Welcome to 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. Today, we're hearing from two guests, Professor Brett Crutch of New York University and Professor Pamela Nadel of Washington University. Brett will talk to us about editing the online magazine, The Revealer, and his shifting writing priorities. And Pamela is going to tell us about moving from academic to trade press. We're speaking to Brett Crutch, who is a scholar of religion at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, where he serves as editor of the online magazine, The Revealer, and teaches in NYU's Department of Religious Studies. 
He is the author of the 2019 book, Dying to be Normal, Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics from Oxford University Press. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsday, The Advocate, and he has been featured on NPR. Since 2019, Crutch has been the editor of The Revealer, which launched, I think, 20 years ago in 2003. And it is an online magazine about religion and society published by the Center for Religion and Media at NYU. So when it comes to academic writing and publishing, your position, Brett, seems pretty unique in terms of job expectations. If in fact becoming the editor of The Revealer was part of this position, can you tell us about how you came to it and why it was a good fit given your background? 
Sure. It's great to talk to you. You are correct. It's been 20 years since The Revealer was founded in 2003 by Jeff Charlotte was the first editor of The Revealer, so some people may know his New York Times bestselling books. So I came to The Revealer after I had finished my PhD. I had been a visiting assistant professor in religious studies. And prior to even doing my PhD, the backstory to all of this is is that in between my master's and PhD, I had done freelance writing for several magazines and newspapers and had developed relationships with a number of editors. When I was a visiting assistant professor at Haverford College, my husband got a job offer in New York City. We were living in Philadelphia. 
And I was a really bad ex-New Yorker who constantly compared everything to New York and was desperate to get back. So one of my... personal priorities was always to get back to New York City. And I knew that meant for me that a traditional academic tenure track job that I needed to think beyond that and have broader ideas. And I was really open actually to a lot of different possibilities. But I was still at Haverford as a visiting assistant professor and really enjoying it and had started co-editing a book on the show Transparent that will hopefully be out next year. And as all of that was going on, a job opened up at the Center for Religion and Media that I have now that involves being the editor of The Revealer. 
And I can say that as I read that position posting, more than any other position I had looked at, I felt like this was the position for me because it uniquely... occupy different roles of my life and of my interests that nothing else, even in a traditional path, would have in that it was both, you know, it is a scholarly center at NYU working with other scholars, but it's also in the media world and wants to showcase how scholars can share their expertise with broad public audiences. And I had just, when I read this posting, I had just come back from a week-long training institute called Sacred Rites, which is about preparing religion scholars to share their own expertise beyond the academy, to write op-eds, to do news programs, podcasts, etc. 
So I was really geared up for that, and I had published a few op-eds as soon as that was done and had felt as though not just personally, but as a country, we're in a place where we need to elevate the level of discourse about religion in the country. And so that being a mission that I could get behind really spoke to why I wanted the position and worked to make that happen. So Sacred Rites sounds like an interesting program that some of our listeners might want to check out. Did it prepare you for what you're doing now? Yes, I will say that Sacred Rites is, is an excellent thing for people to look at. And for me, sacred rites reminded me of things I once knew as a freelance writer, but forgot during my years of reading lots of academic articles and scholarly monographs. 
It reminded me that you always start an article with your most interesting thing right up front. You don't wait for it. It reminded me that one shouldn't write with lots of caveats and et cetera, you know, direct sentences that are vivid. I had lost a lot of my sort of writing ability, sadly, as an academic. And so sacred rights for me reinforced what I already knew and needed to be reminded of that. And I think for others, it was to give them models of good writing for the public and how to, you know, look at an op-ed and see, you know, sort of the formula to that. Is your position at NYU as unique as it sounds? I don't know if you're aware if there's other positions like it. 
Is this becoming more common? That's a great question. I think that it's like a unicorn. It's, you know, there aren't many. The one place that it's somewhat similar is at the Danforth Center for Religion and Politics at WashU, which also has an online magazine called Religion and Politics. And can you tell us about the kind of writing and editing that you do on a daily or weekly or monthly basis? Sure. So The Revealer publishes as a monthly online magazine. We technically do 10 issues a year. And so we're interested not in a quick hot take, but more in in-depth insights that people who have longer to think about something can offer up. And so our articles are published by a mix of academics, journalists, and freelance writers. 
So for academics, it's a really great place to get a wide readership for their things and to share their expertise with a very broad audience. For journalists and freelance writers, it's a good place to go a bit more in depth than they would be able to in other places. We pay for everyone, you know, we pay... Everyone who writes for us, we pay as sort of a value of NYU Center for Religion and Media. The process is that I receive pitches every day and then I, you know, some of them I think would be great and I enter into a relationship with a writer and they pitch a range of pieces that we publish. Some are originally researched or reported pieces about something going on in the world. 
Some are film reviews about something that had a religion connection to a film. We recently ran a great one on the film Women Talking that's based on a Mennonite community in Bolivia. We run our version of op-eds, which we call perspective pieces. So perhaps an academic has a book coming out and now they have like sort of a shortened version of an argument that they want to put forth for that. And so we plan our issues four to five months in advance. And so we're sort of always looking to the future while also working on the next issue. And most of our articles go through two to three rounds of revision. I work with an editorial assistant on copy editing, and she's also great at, especially when working with scholars who are writing, I have her read sort of at the very last stage to make sure everything is as clear as possible for our readers who aren't scholars. 
And and then we publish them and and the readership since the start of the pandemic has grown exponentially. I think there's been a real need and desire for people to have trustworthy sources of information. So I think being housed at NYU has also helped that that people have our readership has just grown exponentially. So the number of pitches I receive has grown exponentially, but all in exciting ways. Do you have an idea of what your readers are like demographically? In terms of demographics, the analytics that we have show us such things as where people are reading around the world. So it's majority U.S., but not at all, as in sort of like 60% are in the U.S. I know what type of system they're reading on, by which I mean a phone or a computer, etc. 
And I know how long people read each article. So it's helped us gauge what's an appropriate word count for the different types of articles. I don't have analytics on the gender makeup, racial makeup, etc. But we believe that the quote-unquote average reader of The Revealer is someone who's college-educated, and who has a broad interest in religion and society and how religion influences aspects of society. And I say the college-educated part because when thinking about public writing, that's a slightly higher level than what one would write for in many other publications. So I was on a panel with other editors, and each one sort of talked about what grade level they see their readers at. And so for a place like Religion News Service, which is more of a newswire, the person from Religion News Service shared with the audience that they aim for about an eighth grade reading level, which isn't to say that academics who write for Religion News Service will be dumbing down their material in any way. 
It's more just about the way that you write and you think about the level of the audience that you're trying to reach and engage. Your first book came out Around the same time, I think, that you became editor of The Revealer. I'm wondering how – well, whether book writing has a different value now that you're doing all this other kind of writing and editing all the time. What's your feeling and thought on writing books at the moment? Yes, that's great. I will offer a very brief story. So my book came out in 2019, which is the same year I started The Revealer. My book came out about six months prior to that. And in between those two things happening, I was at an exhibit at the New York Historical Society on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. 
And the New York Historical Society is a great museum in my neighborhood of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And after going through the exhibit, you sort of exit into the gift shop. And the gift shop had a full display of books on LGBTQ history. And my book is about LGBTQ history and religion. I had a moment where I just so badly wished my book had been one of the books on display at the museum in the gift shop. And I looked at all of the books and none of them were published by university presses. Since then, and since being in this position, I've given a lot of thought to something I didn't know about when I was finishing my PhD and thinking of publishing a book, which is that there is an entire other world. 
publishing that academics can turn to for publishing their work that isn't just university presses. I don't know that I necessarily would have done things differently. I was happy to have my book out with Oxford University Press and I had a very positive experience. But given that I'm in a non-traditional position and given that so many PhD graduates in humanities are in non-traditional positions, there is a whole other path. of trade books where one can get larger advances, one can get more exposure, but it's writing for very different audiences. And I think that I initially thought, even when I knew I wanted Oxford University Press to publish my book, I think I thought I as a writer can write this in a way that will both satisfy my scholarly community and the broader public, whomever is interested in LGBTQ history and religion. 
And that's a tricky thing to do because on the one hand, To get a contract at a university press, you need anonymous scholars from your field to think that you've shown your scholarly credentials through what you're arguing, who you're citing, etc. Those concerns are different than if you're writing for just a broad audience. It's a very tricky thing to do. I think that for people who, if they know they're not going to be pursuing a traditional academic career, or if they know it's going to be very limited, like me, where I'm only interested in a very small geographic radius, I think it's worth considering looking at and considering what it would mean to write a nonfiction trade book where you could get a larger advance, you could get more exposure, and just think through who do you want to be in conversation with as you are in opportunities to talk about your book. 
Do you think if you had been Writing that first book for a trade press, you would have written it a little differently? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that definitely because I wouldn't have – it could also be, you know, sort of like a newly minted PhD thing and someone who's trying to prove themselves. But I think that sort of the exercise of proving oneself is not a great writing strategy. Right. If I didn't have that, I probably would have written differently. That's not to say that I'm not happy with the book and I'm not happy to have written with Oxford, but I do think, you know, audience is everything when you're writing. And so you have to imagine the people that you're writing for with this particular piece. 
And so I had in mind, you know, scholars who hold power over whether or not to get a book contract and who publishes that. And that's a different set to have in mind. And that should change the writing, I think. I totally agree. Does this mean that you, if you're thinking about a second book, do you imagine that might be a trade press book? Yes, yes. And part of that's also that, you know, as I mentioned at The Revealer, we pay everyone who writes for us. And I also want my time and labor and work compensated in a way that with academic presses, there's some compensation, but it's You wouldn't want to divide that dollar amount up by the hours spent on the project because then it's not really so much of a compensation. 
Exactly. Yeah. With the first book, when it came out, what was surprising about having this first book out in the world? What was as you expected or not as you expected? I actually think what was surprising was a pleasant surprise, but it hadn't occurred to me at all. And that was that I would still... be engaged in work on the book, by which i mean, you know, like requests to do podcasts or interviews or to come give a lecture um or to visit a classroom, which were all exciting things. You know, it's great to be able to talk about your work and for people to care, but i had not considered nor planned for the time that that would occupy once the book was out and how, you know, I have a few different talks about the book that i give, but it's sort of like each 
campus would want something a little different, and I would meet with different student groups. And I enjoyed it all, but I had never heard anyone talk about, you know, the book is out, and you're not done with it at all. Like, now you sort of get revved up for an entire different thing, which is all of these talks and Q&As and different things that do take up quite a bit of time. Yeah, this seems like it's become... more common, or at least I wasn't aware of it before, humanities, academics, people that you and I would know in fields like ours or next to them are doing these kinds of book tours and book events. And in terms of the next book, is it related to the topic that you were writing about with number one? 
Oh, good question. Well, so I am working on a few different things. I don't yet know if either will definitely turn into a book but the edited volume on Transparent now has a complete it's under contract with Rutgers University Press and we now have a complete manuscript and now Transparent has been it's transitioning itself and is turning into a musical stage production and so I think it's going to be coming out at a good time now that sadly we've been working on this project for over five years and we have 15 or 16 projects great contributing writers. And the world's and the country's discourse around issues of Jews in America and trans people in America has increased exponentially just since we started it. 
And even since Transparency premiered in 2014, the situation for trans people has become more, not less precarious. And so I think it's going to be coming at an appropriate time that will lend itself to good conversations, both about trans people and Jews and queer people more broadly. Yeah, and that's a good reminder of how long these academic projects and maybe especially the edited volumes. I don't know if this whet your appetite for more edited volumes or if you feel like this might have been enough for a while. Yes, I will go with choice B. Yes, it's a very slow process. And when many people are involved, there's just lots of reasons why things can get delayed and etc. If I heard you right, it sounds like there's a couple of processes. 
projects that you're working on? Is this a strategy to have a few things, you know, that you're in the middle of and sort of see what writing project is working? Yes, I would also add to that, that I have been affected both by the pandemic and by moving back to New York City in that I think like many academics, I was willing to work far more than 40 hours a week. to accomplish all that is expected of many academics. And since moving back to New York and enjoying New York City life and the pandemic, my values just have shifted from constantly wanting to publish as sort of a way of being productive to wanting to enjoy life and the people who I love. 
And so that's the biggest priority for me. I also think that because I'm in a role where I'm putting out a new issue of The Revealer every month and a new podcast every month, that that part of me that needs to put things out into the world to feel good about myself, to self-analyze, that gets fulfilled now in a new way. And so I'm not in a rush. And I just want to make sure that a shorter project that I'm going to turn into a larger project feels right and that I'm excited to invest in that type of way. Yeah, that makes sense. Are academic journal articles still available? part of your life, your writing life? The last one I published was in 2021, I think, maybe 2020. 
It was co-authored with Samira Mehta. And I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, even though I've now given a whole spiel about how I think academics should be compensated for everything they do. But there's a part of me that, you know, still enjoys that type of writing and that type of world. So I don't know that I'll abandon it entirely because I feel... happy to remain in the scholarly community as well. So I don't know that I'll abandon that type of writing, but it's not my priority right now. We touched on this a little, but one thing we're asking all guests is if there's something you wish you had known about writing or publishing earlier in your career that you think would be helpful for others. 
Sure. I think that great writing takes quite a And my worst writing has been when I've written quickly or when I've had fellowships to do nothing but write. And so it's like the things that you think are the great things to get, which often are because they come with money and benefits and prestige. Those have been the times when all I have to do is write. And I think that that's all I want in the world, that my writing has been the worst. And so much of my best ideas I think come from when I'm also doing other things. And then it's just sort of like my brain gets a chance to rest from those other things. And I think there are many people, creative people who've talked about this, um, that, you know, some of our best ideas, it's like, they just sort of appear out of nowhere. 
And it's like, they're this great gift when you have to like work on it and just revise it. To me, that's always, uh, I'm never as pleased with those sections or those pieces of writing. So given how competitive everything is, I think, for me, I've learned that just writing is not what, for me, produces my best work. I relate to that. It reminds me of a couple things. One is that when I am too focused on something, you know, trying to hold on too hard, almost, it doesn't work out as opposed to when I'm a little more relaxed. And the just writing periods are too focused for me. And then also, I guess the variety, the variety of doing other things, talking to different people, being in different places, it really makes a difference in my writing also. 
And I'm guessing with your position, editing, you know, reading other people's pitches and thinking with other people about their ideas that that is helpful too with your own. Yes, definitely. Yes. And we're also asking folks if there's a writing practice or habit that's working well for you now. Oh, that's a great question. I wish I could respond to this by saying I wake up before the sun rises and I don't stop until I have 500 words on the page. I have a writing mentor who says a page a day is a book a year, but that's just not quite where I am. I will say that I have discovered that I love editing, but I love writing even more. It fulfills something in a different way. 
When it goes well. When it doesn't go well, it can make me miserable in a way that editing doesn't ever. It's sort of like the range of emotions for editing isn't as large. My writing practice is short bursts of time for reasons that we've just discussed. And I have to say that just carving out one hour of three days a week is very fulfilling for me and allows me to use that part of myself that needs to write and feels happy doing that. And it then doesn't put too much pressure on me to constantly be doing something. The shift that I talked about in the pandemic is that I maybe shouldn't admit this. I don't know. I haven't worked on a weekend since March 2020. 
And I don't want to start. And so part of the hesitation of all of this is, you know, if I do commit to a book project, the time will have to come from somewhere in order to finish it in a period of time that doesn't stretch on for too long. And I'm just not quite ready to give up doing things on the weekend that aren't work. Yeah, I'm thinking about that because my husband and I have also discussed, should we preserve weekends more? And sometimes I really notice... When that happens, just because there's other sort of fun friend or family plans, you come back on Monday and like work is so much better or like, you know, I have a fresher perspective. So it actually seems better for the work too. 
Yes. Yes. Yeah. I was at an airport on the way to the American Academy of Religion conference one year and ran into another religion scholar who introduced me to his wife. And they were talking about how they had gone on their honeymoon. And after four days, they both looked at each other and were like, do you think it's okay to start working now? And then they said that then from there on, the honeymoon was, you know, it was great that they were able to do work each day. And I left that story like, oh, that's not the life that I want. But we all have to know where we are with those sorts of things. Yeah. And I'm curious, too, does, I mean, what you were just talking about, does it feel like writing is less focus or part of who you are now? 
It still feels like who I am in that I write a monthly editor's letter for the revealer to tie the issue together and to, you know, sort of have a conversation online. with the readers. And because we plan our issues four to five months in advance, the letter sort of shows why these things matter right now today. And so that I find fulfilling. I just wrote the conclusion for the transparent book and enjoyed the process of thinking through why that still matters today, even though the show has ended and is now moving on to a stage production. So I will say that I also enjoyed teach. I teach one class a year. And the trick is, I think for people who are not in a traditional academic position, is it's hard to do all three, by which I mean your non-traditional job, teach, and research and write. 
I found that you can do two if doing all three is a bit of a challenge. And so it could be that you maybe one year you teach a class in addition to doing your alternative academic job, and then the next year you focus on writing research. For me, I think doing all three is quite challenging. Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you so much, Brett. This has been really interesting and a lot of fun. Is there anything else you want to add about writing or publishing? Let me see. I think that people in the humanities who want to share their expertise with a to remember that there are many ways of reaching people that aren't only The New York Times or The New Yorker or The Atlantic, that there are many smaller publications that really do have quite large readerships. 
And then with social media, you know, something published in a sort of less prestigious named venue can also become viral. And sometimes these places are more receptive to working with scholars and to perhaps progressive politics than some larger named publications. And to consider that when thinking about where you want to break into as a scholar who's interested in writing beyond the academy. Good point. Yes. Thank you for that. Thank you. We're so glad to be speaking today with Professor Pamela Nadel. Pam is the Patrick Clendenden Chair in Women's and Gender History at American University in Washington, D.C. Professor Nadel served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies from 2015 to 2017. She has authored or edited eight books and numerous articles, including her 2019 book, America's Jewish Women. 
a history from colonial times to today. And she is currently working on a book about the history of American antisemitism. One of the reasons we wanted to speak with Pam today is because of her publishing path. So Pam, after your second single authored book, which was titled Women Who Would Be Rabbis, which was published by Beacon, your next single authored book, I think was a trade press book. That was the America's Jewish Women book. And this seems like a switch, although in truth, the topic and title of your previous book, Women Who Would Be Rabbis, to me, that sounds like that could have been a trade press book too. And so I'm curious if you could explain this path of yours from academic press to trade and how your thinking about your writing and your readers might have evolved. 
First of all, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm so excited about this podcast series because I think it's so important to educate ourselves about the mysteries of the publishing world, which when we're in graduate school, nobody ever teaches us. What happened with America's Jewish Women was that I worked on that book for a very long time. And in fact, so long that when I sent off the manuscript, finally, I My daughter, who by then was probably already in medical school, posted a photo of the two of us together when she was four. And she said, my mom finally finished the book. And I had opportunities to publish that book along the way. There were academic presses that I had published with before that were interested, kept encouraging me. 
And I wrote the original version of that book. I wrote that as an academic book. And I really had higher hopes that I could reach a wider audience. And the truth is when you're writing for trade, it really is about the audience. You have to have a topic that's going to reach an audience that people are going to want to buy your book. And I actually consulted with Jonathan Sarna, a well-known historian in our field, good friend of mine, and he gave me a couple of options. He actually understood a lot more about publishing than I did publishing. And at that point, I'd already written or edited, you know, some six or seven books. And he suggested that I talk to somebody who was the executive director of the Jewish Book Council who really had her pulse on the publishing world. 
And I call her my fairy godmother. And she read one of the chapters and she told me everything that was wrong with it. And then I rewrote the book and I rewrote it for trade. At around the same time, maybe a few months later, I was having lunch with someone who had an agent. And I had contacted one agent, but she wasn't interested. She actually wrote me and said, I think it's so sad that I don't think we could publish a book on the history of America's Jewish women. I subsequently found out that she only liked to publish books if she made $100,000 on them. That wasn't going to happen. And the – person I was having lunch with, I was there to help him think through a book project. 
And then he said, what are you working on? And he introduced me to his agent. And when my agent signed me three weeks later, I turned to him and said, really? Like, why? Why do you want my book? And then I began the process of figuring out how you go to trade. Wow. So it didn't sound like you necessarily had trade in mind at But at the beginning of writing this book, but you did know you wanted to reach this wider audience. Exactly. Exactly. But it took a while to get there. What did you learn about writing as a result of doing this first trade press book? How did the editor sort of shape you or teach you? I learned so much. You know, the amazing thing about writing is we are always learning how to write better. 
And the big difference for me is between trade and academic presses is in the quality and the extent of the editing. And I had wonderful editors at academic presses, but they didn't do the kind of editing that my editor at Norton does. And she wrote on every single page of the first draft that I sent her, which of course was my 50th. And she wrote on every fifth page of the draft I sent back. And she made it a better book because she understood that I needed to pay much more attention to storytelling than I had certainly in my first draft. When we write books as historians, we want three pieces of evidence to prove any point. And what became clear between the first draft of the book and then the big second draft of the book when I rewrote it was that you can't do that in a trade book. 
Nobody's questioning your authority. And I could choose, it was actually quite a lot of freedom because I could choose the very best example. And then she would make sure that I followed the story all the way through. So I remember writing something about in the colonial period about a woman whose mother would not let her marry any of the potential suitors. And my editor wrote back and said, so who did she marry? And then it sent me looking to find out who she actually married to kind of round out the story for the reader. Yeah, so it sounds like you were learning about storytelling, which you probably already knew, but some of this had to be kind of drawn out of you a little bit. 
It definitely had to be drawn out. I also learned that one of the big, this is what I was told, one of the big differences between academic writing and trade press writing is in the use of quotations. As an academic, I love hearing the original quotations. I want to hear those voices from the past. But apparently trade audiences want the authorial voice. And I was told to really pull out a lot of those quotations or rephrase them in my own language. And I ended up writing using quotations much more sparingly than I have ever done in anything before. Oh, that's really interesting. I never thought about it that way. And did you find that more fun in a way? I don't know if it was more fun because I do miss those voices often. 
But I actually understand the reasoning behind it. And I will say that the book reads more smoothly because of that, because it's not being constantly interrupted by an 18th century voice or a 19th century voice. Right. And how did it change how you thought about chapters or how you break up a book? It didn't change how I thought about the chapters. The chapter structure stayed the same. What was different was this time I wrote a preface as well as an introduction. And that was because the editor pulled a piece of the first chapter out and said this really stands as a preface. And the only other really substantive change she made was in one other chapter where she moved like a section. And she moved it elsewhere in that chapter. 
But otherwise, the chapters and the structure – remember I was writing a chronological history. That didn't change much. But she would notice Lacunae and she would say, you know, you need more on this. And I don't remember her cutting extensively in the draft. It was more about sometimes just moving a phrase into a different place. I really learned a lot about writing from watching her changes. And I liked her so much that with the next book, it's going to be published by Norton again. My agent and I did not shop it. I only wanted to work with this editor. and she better not retire. That's great. And what about starting, like intro, opening a chapter? Did you learn things about, I mean, obviously it's about engaging the reader, but did she have a different take on how to do that? 
She didn't have a different take, but what's interesting is you mentioned my earlier book, Women Who Would Be Rabbis. And in Women Who Would Be Rabbis, I originally wrote a book a story, a personal story that had led me into the book. And then I remember showing it to an academic colleague. And the academic colleague told me, oh, no, you can't do that to open the book. You actually need to have, you know, kind of your classic historiographical overview. And then I sent both versions to my editor that time at Beacon. And she said, oh, no way. You want to tell the reader why you're writing this book. And I still really liked the opening there. And I did something very similar. with a personal story in the introduction to America's Jewish women. 
And I already have an idea for what will be the personal story that will lead me into the introduction to the next book. So it sounds like you were pretty lucky with the agent situation in terms of having a colleague friend introduce you. So I don't even know if you could answer this question, but do you have advice for how academics learn about or get into that whole world of agents, which is also very mysterious to academics. Yeah. Agents are completely mysterious. I totally agree. I actually do have advice because one of my colleagues was telling me the other day that he has recently gotten an agent. And what he did was he looked at – he used Google Books, which is an amazing resource. 
And he looked for who – he looked at books – that were similar in topic or same time period as his book. And he looked to see who were the editors and who were the agents who were thanked. And I knew that you were supposed to look in introductions or in the acknowledgments, rather, to see who was thanked. I know at one point when I was trying to move to trade, someone said to me, you need to go to a bookstore and go to the history section, go to the Jewish studies section, and look at the books that are there, that are being sold there. And then look at the acknowledgments. It'll give you some idea of who might be interested in the topics that you're interested in. 
So I did that. I did that actually at an independent bookstore. And then I also did it at one of the big chains. And what he's just doing, my colleague, is he's doing it, but he's just using Google Books to do it now. Great. Even easier. Yeah. And he got an agent. He said he found the name of somebody and that person assigned him. Wonderful. Yeah, and then I guess it's great to be able to say in your cover letter that, you know, I really like these other books that you've been an agent for. Right. It shows something. And it is, I mean, it is a mysterious process. There are also, especially for those of us in Jewish studies, there are some agents out there who are particularly interested in Jewish studies. 
We have a number of colleagues who have used agents before. And they've used agents not only for trade presses but also for academic presses. Yeah, that is a question about when or why you might need to do that. Any thoughts? I think – I have a couple of ideas. First of all, if you work with an agent – and I did have competing offers from academic presses and then from trade for this last book. When you work with an agent, you will get a better deal for the lack of a better word. And – I know I once chaired a session where people were talking about this at one of the annual conferences of the Association for Jewish Studies, one of our meetings. 
And I know other people didn't have as positive experiences. They felt that using an agent, they basically took a chunk of the money that these people would have gotten. But I found that they know how to deal with a contract. And most importantly, when you're writing a book, once you're done and once it's come out – You have to promote it. If you don't promote it, nobody's going to promote it. And in that, an agent, it's not that they're not a publicist, but they can ask for things in that original contract so that the press will be more invested in promoting the book. That seems really important. Yeah, I think it's super important. The publicist thing, we just had a conversation with someone else who mentioned that it sounds like that can make a big difference in advertising. 
having events for your book? Is that something you do or are considering? I have not hired an independent publicist for any of my books. I had a publicist at the press, and that publicist was able to do things like get the New York Times book review, which nobody else can get, and line up events in big venues like the New York Public Library and major independent bookstores like the big bookstore in Washington. So the publicist at the press – It has to be really invested in your book. The other thing they're able to do is have you write pieces. They can pitch pieces to places like Literary Hub where authors are going to talk about the books that are coming out. But they're not writing about the book. 
They're writing about the process or something adjacent that will get people interested. So the publicist at the press is absolutely critical. I never hired a separate publicist. I didn't think that it was necessary, but I know people who have, and it's often very, very useful. It really just depends on what you want. And also, I think a sense of your reach, your own reach. So as you were kind enough to mention, I've been president of the Association for Jewish Studies. So I knew a lot of academics, and I was able to say, you know, here's my book. It's coming out. And as you know, because you invited me, so thank you at the University of Florida, you know that Many, many universities have opportunities for guest lecturers to come and give talks about their recent books. 
Yeah, that sounds like you have a good in-house publicist there at the press. Yeah. What else? Does the agent do much with you on the writing or the book itself? Or I guess I imagine them almost like a lawyer getting you the editor and getting you the right deal. Right. Where the agent does a great deal. is on the proposal. And I've written many proposals in the course of my career. And obviously, I wrote a proposal that interests the agent sufficiently. But then he and I wrote multiple drafts of the proposal, both for America's Jewish Women and for the new book. And he has a really excellent sense of how to shape the story. Because editors get lots and lots of proposals. If your first page is not going to grab them, they're not going to read beyond page one of the proposal. 
Now, if they know you, then maybe they're going to read further. But for that first book, for that first crack, you really need to understand how to tell the story and how to convince – you do it a little bit later in the proposal – how to convince the editor why you are the person to write that story and why that book is going to find an audience. So that sounds like the book proposal that many of us write for academic presses. How is it different or is it different? That's really his mιtier. It's his job to make that proposal soar. But after that, he's not involved with the writing. So assuming an academic has tenure and she is thinking about, you know, maybe she wants to write a trade press book, you know, maybe like you, she feels like this is a story that would appeal to not just academics. 
What is your advice for how to consider this possibility? I think that there's only an upside, right? but it also depends on your particular department. So if you have tenure, if someone has tenure, and they want to get promoted to full professor, at my university, a trade press book would be fine, especially one that comes from a press where you're going to be able to include at least some endnotes, if not the kind of full range of endnotes that you would have in a traditional academic book. But if you're in a department that would discourage that, then... I wouldn't advise moving to trade at that point until you're promoted to full. Okay. So full might be the safer moment unless you've got a feel or can talk to someone in the department. 
Yeah. It really depends. I mean, you know, the other big difference between academic publishing and trade publishing is that I've heard academic editors say, I literally heard one academic editor say this, that the average academic university press book sells fast. copies. And a trade press, you can reach much, much more widely without having to hit the bestseller list. So I think it just depends really on the nature of one's department. What will the department value? The scholarship that went into my trade press book is the same scholarship that went into my earlier work. Right. You mentioned that it seems like it's a lot of upside. Was it more fun to I don't know if it was more fun. It's a better book. I'm convinced that this is a far better book than the original version that I would have published with my three examples for each point. 
It's a much better book, much better written, much better read. It's shorter, not by a lot. It was like 100, I think it was 100,000 words, maybe a little bit less. But it's accessible. And I think the other thing is it's accessible to a wide audience, but it's also accessible to an academic audience. You know, since you mentioned the 400 copies versus much more, whatever level you want to answer this, but I'm curious, do academics actually make something like real money from a trade press book? The answer is it depends. And this is like part of the publishing world that I wish I had known about, you know, when I was starting my career. So when Beacon approached me about women who would be rabbis, they were publishing three books dealing with Jewish women at one time. 
And what I remember is I remember them coming to me. I could be wrong about this, but I don't remember ever submitting to Beacon. And I got an advance. And the book was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. It It came out in paperback a year after it was published in hardcover. All of those are signs of success. But I never earned out the advance. Earning out is the term of publishing, which means that you have paid back your advance and you start to then collect royalties. And I always thought the book was a failure because of that. And I had no idea that most books never earn out their advance. It was not a particularly big advance. And that it had nothing to do with the success of the book. 
Now, with America's Jewish Women, it was unusual. I earned out the advance in nine months, even before the paperback appeared. And that was pretty exciting, which also then positioned me for the contract for the next one. Okay, so those sales do make a difference for your next contract. Yeah, absolutely. And curious, what other ways, you know, Did it change your career or your identity as a writer to have published a trade press book? I don't think it changed my career, although I did give 50 in-person talks before COVID hit. And then I've given 100 on Zoom. But Zoom's changed everybody's world, right? Right. We're all talking on Zoom. And we can go to each other's classes. Zoom is the one upside of the horrible pandemic. 
Mm-hmm. So if anything, that would be the aspect of changing career. I don't think that there was much else. It took me a long time to write America's Jewish Women. I'm already well-established in my career, and I had done a lot of administrative things and other things. I did learn, which I didn't know before, that you can pitch book reviews to major newspapers. So I ended up subsequently writing – book reviews for the Washington Post, which I had never thought to try to do before. So it gave me, you know, kind of position for that. So I'd say that's the biggest thing that I learned and kind of the biggest thing in terms of change. And it let me think about the next book in a different way. 
I originally thought I would write my next book on gender and anti-Semitism because there's almost nothing written about that. And after conversations with my agent, my editor, we decided that I should tackle the big history of American anti-Semitism because there hasn't been a decent book on the subject since 1994. Right. So how is that writing going? It's coming along. Not as quickly. Do they ever come as quickly as we want? But I am, as soon as I finish grading papers, I'm going into a year-long sabbatical. Oh, wonderful. And yeah, so I should, I hope. And I'm also... The big thing that's changed is I'm writing for a word count now. I'm not, I'm not going to write two versions. I'm not going to overwrite the book. 
So that makes me wonder with the first book, they didn't give you a word amount like they do in academic. No, I had, I had, but the first book was sold when I had only one chapter left to write. This one was sold before I even had a chapter. Right. Which, okay. So that reminds me of a, another question, which is like, I guess with these trade press books, I'd heard you sort of go out there on the market even before the book is mostly written. Is that the case? I mean, I think maybe – I think it just really depends. It depends on where you are in the process. So when I – when Norton took America's Jewish Women, the book was essentially done. 
I had – it was my second – My major rewrite of the book was already done. I was just finishing the last chapter. But this time, because they know me this time, and I've written things that will go into the book, but they weren't published as part of the book. But this time they took it without a sample chapter. So there's something that we're asking all of our guests, which is what is something that you wish you had known about writing or publishing earlier in your academic career? I wish I had understood the world of publishing. I really had no comprehension about it. And I will say when I was a graduate student, a faculty member said to me, and this was not one of my major professors, not somebody in the field of Jewish studies, but a faculty member, we were chatting one day, maybe I was his TA. 
And he said, you know, don't expect ever to publish a book. Most graduate students will never publish a book. And I, carried that with me. Like my dissertation, I did not publish as a book. I published it as a series of articles. And I really did not understand the difference between trade and academic, what we call sort of academic plus, like Beacon. I really had no comprehension. And there was no guide to the publishing world. I had to rely on mentors who were also in many ways – feeling their own way because maybe they'd published, you know, one or two books at that point. So I really wish I'd had a better, a better sense. And that's why I was excited you were doing the podcast. 
And of course today there are other resources. I would recommend the terrific book thinking like your editor by Susan Rabiner, which yeah, it's a really, really useful book. And I was, you know, a lot of it's serendipity. I was lucky. I had lunch with somebody and he introduced me to his editor. One of our PhD students, um, who wrote a book that went on to be a finalist for a National Book Award. She told me about thinking like your editor. Oh, wow. That's nice. Yeah. Another question we're asking guests now is if there is a writing practice or habit that has been working for you recently. So my writing practice has really changed over the years. When I was writing women who would be rabbis, I had very young children. 
I would drop them off at preschool in the morning, and I would try to have three pages done. before I picked them up in the afternoon. And I had an amazing principal of that preschool would ask me every day that she saw me if I had made my word count. Now I'm writing. For some reason, I tend to write later in the day, which never had happened before. But that's also partly a reflection of all the administrative responsibilities I have at the moment. So if I can clear them off my desk in the morning, first couple of hours in the morning, then I can write in the afternoon. But I'm also, I'm curious to see what happens once I really head into sabbatical, how I'm going to shape it. 
But I know I have to shape the day. Right. Yeah, I'm just still thinking of that story that you told about the professor who said that to you about not expecting to publish a book. I mean, what do you and your colleagues feel are the message you're trying to give grad students about publishing and books? One of the message I give, I have a couple of grad students at the moment, and I'm having them both write their dissertations with an eye towards publication as a book. They're choosing a topic that will generate interest. I don't want them to choose a topic. It can be university press. I think likely they will be university presses for a first book, but I want them to pick a topic that will have an audience. 
I'm really thinking about audience. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Pam. This has been really helpful and fun. And I'm sure we'll have reasons to talk with you again in the future. So I really appreciate your taking the time to do this today. My pleasure. It was great to be in conversation with you again. Thank you. Take care, Pam. Thanks. Bye. 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.