During the American Anthropological Association conference last week, I spent a lot of time in the Book Exhibit. But I wasn’t just checking out the newest anthro titles, which can be its own small joy, especially when friends and mentors have new offerings to share. I was actually walking the exhibit with students, trying to introduce several current dissertation writers (and a few newly minted Ph.D.’s) to editors at academic presses. I don’t know many editors, but one or two introductions are better than none.
Every introduction won’t turn into a publishing match made in heaven, but it is important to grease the wheel for students as they attempt to clear that important hurdle. Indeed, it is an adviser’s job.
When I was writing my dissertation, my adviser told me to “write a book,” which is something I also ask of my current students. I realize that that isn’t an uncontroversial position, and it is far from self-evident what the call to “write a book” even means. When you haven’t even successfully written a dissertation yet, the suggestion can feel like replacing one opacity with another.
One of the things it means, I think, is to approach writing with actual readers in mind, to make your claims with attention to the dramas, tensions, and story lines that will keep audiences oriented and invested. It need not demand sacrificing rigor for readability. It just asks for a little emphasis to storytelling (along with argumentation).
After I defended the dissertation, my adviser made it her job to introduce me to several university press editors. In fact, she spent a lot of time helping me to think through my pitch, boiling my arguments down to their most interesting (and publishable) permutations.
My adviser made a point of saying that graduate students aren’t “islands” isolated in some academic sea all by themselves. As most academics know, if the process works the way it is supposed to work, a dissertation adviser takes on a career-long role. And one part of the job description entails demystifying academia’s backstage, helping students as they (i) prepare for “the market,” (ii) negotiate job offers, (iii) deal with the challenges of postdoctoral life (committees, new colleagues, more service-related demands, etc.), and (iv) publish their research.
In terms of the publishing maze, things are changing quite a bit. There used to be a time when it was roundly frowned upon when authors tried submitting book manuscripts to several academic publishers at once. That is increasingly becoming less true. Indeed, the only bit of leverage that a junior faculty member might have these days (vis-a-vis potential publishers) is the threat of going with another press that is equally invested (and also pressuring reviewers for reader reports).
Again, this isn’t uncontroversial, but there is a lot to recommend such multiple submissions, as long as authors are up front with editors about it. For one, if an editor is really interested, he or she might promise to expedite the review process (pushing readers even more adamantly about quick responses) to preempt competition. Indeed, I only submitted my first manuscript to one publisher, but only if they promised to expedite things (and not leave me waiting around for months and months without word).
The other benefit of multiple submissions is the fact that you get more critical feedback. If Publisher 1 sends it to three anonymous reviewers and Publisher 2 sends it to three more, you can feel pretty confident about the coverage your material is getting. There is less likelihood that you have missed a key critique.
Academic journals still routinely disqualify articles that have been submitted to several places at once. Book publishers are becoming more amenable to the idea of multiple submissions, even if they aren’t all happy about it. At the end of the day, a good relationship with an academic press is about a good relationship with an editor. So, whatever you do, make sure you are upfront, honest, and straightforward. Editors will tell you where they stand, what they will stand for, and you both make informed decisions about how to proceed from there.
7 Responses to Turning Dissertations Into Books
dank48 - December 15, 2009 at 10:45 am
I’d like to see Sandy Thatcher’s comment on this, which I feel sure will be better informed than my own. Meanwhile, as a placeholder, it seems to me Professor Jackson has generally summarized the current situation quite well. Things have changed and are changing.
desmondj - December 15, 2009 at 11:22 am
While submitting a mss. to several presses at once, with their knowledge, may bring some of the benefits Prof. Jackson notes above, it increases the burden on those in the academic community who agree to act as mss. reviewers–a largely invisible, largely unpaid service to the profession that so many of us regard as part of our job, but which many people I’ve met recently are now deciding takes too much time from their own work to do. One reason it takes so long now to get journal articles or book mss. evaluated I suspect is that many people who are asked to do the reviews say no–editors can weigh in here to tell us if this is correct. If this is so, that problem may be increasingly exacerbated if reviewers are later told that the manuscript was pulled because it was just accepted somewhere else. As the academic publishing industry continues to change, we must make more visible the invisible parts of our work to factor into those decisions about change.
maw57 - December 15, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I second desmondj (comment #2): there’s a real danger of exhausting available reviewers, in every sense of the term. Also, a reviewer has little incentive to offer constructive criticism if there’s a good chance that the criticism will be ignored by someone who goes with a different press. I’m sorry if multiple submissions of mss is becoming the norm: it may well be detrimental in the long run to the quality of reviews and therefore to books.
johnljacksonjr - December 15, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I’m not sure why we would assume that criticism is “being ignored” when an author chooses a different press. The idea would be to incorporate ALL of the feedback, not to artificially ignore the ones that aren’t officially from your chosen publisher. The point about invisible (and potentially exhausted) backstage academic labor is a good one. It might be a version of the chicken-or-egg issue, but I would argue that the idea of multiple submissions was a resonse to (not a cause of) the slowness of the publishing timeline, which is also a function of faculty/reviewers being overworked (again, not the original cause). Might it make a bad situation worse (in the big scheme of things)? Yes. But the system was already in need of fine-tuning, I think, before authors started to court more than one press at once (in an effort to better protect themselves during the tenure process).
maw57 - December 15, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Re #4: in an ideal world, all writers will take into account all responses, though I doubt all will. More to the point, as a series editor myself, I still refuse to accept multiple submissions on the grounds that I can’t in good conscience ask my reviewers to perform a task that is potentially a waste of time. I solicit particularly detailed constructive reviews, telling my reviewers that we have a real editorial process, not just the “accept and off to copyediting” approach that has become increasingly common. I get that young scholars often need a quick publish for tenure, but the multiple submission route seems simply to prize speed over all other considerations, in particular the welfare of the profession as a whole, insofar as careful anonymous reviewers will become increasingly difficult to find. Perhaps what I’m saying amounts to this: when giving advice to young colleagues, how do you balance the needs of the individual against the needs of the professional community?
johnljacksonjr - December 15, 2009 at 7:07 pm
maw57: That strikes me a potentially useful way to frame the issue. Thanks for your detailed response.
lorelette - December 15, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Here you are! Happy writing, etc.!