The Book Proposal Book

A Guide for Scholarly Authors

Laura Portwood-Stacer

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780691216621
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

A step-by-step guide to crafting a compelling scholarly book proposal—and seeing your book through to successful publication The scholarly book proposal may be academia's most mysterious genre. You have to write one to get published, but most scholars receive no training on how to do so—and you may have never even seen a proposal before you're expected to produce your own. The Book Proposal Book cuts through the mystery and guides prospective authors step by step through the process of crafting a compelling proposal and pitching it to university presses and other academic publishers.Laura Portwood-Stacer, an experienced developmental editor and publishing consultant for academic authors, shows how to select the right presses to target, identify audiences and competing titles, and write a project description that will grab the attention of editors—breaking the entire process into discrete, manageable tasks. The book features over fifty time-tested tips to make your proposal stand out; sample prospectuses, a letter of inquiry, and a response to reader reports from real authors; optional worksheets and checklists; answers to dozens of the most common questions about the scholarly publishing process; and much, much more.Whether you're hoping to publish your first book or you're a seasoned author with an unfinished proposal languishing on your hard drive, The Book Proposal Book provides honest, empathetic, and invaluable advice on how to overcome common sticking points and get your book published. It also shows why, far from being merely a hurdle to clear, a well-conceived proposal can help lead to an outstanding book.

1

Know the Process

Your Readers and the Importance of Fit

Why do you want to publish a book? “Because I have to for my career” is a reason I hear a lot. “Because I need to have something to show for all the research I’ve done” is another one. Maybe you’ve always wanted your bookshelf to feature a bound volume with your own name on the cover. These are all valid reasons, but right now I want you to set them aside and think about the possibility of readers. “Because a lot of readers will want to hear what I have to say” is, maybe, the best reason to produce a book. The true power of a scholarly book is that it can get your expert knowledge into the hands of hundreds or thousands of readers who will spend a significant amount of time with it, absorb it, appreciate it, and maybe even apply it to problems they are working through themselves. Great scholarly books generate conversation among readers and shape whole areas of study. The book you’re reading right now is premised on the idea that, whatever your other reasons for publishing a book are, you also care deeply about reaching readers of your own.

Have you noticed that so far I’ve been talking about publishing a book, not writing one? That’s because publication is a particular process, and it’s distinct from the writing process. You may have written most of your book manuscript already, or you may only have a plan for writing it. For the purposes of this guide, it actually doesn’t matter which stage you’re at with the manuscript itself. Publishing is what will eventually turn your written manuscript into a material object and transport your knowledge to the readers you want to reach.

For a book that you hope to publish with a scholarly press, you’ll need to effectively reach a set of preliminary readers before the process of rolling the book out to a broader audience can begin. These preliminary readers include acquisitions editors, possibly some series editors, a few expert peer reviewers, and a publisher’s staff and editorial board, and they all must be able to absorb and appreciate your book’s contribution before anyone else gets a shot at it. They have to vouch for the project’s capacity to appeal to an audience of hundreds or thousands of book-purchasers in order to justify the publisher’s investment in packaging up and distributing your knowledge in book form.

How do you reach those preliminary readers? It starts with a book proposal package: a prospectus, an author CV, and a sample of your writing. Some people use the words “proposal” and “prospectus” interchangeably; for clarity in this book, we’re going to use “prospectus” to refer to the single document that makes the pitch for your book and “proposal” to refer to the larger submission package that includes your CV and writing samples. The prospectus will take on different formats depending on the specific requirements of your target publisher, and there’s no set length it has to be (unless your target publisher offers a guideline). In most cases, your prospectus will include the following components:

• A working title
• An overview of the book
• A description of the intended audience(s) for the book
• A discussion of comparable titles and how your book fits in the marketplace
• A complete table of contents with chapter summaries
• Information about your qualifications as an author
• Technical details (such as word count and illustrations) and the current status of the manuscript

The next several chapters of this book (chapters 2–11) are going to help you craft your prospectus and the other elements of your proposal package in order to reach your preliminary readers effectively. The remaining chapters (chapters 12–14) will help you navigate the stages of the publishing process that come before, during, and after submission of the proposal.

The first step in creating a successful proposal package is understanding how that package will pass through the hands of the preliminary readers who will participate in the decision as to whether your “book project” will one day become your book. Understanding this process, and what your preliminary readers are looking for during it, will help you effectively reach those readers and give your project the best chance of becoming the book you want it to be. That’s why this chapter kicks things off with a quick run-down of scholarly book acquisition, from the first contact an author makes with an acquiring editor to the signing of the contract. There may be variation in individual cases (and among different kinds of publishers), but I’ll give you a pretty standard picture of the acquisitions process as experienced by scholars who publish with university presses (UPs) or commercial academic presses.

Then, because one of the biggest factors in landing a book contract is the fit between your manuscript and the publishers you pitch it to, this chapter is going to put you to work identifying appropriate target presses for your project. I’ll provide you with some tips and questions that will help you narrow down your list of target presses and articulate why the presses you select are right for your project. Your articulation of how your target presses fit your project will be the first building block of what will eventually become your complete book proposal.

The Acquisitions Process, from Contact to Contract

Acquiring editors, also known as acquisitions editors, are people who work for scholarly publishers and usually specialize in a specific field or set of subject areas. The books they acquire in these areas are known as their “list.” They are responsible for bringing book projects into the press and guiding them through the publication process, often helping to shape and improve the projects along the way. Acquisitions editors possess a good working knowledge of the academic fields they acquire in—they’ve read a lot of books in those areas, after all—but they may not be scholars themselves. A series editor is a scholar who collaborates with a publisher to acquire a collection of books united by a cohesive theme. Series editors are often well connected and highly visible in academic communities and rely on their extensive networks to learn about new scholarship and up-and-coming authors. While your first contact at a publisher might be a series editor, the acquisitions editor is the one who will bring your book to your other preliminary readers (peer reviewers, press staff, editorial board) and see it through all the steps of publication.

There are a number of ways to make an initial connection with an acquisitions or series editor. You might reach out via email or social media, or start up a conversation at an academic conference. A mutual contact, such as a colleague who has previously published with the editor, might make an introduction for you. An editor might reach out to you first if they see something intriguing about your research that causes them to think it could make a good book. Whatever the circumstances of your initial connection, you’ll want to concisely summarize your project, bring up the names of any series or lists at the press that you think would be a good home for it, and situate yourself as an authority on your subject. (For much more advice on contacting editors, including how to figure out which editor at a given press to reach out to, see chapter 12.)

When the editor learns about you and your project, they’ll consider whether your book is something their press could potentially be interested in publishing. They might know immediately that your project isn’t a fit, possibly because their press doesn’t publish in your area, because they already have a similar book on your topic slated to come out soon, or because the idea just doesn’t grab their attention strongly enough. If you’re lucky, the editor might want to talk through the concept with you more and encourage you to submit a full proposal.

When you first meet an editor, you should also be gauging your interest in them. Does the editor seem like an approachable person whom you’d enjoy working with over the next few years? Do they demonstrate genuine understanding of and enthusiasm for your intellectual project? Can they explain how your book would fit into their publishing program and how they would help you reach your core readership? Would you be proud to have their press’s name on your book? (There’s lots more to consider when selecting a press; I’ll get to that in a minute and return to it again in chapter 12 because it’s so important.)

If you don’t have the opportunity to connect personally with an editor before preparing your book proposal, you can simply follow the submission instructions on the publisher’s website or in the series’ call for proposals. That’s fine, and it’s eminently possible to get your project picked up without having a prior connection to an editor. When the editor reads your full proposal, they may realize that it’s not a fit with their list and let you know that. Even if the editor does see a fit, they may want to see you strengthen the concept and presentation before proceeding further, in which case they might ask you to revise the proposal and resubmit it. If you’ve submitted to a series editor and they like the project, they will pass it along to the acquisitions editor for approval by them as well. In the best-case scenario, the acquiring editor will think the project is promising and want to go ahead with peer review of the proposal and some or all of the book manuscript. At some publishers, acquisitions editors present projects they are excited about to other press staff and are then approved by an internal committee to proceed with peer review. At other presses, editors can proceed with peer review at their own discretion.

If you make it to the peer review stage, your editor will ask you to provide the materials they need for review. Many presses will move forward to peer review with just a proposal and sample chapter or two; some presses prefer to wait on peer review until the author provides a full or nearly complete manuscript, especially for first-time authors. When your materials go out for review, particularly if you’ve submitted a full manuscript, your editor may stipulate exclusive submission, meaning that they will require you to (temporarily) pull the project from consideration elsewhere if you have submitted the proposal to multiple publishers. The exclusivity usually goes away once you get the reviews back, meaning that if you don’t like what the reviewers or editor want you to do with the manuscript, you can then try your luck with a different press to give yourself some options. Note that up until the moment of peer review or contract, you are free to be in talks with editors at multiple presses in order to identify the best home for your book. As long as you are transparent with everyone that that’s what you’re doing, there is no problem with this at all. If an editor thinks your project is particularly appealing and recognizes that they will have to compete with other publishers for it, you’re in a strong negotiating position and they may agree to waive exclusivity during the peer review process. (For more advice on multiple versus exclusive submission, see “Frequently Asked Questions” in chapter 12.)

During peer review, your editor will ask expert scholars to evaluate your submitted materials and return their thoughts in the form of written reports. Unlike peer review conventions for scholarly journals, peer review for books is not anonymous in both directions. While you won’t know the identities of your reviewers (unless they reveal themselves in their reports), your reviewers will have access to your name and CV, because in addition to assessing the content of your submission materials, they will also be commenting on your scholarly profile and perceived authority to write the book you’re proposing. Reviewers will also be asked to comment on their perceptions of the market for your proposed book.

The return of the reader reports will likely be a big moment of decision for the acquiring editor. These are some possible scenarios:

• The reviews come back largely positive and the editor decides to seek approval from their publisher’s internal committee and editorial board to offer you a contract.
• The editor thinks the criticisms in the reader reports are minimal enough that they can be addressed through a response letter from you. The editor has faith that you will assure the editorial board that you can fix any significant problems in revision and gain their approval for a contract before another round of review.
• The editor doesn’t think the reader reports are strong enoug...