sure to point that out. In theory, academic publishers
that are university presses are supposed to be non-profit, and they should publish good scholarship, irrespective of whether it
makes them money or not. In reality, most of them in
fact, do care about the money, and therefore, the larger the potential audience for your book, the more likely it is that
they're going to accept it. You could argue that they
shouldn't be that way, they should care only about ideas, and they should be indifferent to money, but that's not the way that it is. And obviously that's even more true for commercial academic publishers, who even, as a matter of theory, they're in the business of
making money, most of them, and therefore, they will
wanna know that as well. So, those things should
be in your proposal. There is one other
point that I would note, and that is that, if you are challenging conventional wisdom in your field, if you're making an
argument that, you know, you know most other scholars in your field will disagree with, then you should think about, what are the likely
responses to your argument, and prefigure your rebuttals
to them strictly speaking, in that maybe that only needs
to be done in a manuscript, but in reality, peer reviewers
and the editors at the press will be interested in that, and
they will be more interested and more on to lookout for that, if you're challenging conventional wisdom. So, this I think is especially important, for those of you who are
conservative or libertarian in most academic fields
that majority of scholars, and also editors are left-wing, and therefore, they will
be more on the lookout for, "Is this person addressing what I think is the
obvious counter argument?" There's a little bit of a
double standard there that, if you're making a woe, a more left-wing, more conventional argument,
conventional for the field, then this will be less undermines, but, again, this another area where you have to deal
with the system as it is. So, therefore, the more you're challenging
conventional wisdom, particularly on an
ideologically charged subject, the more it is the case
that you want to explain, you know, how you're gonna, or preview how you're
gonna respond to arguments. Lastly, there is the issue of
dealing with peer reviewers. In most cases, your proposal
will first go to an editor. If the editor just
doesn't like to proposal, or doesn't think that it
fits the press's interests, they may just reject it out of hand, but if they wanna give a consideration, they will send it out to peer reviewers, usually two, but sometimes
as many as three or four. Sometimes the editor will ask you for possible suggestions
for peer reviewers. You should prepared to suggest, two or three names to that
person, those people should be, prestigious leading
scholars in your field, as big names as possible. They should be people that know that know, that you know like your work, because there is nothing worse than, you giving them a name
of the peer reviewer, them using the name that you gave, and then that person saying, you know, "Joe's proposal really sucks
and you should reject it." So, you should give them
names that you think will, you have good reason to think, will think favorably of your work. On the other hand, these are people, who should not be at your own university, because then they'll suspect
a conflict of interest. If you're a libertarian or a conservative, at least most of your suggested names, should be left of center people. If you give them a list
of other libertarians, or other conservatives, if
that's what your views are, they will think or they may think, "Well, only people who
agree with this person, actually like his or her work." And again, this has
another double standard, if a liberal or a left-wing writer, submits in a list of mostly
left-wing peer reviewers, then, you know, that, they
probably won't think that, but you have to live with this problem. Then it will be sent out
to the peer reviewers, they may or may not be
people that you suggested, and you'll get back peer review reports. If the peer review reports
are extremely negative, there is not much you can do, the proposal will probably be rejected. If they're very positive
for the most part, then the proposal will likely be accepted. You will still have to write
a response to the reviewers, but in that response, you can just say, "Yes, thank you to reviewers
that they recommend my work." And if they suggest
various small adjustments, you can say, "Well, I'm
open to considering them." Or something like that. You might well get an intermediate case, where the reviewers say some
things that are positive, and some things that are negative, and so, things are little
somewhat on defense, in that situation, the
response that you write to the reviewers, will
be extremely important. You may be tempted to just say that, if the reviewers criticize your proposal, you will be very tempted, I know I'm tempted when
this happens to say, "Well, you know, here's my
response, my response is that, these reviewers are a bunch of morons. They don't understand
how great my work is. They don't understand how profound and pathbreaking by ideas are. So, their suggestions were
all stupid and I should, and I'm just gonna reject them." And while this will be tempting, it probably won't be
good for your proposal and your chances of having it be accepted. The editor chose those
reviewers because they think, those people have useful insight, and know a lot about the
field, so, if you look like, you're just rejecting
their ideas out of hand, that won't look good, what you should do, is look for places where you can agree with the things that they said and say, "Well, you know, I can integrate this idea into the structure of
my existing proposal." If you can't fully integrate
it, you can at least say, "Why, but here's a different way that this problem could be addressed." And in places where you just
have to reject the suggestion, because you just think
it's completely wrong, or because it won't work in
the context of your book, then you should explain
as politely as possible, why you're rejecting it,
and if at the same time, you're able to accept some of
the reviewer's suggestions, you will be in a better position to be able to reject others,
remember that your goal here, is not to win some sort of
debate with the peer reviewers. Your goal is to get
your proposal accepted. So, being nice, being conciliatory
and seeming reasonable, in most cases is a better way to doing it, of doing it, than sort of, getting up on your high horse,
and saying like, you know, "I'm the only one who really
understands the topic. All these other people
are a bunch of morons and you know, so it's gonna
be my way or the highway." In many cases, if you take that attitude, they will send you packing on the highway. And so, you won't actually
succeed in that way. So, finally, I should note one point about the mechanics of submission, that when you initially submit, if at all possible, you should
just email your proposal directly to the editor at
the, that particular press, who's responsible for
your particulars field. Often, on the websites of the presses, they will have the list of
editors and it will be listed, which one does which fields, if you can, you can probably find their email there. If you can't find it on the website, you can finds out some other way, perhaps from other scholars
who published with that press, but submitting it directly
to the editor, is much better than submitting it through
some kind of general, a portal that might exist on the website, and it's certainly much better than sending them something by snail mail. The more immediately you
could get it under the eyes of the person who
actually make a decision, the better off that you
will be, and that's true, even if a tactically, the website says, "Well, everybody must
submit through some portal." Even if it says that, you're
probably still better off emailing the particular editor, regardless of what the official rule say. So, let's say you've done a proposal, you've gotten it through, and now you actually
have to write the book. In some ways, that might
be particularly hard because if you're like me and
you're like a lot of people, when you try to write,
it's a constant battle against time-wasting and procrastination. Usually, your contract that you'd signed, will call on you to submit the book within say, six months or a
year, something like that and, you will be very tempted to instead, spend your time on other things, other projects with more
immediate deadlines, things that are more fun,
obligations with your family, or even just surfing the
internet, rather than writing on the day that you're
supposed to be writing. So, this is very tempting, and I don't have a
brilliant solution for it, if I did, I would have
published a lot more books and other projects than I actually have. But broadly speaking, I
think there's two ways that you can address this, one is, you can learn to be more
efficient in your use of time. I don't have brilliant
ideas for how to do this, but if you wanna go this route, there's a book by Jason Brennan, called, "Good Work If You Can Get It," which he published last year, which is all about time management and organization for academics,
so if you read Jason's book, he has a lot of brilliant advice, and if you take it and follow it, you will be much more
efficient in your writing. There's only one problem, in
order to follow his advice for doubt of other people
who have similar ideas, it requires a good deal of self-control. And lack of self-control, is precisely one of the big
reasons why people like me, and many other academics are procrastinators in the first place. So, if you're like that, and you feel like you won't easily change, you can adopt the other strategy, of knowing this about yourself
and building in time for it. So I know for instance that, many times when I sit
down and try to work, sometimes I just won't be able to do it. So I try to set up enough blocks of time, where I can sit down and
work session, if I work, if I actually do work
only during some of them, I can still get the project done. Similarly, I try to learn
under what conditions, and the most efficient, and most likely to be able
to work effectively for me, it's sitting in my basement
office, like I am right now, and in a place that's
as quiet as possible, for somebody else that
might be in their office, at their university, it
might be at a coffee shop, it might be somewhere else, learn where you're most efficient, learn whether you're better
off in total quiet or whether, having some music playing in
the background is good for you and try to write under those
conditions as much as possible. And also, one way that I
battled the procrastination and time-wasting is that, in
moments when I am into group, when I can force myself to work, then I'd push ahead for
as long as possible, and I try to build into my
schedule things such that, I have the ability to do it. And similarly, you should
know with your pace of work, and therefore, work with
the editor initially to build up a deadline, such
that it's realistic for you. It's easier to ask for a
slightly longer deadline from the get go, than if
you violate the deadline, and then ask for more time after the fact, most academic publishers will
let you violate the deadline by a few days or even two
or three or four weeks, but the more you push beyond it, the more their confidence in you will win, and the more you risk potentially poisoning your relationship. So this issue of procrastination
and time-wasting, is an extremely important one. I don't have a complete
solution for it, but my hope is, that if you've taken the time
to listen to this seminar, that in itself is an indication
that you're more hardworking and less lazy than I am and
therefore it will, you can, you know, you can battle through it, and if somebody is lazy, as I am, can publish six or seven academic books, then hopefully you can too. So I wanna talk next a
little about the organization of the book manuscript itself. Obviously, this is going
to vary enormously, depending on the topic of the book, your writing style and
so forth, but I think there are a few general
principles, could potentially help. One is that, you should
have a clear introduction to that book, which weighs out
what your main argument is, and also how different chapters, later in the book will fit into it, and in each chapter also,
it's good to point out, "This is what the chapter is about. This is how it ties into
the rest of the book." You, see, in order to not make
the book sound too clinical or technical, it is desirable, particularly in the
introduction often to have, a story or something
that's attention grabbing. So in my book, "Free to Move," which is about migration
and voting with your feet, early on, I told the story
of Frederick Douglass, the famous escaped slave and abolitionist, and how he understood the
importance of freedom of movement, not just within the United States or for other escaped slaves, but also, he was a big advocate
of free immigration as well. So the story of Frederick Douglass, is an attention grabbing device, and I similarly included
the story of J.D.Vance, the author of "Hillbilly Elegy," where I argue that, Vance
who was very famous, his story is best understood as, an example of the success
of voting with your feet, even though, Vance
himself doesn't understand in that particular way. So, you wanna have both
a clear organization and also attention grabbing stories. Particularly, if you want to reach, people who are not experts in your field, you wanna make sure that your writing is as clear as possible. And there's various different
ways that you can do that, but you should at least
be aware of this issue, and if you're not sure
if you're being clear, ask someone to read your manuscript, who is interested in the subject, but is not an expert in that field. In my case, sometimes it's my wife, she knows a lot about
the things I write about, but she's not herself, an
academic specializing in them, if it's unclear to her, that probably means that
I've done a bad job, and I need to make it clear. Similarly, you can ask
your editor about this, often editors are very good at, dealing with these sorts of issues. I wanna talk also very briefly about, substantive issues in your book. Obviously those vary
greatly by your topic, and how you plan to address it. But I would note that particularly for books that address controversial issues, and particularly for
challenging conventional wisdom, you need to think very carefully about how, what possible arguments can be raised against your position and how
you're gonna respond to them. You may not be able to
respond to everything, but you do need to respond to, at least those things that
are most likely to be raised by other experts in your field, or in some cases, also by lay readers, if you expect that there'll
be a lay readers of the book. So, for example, in my
book, "The Grasping Hand," which attacks the Supreme
Court's famous decision in Kelo versus City of New London ruling, which said that the government
can take your property, and give it to another private owner, for the sake of promoting
economic development. I knew that most people in
my field, thought that Kelo was correctly decided
and it was just fine. So I had to think about,
"Why did they think that, How would they respond to my arguments?" Ideally, you should read
the opposing literature, so you know what their views are, but even if there isn't literature on the specific point you're making, or you can't find it, or whatever, at least ask yourself this question, "If it was my job to
respond to my argument, what would I argue against myself?" It's a question I had to ask way back when I was in high school
debate when I first learned it, it's useful for academics as well. If an argument occurs to you as a potentially powerful
respond to your position, then it will probably
occur to other people, and you need to include it. In some cases, you also
need to include arguments that you yourself think
are weak or even stupid, but if a lot of people believe them, you need to address it,
so in "The Grasping hand," I addressed the argument
that the position, that I was arguing was very similar to the
Supreme Court's notorious 1905 decision in a case called
Lochner versus New York. I think there's actually, little offended here in
common between that case and what I was arguing for, but a lot of people think the opposite, and therefore I had to address it, whether I wanted to or not. So, I, obviously there's
a lot of other details that will vary based on the
nature of your book, but it's, these are some general points
that you should consider. You should also perhaps
briefly consider the issue, of whether you wanna take
a hand in the cover design. In general, when I started this process early on in my career, I thought, "well, the publisher are
the experts in cover design, I'll just leave it to them." And in some cases I've done just that, but sometimes, they will
suggest cover designs, that are just really, really
bad, and in that case, they will often let you
put your foot down and say, "No, I'm not gonna accept this. I have a contrary suggestion instead." So, for "The Grasping Hand," the press's initial design
was the one on the left, which to my mind, at
least, tells you absolutely nothing about what the book is about. I suggested something like the, what became the one on the
right, which is the actual cover, which conveys the idea, that the government is
taking people's homes, which is what the book is about. So to my mind that I think
to that and most readers, the design on the right is much better, and I'm glad I put my foot down, and if you reject their idea, and have a reasonable one of your own, then often publishers
will go along with that. Particularly if your idea's not expensive, or if it utilizes a picture or image, that's not one that they have
to pay for that, you know, pay to the copyright holder or the like. So, let's say you've completed your book, it's been published, congratulations, that's a great achievement,
many academics feel well, "When that happens, then my work is done." But in most cases they're mistaken, because for most academics, you also have to promote your book, unless you're already very famous, then the publisher probably
will make only a modest effort to promote your book, and you will have to do
most of the work yourself. You can negotiate with the publisher, to send out copies to particular people and also give you a free author
copies, you can discuss that at the stage at which you're
writing your contract. Another thing to discuss at the stage of when you're negotiating
about the contract, is if you think that, that your book might be bought by people who are not academics,
would expense accounts, then you will wanna
discuss with the publisher, the need to set a reasonable,
not too high price. This is actually the main
thing that I negotiate with book publishers when
I'm talking about contracts, otherwise many academic
publishers will price your book at $80 or $100 or even more, and nobody will be able to buy
it, but academic libraries, that's fine if you expect the
book will only go to libraries and only other experts in the field will be interested in
it, but it's terrible if you think you wanna
reach a larger audience. So you want to make sure that
there's a reasonable price and that the time to discuss that, is at the stage when you're
talking about the contract, and especially you will
have some leverage, if you have more than one
offer that you're working at. So, broadly speaking,
there's two audiences that you might wanna reach. One is the audience of other academics. The other is the audience and people and the quote, unquote, the "Real" world. To promote to the academic world, there's a number of
steps that you can take. One is, make a list of who
are the 20 or 30 or 40 people, in the academic world or
unrelated places like think tanks, who are the ones most likely to take an interest in this topic, or most way could review it, and email them to let them know
that the book is coming up, and also send them copies of the book, and hope the publisher might
be willing to do this for you. If they're not willing to do it, if at all possible, use
your author copies to do it. Most publishers will let
you buy discounted copies beyond the ones that
you probably for free. So if you have the money to
do it, by all means, try to, you might say, "It's not
worth it waste of money." But if even one or two
really important people, hears about your book this
way, they review it or to like, not only would this be great for the book, but you might even earn the
money back, so in one instance, with "Democracy and Political Ignorance," one of the people that I sent
the copy of this book to, was a Japanese academic
that I knew and he read it, and he liked it and he said, why don't I do a Japanese
translation of the book? He approached an academic
publisher in Japan, we did it translation, and the income from the
translation was not enormous, but it was enough to pay for all the books that I sent to everybody,
so, that's just one example, even if most of your
efforts at outreach fail, those that succeed can make
up for the failures elsewhere. In addition, you should
know about the schools, and other institutions that
have workshops or conferences, other, that relate to topics
that are covered in your book, you should contact those organizations, suggest that you can give
a talk at the conference or at the school about them, and if at all possible, that you can get speaking
engagements that way. In addition to ones at universities, you should also contact think
tanks and research institutes that have an interest in your
topic, including ones that if you're a libertarian or conservative, places like the Cato
Institute and the like, that have an interest in that field. So, therefore, try to contact as wider range of people as possible, about both speaking engagements, and also reviewing the book and the like, send it and out also to
leading academic journals in your field, and possibly public policy or other similar journals as well. Promotion into real world in some ways is a more difficult business, and not all books land themselves to it. But if you have a topic that
may be of interest to people, who are not academics, then you wanna reach
out as much as possible, to organizations that are
not academic ones or not, we see university-based,
like think tanks and others. You should also make sure that, review copies are sent
out to a popular media, like major newspapers and
websites and the like, also blogs that write about the topics that you're interested in, some of which may run by academics. It was mentioned, Tyler
Cowen was mentioned earlier, his blog, "Marginal
Revolution" covers many issues, in the economics and public policy, and if your book has mentioned there, that's really good for
getting attention for it. Ideally, you can also leverage
your book to write op-eds related to the topic,
especially if there are things going on in the news related to it. In Q and A, if people are interested, I can talk in more detail
about how to get yourself into the op-ed world, and how to leverage your book in that way. Since the pandemic, there have been more online speaking engagements than before, and while in-person ones will continue, I think the online ones
will continue as well, and that opens up more opportunities, which another topic we
can talk about in Q and A, if people are interested. So, the biggest rule for promotion, and really for the entire
rest of this process, is that you have to accept the idea that you will need to reach out to a lot of people and
institutions, and that many of that, those outreach efforts
will result in rejections. Many of those rejections are painful at the time that they happen. Every single book I've ever published, was rejected by at least
one of the publishers that I sent it to. For every speaking engagement
or op-ed that I've had, there's probably another
one where I, you know, I try to do an op-ed or I try
to do a speaking engagement, but people said, "No,
we're not interested." And it's annoying and painful at the time, but you have to learn to deal
with it, you have to press on, and you have to remember that, the outside world were
only see the successes. Nobody will know that
your book was rejected by Princeton University Press, and by Harvard University Press, and whatever other press rejected it. If it was published by Oxford, or by Cambridge, or one good press, nobody will know how many
others said no to it, and the same goes for the rest of this. So, if you put into time
and do the outreach, there's a good chance that
you will be successful. So, I now conclude, but I very much look
forward to the questions, I'm gonna stop sharing my screen. - All right, thank you so much, professor, for such an excellent and
informative presentation. We have a lot of great questions, so I'll just, I'll lead
off with the first. First question is, "I'm
an independent scholar, not a professor, or I except
in an occasional adjunct, are academic presses, realistic
publishers have a book by an independent researcher like me, or should I seek something else? - It's a good question, I think it depends on your credentials. So, one point that I
probably should have included in the list of what should
be in your proposal, is an explanation of, why are you the right
person to write about this? And so, there will be more
skepticism about that point, if you're not an academic or
you're not a think tank scholar or the to like somebody with a, who has an institutional affiliation, but if instance you've
written previous articles or books on the same topic and
particular if those articles are in prestigious academic
journals or are well cited, you can point that out in your proposal, and explain how that makes
you qualified to do it. If you've really published
nothing or almost nothing, and you also have no
institutional affiliation, then you're in a much tougher position, and I would almost suggest that you might be better off
first publishing some articles, and then working your way up to the book, though if you have a
truly pathbreaking idea, or there's some other way in which you have good credentials, like maybe you are personally
involved in policy making about the issue or something, there could be exceptions to that rule. - Okay, great, so our next question at, "During your presentation, you mentioned sort of the big names
in the publishing field in the book publishing field, are there like easily
searchable, fueled specific, like lists of these publishers,
or is this something where you just kinda have to ask around?" I know for instance, the
lighter blog for philosophy-- - Yeah. - It has like surveys of scholars on their opinions of the top presses for different fields of philosophy, but is this something that
people should be able to find whatever their field is? - I think the answer is they
should be able to find it, but in some fields they actually can't, because no one has done
it, so the lighter blog, and also, I think the philosophy new blog have done a good job of
this with the philosophy, but in other fields,
including my field of law, and I think perhaps also in
political science and economics, there isn't really one
easily findable ranking. So, the ones that I
mentioned, those top six, are gonna be near to top for a wide range of field, but beyond that, if you're not willing to
sort of use the crude rules of thumb that I mentioned
earlier, you do wanna ask around, but I wouldn't know if there's a lot of herd
mentality in academia, and therefore, if you ask a few people, what they say is likely
to be representative of what their field in general thinks. - Okay, great, so our next question, "Our top presses has bigger
deal to get published with as top journals in an, in addition to that, for instance, would publishing with
Cambridge University Press, be more or less difficult
than say getting a publication in American Economic Review?" - That's a good question, and I think it varies
somewhat by the field. The more of a book field
that is, so to speak, perhaps the more difficult it might be to get the press publication, in general, I feel like at least in
fields I'm familiar with, the presses are in some ways
more open-minded and less rigid than some of the top journals, which all have a very specific
thing that we're looking for, and are very rigid about
format and delight, but that can vary a lot, and that's another thing
that's more specific to a given field, just as the
prestige of book publishing versus article publishing
can vary by the fields. So economics, I know is
more an article driven field than a book field, so, other things equal, a publication in American Economic Review may help you more than publishing a book with Cambridge University
Press and economics, but the opposite could be
true in some other fields. - Okay, our next questioner asks, "So I am hoping to turn my
history PhD dissertation into a book, is it wise to
send in the existing manuscript or to submit a proposal
based on the manuscript? I imagine the book being more in-depth and longer than the dissertation, but also, once the manuscript is accepted, is it typical that you receive in advance as part of your contract
with the publisher?" - Yeah, so that's really
two different questions. The second one is easier to answer. Most academic authors
do not get an advance, especially if this is your
first time publishing, I've only started to get
advances offered to me in the last book or two that I published, earlier on, you know, they
didn't give an advance to me, that so you should not expect
one, and if you do get one, it probably will not be
more than two or $3,000. If you become very famous,
if you're like Steve Pinker or Cass Sunstein or somebody like that, things might be different. In terms of turning
dissertations into books, a lot depends on the
nature of the dissertation, but if it's not organized in a way that's readily readable and
accessible, many dissertation, I'm not saying this person's in like this, but many dissertations
are not very accessible, and they're not very
easily readable to people who aren't experts in the field. Then you may be better off
just drafting a proposal based on a dissertation
and maybe giving them, perhaps, whatever you think
is your most readable chapter. If on the other hand, your
dissertation is very accessible and it already is organized in
a way that a book should be, then you might be wanna to
go the manuscript route, and submit the thing as a manuscript. You also could potentially
revise your dissertation to make it more like manuscript, though obviously that can take more time. - Great, next question, "I've been told by some senior scholars that many presses, for instance, Princeton,
will not consider a proposal from a first time book author, only a full manuscript, is that true?" - I don't know for sure about Princeton, because I didn't submit them to them when I was doing my very first time, but I think in most
cases, that isn't true, that you can submit a proposal
and they will consider it. They may view it with more skepticism if you're a first time author, and in general, sort of the more famous and prestigious you are in your field, the less skeptical they will
be, so, if you're very famous, you can actually write
sort of a mediocre proposal and would still get accepted, because at that point they're saying, "What we really value is professor X in his or her reputation, rather than the details of the proposal." But in general, I think that
the prestige of the author, is less essential with
many book publishers, than it is sometimes with articles, submissions and the like. I, so, it's certainly not fully
democratic or meritocratic, but prestige and name
recognition like do matter, but I think most presses will consider proposals
by first-time authors, particularly if the person explains, "Here are my credential
for writing about this, here's why, you know, the
articles I've already published in this field and so on." - Okay, the, I've kinda bundle
these two questions together. So, "Will an editor send a book proposal, only a book proposal, not sample chapters or a
manuscript, out for peer review?" - Yes.
- And secondly, "How long should a book
proposal be, typically?" - Yeah, so they will send
them out for peer review, that is the typical way
of dealing with proposals. As I mentioned earlier, it will initially first go to the editor. Then the editor will decide whether it should be sent
out for review or not. If he or she decides that
they're interested enough to send it out for review, then they will in fact
send it to reviewers, and that, that's sort
of a standard process. How long should it be? It depends somewhat on the field, and on the nature of your
topic and how long it is. I would guess, between five
and 15 pages, in general, the longer your book is likely to be, the longer the proposal
probably needs to be and also, the more you're
challenging conventional wisdom, the more you will need to
prefigure, what are your responses to the, sort of the
conventional position part, and that's especially true
if people in the field maybe, many of them may be ideologically predisposed against review. - How long are you
typically given to complete the book manuscript after
receiving a contract? - It's a good question,
it can vary somewhat, and you can actually negotiate
a longer or shorter period, but in general, they
will usually give you, a about a year or so. And you can submit it earlier than that, and usually as a practical matter they, if you submit it one day
late, they won't say, "Okay, sorry, here we're
throwing out your book." But you don't wanna miss
the deadline by too much. - Is commercial potential? That is accessibility to an audience of wider than just an academic one or people in the professional
field exclusively, is that a smart argument
to make in a proposal or is it gonna be self-defeating? - It's smart depending on
the nature of the book. So, you know, if your
book is something like, you know, the, "Here's
my book about sort of, new technologies for
archeological digs or something." It's gonna be very hard
to argue that that can, you know, appeal to a wider audience. But if your book is on
a public policy issue, or on a period in history or a legal case, like a case before the
Supreme Court or like that, a lot of people are interested in, then you can possibly make the case that, there is a market for this, which is not limited
to the academic world, and you should make that case, if you can, and if the case is a good one, it will increase your odds of
getting a proposal accepted, and it will also increase the odds that you can persuade them to price the book in a reasonable way, such that it really
can be bought by people who are not academics with expense accounts or not libraries. - All right, the next questioner asks, "Are sabbaticals good
times to write books. They are, I'm starting my
fifth year in the fall, when is a good time to
start the book proposal, if my sabbatical is the seventh year?" - (laughs) So, my university
actually doesn't have sabbaticals, so I've only
had one or two semesters off then entire like 18 years
that I've been here. I think, yes, the more time
you have available to you, other things equal, that's a
better time to do a proposal. And in many ways, and
especially a good time to actually write the book manuscript, which takes much more time
than writing a proposal. There is obviously the issue of what else are you gonna be doing your, during your, doing during your sabbatical? And you know your sort of, how your schedule works
better than I do obviously, but the more to other things equal, the more time you have
available, the better than it is. - Is there anything the
difference or major difference between writing academic
books versus textbooks? - Yes, there is a big difference, and what I'm talking about here is actual book works of scholarship that make an original argument. I don't know as much
about the textbook market, but it's somewhat
different, and it may be, that may be a separate
event that I just wanna do with somebody who knows more
about textbooks than I do, because I've never thought seriously about writing a textbook,
I feel like for me, it would be too boring to try to do it, but textbooks can make
money, and in some cases, you can become more
influential in your field by publishing a widely used textbooks. So, the fact that it doesn't appeal to me doesn't necessarily mean
you shouldn't do it. - If the book is based
on peer reviewed papers that you've written, what
should you put in the proposal? Should there be changes from
the papers as well like? - That's a good question,
oftentimes you will submit, a book proposal that is based in part on your previous
work with journal articles, and you should note that
you've done those articles, you'll be building on them. You can, and people
often do, including me, incorporate pieces of
their previous articles in the book, but you shouldn't, and the publisher probably
won't let you simply just, you know, have a collection
of essays or whatever that's, have a fewer no changes from before. So you should expect
that you will need to, reorganize and rework the
material that you adapt, and you add new material to it, for instance, to take account
of different counterarguments for additional literature
that may have come out since your article was published, and you should expect, I
know it was like this for me, that it takes longer to adapt articles and put them together in a book, than you might think that it does. And in most cases you
probably can't get away with just stringing together
two or three articles and they were more articles
with minimal changes, you will end up having to
write a new material as well. - Yeah, I've been told the
sort of the rule of thumb is at least 2/3 of the material for a book should typically be
original (indistinct)-- - I don't know the original rule of thumb and also there's--
- Yeah. - It's hard to draw a clear dividing line between what's original and what isn't. - That's true. - But my guess is that,
in terms of the words that are gonna be in
the book in most cases, about 1/2 of those words or
more are probably gonna be ones that you have to write new for the book. Some of those would be completely
new chapters or sections. Some of them will be sort of rewrites or restructuring of the
stuff from the articles, there is an exception to that, in that, if you're a very senior and well-known scholar in your field, sometimes you can write just
a collection of the essays of Ilya Somin or whoever, but if you're at that point in your career then you probably don't need my help with book publishing to begin with. If you're not at that stage,
where people will like read the collected works of such and such, then you should put that
possibility out of your mind, at least for now. - And I don't know about other
fields, but in philosophy, there's the practice of the
Festschrift right at the end-- - Yeah.
- Of the person's career, a bunch of scholars get
together and tear apart everything you've ever worked on in the celebration of your career-- - Yeah, so--
- If that is fine, fine. - So, yeah, so that's a
different kind of a thing where it's not actually you
that's writing the book it's-- - Yeah.
- Or the Journal Issue, it's these other people that get invited. - Yeah, okay, so our next questioner asks, "I have a complete manuscript
of a plan to make changes to most chapters,
including the introduction. They're more stylistic and
organizational than substantive. I've been working on the
manuscript for several years now, but should I wait until I
have what I consider to be a more finished product
or submit what I have now, and see what changes
the publisher or editor would like me to make." - That's a really good question to which I'm not sure I
have a definitive answer. I think it depends on how good of shape the manuscript is in now. If you think the manuscript
is clear and readable, and if you think also, you know, that it's a strong contributions
to field subsequently, then it may well be that
you can just submit it now, 'cause even if you put it in, what you think is a
completely finished form, the editor will almost always
have suggestions of their own, the peer reviewers will
have suggestions and so on. So if you think that it's a
strong piece of work already, you don't necessarily have to put every single possible
finishing touch on it. But if you think there are
serious flaws or the like then, and you can fix them in a
reasonable amount of time, then you might wanna do that
to increase the odds that, the manuscript will be accepted. And when you send them a manuscript, as opposed to a proposal, usually you will send
in a short cover letter, where you still also wanna explain these, at least briefly explained
these points that I mentioned that need to be in a
proposal, also in more depth, like, what is the book about? Why is it important? Why is it original? And also your, why are
you the right person to write this project
and what is the audience? But in that event, it will be a letter just maybe one or two pages long as opposed to like a long
and more detailed proposal. - When choosing a publisher, are there predatory publishers for books, the way there are predatory journals? - I think there are, at the sort of the bottom
of the academic key, but I don't know as much about them, but basically if it's a publisher
that you haven't heard of and that nobody else in
your field has heard of, it's possible, there
are predatory publisher, but it's possible also, that they're adjusting extremely
well prestigious publisher, and you can usually establish
which one of those it is, by asking around, if this
does raise the question of sort of, how low should you go on the totem pole of academic publishers before you give up the idea
of publishing a manuscript. And I think that depends
to some extent on, how people in your field view
things, so, in some fields, if you publish by the
50th or even the 100th, most prestigious publisher that's still, you know, a reasonable chit on your CV, and whereas in some fields it might say, "Well, if you publish the
only with potent press, then, you know, that's a failure, or that just shows you
couldn't go higher." And if you're in doubt, what
the answers to that question is you should talk to a, again, a more experienced
person in your specific field. - Somewhat related, is it better to go with a second-tier press rather than a first-tier,
if time is a factor? - It depends on how
much of a factor it is. In general, the higher
the press that you get, especially early in your
career, the better it is, but if you have a
situation where, you know, you have to get the book
accepted within the next year, because you're coming up for
tenure or something like that. And for whatever reason, you think that the lower ranked press will go through the process
faster, and that's a good thing, that's an important consideration. In general, however,
it does not seem to me that the speed of consideration varies greatly based on the press, because they still have
to go through peer review. They still have to send it out, and peer reviewers for
lower prestige presses, aren't necessarily faster on average, than those for higher prestige
ones, like, you might think, that sort of the higher prestige academics work more slowly or whatnot
because they have, you know, more things to do, on the other hand, the higher prestige academics
are more efficient academics, that's one of the ways they
have succeeded to begin with, so, I'll tell us a brief
story on that, that years ago, I was an Editor for the
Supreme Court Economic Review, which is an academic journal in my field, and I sent out a peer review, or I sent an article for peer
reviews for Richard Posner, who not only is he a very
famous scholar, but he was also, until he retired a couple of
years ago, as a federal judge. So I thought, you know,
Posner is gonna take the, you know, the one-month
period that we gave people to send in their review reports. I woke up the next morning
and I opened my email inbox, and there was a line in
detailed review by Posner, which was much better than
most other peer reviews that I got from people who took a month to do them or whatnot. So in general, there's
a lot of happenstance to how quickly your
proposal gets evaluated, but it doesn't necessarily correlate with the prestige of the publisher. But you should expect that the
process will take at least, in most cases, from submission
of the proposal to contract, it will usually take at
least two or three months, and sometimes it can take as
long as six or seven months or even a bit longer, depending on, how quickly they
get the review reports back and how quickly certain
stages of consideration are gone through it, the press itself. - All right, next questioner says, "Mine sub-field emphasizes articles, but a book can be very helpful for getting promoted to full professor. How much overlap do
you think is acceptable between one's published
articles and the book?" I just kind of came up already now that I read it--
- True. - But I don't know if
we've got anything more to add to that. - Sure, so I think in many fields, I'm not specific familiar obviously with, I don't know what field this
particular individual is in, in many fields, it's a
common practice that, you will write a series of articles, that you will build it up into a book. So, some degree of overlap
is normal and accepted, and I think most scholars
will recognize that, but when you come up
for renewal or tenure, or promotion to full professor or whatnot, you should make it known to
the people on that committee, like, "This is how my book
goes beyond the article." Usually for most promotion processes or contract renewal process and the like, you will submit some
kind of memo or to like, describing your
scholarships, you should say, "I've written five articles about X topic, and I've also written this book, and the book goes beyond the
articles in ways A, B and C." You can say something like that. - Great, we only have
about 10 minutes left, there are so many great questions,
so I apologize in advance if we don't have time to get to yours, but the next question is, "What if the press has a
sole submission policy? Is it still okay to send a
proposal to more than one press?" - It's a good question, but
what I would say is that, at least among leading
academic publishers, it's increasingly accepted that you can submit to
more than one at once, and they sort of expect that, I mentioned earlier on,
do you, should submit, you should initially submit
to about three or four. The reason why I say that, is
not because there is a rule against submitting to more than that, but because if you submit
to more than three or four, you're gonna run out of these, in many cases, you're gonna
run out of the available stock of peer reviewers, and they
do, they may get annoyed if, you know, if they're all
asking the same reviewers and someone can't get them. Occasionally a press will say, you know, "We have a sole submission policy." I've never found that in recent years, but it can still happen, if
they say that my own view, from an ethical point of view
is you should not lie to them. But if you say, "I'm
gonna honor that policy." You should not turn it around and then, sort of, or sneakily try to
submit to another publisher, especially since, publisher number one may well find out about it, given the potential
overlap of peer reviewers. So, if you tell, hypothetically,
that Oxford is not actually like this Oxford will let
you submit to than one, let's say Oxford says, "This
must be a sole submission." And you say, "Okay,
I'll submit it to them." But then on the sly, you also
try to submit it to Cambridge. There's a good chance
Oxford will find out, they'll get mad and it'll
hurt your reputation. So if you do run into
one of your candidates, is one that has a sole submission policy, unless you have a very strong
reason why you feel like, "I must have this one." Like, you know, everybody in your field says that this is the best one, and no other publication will matter, it's gonna be Oxford or
bust or something like that. Unless it's like that, I might just say, "Skip that publisher, at least for your initial
round of submissions, submit to two or three other
publishers at the same level. And, you know, just do things done but." - So, should a PhD candidate
write their dissertation to read like a book if they can, so that they can turn it around
and publish it right away? Or should they just
complete their dissertation? Because no matter what a
manuscript will unveil, no matter what, a manuscript will undergo massive revisions anyway. - Yeah, so, I think this may
be a topic best discussed with people in your field, I
think obviously in many cases, priority one for a PhD student, and this also is discussed very well in Jason Brennan's book,
which I mentioned earlier, which I recommend all of you is that, the best dissertation
is a done dissertation. The dissertation that doesn't get done, will not get you a job,
so, if there is a trade-off between getting your dissertation
done in a reasonable time and getting your first job, versus making it more like a book, then you should, getting it
done should be prioritized. I know from personal experience, you know, I was a JD-PhD student, and I never did truly complete the PhD, I became a law professor
it doesn't require a PhD, but it was a mistake to
let the ABD thing continue it's a mistake that I paid
for later in my career, so don't repeat by mistake. Your first priority should be
to get the dissertation done. But if there's a way
that you can get it done, but also prepare it
better to be in a form, which can be published as a book, then by all means, do that
too, just make sure that, when you talk to your PhD
advisor or your committee, make sure that the things
that you do to make it a more effective book, will not be things that
alienate your committee. I think most good scholars will know that, it might be a good idea to try to publish your
dissertation as a book, and so they might be amenable
to things that you might do to structure it in a way that
will increase the odds of that, but you do wanna make
sure you don't do anything that alienates your advisor or other people on the committee, 'cause you need those people's support to have the dissertation accepted, and also obviously, to
go on the job market and get placements, if your
committee members are saying, "Well, this guy isn't
very good and he was, you know, he wrote a crappy dissertation, as he was pursuing the false glory of trying to get a book." Then, you know, that's
obviously not a good scenario. - For entry loss of
entry-level law school hiring, how useful is a book versus
a law review article? - That's a good question,
very few entry-level law school hires will
have books on their CV. So in some respects, if you have one, and it's been a good press, it
will really stand out a lot, it will look very impressive, but it's not something that's expected. What is expected these days, is that you will have
two or three articles, and other article projects in the works. But if you have a book project
that's with a good press, either it's already published, or more likely it's been
accepted or to like, I think that can help you a lot because it, in some ways it will help you stand out from the crowd,
so it's not necessary, and you have to consider the
opportunity cost question I mentioned earlier of, you know, could you have
just written more articles in the same period of
time or done other things during the same period of time, but if you do have it, and
it's with a good publisher, and it's on a good topic
that's related to the field, do you wanna be hired? And it would really make you stand out. Only maybe once or twice in the years that I've worked at entry-level candidates have I actually seen somebody
that had a book on their CV with the exception of people
who are already scholars in another field or something like that. - How much of the book
should you have written before sending in a proposal? - Very little, one of the advantage, or at least it doesn't have to be much. It may be that you've only
written the proposal itself, and the only other thing you have, maybe some previous articles that you might work into the book. I've done things that way before. That's how I did "The
Grasping Hand," book. That's how initially I, did a couple of my other books as well, but there have been other
cases that I've had more of a complete manuscript already some of have them, you
know, both processes before. But one advantage to proposal route, is that you can sort of scope
out the amount of interest that there is in it before
you actually write the book, and so, if you have your
contract with Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard or Chicago or
whoever, that provide, that lets you know, there
is a market for this book, and if I plow through and completed, it will in fact be published most likely by this big name press. - What kind of compensation can a first-time academic
book authors anticipate? - (laughs) Sadly, the
answer is, not very much. There is a royalty provision, in nearly all academic press contracts, the amount of royalties that
you'll get will vary somewhat. Usually it will be somewhere,
for first-time authors, may be somewhere between about five or 7% of net proceeds from the book, which is the money that it
brings in above certain expenses. For the, in practical terms
for the numerous academic books that sell no more than five or 600 copies, you may make, you probably
won't make more than two, three or $400 from that. If your book sell several thousand copies, you can make more than that,
and you might even bring in, say like $1,000 a year or something, my book, "Democracy and
Political Ignorance," makes me, several years after publication, it still makes me 500 to $1,000 a year. You can still also, in some cases, get paid speaking
engagements from your books. If you publish an op-ed
based on your book, some of the newspapers or magazines will like we'll pay you for their op-eds. So, I actually make much more money from speaking engagements from my books, than I make from the sale,
the books themselves, but as a practical matter, unless your book really hits
the big time and becomes, you know, and sells tens
of thousands of copies for like, which is extremely rare. You cannot expect to get rich out of this, from, I make probably more
money off of my books, than I don't know, maybe
90 or 95% of academics, but in a given year, I don't
make more than maybe 15 or $20,000 from all my books combined. And that includes revenue
from speaking engagements as well as revenue from
the books themselves. That sounds like a lot, but remember that's from a total
of like six or seven books. (chuckles) So you should not
expect to make a lot of money, but you can make some modest amount. There is always the
chance to your book really will break through to the big time, so, you know, I've had
books sell for 5,000 copies, which is a lot for an academic book, but not an enormous amount for a sort of like a true best seller. But if you sell, instead of 5,000, if you sell 50,000 or something like that, then you know that's a lot more money. - Yeah, it's kind of
like musicians, right? That you make money off the tours, not the album sales so much (laughs). - It depends on I'm a musician,
if you're Taylor swift, (chuckles) then I'm-
- Yeah, it's true. - (chuckles) Then it's
a different ball game. In general, in most cases, you can't expect a lot of
revenue from these books, but if you're lucky and
if you're successful, then it could add, you know, an additional nice supplement hearing. - The next question is a bit meta. "Is there a book that you recommend for writing a book proposal?" - There are a couple of books about how to write a book proposal. I'm not sure I should recommend them. I would recommend a
couple of things though, one is, you can read,
"Not My Own Thoughts" in a bit greater detail
in the relevant section, on the IHS website, you
can get that for free. Also, Bill Stuntz who is an
Editor at Yale University Press. He has a nice piece on the
Yale University Press website, which is about how to write a proposal, and what he thinks should be in it, and his way is not the
only possible way to do it, but it's, you know, but it's, it's useful. Nonetheless, I am, I understand
I think a few years ago, I believe it was the
daily new philosophy blog, which actually had interviews with editors at several leading university or commercial academic
publishers, where they is, talk about what they think
should be in the proposal. But in general, I think
there is no one way to write a proposal, there is so many different
organizational models you can have, I talk
about a couple of them in the piece on the IHS website, but what you should make
sure is you answer those four or five questions that I, you know, I mentioned
earlier, if you have that, and you have compelling answers done then, you know, you're one way
towards where you need to be. - Great, did you ever
use a professional editor outside of the book publisher? And if so, how did that go? - I did not, in general,
I didn't have a budget for doing things like that, and I found that working with
the editors at the publisher was enough for me, and
occasionally, you know, I would have friends or my wife or others read through some material as well. I do know academics who
do use external editors. I can't say too much about that because I haven't done it myself, but one advantage the external editor, if you think it's an advantage
is that they will usually, go through the manuscript with
a much more fine tooth comb than the most editors in
academic presses will. If you think that you could use that, to sort of improve your
language or phraseology, or especially if English
is not your native language and the book is in English,
then that could be useful. On the other hand, if you, you know, generally
don't like to sort of, mull over every single word or every single phrasing choice and so on, then it can be sort of a real, sort of tearing out your
hair kind of experience. I've had that experience with
op-ed editors sometimes that, some newspapers, they will
only edit your thing lightly. There are others where like, you know, they feel the need to make
suggestions about every sentence and the like and sound
all suggestions are good, but others are like, "This is really annoying and I'm annoyed that I have to spend time
rejecting this suggestion." And so, in general, I
think it's not necessary, but it could be useful for certain particular
people in situations. - This actually lead right
into the next question. "Could you say a little bit more about how to best get an op-ed accepted?" In my own personal experience, that's like been the hardest
thing, I can get journals, (chuckles) journal articles accepted-- - Yeah.
- Op-eds are really hard. So do you have anything to say about that?
- Yeah, so, unfortunately, there's a little bit of
a chicken and egg problem that the best predictor of your ability to get new op-eds published
if you publish them before. So, once I published my first few op-eds it became much easier,
both because I could say, "Well, I published the
previous op-ed in "USA Today," or "Wall Street Journal,"
or whatever it was. So, I have credibility as an op-ed guy, if you will, once I've done that. But the other thing also
is if you publish an op-ed in a place you have a relationship
with the editor there, and you can just contact
the editor directly and say, "I have an op-ed for you." This is what I do now at
this stage in my career, I just contact, you
know, I recently reached a tentative agreement to
do an op-ed for the Hill, because they already knew
somebody up the Hill, I said, "Here's my idea." And they're like, "Okay." Now when I do, and that
doesn't mean they accept whatever I submit, but it does mean that they will at least give
real consideration to it. So, if you're still hiring out, you haven't published any op-eds yet, it's obviously a tough situation. I would make two suggestions. One is, if at all possible, find out the name of the actual op-editor at whatever website or
newspaper or whatnot it is. You might be able to
find out through somebody who has previously written
for that particular journal, or sometimes the Public Affairs
Office at your university, if you work for one, will know
if you work for a think tank or a Research Institute, they
tend to know a lot of people. Sometimes also, some staffers at IHS might know people like
that, I think Nigel Ashford for instance had some
contacts of that sort. So if you have relationship
with IHS they can help you. In general, as with the book
editors, but here even more so if you can get your idea
in front of the eyes of the person who actually get to decide, then that's much better, than if you go to the website
of the "Washington Post," they have a portal somewhere which say, "Well, you can submit
your op-ed idea here." But there's probably
like hundreds of people, most of whom are nutcases who do that, and the chance that they will even bother to look at your idea, in that cont, if you submit it that
way it's very little. So you wanna get that initial in. Similarly, if you get quoted by to media, that increases your
possibility of getting op-ed, and the way I ran into it
is by first being a blogger for the Volokh Conspiracy
one poets exploit, if you're a blogger for a
website that's well-known in your academic community, sometimes members of
the media will notice it and they will offer you op-ed
opportunities, in that way, I would add also that
before you publish a book, you should contact all the
people that you know in the media to get them interested in it, if some of them may wanna review, or even write an op-ed and be the like, I got George Will to endorse
a couple of my books, actually, because I met
George Will at an event once, I emailed him and said, "Would you like to endorse a book?" He said, "Yes," and in the
case of one of the books, he actually wrote a column about the book. In the vast majority of
these cases of outreach, they don't amount too much, this is another area where
you have to be persistent, and you have to expect
that if you reach out, especially early in your career, you may reach out to
10 or 20 or 30 people, and maybe only one or
two of them will pan out, but those one or two
will make it worth it. - Great, "Do you think inviting
big names in your topics as for book reviewers may make
them more likely to reject your proposal or your manuscript?" - You mean, to wrote as peer reviewers? - Yes, I believe that's
the native question. - So, in general, other things equal, you should list as big names as you can, but the big names should be people they, either they should be people who know you and like your work. So, if you list the big name, but you have no idea whether
that big name will actually, you know, like your proposal,
then you're taking a risk. One possibility is they'll
the big name to review it, and the big name will say,
"I just don't have time." That doesn't hurt you necessarily, but it doesn't help you either. If the big name reviews it and says, "Well, this is terrible,
you should reject it." Then that will we kill
it, so by all means, recommend a big name if, include the big name on your
list, if at all possible, but you should only include
it, if you know the person, or at the very least, you think that, there's a high likelihood that
they're gonna like your idea. - Okay, I, this one was
a clarificatory question, "Did I hear you correctly
that it's acceptable to submit to multiple publishers at once, given there's a strong norm against this." And, in their field of,
for journal articles or just the answer type of--
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, publishers are different than journals, in journals there is a, at
least in peer review journals, there is indeed a strong norm against submitting the multiple ones, that norm does not exist for the most part among leading
academic book publishers. It may have existed
once, but, I don't know, the last 10 or 15 years
that I've been doing this, you know, it just either, either it isn't there at
all or it's very weak. - Are indexing and copyediting included in the book contract? - All right, good question,
copy editing generally, yes. The indexing, sometimes they will sneakily try to make you pay for it,
that happened to me once. What I try to do, is if at all possible at the contract negotiation stage, I try to include a provision, get them to include a provision saying that they will pay for index. But if not, an index for most books generally costs about eight or $900, and you can pretend if you're
an academic at a university, you usually will have an expense account, that can help pay for that. You also have the option
of doing an index yourself. Which I did do once, I did actually, I did it once when I was an undergraduate when I was a research
assistant for a professor. I got paid by the hour to do his index, and then later for my very first book, was a my undergrad dissertation,
I had no cloud at all, and I also had no idea what I was doing and I put negotiations, I got stuck doing my own index for that. It's very boring and tedious
work and if you can avoid it and get the publisher to
pay for it, you should, but you should keep in mind, that this is one area where many academic publishers
tend to be sort of skinflint and they try to save some money by sticking you with the index expenses. If you have multiple offers,
this is one of the things that you should include in your demands, and it will usually be granted, I think. Sometimes it will be granted even if you don't have multiple offers. But let them know that you want it. - And as far as indexing fees
and other kinds of services with regard to publishing your work, I'll just put in a plug for IHS
has Hayek Fund for Scholars. - Yes. - Which can often, offset
some of those expenses. So definitely, keep that in mind. We briefly lost our
logistics director here, but maybe we can drop that
link into the Chat right now. But unfortunately, we are at time. I'm sorry to those of you whose
questions we did not get to, but thank you so much, professor Somin, for a really informative session here. I think we all learned a lot, and I wanna thank you
for sharing your advice. As an author myself, I know how complicated the
book publishing process can be. So your advice has been
really great, really helpful. And thank you to everyone in the audience, who joined us today and ask questions. We've recorded today's talk
and we'll email it to you, when it's available to watch,
and also before we shut down, I want to remind you that the
Institute for Humane Studies does offer various publication
support for academics. These things could range
from manuscript to workshops, papers workshops, or
even just paper reviews. If you wanna get the opportunity to hire a scholarly expert in your field, we can set that up in many cases, not always, but in some cases, for sure. Also make sure you're subscribed
to the IHS newsletter, so you can learn more
about future opportunities. And so, with that being said, thank you again, professor Somin, and thanks everyone else,
be well and take care. - Thank you very much for having me.
