The unwritten rule seems to be that book writing is something you do if you’re a historian in academia, ideally on the tenure track at a place that will support you as you write (but certainly not always). Take a job outside of academia–in my case, teaching at an independent K-12 school–and you’ll rarely get asked about your dissertation or whether you’ll write a book. But book writing isn’t just for those seeking tenure or tenure-track jobs: while many history PhDs might not have the interest, it’s still possible to write and publish your book outside of academia. I always intended to write my book, which focuses on how the US military integrated women permanently after World War II. The history of Cold War womanpower is an important one that few people know, and one that I’ve long wanted to share.
I completed my PhD a decade ago and spent the last five years working to get my book published. Most of the work has happened in fits and starts, rather than five nonstop years of revisions and trying to find a publisher. In that time, my experiences have largely demystified the publishing process for me. When you’re dissertating, your advisor and mentors give you feedback, and you might attend writers’ workshops with peers and faculty. Those networks are gone when you write on your own outside of academia: you have to find support systems in other ways and use your skills to find the resources you need. You don’t automatically have those people directly in your life to tell you what to expect in the publishing process. There’s a lot I still don’t know, but everything I’ve learned has convinced me that it’s important to document and share this process with others, especially those off the tenure track.
So, what can you expect in the publishing process? What do you need to do? How long does it take? While every publisher will have their own variations, there are some general steps that you’ll go through.
It all begins with the book proposal, your argument for why your project should be published. You don’t have to have your revisions done yet, as the proposal lays the foundation for later work. Writing a proposal helped me clarify my vision for the book, forcing me to explain why I thought it was an important book. Both literary agents (if you want to be published by a trade press) and acquisitions editors at university presses (UPs) want to see proposals. While each agent or UP may have slightly different specifications, the proposal will generally need to include:
- What is this about? Provide an overview of your proposed book.
- Who are you? Talk about your expertise.
- Who will read this? Describe your projected audience.
- Why should we publish this? How the book will fit into the publisher’s/agent’s acquisitions.
- How will this look? This includes chapter descriptions and expected length.
- When do you expect to finish writing it? Let them know your timetable.
I used How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book to start learning how to write a proposal, but you’ll also tailor the proposal to the recipient. This means you need to do your research to first find the right venues and people, and then to know what each publisher or agent wants so you can adjust the proposal accordingly.
Because I wasn’t facing a tenure clock or other pressures, I began by pitching my book as a trade publication. In this approach, you begin by finding a literary agent who wants to sign your project. Although several agents expressed interest in my project, they asked me to come back after I had a bigger platform: an established audience of people interested in my book, a sizable Twitter following, that sort of thing. For trade presses, a built-in audience is important for a nonfiction book. This makes sense, but this was also where I had to draw a line. The thought of the time it would take to build my platform, on top of my teaching career and family, was overwhelming.1
Whether you want to try your luck with a trade press or go with a university press, your book proposal’s foundations can be used in either avenue because you will tailor it to the audience. Likewise, you’ll also need a solid query letter to begin reaching out to either literary agents or acquisitions editors at UPs.
If you’re considering trade press (nonacademic/popular publishers), you start by sending queries to literary agents, whose names you can find in the latest version of Writer’s Market or through careful searches online. In many cases, you do not send the proposal or a sample chapter without their permission, so your query letter is an offer to do just that. Your query letter shouldn’t be too long. Mine included a bit of attention-getting historical context, a brief description of the book, and my credentials.
My experience with trade presses ended after about a year of attempts to query more than 100 agents. When I decided to look at UPs, I began with one recommended to me by a dissertation committee member, and a second that I knew might have specific interest in my project. These were great starting points for me, but even pitching to a UP felt stressful. Since I’m not in academia like most people who publish with UPs, I worried whether anyone at such a publisher would even want this project. This concern has been moot. I explored this project with three different UPs, and in every case, the intellectual work and its fit on a UP’s existing list of acquisitions were what mattered most.
If an acquisitions editor likes your project, it goes to peer review, which many of us first learn about in graduate school. To get to the peer review stage, though, you need a full manuscript, and getting the full manuscript written can be one of the most time-intensive parts of this process. Revising while you work full time–in a position that is not tailored for writing support–can be challenging. It involves stealing small moments where you can, often around work and family. In six months, I revised three chapters, which seemed slow to me at the time. More importantly, though, the revision process can feel very solitary if you don’t have a good support group in place as you write. If I did this part over again, I’d build and help cultivate a writing support group where we could trade work and give each other feedback as we wrote.
Proofing the manuscript by hand. All photos supplied by the author.
My ability to do further research was also limited because I did not have institutional funds for research, and only limited database access. I supplemented my existing materials with digitized oral histories and digitized sources I could access from home. I also spent a little more than I’d like to admit on secondary sources that I realized I needed to look at (a couple hundred dollars).
For those of us outside the tenure track, access to research materials is a major consideration. Specific libraries and archives have funding, but this is not universally true, and even when funding is available, there is stiff competition. The truth is that the historical community will miss out on a lot of rich project ideas because the people who could research and write those books do not have the financial support and time needed to do research while working full time outside of academia.
Once your first round of the manuscript is ready–before a contract is offered–the UP editor will send your manuscript out for the peer review process, with at least two anonymous readers providing feedback on your work. The readers spend several months with your manuscript, then send in reports, which vary in length depending on the reader and what the press asks them to comment on. Writing solo for so long meant that by the time an academic publisher wanted to send the manuscript to peer review, I was more than a little petrified. I was excited to get the first feedback on my manuscript ever, but it had been years since anyone commented on my work.
When the readers’ reports are in, you may be asked to do a response to the reviewers’ reports. Here, you address how you’ll make the changes they propose, and which ones, as well as what you feel strongly about not changing. This part felt particularly stressful because I worried that if I didn’t do it right, I’d lose the opportunity at a contract. I went through three rounds of this, a first round early on without guidance, a second round with very helpful guidance as the press came closer to offering me a contract, and a third round when the reviewers’ reports came after reviewing the final manuscript. It felt easier when I had feedback: this is a good place to ask the editor what they would like to see in your response.
After my second response to the reviewers’ reports, I was offered a contract, signed it, and promised revisions in a certain amount of time (then found myself waylaid by the pandemic). As I got closer to delivering the manuscript, other people at the press began to reach out with logistics I needed to know, such as:
- How and when to get permissions for text and images in the book
- Logging permissions
- Submitting artwork for the book
- Manuscript formatting guidelines
It can take time to get permissions to use things from archives or organizations, and sometimes in this process you discover things that won’t be practical. For example, I had to cut a photograph I really loved–Marilyn Monroe with four servicewomen–because it would have cost me $500 to license it for publication. In contrast, a composer’s archive granted permission to use lyrics from a song in exchange for a copy of the book.
A glamour shot of the physical proofs.
In the end, I spent far more of my time writing, revising, and working to get a contract than anything else. Once I had the contract in hand, the process became more straightforward, with regular communication from multiple people at the press. After I submitted the completed manuscript, I just had to wait, make sure I turned in all my permissions and artwork, then respond to the final round of peer reviews and recommended edits from my editor. When the board of the press voted to approve publication, the production process began.
I’ve learned that–at least in my case–it will be about one year from board approval to publication. It’s a nice amount of time, with plenty of downtime and spurts of activity to help get the book to the shelf. So far, I’ve gotten to do the following:
- Discuss title and book cover with my editor
- Make final stylistic changes to get the book ready for copyediting
- Submit a detailed survey (and author photographs) for marketing purposes
- Communicate with the copy editors to better understand their process and to complete my portion of the work, which included a month for me to review the copy edits (and make final book changes), and a month to review the page proofs.
- Work with my editor to refine the catalog copy used to sell the book
- Write an index over spring break, something many people pay to have done. A tenure-track faculty member might have institutional support for this, but not always. While a part of me really loved taking on this challenge, it was one of the hardest parts of the process and more time-intensive than I anticipated.
- Stalk the press’s website and other sales sites to see the book arrive online
- Begin working on publicity efforts, in coordination with the press
- Obsess over how cool it is that this is actually happening
Soon, my book will be out in the world and I’ve begun learning about the next stage of helping people discover my work, thanks to resources like this piece by historian Lindsay Chervinsky. The process has gone from top secret and scary to exciting as I get to share the book cover, see it listed on Goodreads, and talk about its upcoming release online. Those are the things that make the months and years of writing, revising, and working toward publication all worth it. I would go through this process again in a heartbeat–hopefully taking less time, of course, and with more confidence in my abilities. I guess this means it’s time to start thinking about another book.
- Curious about the differences between publishing with a trade press and a university press? We’ve got a mailbag for that too!
