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July 04, 2008, 07:00 AM ET
Academic vs. Trade Publishing, Part One
It is an age-old debate within the academy, but I have been revisiting it quite personally during the first half of this year.
With my new book (my first “trade” book), Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness, just released in May, I am still trying to figure out if my writing experiment (away from a university-based publishing house) was worth it. Obviously, it is still early in the life of my new book, but I do need to determine how to make the most of my little foray into trade publishing — and decide how soon I want to do it again.
One thing is clear, I have attempted to get the word out about the new book much more forcefully than I ever did for the first two. I actively tried to get C-Span interested in covering a book reading. I emailed my favorite shows at National Public Radio. I responded to almost all of the journalists who called for my reaction to the top news story of the day. I sent books to Tavis Smiley, Bill Maher, and even Bill O’Reilly. (I figured that I’d wait to see if any of them might be the least bit interested — so far, a resounding “no” — before I try to find an “in” to Oprah.)
I even started writing op-eds and blogging right here for The Chronicle, genres that demand quick turnaround times over and against the slow-burn of normal academic publishing deadlines.
I grew up a pretty shy and private kid (as I’ve already admitted in my previous books), so these gestures were real challenges for me — putting myself out there.
Indeed, I am trying to really figure out if my own current (and very minor) dance with the role of “public intellectual” has been worth it — intellectually, politically, and psychologically. Am I any good at it? Do I even want to be?
I know the book is brand new and that we have a long, hot summer ahead of us, a summer of election campaigning by a major party’s first black presidential nominee, which means that many of the arguments that I make in the book (about some of the newfangled ways in which race functions today) will be on explicit and high-charged public display all the way through November. It’ll be interesting to see how much people use the book as one of the many tools they deploy to make sense of this electoral season. If they don’t, I can’t take it personally, right?
Well, off to a family BBQ. (We start early!) I’ll have to continue this later…
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