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. Hi, if you're enjoying writing it or feel like you're gaining some new insights from the pod, we would so appreciate your leaving a rate and review. And if you have comments or questions that you'd like to see addressed in future episodes, please use the contact us form on our website. Our goal here is to make academic writing and publishing a bit more transparent and a bit less overwhelming. 
So we'd love to hear about what's confusing you these days when it comes to our academic writing lives. Today, we're speaking with Rachel Dahl, the marketing manager at the University Press of Florida, and Stephanie Hunter, editor-in-chief at the University Press of Florida. And we're talking about what happens with our academic manuscripts once they're at the press. So maybe to start, you can each tell us something about the changes in each of your departments in recent years. What has changed? What listeners should be aware of about the editorial and marketing departments these days? Yeah, thank you so much, Rachel, for having us on. I love the mission of your podcast of making the publishing process more transparent. That's definitely something that we care very much about. 
So I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today. So from the acquisitions department, The publishing landscape, I think the main challenge that we have right now is finding peer reviewers. People are overcommitted. People are stressed. And while we do compensate peer reviewers for, we give them an honorarium for the work that they do, it's not comparable to the amount of effort and labor that goes into it. And so understandably, people are less able to take that on. And so that's one of the challenges we've been facing recently is One of the exciting things that I'm really looking forward to, and I don't know if this overlaps with what Rachel Dahl is going to say, but there's some really great things happening in open access right now. 
We've been very fortunate to participate in a couple of different programs. Open access can be challenging for small to mid-sized presses because it takes a lot of resources. And we've just been very fortunate to participate in some programs like the Tome Initiative from the AU Presses. And there's a new initiative called Path to Open. And we have there's 100 new 100 books that are going to be part of the first round. And three of those are our books. So really excited to have some books coming out open access. And I'm excited for that to be more and more possible in the future. Thank you. I just want to follow up quickly that the getting the readers issue is interesting. And I'd heard that. 
I appreciate your acknowledging that, you know, the compensation, even as you see it, does not, you know, it's not the compensation. enough for the work that they do. I'm wondering, in the event that we happen to have senior listeners who are thinking, actually, I happen to be in a season of my academic career where I have some time for that and I'm interested in seeing what's out there and reading these manuscripts, are there things professors can do on their end? Should they be getting in touch with presses if they sort of want to volunteer? That's a great question. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, that would be fantastic. I have some authors who have email me and let me know that they would love to read manuscripts. 
They're available to read manuscripts at any point. So it might be a little strange to email an editor out of the blue that you've never had a conversation with. But if you have an editor that you've talked to before that you're on good terms with, letting them know that you're available and happy to review manuscripts is wonderful. We really appreciate that. And to clarify, are you generally looking for full professors or what stage? That's been an interesting question. We prefer to have scholars who have published their own monograph. It's really helpful to work with someone who has been through the process themselves. But both because there are fewer tenure track positions and because we want to we want to be getting a diversity of perspectives from our peer reviewers. 
We're more and more likely to recruit junior scholars that might have to be they might be the third reviewer in a set position. It might be like a tag team review with a more senior scholar. We've been trying out different ways of incorporating junior scholars, but we really do want to have that feedback as well. That's great to know. Thank you. And Rachel, maybe you can tell us from your end what's new, what's going on in marketing these days. Yes. So also thank you so much for having me and having Stephanie today. When I think about changes in the past few years, I have to think about the pandemic and about changes that that has made to our are just what marketing looks like for us. 
One of the big changes that has happened has been a shift to more done digitally instead of in print. For example, we used to print – we would print our seasonal catalog every season and do a big mailing every season, and that's now done completely digitally. We used to – for every one of our academic books, it would be standard practice for us to – to ship printed review copies about 20 to 30 to journal book review editors unsolicited. And that is something that we don't do anymore. It's actually turned out that it's preferable for a lot of journal book review editors to receive an announcement from us first, and then to be able to request that we send that review copy to the reviewer directly. 
And then also just the shape of exhibits and our academic conferences and our presence there It was a really big thing for us in the spring of 2020 to suddenly rethink all the plans that we had for our conference displays that we were going to do that spring and then moving into the fall. And we had to really reimagine what our conference book displays would look like. We transitioned to digital formats. And now as we are going back to in-person conferences, we are – rethinking how we did things before. And we are finding a balance that is a little bit of having an in-person display, and then also having a digital virtual booth that's parallel to that, and then a lot of digital promotions outside of the conference. 
Interesting. And speaking of these other forms of the book, it reminds me, I'm curious about the audio versions, because this is something so many of my academic and non-academic friends do. We love listening to books. And I noticed some academic books are available as audio, is this something that is becoming more common or how rare is it and can an author make the case that there's enough narrative here that this book maybe deserves to be in audible form? Yeah. So we don't create audiobooks in-house, but that is something that our rights department, we pitch our books to audiobook vendors for the creation and distribution of of them. And if we do hear from an author that they're especially interested in that, then that would be a book that we prioritize for pitching. 
Okay. So it might make a difference for an author to express that. Yes. Yes, definitely. Okay. That's also really helpful to know. Rachel, one of the things you shared with me was this wonderful timeline of the book, which to be honest, I shared on Facebook and a bunch of my academic friends wrote and said they had not seen anything like this from their presses. And it really gave them much more clarity about what might be happening with the book at different stages. We're going to include this timeline on our own Instagram page for listeners to see. But to give listeners an idea, you start with this eight months out data point. And you mentioned there that that's when the and the book appears on online retailer websites, and then you go to four months out, and that's when the press announces their season. 
You also say at four months out, the author actually might want to share news of the book's forthcoming publication on their own social media, that form. How did you arrive at that? And maybe Stephanie has some input here too, but was this through trial or error? How did you figure that timeline out? Yeah. Well, this is actually pretty standard for all of our books. We have schedules and timelines in place where we essentially count backwards from the book's publication date. Once the book is launched, this gets set into motion. And so we've been doing these timelines for quite some time. Three months out is about when we start doing the pre-order discount email for authors and then one month out is when we anticipate that the book arrives in our warehouse and we start sending out announcements to book review editors to request review copies. 
And then you get the pub date at one month out, which is when we make announcements on social media and announce it externally. And underlying this timeline, it's not here on the timeline, but usually we have our authors complete a marketing questionnaire for us around the time that their book is launched into editorial. So we are referring to that questionnaire through all these processes. And when we get to these stages, we refer to it. We refer to it for journals that the author would like us to submit the book to and professors that might be interested in adopting the book, things like that. Related to the schedule and actually the marketing form you just mentioned, most of us academics have had to do that for a press if we've worked with the university press. 
And one of the things they asked, which a listener asked about was, They often ask, which books is your book similar to? So you're supposed to name some other academic books that you feel your book has something in common with. What is that used for? Or how important is it? It's used in a couple of ways. The first is so that we can list these comp titles for our sales reps and buyers to kind of get a sense of which books it's similar to. They can look and see how many copies have sold of those books if they need to. And then it's also useful for us in figuring out how to present the book in the marketing copy that we write for the book, what things are selling points that set this book apart from others that may be similar. 
And then we want to make sure to highlight those selling points in the copy for people who are in the field who are familiar with scholarship that's been done. We want to really point to this is what this book is bringing as a contribution that's new and different. So it sounds like that it might be to the author's benefit to list books that are popular or selling well. I mean, it sounds like there might even be a danger to listing a book there that is not selling well because the book seller might be looking at that and thinking, oh, well, that other book didn't sell that well. So I'm not sure I want to buy that many copies of this one. I would say to be realistic about the books that you're listing as comps and 
Listing other books – so we're a university press and listing books by other university presses is probably the most helpful for us to get a sense for like this book is probably most similar to those and it comes from the same kind of publisher. So it's actually kind of more beneficial for us to have those university press comps to look at. Yeah. Now I can understand that. I did want to say – We publish books for all different audiences. We publish scholarly books, and some of them are very niche, but they make a real contribution, maybe not in sales numbers as much as in moving the argument forward or this is going to be a book that's going to win an award. So we're not looking at just... It's helpful to be realistic about the sales numbers because that's not the only thing your book is contributing. 
And we want to know what's unique about your book, whether that's this really interesting new... turn that it's bringing to scholarship, or if that is, in fact, a large sales number that can be expected. Yeah. And actually, Stephanie, I feel like you bring up a point, which is that one of the benefits of going with the university press, as opposed to sometimes we've been talking with authors or editors who are into the trade press division, is that you actually don't have to be as stressed or maybe not at all that stressed about sales when you're working with a university press. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, Rachel might have more to say about this too, but sales are important. We do need to meet, recoup the expenses that we've put into the, we've invested in the book. 
But there's so much value to our books in many different ways. We support the state university system. And so supporting professors and scholars in the state university system is part of our mission, making good scholarship available to the public on subjects that are needed. is another part of our mission. So sales is part of it, but it's multifaceted, the work that we do and the value of the books that we're publishing. On the topic of making scholarship accessible, listeners have asked about price of a book and if this is something that an author can try to influence. Can an author, even a first-time author, possibly influence a university press to say, go under $30 or under $35? And this question in particular was, you know, is showing the press sort of the things that you are doing to help sell or promote the book, is that a possible argument to the press about lowering the price? 
I think so. When I'm meeting with prospective authors, I always ask them, what is most important to you? What are your priorities in this publication process? What do you want from your book? I want to know if the price point is... with what they really care about. I want to know if it's an audio book, if they really feel strongly that their book should be an audio book. And I ask that way up front before we sign anything, before there's a commitment made, because I want to make sure that the author's expectations are something that we can meet. And I'm going to take those questions back to my colleagues. I'm going to take them to Rachel and say, this is what the author would like to do. 
This is what the author is hoping for. Is this something that you think we can realistically promise? And if not, we may not be the right press. And that's OK. I want the author and the book to go to the right press. But having those early conversations about what is important to you is really helpful. And Price Point is definitely one of those. You know, some of my authors care very deeply about making their book accessible, especially within Latin American and Caribbean studies. That's one of the fields that I acquire in. And that's a question that I get constantly. And that's part of the incentive for doing open access is that we're able to make these books free, which is incredible. But for other scholars, it's it's a different consideration that they that is most important to them. 
So I encourage you to express those ask those questions and express those concerns early in the process, because the press will listen and wants to help you wants to work with you. That's really good to hear. And since you sound like such a willing to work with author kind of editor, we'd love to hear about your specializations and also how important it is for an author to work at a press known for having a specialization that is the author's field. Yeah. So I publish in Latin American and Caribbean studies, medieval and modernist literature, and dance. And Some of these are my academic background. Some of them are not. I love all of the subjects I acquire in very, very much and thoroughly enjoy publishing in them. 
I think that there's a balance in choosing a press. Obviously, there's going to be something gained from going with the press that specializes and has a strong reputation in your field. But you also want to make sure it's the right press in other ways, too. Think about what's important to you, the price point or the audio book or the open access, the relationship with the editor. I can't stress enough how important the relationship, the author editor relationship is because that that lasts for years. Often we're partners once we've committed to working together on this book. And so you want to work with an editor that you respect and you trust. And so definitely consider the prestigious presses in your in your field and 
But also talk to your colleagues and see if there's an editor that they really enjoy working with and a press that they've really enjoyed working with. Because that does a lot. I think one of our specialties is that we're more personable. And so take advantage of that. Get to know the person that you're going to be and the people that you're going to be working with. That reminds me, I hear a lot of colleagues say that what they do is look in the acknowledgement sections of books in their field and see how it's How is the editor being thanked? Is it just thank you so-and-so or is it thank you so-and-so for doing like X, Y, and Z? And I'm curious what kinds of things, you know, maybe extras that an author might not realize could be part of this relationship. 
What kinds of things do you or your colleagues do as editors for authors? Yeah. So in those initial conversations, when I'm asking authors what's important to them, sometimes they want more direct editorial feedback. And I am not able to do, you know, line edits on every manuscript that I publish, but I can for some. And so if an author says this is this is really important to me or I'm really struggling with this, I have a book right now that I'm reading the chapters as they're written and giving feedback to the author. And I think it's more interesting. I think, I hope my feedback is helpful, but I think it's more that the author really appreciates having someone engaged with their work throughout the process. 
And it's exciting for me because I'm really invested in this book. I really love this book and I get to, I get to watch it develop. Some of my colleagues, we check in with authors. Some authors need deadlines and they need someone to enforce those deadlines. And so if that's something that works for you, let your editor know, and we might be able to, to set that up, you know, sit in a check-in point. I don't know. Our, our, For me, a lot of my authors are people who I feel almost like friends with at this point. I see them at conferences. We go to lunch. I know their kids' names. I get a Christmas card. There's this relationship and this mutual investment often. 
Not always, but often. Yeah, and I imagine not every author is up for the same level. Sure, sure. The question, though, I guess, is also one that Rachel might be able to speak to because book publicity is something – that I feel like first-time authors care about maybe more than they used to. The things that I see early-stage academics doing for their first books, events they organize. And I wonder if you could tell us about what kinds of things the presses does to help publicize a book, especially if the author is showing this initiative about wanting to get out there at book events and maybe even doing op-eds or other pieces related to the book that they can publicize. put in a more popular press. 
Yeah. And I think first, if you are an author who is really excited about getting involved in publicity for your book, that is something that we would love to know if you're an author out there who is wondering, should I reach out to my marketing department about this? Is there, you know, like, I'm just not sure if this is something that I should be doing. I'm not sure where we are at this stage. Always, always reach out to your marketing contact. If We would love to hear from authors who are thinking about these things. If an author has expressed a lot of interest in doing events and has specific ideas in mind, we've worked with them before to help pitch them for those events. 
And then once the events get on the calendar, we help promote them on social media. And we also make sure that there's a plan for how to best handle book sales and promote the book at the events. So we've worked with authors that way. If you are really heavily invested in social media and you would like some materials and tools to help you share the book there, that's something that we would also be excited to help with. And then also op-eds. That is a great idea. And we have had some authors have really good success with placing those in high-profile publications. And usually... The angle of those op-eds, they're not focused on the book. They're focused on the author and the author's research. 
And it's really more for if you are an academic author who has written an academic monograph, you're using the book kind of more as a platform to promote yourself as a public scholar. And you are sharing your research and expertise to weigh in on research. something that's in the news, a current event, something that people really care about. And the book will usually be mentioned in your byline at the end of the article. That's still really great publicity for the book. We may sell a few more copies for people who wouldn't have known about it otherwise. But it is really like the focus there is on the author and their research and the book can kind of become a way to just bolster credibility. 
Right. Yeah. So that's almost something that the The author needs to check in with themselves. Do I want to be a public intellectual type and then kind of have that byline advertisement for the forthcoming or new book? It's not something that every academic is interested in, but I guess it's another way to bring your research to more people. Something that you mentioned before, selling books at book events. So if one of your authors is doing a book event, let's say it's out of state, are they able to call the press? And is the press able to help with books being able to be sold there? Yeah, it depends on where the event is, whether book sales are good. So this is all information that we ask authors for. 
And these are details that we try to figure out. Is there going to be a vendor on site handling book sales? Is the author going to be bringing books themselves? Or is there really just not a great opportunity for book sales? And would they like us to provide a flyer instead with discount code and attendees can order directly through the publisher after the talk with a discount code. That often works really well for authors giving Zoom talks in particular, because there's no book sales at a Zoom talk. So we can always share a discount code. And that's been our authors have had success with that. Another question we had was about blurbs. Not every academic press actually does blurbs on the back of the book. 
But do you think these matter? Sometimes the author gets to ask someone themselves or the Press will sometimes ask, actually one of the readers who did the Reader's Reports, any advice on whether an author should try to pursue these if it's an option? Blurbs are nice to have, but not absolutely necessary. We always try to have at least one blurb for our books. So we do make sure that we have one. It's usually more like one or two. We ask our authors in the questionnaire for a list of suggested blurbers. if we need to find additional blurbs, if we need to solicit blurbs. And usually that is only done, it's rare cases where we do need to contact them, but it is useful to have that information just in case. 
And it's the press that contacts them. Unless the author would really, really like to themselves, if they have a strong personal connection and they would like to reach out, it's usually the press that reaches out and supplies the manuscript and coordinates that. Okay, great. Yeah, that is good to know. Another question that we had was about book covers, which presses often invite an author to weigh in on this. Do you have any ideas or sense of whether an image or a text only or certain colors? Any advice for an author who might not even be that into design, but suddenly has to weigh in on whether they have any thoughts about what the cover of their book should be? I might let Rachel start with that one. 
Yeah, okay. Our marketing department weighs in. pretty heavily on the cover design. Yes. This is one of the really fun parts about working in marketing is that you get to see the books coming through the pipeline even before this whole marketing timeline starts. We're seeing the books as they're coming through and going to our board. And then as the manuscript is in development, sometimes our acquisitions editors share things with us and we get to talk about them and we get really excited seeing them come through. And covers and titles are some of the things that we get to talk about. with acquisitions. And sometimes, so I think that usually where we usually start is, are there any suggestions from the author in particular that they would really like to see on the cover? 
Is there any art that's already going in the interior of the book that would work really well as a cover image? And then we talk about it from there. And our design department is also involved in this and weighing in on whether they think that would work on a book cover design. And one of the things that we are increasingly thinking about is the cover at thumbnail size. Is the cover going to represent well on an Amazon page, on a website? Because a lot of covers, you don't see the books at the bookstore anymore, the full cover in person. And then from the acquisitions editor usually starts the conversation with the author about the cover. And I just ask my authors, what have you been imagining on the cover? 
And let's start from there. Is there anything we should avoid? Any colors? any particular images, anything like that, that we should avoid, but what do they think? And yeah, it's, I get really excited about the cover too. The cover is really fun. Yeah. Stephanie, what you mentioned about the thumbnail sketch, I hadn't even thought of that, but it might be a reason. I know some friends have considered a text only cover with a, with an attractive color and I can see how maybe they're nothing is really lost on that smaller thumbnail sketch. Then another question we had, Stephanie, maybe, more for you is about the approaching the editor or pitch email. What you like to see if we have listeners who wanted to email you about a manuscript, what are you looking for in that first kind of cold email from an author you don't know? 
I should say, first of all, don't be afraid to cold pitch a manuscript to an editor. We love that. We What I'm looking for in that first email or letter is just a general sense of what the project is about and what it contributes. At that point, I'm really looking for fit for our list. Is this a subject that we are actively publishing on? Is this an area where I see our list moving in the future? I'm thinking about the books that I'm going to be publishing in the next four or five years. And so I already know what's in the pipeline. And so I'm kind of trying to put it in that pipeline with them. And so a lot of the first inquiry is just fit, whether the project is a good fit or not. 
And you may not know that from the press website. It may be something you have to ask the editor. But I do pay attention to other presses, too, that are publishing in my field. And so if the project is not a good fit for the way I'm developing the list, I may be able to recommend another press and say, you know, this isn't something that I'm actively acquiring right now, but I've heard that this editor at this press is building this list. And so you might want to reach out to them. And so we... The goal at that point is to help the book find the right home and figure out if that could be Florida. Yeah, that's a good reminder that that kind of reply is not at all a diss on somebody's manuscript. 
It's the genuinely wanting to help it find its best fit press. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, that's me going out of my way a little bit, maybe doing some research to find out where I think it could work, because it's often... Very often, they sound like amazing books that I would love to read and I would love to publish. It's just not the right fit for our press at that time. So trying to be as helpful as I can in directing you to the press that might be interested. Yeah. And in that first email, is it how long an email, you know, how much description of the project do you think is appropriate? I think it could be pretty short, maybe a paragraph or two. 
I think there's something admirable about being able to summarize your book and the contribution. in a paragraph or two, we read a lot of these emails. And so getting to the point quickly is helpful from a time perspective. But I do really appreciate when authors show that they are able to concisely explain their book and its contribution. I think that bodes well for writing, more writing from that author. For sure. And that does seem like a sign of respect to the editor that they're not going on and on, maybe in that first email. Another thing that we wanted to ask the publicity department was about book events that authors might schedule, whether you think this is a helpful thing, what kind of book events actually do something in terms of sales or just boosting an author's profile? 
Yeah. So I would first say to think about the characteristics of the book itself and And what the audience of the book is, that might help determine what venues you approach for a book event. Depending on the price of the book, it may not be one that you want to do a bookstore event for because that list price may just not be – it may cut down on book sales at the event and then it's just not really a great experience for everyone. But an alternative might be doing an event at your institution or at – like a museum or an organization that you are a member of and doing like a series of lectures that are about the book where book sales are part of it, but it's not, you know, all like book sales are not the point of the event, I guess. 
It's like looking for opportunities where you can give lectures about your work, give talks about your work and, oh, here's, you know, here's a flyer with order information for my book. And those, I think from what I've seen, it's, Usually the authors that do multiple, you know, smaller events like that who have – we see the steady sales come in rather than maybe just like one big opening launch event and then nothing else after that. But it's just like looking for, hey, I'm traveling to this certain geographic location. Is there anywhere – is there a school I can give a talk at while I'm there? Can I like think about what opportunities I may have there? When I'm already traveling somewhere to give an event or I'm going to a conference, is there an opportunity there? 
Can I set up some kind of panel discussion that's related to the topic of my book? So sometimes it's more about looking for things like that rather than bookstores and book fairs for academic books. It can be different if your book is kind of more of a crossover title, then that might kind of change some of where you're approaching. And when you say crossover, what do you mean by that? So that is usually a book written by an academic that is intended to reach general readers from the beginning. It's been developed that way. You're thinking, this is my audience. It's not just other scholars in my field. I'm really trying to bring this scholarship, make it public to reach general readers. And those books, we do publish them. 
And those are kind of somewhere in between our really, really general interest trade books, and then our academic monographs that are written for scholars. So there is kind of that middle ground, and we do publish some books that fall in that area. Yeah, I'm wondering if it's something that an author should know about their book and should be communicating to the editor, you know, as in, I think this might be a crossover book. And if they don't, is that something that you, Stephanie, might... ask an author or you might be taking a look at the manuscript and thinking, hmm, this has potential as a crossover. How does that labeling at crossover actually work? Yeah, definitely. It goes both ways. Authors will come to me and say they think there's a larger audience for a book. 
I'll take a look at it. And if I agree, I'll pass it along to, again, my colleagues, Rachel will take a look too. And the author may send me a proposal and I see the potential for a in the process so that we can develop the project in that way. Because there's multiple considerations for a book being a crossover. It has to be a subject that is going to have a wider appeal and it has to be written in a very accessible manner. And so as the editor developing a crossover title, I'm going to approach it differently. I'm going to be looking for different things in the writing sample. I'm going to choose maybe slightly different reviewers so that they can provide comments on how accessible and how a wider audience will respond to that 
to that topic. So raising that question early is very, very helpful because that's something we want to, one, get our colleagues feedback on and make sure that, again, this is something that the press can support that the author cares about, but also develop the project in that line. That's a really good point that how it's helpful to know that early on and that that might influence the kind of readers reports you find, because I'm sure there are authors who may be been thinking they're going in that direction, but they then get back the reader's reports that also say that don't appreciate maybe that sort of accessible style. Whereas if the readers had been picked with that in mind, they might be more open to it. 
And I'm guessing that that crossover label goes along with a certain price range. Is that the case that if you're in the crossover category, you might get a lower price on the book? Yeah. Yeah. Usually that's the case. In those early conversations, we will create a budget for the book. And at the press, everyone at the press weighs in and get an idea of what price point is realistic for us to be able to, again, recoup our investment in the book. But also, you know, if it does have a wider appeal, we can count on higher sales. We can maybe price the book a bit lower. And that's where it's useful also to know, going back to what we were talking about, about the author's social media presence. 
If there's something – if that's a factor, if the author already has event venues that have expressed interest in doing events, that can be really helpful in those early conversations as we're thinking about the sales potential of the book. So another thing an author might want to bring up early on, that social media presence. And your press also has an actual trade division. Is that right? Yes. Which seems like it's becoming more common among university presses now. Is that something that a first-time author would be part of, or is it mostly more senior academics who get into the trade press division? A lot of our trade authors actually may not be academics at all. They may be journalists. They may be people who have done degrees in writing, MFAs. 
So it really varies. It varies. I think scholarly... I think it's challenging for scholars, especially first-time scholars, to write a trade book just because that's not the writing that they're trained in. They've been writing for a committee of four for years. And so writing for a trade audience can be difficult, but I think it's possible. It just takes the right topic, the right author, the editor willing to work with that author on making the book accessible. So I think it is possible. I don't know that it's as likely. as it might be for more senior scholars. And partly, I'm just thinking through this now, senior scholars tend to have more flexibility about their book requirements for promotion and tenure. So first-time authors really need that tenure book. 
And there may be, the university might have specific requirements about what's expected from that book. So that might be something that, from the scholar's side, limits their options, and that you would want to know from your institution If you need to publish with the university press, does it need to be a scholarly book? Does it need to be really rooted in the scholarly contribution? Or can it be a wider audience book? And the trade division does still do peer review, does it? Yes. Yes, we do. So that's one of the real benefits of the academic press that you're still getting if you're with trade. And how would you describe the other benefits of being in a trade division of an academic press? I think there are different benefits for different authors. 
I... I think the mission of the press is an important one. Part of our mission is to disseminate solid scholarships, solid information about issues that matter to the state of Florida, to readers in the state of Florida. And we take that very seriously. We do peer review of all of our books. We take them to the editorial board who makes sure that we've done appropriate peer review and that the author has revised accordingly. So I think that the brand, the university press brand, add something because you do know you have those steps that are being taken to make sure it is solid scholarship. About the mission too, I'm thinking of how diversity and inclusion are values important to many academics. I'm curious how you see that reflected in your press or academic publishing in general these days. 
We've been talking a lot about that in the past couple of years. That's a really good question. I don't know if, Rachel, do you want me to Sure. I can start by sharing one of the initiatives that we've done in our press has been transitioning our internship program to only paid internships. We do not have a volunteer internship program, which has been a really big push within the publishing community because previously a lot of publishing internships were unpaid. And that meant that, the people who were doing those internships were people who could afford to put in those hours for no pay. So it was excluding a lot of people from just getting their foot in the door of the publishing world. And so that's something that we've been really excited to start doing now. 
Our internships are our jobs for our student workers. Yeah, to widen, like to open up the opportunity of exploring publishing as a career for a wider group of people. So I'm guessing you got college students, I could also imagine some grad students who were thinking, actually, I'm interested in the publishing side of academia might also be interested. Is that something that you're open to? Yes. We have had several graduate students come through our internship program. And yeah, we love to work with them. And it's really interesting to hear their side of where they are in their program. And then also, I think they find a lot of what we're doing at the press really interesting to see because that's once they graduate with their, might be a PhD, they're going to start thinking about these things and starting thinking about writing their own book and, oh, what do I do with my dissertation? 
And so like seeing a little bit of what happens from our perspective, I think has been really interesting. Yeah, I bet. Well, one question that we're asking most of our guests here is about something that you wish you had known about writing or publishing earlier in your career. So I think I mentioned if you're able to kind of answer this from the perspective of your authors, from your experience, if there are things you notice, gee, it seems like it might have been helpful if they had realized this about writing or publishing, what kind of things would you mention? That's a great question. I have a lot, a lot of small things that I think I would tell authors. I guess an important one would be knowing the importance of community. 
of not doing this by yourself, both of reaching out to mentors or other colleagues who have published books, ask them about their experiences, talk to editors. That's what we're here for. Find writing groups, find a writing group you can participate in. Even if it's scholars who are working on very different subjects, having that group of people who have the same goals that you do to hold you accountable can make it a lot less lonely. It can make it a more enjoyable experience. So look for the community. You might have to build it. You might have to create that community for yourself or for writing. But I think my authors that have been successful have been able to do that, to create their community that supports them throughout the process. 
That's really interesting that you've been able to notice that too. Of course, I love that you mentioned it because it's part of our goal here of making all of this writing and publishing a less lonely experience. But I wonder how have you been able to notice from authors? Do they just kind of tell you about their work? writing groups or how they go about doing it more collaboratively or in the company of others? I think it's the difference between conversations with authors who do have a writing group and conversations with authors who don't. Because the authors who don't are usually so excited to talk to someone, to have a captive audience, to talk about their work. And someone who is equally excited about it, the fact that that's a rare occurrence is sad. 
Most authors all authors are doing such fascinating, incredible work. And so it deserves to be part of this larger community that is participating in it. So I think for me, it's just observing the difference between the way those conversations go. Authors who have a writing group and have a good support system don't have the same amount of questions. They don't need as much from me, which is not a good thing or a bad thing. I'm happy to provide support, but they have it already. They have all of that support built in. Yeah, and so interesting that you've been able to observe that too. Speaking of the community, we've heard a bit about and we're talking with some developmental editors, which is a term that some of my colleagues and I actually had never really heard of before. 
But it seems like possibly this is becoming more common to work with someone. Sometimes they're more like a coach. Sometimes they're more like a line editor. Do you ever recommend these or do you notice the benefits of authors working with them? Yeah. Oh, definitely. We have a department list of developmental editors that have been recommended to us by past authors that we will send to future authors. And I like to try to match subject area expertise or work style as much as I can. The challenge there is that it's extra cost. The author has to find a way to pay another editor, a developmental editor, to do that really close read of their manuscripts. And there's a lot of advantages to that. The acquisitions editor is going to be very familiar with your project, but we're not able to do that like line by line, deep reorganization or, you know, whatever the deep work that the manuscript needs for every chapter of every manuscript. 
And so a developmental editor is going to be able to just devote more time to providing that really deep feedback that I like to know if an author is or has worked with a developmental editor, it's really good to have to, to, Know what guidance is being offered from both directions. You want you want your developmental editor and your acquisitions editor to be on the same team. But I think it's it's a fantastic another another opportunity is if there are workshops at your institution. Sometimes they'll do a department will sponsor a workshop for for one of their scholars and you can get some really great feedback. With less cost to less personal cost, potentially, by participating in a workshop and having several colleagues or scholars from other universities read your work and provide feedback. 
So there's different options for getting that kind of deeper support. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, Rachel, because I completely forgot. But it's the type of thing I wanted to share that I did one of those manuscript workshops. And it was something I had never heard of before. But my husband, who was at the time working at another institution, his institution recommended it. So he did one there. And then I did one here. And the way this works for listeners who might not have heard of this is that I invited three scholars from the field that the book is working on, actually sort of different aspects of it. So for me, it was someone who works in literature, someone who works in American literature, someone who works in American Jewish history. 
And I sent them all the manuscript at the time. And they all read the manuscript. And then we had a Zoom actually meeting where we were talking about it. And I did mine after Reader's Report so that I was getting sort of their take on these reports and how then we could all kind of think about how I was going to move forward, which was, you know, it was wonderful for the reasons you say. That can be a lonely and overwhelming moment for an author when you've got the Reader's Reports and you have to figure out how to go forward with suggestions and criticism. So to share those with other scholars I really respected and have a chance to think about it with them was really helpful. 
So I agree with you. And Rachel, we were going to hear from you also about what you'd advise authors. I would say from the perspective of book marketing, thinking about promoting your book, marketing is more than social media. And marketing doesn't start when your book arrives in our warehouse. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. from very early in the process, from sometimes when the book is in development, it's being handled by our acquisitions department. There are sometimes discussions going on that involve marketing then. But things like metadata for your book, which gets distributed to all of our vendor partners, we're working on that eight or nine months out before the book's pub date. We're thinking about how to best optimize the book metadata for search engine discoverability and how to best present the book on websites of retailers so that it is optimal and it looks really good. 
If you're an author that is daunted thinking about social media and having to build a big following and you're thinking that that's what it is, I'm going to be posting about my book on social media, there are other things that you can do that are also effective. if that is just not something you want to be involved in. For example, just the nitty gritty work of putting together contact lists of people that you know, who might be interested in adopting the book, not just names, but email addresses. Also, it sounds like just very detailed, but that's something that is extremely valuable when it comes to your looking at your author questionnaire and helping the press that you're working with be able to to really easily reach out to those people. 
They may not have the time to go hunt down that contact info if it's just a list of names or if it's a list of organizations. But if you have contact for a newsletter editor at a specific organization, if you have those email addresses, the press can reach out and it makes a huge difference. And that is something that you can start thinking about really early on in the process as you're working on the book. way to catch these things that come to mind. Oh, I know that person. That would be a great person once this book is out. Or, oh, I wrote an article for that publication. Maybe I should save the editor I was working with so I can reach out to them later. 
Contact lists are very, very important and very helpful. Connections that you've built during grad school and just in your work every day, just keeping track of those things somewhere so that when it comes time to working with your publisher and filling out that author questionnaire, you don't have to start from scratch. You already have like a list that you've been working on. That is really helpful to know. So I'm actually trying to look on your timeline now. Where is that that the press might get in touch with professors about the book? It's usually when the book arrives in our warehouse, when we have those finished copies, because that's when if we get a request for a review copy, we have them and we can send them out 
we don't have to make them wait. If we do it earlier than that, then there may be you know, like a gap in three months before the book gets sent out. And it's just nice to have it available and ready to go. So the person gets it and they remember what the context was. They remember why they requested it. Yeah. So that is something that authors might do, even as it's getting pretty close to pub date, like a month or two before might share this with the press. Yeah, definitely. If If there's anything that you did not get a chance to include in that questionnaire, we do send that pretty early. It's when your book gets launched into editorial. So if there's anything, any addendum that you want to send to us, feel free to do that. 
And, you know, we can add that to what we already have. Yeah. And I'm sure it's very comforting for many listeners to be reminded that marketing or publicity is more than social media. I know there are many academics who don't love marketing. the idea that they have to be on social media a ton if they want their book to be successful. And I'm also thinking about actually reviews in journals and maybe even more popular magazines or newspapers. Is that something that you've seen authors be able to facilitate if they have ideas of publications that might be interested beyond the academic journals? How do they maybe try to make that happen or can they ask the press to send a PDF of the book or something like that? 
Yeah, I think the author should talk to their press marketing contact if they have ideas for publications that may be kind of more like national level general interest kind of publications and the press may be able – like they may already have contacts with those publications – They may also be able to provide advice on whether the book is a good fit for pitching. It may be that like the academic monograph, if it's an academic monograph, that it may not be likely to be reviewed. So it just may be something that the press doesn't recommend doing. But yeah, I would definitely, if you have any thoughts, any ideas along those lines to talk to your marketing contact. And you used a term earlier, which I should have followed up on right away, but it's also in the timeline, metadata, right? 
Are these keywords and descriptions? What is that? Yes. So it is everything that describes your book, everything that appears. Well, you can think about it like it appears online. So like websites, retailers like Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, like other places that sell books online. It's your book description, your blurb. Sometimes you have like a bold tagline. And we also submit keywords. Those are part of it. We submit keywords that can't really be seen externally on those websites, but they also help with search engine optimization. We also think really hard about trying to put as many keywords as possible in the book's description and in the title. Those are also really important. If we have those keywords there, that's even better because that will help it turn up in search results and be ranked higher. 
So these are really important. Does that mean an author is maybe trying to find some of the bigger and more general terms that accurately reflect what the book is about as either part of keywords or description or title? Yeah, we ask authors to suggest keywords pretty early on in the process. And then again, in the marketing questionnaire, and we actually suggest that they not be too broad. If you're writing an archaeology book, you know, like the discipline archaeology, that's going to be conveyed through the subject category that we put out in metadata for the book. also a keyword. It's also probably going to be all in the descriptive copy, but like more specific, more specific keywords that reflect what people, what you think researchers will actually be searching for when they might turn up your book. 
So like to think about like what you as a researcher might be searching for to find books and articles and then try to use those as keywords. Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking even say in one of my fields, Jewish history, I know folks sometimes wonder if Should they be going for a more general title and then have the Jewish history part more in the subtitle? If I'm writing about a moment in sports Jewish history, maybe I'm thinking it would be more useful to get sort of the sport or the athlete I'm looking at, sort of their name in the main title, because thinking that might be of wider interest and then keep the Jewish in the subtitle so that it sort of accurately represents 
no one's disappointed that the book is actually focused in this way. But is that type of consideration something that you suggest authors kind of think about as a way to have a more sort of broad appeal while accurately reflecting? Yeah, this is something that it's a huge factor when we talk about book titles. We think about the keywords that are in the main title and the subtitle. I think the most important thing is just to make sure that your main title does contribute something in terms of keywords. And it's not just like a creative title that really doesn't communicate anything about the discipline or like the subject of the book. So sometimes it happens. And then you also have to figure out how to make it make sense with these keywords. 
So sometimes it happens that there's some keywords in the main title, some in the subtitle. But yeah, we try to make it so that all the important keywords are in there somewhere, preferably in the main title. Okay. And just relatedly, Rachel may have thoughts about this, since we're talking about title, a question that had come up was about chapter titles. Sometimes folks, and I know I do this, look at a table of contents in a book before I buy the book, because that sort of tells me the story. And so when they've got these very evocative, catchy titles, I'm sort of more enticed. But many of us in academia actually choose very straightforward, almost dry or boring chapter titles. Do you have advice, Rachel, about how to think about chapter titles or what you think works well in the humanities? 
I think thinking about it from the reader's perspective is exactly right. Who is going to be picking up your book and what are they expecting to find? What information do they need to get and how can you make that information available to them? So I love poetic and catchy titles, but I think the workhorses or the titles that give you a clear idea of what the the chapter is about and what the book is about. You know, those are really utilitarian. Those are getting to the reader, getting the point across. Those are most effective. And some of us also academics, I know we think about having chapters that are maybe easily assignable in classes because many undergraduates don't read a whole book. And so we sometimes think, oh, is there anything like I want my academic book to have a chapter or at least a chapter that's pretty standalone? 
Is that something you think of as important or from your perspective, is it just sort of not something that you're considering? I think so. I think in the development of the project, you want... I mean, we're thinking about... I think about the books as building blocks. And even from the proposal stage, looking at the annotated table of contents, I like to see... What does each chapter do on its own? And then how do they build together to reach something else? So we're thinking about it on multiple levels, on the chapter level. Can it stand alone? What contribution does that chapter make? And then more largely, how does that advance the full book? Okay, great. There actually is another question that we asked guests. 
I wasn't sure if this would work for you, but actually, Stephanie, some of the things you said before made me think it might, which is we do ask guests about writing practices or habits that work work for them. So I don't know if either of you hear from authors about what they're doing or the range of ways they write that might be interesting or helpful for our listeners to just consider how there are different ways to go about academic writing. I think different authors approach it different ways, and that's just based on the time they have available, whether they're able, whether they have the advantage of taking a semester sabbatical or whether it's waking up at five o'clock in the morning and writing a couple hours before the kids wake up. 
I have authors who do each one. I think a broader piece of advice is maybe, aside from the writing groups and the finding your community, conferences, using conferences as self-imposed deadlines. You know, it's kind of brutal writing a paper, finishing a paper on the plane on the way to the conference, but you get it done and you're one step closer to finishing the book. And so if there's a way to kind of break the book, apart into sections that can be presented as, as conference papers. And then you have the advantage of getting feedback while you're at those conferences. And, you know, that's, that's a level before peer review, even that's, that's, you know, brainstorming on the ground. So, so that would be my advice is, is use what you have to, to your advantage, to set those deadlines, to make the most of the opportunities that you have. 
Yeah. Yeah. That is a great idea. Anything else either of you would like to add that might be helpful for our listeners to know or think about either editorially or sort of marketing publicity wise? I think that I would just say that just in general, if you're an author and your book is going through a press, and if you have any questions about Even after doing your author questionnaire and receiving materials from marketing, if you have any questions about what the press is doing or if you have an idea but you're, like, maybe not sure if it's something that you should bring up, your marketing department would love to hear from you. You'll have a marketing contact and you should not hesitate to reach out if you do have any questions. 
This is – book marketing it may be your first book and it may be completely new for you and also looking at it from the press's perspective there are things about you as an author and the connections that you have that we don't know and we would love to hear about those too so it really is a partnership the press and the author working together the press to do what we can on our end and then the author to to do what they can on their end and communication is really important That's great to hear because I actually think many authors, maybe especially first-time authors, feel like they should not bother the marketing department or that they're being annoying. But that's not your experience, I guess is what you're saying. 
No, not at all. I think if you are an author who is really excited about promoting your book, we want to make sure to speak with you and to really make sure that you have the resources that you need and that you know what's going on and what to expect. So if you are an author like that, yeah, we want to know. Good to know. Anything you want to add, Stephanie? Yeah, well, I didn't really talk about peer review very much. And so I just kind of wanted to give a little minute for peer review because it's one of the most important parts of the development process when working with the university press. And it's perhaps one of my favorite things to talk about. 
But I think the peer review process can be really intimidating because you're entrusting this manuscript that you've been working on for years with reviewers. who you don't know and probably not know their identities. And I think that's understandably terrifying. And also when you get those reviews, it's very rare that people like to read criticism of their work. Like no one enjoys this. So I think my advice there is to take advantage of having your editor weigh in. Your editor has put a lot of thought into the reviewers that they have selected. When we send the reviews, we write a summary. of what we think is most important, I spend a lot of time on those, on those emails, writing those summaries of, you know, what I, how I read the reviews together. 
And I should say, we read so many reviews. I can't even tell you how many I've read in the past month. Wow. So, so your editor, the reviews may be new to you. This may be a new process to you, but this is something that we are very experienced with and we are happy to talk to you more. And if you have questions, if you have concerns, set up a time to talk to your editor about them. They, they, We deal with this a lot, and we're happy to talk through. And each book is different. The goal is always the same, though. We want it to be the best book it can be, and we want to work with you to make it the best book it can be. 
And peer review is such an important and often wonderful part of that process. That's great to hear. I mean, because I think I've heard even from editors, it's often the case that an author feels a review is terrible, but to the editor, who's read many more readers' reports online, It's fine. And it just appears that they have different perspectives that can be very helpful for the author to hear. Yeah. A review might be like 10 pages of very detailed line notes. And I can see from an author's perspective how frustrating that would be that this person had so many corrections to provide. But as an editor, I'm thrilled to see that because that scholar thought it was worth their time to invest that much of their time and effort into writing. 
giving that feedback into looking at the sentence level of the manuscript. And so for me, that's a great sign that the project is making a really valid contribution. On the flip side, I'm just curious because sometimes authors get these much more short and sweet reader's reports, which from the author's perspective can feel great because it's like, oh, phew, there's not a ton here that I've got to deal with. But I'm wondering then from the editor's perspective if that can seem like, hmm, I'm not really sure that they gave the manuscript as much attention, which sometimes happens because everyone is busy, how you feel or weigh that kind of reader's report. I think expecting the long, very detailed feedback. Feedback is maybe expecting that is maybe unreasonable at this point with the amount of time that the challenge of finding reviewers again, and the fact that everyone is overcommitted. 
There's fewer tenure track jobs. Professors are, you know, adjuncting. They don't have the ability to do this extra service to the scholarly community. So I don't think you should read into a short review in that way. And I think reading the reviews together, I tried to get, I wait until I have all of the reviews before sending them to the author because I really want to read them together and see how they complement each other. You know, one review might be really long, one might be really short, but they are coming from different perspectives and they have different advice to offer and reading them together is really crucial. So again, the editor will be able to tell you from their experience what it might mean that the review is short or that the review is long or that the reviewer had this suggestion or this criticism. 
Yeah. Great. Well, this has been really very helpful. And I know our listeners are really going to benefit from all the advice and behind the scenes information that you've generously shared with us. So thank you very much for being with us today to talk about all of this. Thank you so much for having us. Absolutely. Our pleasure. Great. Thank you. 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 writingitpod and subscribe to us so you never miss an episode.