This is Writing It, the podcast about academics and writing. I'm Rachel Gordon. Here, we aim to make the process of writing and publishing a bit more transparent and a bit less overwhelming. Through conversations with editors and academics at all stages, from full professors to graduate students, independent scholars, and postdocs, we share stories, lessons, and helpful habits from our writing lives. We're so glad to get to speak with Elaine Mazner today. Elaine is executive editor emerita at UNC Press. She worked nonstop in university press publishing from 1985 to 2022, including editorial positions at Yale University Press and the University of Tokyo Press. At UNC, she acquired and commissioned books that aim to influence conversations among a broad range of readers, general and academic readers. 
Her acquisitions areas included religion, Latin America, and the Caribbean, food studies, and regional trade books, including cookbooks. She founded several book series for the press, including Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks, Where Religion Lives, Envisioning Cuba, and Savor the South Cookbook Collection, which sounds delicious. And I thought our listeners would be interested in hearing that among her bestselling acquisitions are Carl Ernst's Following Muhammad, Anthea Butler's White Evangelical Racism, Tisa Wenger's Religious Freedom, Edward Bloom and Paul Harvey's The Color of Christ, and Syke Williams Forson's Eating While Black. So that's already a real range of books that you worked on there. She has a degree in English from Oberlin. And among other jobs, she worked as a cook at Greens in San Francisco. Very fancy. 
and an intern at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and as a shrimp fish person in the Gulf of Mexico. And as I already told Elaine, I really enjoy following her on Instagram and her beautiful photos of her culinary creation. So I hope she is also working on a cookbook or will soon. One sort of trend or something I've heard my colleagues say a lot, and I wonder if it's true, is people seem to think it is harder than ever to get a book contract with a good university press. Do you think that's actually true? On the face of it, not exactly, no, because there are so many good university presses. It's really important to understand the different kinds of university presses that there are and what they specialize in. 
I think that, for example, Oxford University Press and Cambridge are huge. You know, they're global publishers. The sun never sets on the English empire, shall we say. And so they are... very clearly divided between trade books, academic books, reference books, and they, for example, need to fill their publishing space with many, many, many monographs, okay? That doesn't mean you're going to get published there easily because they also are extremely, you know, high quality vetting processes, but they need books. Then you have the six biggest by sales publishers. I think it's Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, MIT, and California, I believe, in terms of numbers of books published and the resulting sales numbers. All of those publishers publish monographs. So we have to talk about what is a monograph, 
And this is one of the really important points I want to make because you asked me what would be helpful for academics to understand. So I can segue into that. But I'm just trying to make the point that all publishers, UNC Press is kind of an upper middle range publisher in terms of its sales. All those publishers have room for monographs, okay? That is the bread and butter of, that is why University Press exists, to publish and promulgate the results of scholarly research. How the writer writes those, how they're packaged and marketed, all of that depends on the product itself, so to speak. And we can talk more about understanding what your book is. But if your book is, say, kind of a typical, high-quality scholarly monograph that answers some important questions or addresses important issues in the field, in your field, whether it's large or small, or even if it's path-breaking, which is 
Pretty exciting. I think you should be able to find a university press publisher. That doesn't mean that Yale or Harvard or UNC Press or Princeton have room for all the fantastic monographs that are out there. So it doesn't mean that, you know, your suggested author is going to be able to find a home for their book at their, say, first choice publisher. There's a lot of steps between choosing your topic for your dissertation and then getting published by a publisher. And you need to understand a little bit about what the university press needs and is looking for to be able to place your manuscript. Because the presses have a lot of pressures to hopefully break even. That's what a non-profit press does. It breaks even. 
You know, sometimes they have bestsellers and that brings in money, but it's all plowed back into the operation. So let's say I finished my dissertation and I think it's pretty... pretty close to book. And I think it actually fits UNC Chapel Hill's list. It's American religion. I've kind of studied the other books that UNC has published. And mine, to me, feels like it's similar. Is it helpful if I go to a conference and try to talk with an editor at, say, the book fair? Should I write first a brief email? What's my best way of approaching if I kind of want the editor's perspective on whether I can just kind of submit that dissertation, or if I could maybe even get some feedback from her about what small changes I might need to make. 
Or large. First of all, UNC Press represents the entire NC system, not just Chapel Hill. It used to, yes, kind of have on its title page, Chapel Hill in London, because we had a sales rep in London, but... That's come off, and the press represents the whole UNC system now. Just to mention that, it's kind of something that people really want to convey about UNC Press. I am all for developing relationships between authors and editors early on, okay? Combine that with also understanding that university presses are not publishing quote-unquote raw dissertations, even if they've passed with flying colors. You know, to make a book successful, there are a lot of things that need to happen, not just the formal review process, but also for the author to, yeah, talk with an editor at a couple of presses that you admire, you know, and exactly write what you said. 
Publishers whose books you would love to see your book in the company of, you know, because that means you're speaking to kind of a field in a way. And that's very positive. Also, one other small point. I always make the point, don't assume that you know what a publisher is publishing because presses change over time and they develop new lists or they might kind of sunset, you know, a particular list. So always get on websites and uh look at what they're doing. And also, yes, talk to editors at scholarly meetings you you can make an appointment with them ahead of time. That's always good if you can, or you can just stop by, which i guess now that, COVID has abated. We're having meetings in person. 
So do try to talk to publishers. I think that it's important for a manuscript. Number one, I really encourage authors to understand what they're doing with this work. What is the intention of your manuscript? Obviously, it's to get you on a trajectory toward employment and success. tenure, hopefully. We're very worried about what's going on in the academic, you know, the university world that we're part of. This is not going to talk about that now, but having the appropriate qualifications after your years and years of study is something that this book is going to help you demonstrate, right? So we need to make sure that the book is not only doing that well, which can be as simple as what is your writing style, can you string sentences together, to making sure you're answering bigger questions in the field. 
So you need to, I think, develop a relationship with an editor if possible, but you need to have a relationship with your field. And then try to make your, especially in the framing of the manuscript, try to address the important and controversial questions that your book is sort of relating to. And make sure that you bring it into conversation that way. Try to have high aspirations for what your project can do. I believe in monographs. I believe, and I've said this at many conferences, that each monograph is a building block of culture. And I really believe that. But it doesn't mean that they will all get published if they aren't written effectively and also... fit a publisher's list. So I think in conversation with an editor, you can start thinking about those things. 
There are also some really good books out there that you can look at. University of Chicago Press has done a number of books about scholarly publishing, how to write a manuscript. Of course, the Chicago Manual of Style is, to me, is a great read. Princeton University Press has also started a wonderful series called Skills for Scholars series. And they have a book called The Book Proposal Book, which talks about how to write a proposal and books about how to do historical research and all kinds of things. So I urge you. There are many other books out there and some are older, some are newer. and how to get it published. Okay. So yeah, I think you need to understand before you talk to an editor, think about this question. 
And again, I think it's okay to talk to an editor even before you've finished your dissertation. It doesn't mean you're going to develop a relationship with the editor where the editor is going to feel compelled to publish it, but it should help you if it's an editor who you know is working on books that you admire. Is your book a so-called narrow monograph? And that is fine if it is, but you need to know that it's not a so-called bestseller. Is your book more of a mid-list book where it relates to a number of fields? It doesn't just answer or do research in certain very, very limited fields, but which have burning questions, okay? Again, this is about the purity of scholarship and how much we need to learn always. 
If it's a mid-list book, it's written in a way that will address questions by a broader audience. And then there's the academic trade book, which is also a scholarly book, and it will be written in a way that is easier to follow. It's maybe more direct language. A pure trade book, a lot of scholars want to think about their books as a trade book, but you need to think about whether it really is. Who's the target audience? And you can't it's very hard to underestimate the general readership because most people are not reading books like that. You can see, of course, some fantastic books coming and prize-winning books coming out of the big publishers like Knopf and Norton and Simon & Schuster, and they are all dealing with agents who represent scholarly authors. 
An agent should be able to help you develop a scholarly book that has potential to be read by a so-called trade audience, okay? But remember, it's not going to be a chicken soup for the soul. So in other words, you need to be realistic in your expectations and talk to people and try to get a feel for yourself what your book is doing. If it is a traditional monograph, make sure it addresses clearly some important questions in the field, relates to large issues in the field, and that you're going to publish it with a publisher that has a very deep commitment to those questions and that field. So, for example, at UNC Press, we have a number of fields to talk about my field, say, in Latin American and Caribbean studies or religion. 
Within those fields, I would publish a variety of books that fit all of the categories I just talked about. I mean, each book, some books are monographs, some are mid-list, some are trade books. And they have been developed editorially at every stage, starting with... the important conversations and expectations that have to be laid bare between the author and the editor who knows their publisher and who knows what their colleagues are going to look for. If you go to them and say, this is a mid-list book or even more difficult, this is a trade book. Our colleagues have years and years of experience and they understand what it means to market a book as a trade book, which is going to take more resources on the part of the publisher. 
I know you asked me a question earlier about, or you wrote to me about marketing, and I definitely want to talk about that, okay? But that's where I should leave it at the moment. About the trade press division, does that happen often that a first-time academic book would end up being considered trade within the university press? It does not happen often, but it does happen. It does happen, yeah. Like I did Psyche Williams-Forsen's first book, building houses out of chicken bones and it got reviewed in New York times, uh, Sunday review section. Wow. Did you see that coming? No, you're always surprised in this business. We never know what's going to happen once a book gets out in the world, but our job is to try and figure that out as best we can beforehand. 
Um, but that's exceptional, you know, and then there are, there are many other books, um, like that. Um, all publishers have stories about books that have broken through to a broader audience. Sometimes I think they all have to be written somewhat accessibly, but, but most of the time it's because of the topic that speaks to the moment. Okay. And that's, that's something book editors of read of say trade, like the New York times Sunday review or New York review of books, even which kind of lives kind of in the trade book world. Um, The London Review of Books and the TLS all are really attuned to scholarly publishing, but they also are looking for books that are going to speak to a somewhat broader audience. 
So if you look through the books at those places, review, you get a sense of what a scholarly breakthrough book might be. But I also want to say that a lot of it is just chance. You know, a lot of it is sort of chance of what happens to be happening for better or worse in the world. And other times, I really feel an author just needs to understand, again, what their book is about and why they should be passionate about what it brings to the world. And then, you know, it doesn't matter if it's a trade book or not. If you want to write a trade book, that's kind of a whole different proposition. First of all, you have to be able to write for general readers. 
And that's much harder for many scholars. Some are very good at it, just naturally, okay? Naturally meaning they're good writers and they have a great ear and they know what people are concerned about. But it's very hard for most scholars to be able to do that as much as they want to. So do you need to write a trade book? Maybe at a certain point in your career you do. You really want to and it's important to you and that's great. But it's a different kind of proposition than getting a dissertation published. Those exist in very different kind of... I mean, there are gradations in a kind of a steady scale. but they exist on different parts of that scale of, of promulgating knowledge. 
About that approaching the editor question. If I can't get to a conference, they're often really expensive and I'm thinking of sending emails to editors. What kind of stuff is important to get in that cover letter, which I imagine should be not too long, but what do I need to let you know about me and my book? Well, a lot of, just so you know, if you check the websites of, um, publishers, they all give you that information, how to write a proposal, what should be in it. I'll tell you what was important to me. But before that, I just want to say, if we're being truthful, I know that it's very hard sometimes to get an editor's attention because the editors are overwhelmed with material every minute of every day. 
However, I always felt that an author who's writing, you out of the cold. Needs to be and should be treated respectfully and professionally. So it's very hard for editors sometimes to get in the habit of answering quickly. And certainly four to six weeks isn't is fairly common. I know that if i um i look at everything as it comes in, but there are certain things that i respond to quickly. And I try to respond quickly no matter what. But I know that four to six weeks is not uncommon for many, many authors. But if you don't hear back, I mean editors, but if you don't hear back in that time, you should definitely write again. The other thing to know is that, as I mentioned, the scholarly ecosystem, it's great if you have advisors who know editors or if you have friends who've worked with editors and they write on your behalf in a sincere way. 
There's nothing wrong with that, okay? If you have a friend who's an author at the press you're interested in, That's extremely common. And, you know, oh, my friend is writing a great book on blah, blah, blah. I think you'd be interested, Elaine. You know, I will definitely want to hear more about it. That's what an editor does for many years of her life is to develop networks. And those networks are extremely important. Relating to what you mentioned before, trends, what's going on in the field, you know. Because your best authors and your best scholars are people who hopefully know what the trends are. And that doesn't mean, of course, that they may be doing it just to be a personal favor. That doesn't mean that the editor is at all required or, you know, you shouldn't have an expectation that the book will be accepted by the editor. 
But many times it might be. So, you know, talk to your friends, talk to your advisors. Some advisors are more involved in that than others. So once you're ready to address something to an editor, I think the short cover letter should mention the framing of the book, the bigger question, you know, without overstating the case, what your project does, and also whether or not it's your first book project or not, you know. There's no reason to hide the fact that it's a dissertation. or I should say derived from a dissertation because some of the most fresh and most important work comes out of a dissertation. You should also make very clear what stage you're at in developing that dissertation. You could say, you know, I just defended it last year. 
I really feel like ideally authors should have some time, eight months, to think about the project and be clear about what they'd like to do to develop it to, as again, There may be more research they wanted to do. There may be questions they kind of have a hunch are related to your findings, but you haven't had time to frame it that way. Maybe do some more reading, add a chapter, take a chapter away. Length is really important because it relates directly to the production costs, and they go up incredibly quickly with every printed page. I always say a book should be as long as it needs to be, okay? And then I interpret that with the author, right? I have had many, many conversations because when you do your budget, your production budget, if a book is over, say, if your manuscript is 120,000 words total, including bibliography and notes, I know I'm pretty sure that'll make a book that's reasonably priced. 
And at UNC Press, we really put a lot of emphasis on trying to make books priced within reach of normal price. everyday scholars. It used to be $19.95 for a paperback. Now it's more like $29.95 for a paperback because costs have gone up so much for a typical 300-page book. So remember that. But however, you can include all the research you want. The book is not a collection of research notes. It's also not a bibliography. So you want to remember to take out the kind of research section that most dissertations include. and in terms of revising, get right to your point quickly. Have a great introduction, a catchy introduction. That should be a trap for what you are looking, what you are, how you're trying to trap interest of your readers. 
If, um, if you go to the aha perspectives article that i wrote, it was published uh in 2002, and it's kind of amazing how little things have changed since then and not in terms of publishing, um, technology, but in terms of thinking about shaping and revising books, it's called Getting Published by University Press by Elaine Mazner, um, from the, uh, Perspectives magazine of the AHA. And there's a lot of, a lot of details in there about what you can do to make your manuscript more accessible and more effective for a broader audience. So the, yeah, the cover letter needs to get to the what it is you're doing, what state it's at, what you might have left to do, how it relates to the publisher that they're writing to, you know, obviously. 
Like, oh, you have this great food studies list. I'm bringing a new angle in terms of Latinx people and, say, economic development in those communities and how food fits into that or what kind of food is available in all parts of the country. all these kinds of cultural aspects of food for Latinx people, depending on their economic class, you know. So try to frame it and how it fits that publisher, where it's at, how many words you think it'll be is helpful, but be flexible. And then just say, I really love to have some of input from you on this project and talk with you. I think also illustrations. Do you expect it to have illustrations as part of the kind of evidence base? 
You know what I mean? Pictures being important, not simply because they're fun to put in your book, but because you've drawn on them and analyze them to help with your argument. That's also very important. And we should talk a little bit more about illustrations in terms of that question. What do you wish academics knew? OK, that's an important question. Since you mentioned illustrations, I think a lot of first time authors wonder, isn't that going to be expensive to reproduce? And I need this book published. So if it's going to turn you off, if I say illustrations, then I'm taking the illustrations out. Like is saying that you're going to need illustrations actually maybe going to be an obstacle? That's a great question. Well, I'd say like six to 12 black and white pictures. 
And it's not a problem for most publishers at all. It does add some cost, but it should be doable if they're important to have. Say you're studying someone who's never been studied before and you're making an argument that they're really important in 19th century Cuban history, then having a picture of that person, a drawing or piece of art depicting that person, if there is one, would be a plus. And I think most editors are very open to that kind of thing. Now, if you're... color illustration is a whole different thing. So that adds a lot of cost to a book because for many reasons, not only the processing, but the paper they're printed on often has to be different. And so that brings that puts the production cost in a whole other category. 
So of course, there are many books that do need color illustrations, but oftentimes to get to that break-even budget, you need a Subsidy, okay? And a lot of times the author is responsible for finding two three thousand dollars subsidy that is common practice in art history. And there are, you know, quite a few funds, although i'm not saying it's easy. There are funds specifically to help authors in the art history do that okay but it's it's something that needs to be kept in mind. Other times, authors feel that a lot of illustrations, you know, what should we say, 30 pictures are really important to the book. And it's, again, might be necessary to get a subsidy for that. It's not necessarily the case. 
This every, you know, that's a great thing about book publishing. I think each one is, it's still a very case by case production. And there are a lot of ins and outs to it. For example, if the book should have a wider market, then it means the production costs are spread out. And it's, you know, further because there's more books being published and more potential income. So it means that the list price of each individual book can still be reasonable, even if you have 30 to 40 pictures in the book. But that's, again, you have to get a book that your publisher feels will do really well in the marketplace. Also, published books where illustrations, yes, are really important because it's a trade book. 
So for example, we did a book recently by Marcy Cohen-Ferris, who's really well known in food studies. In fact, she was one of the kind of progenitors of food studies i think she works on southern culture and southern culture and we did a book called edible north carolina uh which is a regional book okay a regional trade book written for a broad audience about food uh in north carolina from who has it who needs it and also what are the food trends in terms of cooking and growing food and so on and so forth photography specifically for the book. But we had to have a very, um So that's a book where, yes, pictures are an integral part of the book, but we did have to have a very big subvention from an outside source to be able to make that book possible so that's that's one end of it, okay? 
The other end is scholarly book where maybe your university this is something really important. Many universities have a fund for their authors, which can go for something like helping them pay for indexing, or It might be something that they can send directly to the publisher. It can't be something that... We never accept subventions from authors directly, okay? It needs to be directly from their university or another outside source directly to the press to help subvent the cost of production for whatever reason. And sometimes authors, professors who are in the academy, and of course this is an advantage if you are in the academy, it's hard for... Fantastic scholars who may not have an academic position. It's a little harder. But and also that relates to digital publishing as well. 
Open access publishing, I should say, because like the University of California has special subventions for their faculty specifically for open access publishing, whereas an independent scholar wouldn't have access to that. But anyway, ask your ask your department, ask your chair, ask your dean if they have these funds for their faculty to support faculty publishing. authors and sometimes they do. You'd be surprised. You know, the other, the other question that comes up a lot, and this is more important for books that are so-called what we call crossover books that are academic, but are written in a way about issues that hopefully will have a broader audience. And then the question is your social media platform. We would never require an author to have a social media platform because 
If you work with an agent, some of the first things they say is, what's your platform? And this is very true with cookbooks, cookbook publishing. Does this person have a following on Instagram? Do they post on Twitter? I mean, these are things that real dedicated trade publishers may be more concerned about than university presses, even the biggest university presses. Because again, university presses, their mandate is to publish scholarships. So that's the main focus, no matter how big the university press is. um they, you know, the university presses you know, c Press too. We, we could afford to pay, uh, advances of different types to two authors and that means that you're paying them an advance against the royalties that we hope they will earn on the sales of the book. 
That doesn't mean that they'll earn out though, because sometimes, uh, an advance is needed to secure a book that a publisher wants, but, To publish that many books to earn back is very difficult. But it's kind of dog-eat-dog world on that level. And even the biggest trade publishers are competing against each other, sometimes for astronomical advances. But that is well outside what most academic publishers need, authors need to worry about. This isn't true of me, but there are some academics who have a gazillion followers on whatever social media platform they're on. If that were the case, it sounds like it might be helpful for me to include that in my cover letter just so you know I have that kind of power. I agree. 
And along those lines, you and I were in touch about publicity because I am really interested in your thoughts on this. It seems like something that in the past decade – I've noticed many first-time authors are great about even organizing their own book tour or just sort of a series of book events. Really a lot of work doing this kind of self-promotion that I imagine is really helpful in getting their book out there. But I'm curious from your perspective what it really does. And also if you as an editor like seeing that or if you're looking at a second-time book author, you are able to take note of that. Yeah. Yes, very perspicacious and important for publishing. Yes, the more self-motivated an author is, the better it is for their book. 
There's no question about that. Along with that, they need to know how to work, you know, cooperatively with the marketing department of the publisher and learn from the publisher who has tons of experience and knowledge. And I want to talk about levels of marketing, but... Yes, there's no question that even if you have a lot of Twitter followers and you post, oh, I just got the cover of my book, you know, the cover reveal. You've probably seen those on Twitter. That's good. It builds buzz. There's no question about it. Whether that kind of thing in the end really affects sales of a book, I personally don't know of any studies on that. And I'd be interested to know. But I think it in some way probably helps if... 
Depending on the quality of the book, of course, and the kind of need for that book in the bigger world. But I think that, you know, authors for years and years and years have, academic authors have complained about the publisher did nothing for their book. And I'd like to interrogate that more on an individual basis if someone said that to me so I really understand what's going on. But for a traditional, wonderful monograph, there's no question that that the author should expect at least review copies being sent out to all the appropriate journals, okay, and magazines in their field. Promotion of the book at conferences, you know, just on display with the ability to order the book from the conference. Usually nowadays this means just noting the book is there and then going online. 
Getting most of them off for discounts for conferences. Some kind of advertising. so the book is known in the field. That would be scholarly journal advertising. Nowadays, it's most, probably more digital. I don't know, you know, many, many scholarly journals are going digital or do both digital and print. So it depends, you know, none of this is profit making. So it's, I think most journals are trying to figure out ways to be able to continue publishing their journals at very high quality levels and not go broke. So digital ads are, are very common nowadays. So those three things, review, copies, ad, prize submissions, okay? Those are things that absolutely are, I think, non-negotiable. And the author needs to, you know, even before you sign a contract, you should say, are you going to do these three things for my book? 
Of course, most publishers do, okay? That's not a question. The university press, that's what they're supposed to do, and that's what they do. But I can't hurt to talk about your expectations today. and even get it in writing in an email if you're not sure. The other thing is translations. I'm really all for foreign rights deals in areas that are pertinent. So, for example, in Islamic studies, could we get a Bengali translation, for example, of a certain book? And let me back up. Getting foreign rights deals is really hard to do because foreign publishers... many times have even less money than U.S. publishers, okay? That means even if they pay just a very nominal fee or small royalties for the rights to publish the book in Bengali or in German or in French or in Chinese or in Japanese, it's not easy, okay? 
But Willier University Press, most of them definitely want to at least respond to foreign rights inquiries, if not actually have a network of publishers in that field. So if a publisher is known for French studies, they should have somebody at the press who can write to French publishers and say, are you interested in the French rights for this book? And the bigger publishers can even go to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is the world's largest foreign rights deal-making event. And many publishers go to that or have representatives at that field. So that's the fourth area that I would ask for if you were in an area where a translation would make sense. That's not to say that A lot of fields are not going to be popular for foreign publishers, but a lot are. 
So those are four areas that I think are the basics for publishing scholarly monographs and doing the marketing for them. It can just go way up from there for books that are crossover or for, you know, many, many book publishers who have the funds are going to put a full page ad in the New York Review of Books. You've probably seen that. And that's a good kind of representative crossover journal approach. where there's academics and people who are just interested in those topics are reading it. Same thing with the TLS, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books. There are many publishers, The Nation, The Atlantic. Can your publisher place an ad in those journals? Will your publisher send review copies to those places? 
Now, another level is publicists, okay? And that means someone who really knows, book publicity can get out there and has a network of editor, journal editors, magazine editors. I could say, Hey, um, I know this really wonderful book coming out about, I would say anti-black racism around food. Would you like a review copy? And then the, if the journal writes back and says, yeah, I'm really interested in this. Um, can you get the author to do an interview on this podcast? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Those are that kind of level, which a dedicated publisher, you know, for-profit trade publisher will devote that level of marketing for not every book on their list by any means. Because every publisher, even the biggest ones, have budgets and they own they have to, every publisher has to make decisions about where to put the marketing dollars. 
Okay? A bigger publisher like unc press and certainly the six i mentioned earlier and many many many others i would never want to slight any publisher because they're a so many fantastic university publishers. Has marketing dollars. But do they have marketing dollars unlimited for every book they publish? No. Obviously. Not even the big, you know many many of the biggest publishers will choose um okay we're going to do these 10 books and give them everything we can. We're going to even pay the huge amount of money it costs to put up an ad in the new york times sunday book review. We're going to send the author on a tour that we will pay for, as opposed to the kind of author-generated tour that you mentioned. 
But we're only going to do that for 10 authors this year. And the other books will get some marketing, but you'd be amazed at how many complaints we hear from authors who come to good university presses and say, I published this book with blah, blah, blah, but they didn't pay any attention to it. Because university presses can publish trade books, and if they're savvy, they do have some money to put toward marketing. So I really, really urge people to think about a university press who are publishing real trade books and marketing them well and getting attention in the field okay or in the general readership area but again it's very you know there's only a few books that are going to break through and um and there's no promises no promises but if you want a great publishing experience then you really need to look beyond only the trade publisher's 
if you're interested in that kind of publishing and you have a product, a project and product that will be seen that way. And you also, usually an agent can help you position that book at a publisher. That's not to say you have to have an agent for university presses because you don't, okay? But it can help you get higher advances and higher royalties. Doesn't necessarily mean you're going to find an agent who's willing to put work into developing your proposal and talking with you about it and really doing the kinds of things that a wonderful editor at a press could do, okay? But there are agents out there like that. But just as there are many kinds of editors, there are many kinds of agents. 
So that's also something to keep in mind. So there are two other things that I wanted to mention about understanding early in your career. And I'm happy to bring those up any moment, but I'm over to you. I hope I'm not talking too much. Am I talking too much? No, you're great. This is really helpful. Just one other thing that you referred to, we're talking about negotiating, and the contract is something that most of us first-time authors assume we have no leverage. And I mean, maybe you could get more free copies of the book. And when it comes to contracts, anything is negotiable, okay? But it definitely doesn't mean you're going to get what you ask for either. But yeah, I mean, I love contracts. 
I worked on them a lot at Yale University Press. In fact, I rewrote with one of the university lawyers, the Yale University... basic publishing contract. And we went through every word. And in a way, it's kind of a contract is represents the entire publishing process. So I urge authors to read them. I don't urge authors to have their corporate lawyer spouse or friend read the contract and then pepper the and I'm sighing just thinking about editor with 20 questions on every paragraph, okay? We've been publishing books for a century at UNC Press and the contracts are sensible and good. A lot of questions come up with, it says something about you can't publish anything directly competitive with the book that you're publishing with the press. 
Obviously, you can't publish another book that's going to compete with your own book, right? But it doesn't mean that you can't publish a short, abridged chapter or an article that is related to your project you know it doesn't mean that so feel free to dig down on that and ask your editor about those questions but yeah you can negotiate the word length the illustrations of the date of submission which is really important your royalties but be aware that for a regular scholarly book you know one that is no matter what size audience it's meant for There are standards in the field among publishers of what your royalties will be, how many free copies you can get, anything that relates to money because it's not just for the heck of it. 
Those costs are integral to the P&L, profit and loss statement, which every book gets at the University Press Publisher when they're trying to decide if they can afford to publish it, okay? You'd be amazed at the difference. $1,000 can make for a budget. I'm speaking as someone who has done thousands of these budgets and discussed them with her team. And you have to realize that the publisher knows what they're doing most of the time, and they're doing it for the benefit of your book. They're doing it for the benefit of your book. Again, anything's negotiable. So you kind of have to kind of trust, but yes. Ask questions if you wish. And in terms of deal breakers, if you're going to break a contract because they won't let you have 15 illustrations and the editor says we can afford 10, or I should say maybe more like you want 30 illustrations and the editor says you have to get a subvention for that. 
And also don't forget that adds pages to the book, not just the cost of processing illustrations. It's very complex when you think about it. Things that authors don't usually think about. So it's, it's, there are reasons for, for these things, but you should absolutely ask and get it explained to you. Absolutely. And there are, you know, if you feel like something's really important to you and your book, yes, press for it. Absolutely. Okay. That's good to hear that, that you're not just being like a problem child. If you ask questions. No, absolutely not. And absolutely not always ask questions. Okay. That's, that's essential. Uh, it's not meant to be a black box. Um, I know that the author's interface with a publisher is often an incredibly busy editor or assistant. 
But on the other hand, I feel that building a book together is a mutually beneficial and creative process. So I would be happy to... Maybe not always happy. But I would talk with an author about these things. And the authors often ask the same kinds of questions over and over. So I'm not going to lie. I had... many, many, many explanatory paragraphs that I could cut and paste in response to these questions. I don't mean to say every book is the same. I'm just saying certain books have a kind of budget possibility and others have other. And I worked for so long that I had paragraphs that could relate to almost any kind of book. So I wanted to ask you our last question about what kind of advice you would give 
give to academics about what they should know about writing or publishing earlier in their career? Okay, so we're talking about academics, you know, and again, we've published many trade, even, you know, trade authors, not just an academic who wants to publish a trade book, but actual writers who hopefully can make a living by publishing their books, okay? A lot of these things are different for those types of authors, but in terms of academic scholarly publishing, I would say number one starts the day you pick your dissertation topic. You need to know not every dissertation is going to be published or should be published. Sometimes they need to be broken apart into articles that can be groundbreaking articles, but you need to know what the conventions of your field are and the expectations of the people who are going to pass judgment on your worthiness as a scholar, whether it means tenure, promotion, just simple hiring. 
Do they want a book? you know, most fields in the humanities do, but sometimes great articles suffice for your dissertation, and you can start a fresh book project that you work with a publisher on. I think you had asked me about that at one point when we were speaking earlier, that that is certainly not unheard of. It's harder because you have to do a whole new round of research, obviously, and you have to get funded for that, whereas with a dissertation that's already behind you, but it depends. So you need to know what the conventions of your field are in terms of promulgation of the knowledge that you are presenting if it's a monograph make sure that you pick a topic not it's only fascinating to you and to your advisors but one that you feel like you will be invested in and other people will be invested in you know that that's not something you can answer easily but if you try to think about it that way perhaps you'll be working on a topic for some years of course 
that a publisher will also be invested in because they know there are other people invested in it. Again, if it's, say, a project in archaeology, which I don't really, I haven't published much in, make sure that even if it's only 600 people that are going to buy that book, that you know that at least that small group will find important. How do you do that? Well, you're a scholar. You have to know what's going on in your field and what the lines of knowledge are and all of that. it could be a real path breaker it could be something, and don't ever introduce your book in a cover letter as, oh, I filled the gap, okay? Nobody needs a book that just fills the gap. 
Always be positive, not negative, when you present your project, whether verbally or, well, in writing or, you know, in writing or in orally. Don't say, this book doesn't do this, but it does do this. Try to be positive. Like, my book was crafted to address this question, you know? Yes, you need to set the parameters Because you can't do everything in any book, especially an early book. So craft it in a way that you're very honest about the parameters, but in a positive way. Focus on what you've accomplished, not what you haven't accomplished. And I just mentioned that because so many people are very self-deprecating about their work. That's not to say you go overboard and overstate the case, but you need to be positive about it. 
Because if you're not, who will be, right? Okay, so the things that I want to talk about then are topic. complicated, obviously, and timing. You have to realize it takes a long time for a project between the twinkle in your eye, the twinkle in your editor's eye, and its actual cover reveal and actual publication date. So if you're under the clock in terms of, you know, tenure or promotion, I mean, a publisher will always try to help you, but they are not responsible for getting the book out. So they'll do everything they can to help you with your tenure or requirements but it has to be somewhat close for them to even be able to try to make an effort. And remember, there's, um, an editor may want you may read into the manuscript and say, I really need you to connect the tissue of this project with what's going on in the field. 
Uh, you're, you need to do more storytelling. Some projects are, you know, written basically well, and they are going to appeal to say an audience of five or six hundred people And the editor will say, we do need, this is an important topic. We do have a certain number of slots for a book that's only going to sell, say, 400 to 600 copies for important books in the field. Those are the areas where people, I think, get discouraged. Like, how am I going to get my book published because it's on a narrow topic? And it's true that some publishers may get out of those fields. That's, in a way, a question for the Academy at large and what fields are going to be supported in the future. 
Okay? But it's very complicated. as part of this, as I mentioned, this broader ecosystem, scholarly ecosystem. But a publisher is going to say, I have a certain number of slots for this archaeology area and we're going to publish your book even if we know. Okay? So the publisher can publish a certain number of books in each of these kinds of categories because all put together, they're going to break even for that year. Okay? That's what they need to do. Obviously, if some books make more, that's great because again, it can help the press develop their operations. But the author's topic choice is going to relate ultimately to what a publisher's interest is going to be, believe it or not. But that's not to say you can predict it. 
But if you'll simply make sure that there are pressing questions that you are addressing and you make those clear, again, without overstepping the bounds of your research, then that's a real plus, okay? The timing is really important because the the editor will may ask you to do some things in terms of framing, which brought me to, again, to the topic. They may ask you to, in some cases, if your writing is really poor but the project is important, they may even say, look, you need to hire a copy editor or a line a line editor to help you with this. Where do you get the money for that? I don't know. That's another question. All publishers in the university press world, are going to copy edit your book, but that doesn't mean they can line edit, okay? 
So you want to have a pretty well-written manuscript to hand in. What is the difference between the copy edit and the line edit? Yeah, copy edit makes sure that you haven't made grammatical mistakes, that your subject and verb agree. They will check to make sure that your citations are in order and properly numbered in the text and the note section. They will find amazing... They'll help the book so much. They will also make it more felicitous language. They will say, you mentioned this person by their last name only, where you mentioned this person for the first time, you should give the full name. But a line editor or a developmental editor might say, you mentioned so-and-so here, but no one knows who this person is. 
Why don't you add a phrase or a sentence describing who they are and why you're even putting them in the book in the first place, or how they relate to the protagonist. or the order of this storytelling is really wrong, or I think it could make more of an impact if you tell this part of the story first, you know, or you don't really need all of this stuff. You need to, something that's really important, I think, for scholars to do is not give a blow-by-blow description of something that happened in the past. Develop the art of writing the thumbnail of a story, like explain what happened, but be able to Not say, on this day they looked at this, on this day they went here, on this day they went there. 
No, there's no room for that in a project unless you're actually writing a book that's meant to highlight that, okay? The other thing is have some highs and lows in your writing and your expression. Try to write it so there's some drama. I don't mean try to be a dramatist or anything, but if it's all written at the same kind of expressive level, it can get kind of dull. If you think something is important, then emphasize it, you know, in your kind of quote-unquote storytelling. Because writing a book really in some ways is still storytelling, no matter what field you're in. And, you know, the humanities publishing was sort of worked off the science model where you have an introduction and you have a conclusion and you have to relay your evidence. 
In fact, I often would tell authors, Don't just say introduction and conclusion. You know, give it a name, give it a title, because that's going to give the author more juicy clues as to what's coming in those sections. It's fine to say introduction colon and then give it a subtitle. Conclusions often don't even need to say the word conclusion. You know, maybe if you're a scientist, you've concluded certain things from your data. That's why the humanities adapted it. That's why history is still considered, you know, a social science. These things, These things are sort of conventions, and you can push those lines if you want to. You just need to think about it and make sure that it makes sense. So I think some creativity in your writing is also a good idea. 
If you write conclusion and nothing else for the final chapter, that's kind of boring, you know? Everyone will know it's the conclusion of the book. It's the last chapter, you know? So make sure that you can convey that in a kind of interesting title rather than just conclusion that's my own my own thing anyway allow allow plenty of time for the review process. I mean, to get into the review process would be a whole other podcast and the aup the associate museum of presses has put a lot of emphasis and published a wonderful, um, guidelines for review and ethics in review. Gatekeeping, you know, who determines what gets published. These are really important topics that you might want to do a podcast on someday because the review process should be very creative and very, very helpful to the author in making the best book it can be. 
And the editor that you have should help you with that. Sometimes you could get a review back that seems negative, but if you go through it with a good editor, you'll see how to use that in a way that's actually positive. Then when it goes out for the review again, the reviewer, the same reviewer, would say, wow, they really... heard me, you know, that doesn't mean you've done everything the reviewer wants because after all, this is your book, but they address the question and made it better. That's the ideal process. And that's why we do it. So, um, the peer review is, is essential and that takes a long time. Not always some fly through a peer review. It's amazing. Uh, some don't, it doesn't mean it's not going to get published, but it might mean that doesn't get published because the peer review is a 
absolutely essential to the press's operations and present presenting a project to the board. All of that for final approval. The faculty board that approves every project that gets published so that's a that's a big topic. But the point here is that it takes time. And then the time for doing your final final manuscript once you hand it in, according to all the guidelines that your your editorial department guidelines will give you for putting the manuscript into shape, Finally do that. All the illustrations are in good shape. Oh, and by the way, don't assume that just because you took photos with your camera in the field in Venezuela 20 years ago that they're going to be good enough quality to go in your book because they probably won't. 
So you need to make sure if you want illustrations that you understand what it takes to produce high quality images that are usable and also about permissions if necessary. That's something that you need to think about ahead of time, which often people don't think about. So anyway, that all takes time. So if you're under the gun in terms of time, you need to figure it's going to take at least a year between the time you submit your manuscript and the actual publication of it, okay? And then you add another year before that for review and rewriting. You know, sometimes it could take two years or more. Don't I know it. Yes, I definitely feel like we'll need a podcast on that. The Reader's Report zone and also that mysterious book 
editorial board. It's not mysterious. We're here to dispel mysteries. It is a part of what makes a university press a university press. The peer review is essential, and there are guidelines for what publishers can be accepted as a university press in the Association of University Presses, which is a worldwide organization now. You have to have peer review, which follows certain guidelines, and you have to have a board that approves the manuscripts. And it's mainly a faculty board, but it could include people from other publishing companies. It could include, and often does, university officials, okay? And they are presented all the materials and material from each editor on their projects. And the idea is to make sure everything is fantastic and in great order before you present it to your board. 
Because who wants something to be hung up at that moment, okay? That's the last step before the author oftentimes can send in their final manuscript. You can have contracts before board approval or after, but a lot of publishers now do advance contracts which are signed in advance of board approval. But having board approval is a condition in the contract, okay? So even if you sign a contract in advance, you aren't going to get published unless the board approves the project. That's part of the condition. But a lot of times they fly through, but sometimes boards have great faculty members and they have really important questions. And it's rare, I think, for a board to turn something down, but they might require another set of reviews or they might say, have you thought about this? 
You know, we need to talk about this and then we'll come back to the board later on once those questions have been thought through. And every publisher has a different type of board, but there is some kind of final approval process. Well, thank you so much, Elaine. This has been really helpful. And I'm so glad that we got the chance to talk to you. Really appreciate your taking the time to chat with us today. Oh, I'm very happy to do it. Did it relate to your own kind of path in publishing in some ways? It did. It did. And I feel like it also resonated with the stories and questions a lot of my colleagues and peers have been asking, you know, even as I've been talking about this podcast and mentioning that we'll get to 
talk to you. I was channeling some of their questions here. Yeah, this was great. Thanks for listening to Writing It, the podcast about academics and writing, sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. Visit our podcast description to find out how to contact us and send us your questions about academic writing and publishing. Follow us on social media at Writing at Pod and subscribe to us so you never miss an episode.