How to Get Your First Academic Book Published

Source: Charlotte Frost, PhD2Published, Added By:

Charlotte Frost runs the web resource PhD2Published, which offers academic book publishing advice to first-timers. She established the site to help other academics (in a similar position to herself) learn how to get published in an increasingly competitive market. The site covers everything from researching your book’s potential market to effective social media networking, as well as offering numerous tips from relevant experts.
Here she offers her top five nuggets of advice for getting your first academic book published:

1. Learn About Academic Publishing. Unless you happen to be studying the publishing industry, it’s likely you don’t know enough about it to make a successful book pitch. What I mean is that, you need an idea of what academic publishing actually entails, so that you know exactly what you’re asking a publisher to do when you pitch to them. There are lots of ways of learning about publishing from, for example, industry websites including booktradeinfo, Publishers Weekly and theBookseller, but PhD2Published is also a good place to start...

2. Know Your Market. This is a natural progression from learning about academic publishing as an industry. Once you recognise how academic publishing works, you’ll become familiar with which publishers specialise in which subjects. At an even more detailed level, you’ll discover particular series which focus on niche areas. A great way to start working out which publishers are right for you, is to look at your own bookshelves. At PhD2Published we call this The Book Shelf Test, and it’s a great way to see where your book might fit.

3. Know Your Market Some More. Knowing your market doesn’t end with finding a publisher and series, you also need to know who will borrow your book from libraries or perhaps even buy it. Perhaps you’re teaching a course that your book would support? If not, ask friends and colleagues about their courses/modules and invite their honest opinion on whether your book would go on their reading lists. If you’ve done your homework on the publishing industry you’ll know that it’s a business, so they need decent evidence that your book will sell and they want to know upfront exactly who to.

4. Network, network, network. If you dropped off the face of the earth to finish your thesis, now’s the time to get back out there and remind people who you are. Speak at every conference you can (fees permitting) and if there aren’t any that suit your research, seriously consider organising one. But don’t stop there, if you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, make sure you’re connected to everyone you should be and that you’re regularly commenting on activities in your field. If you’re not using these social networking tools, I strongly urge you to take up at least one of them; they offer instant access to your peers and show a potential publisher that you have a platform for your work. And at the next level, it doesn’t hurt to start networking with people in the publishing industry. Commissioning editors don’t want to be inundated with irrelevant questions, but will often answer brief, focused and polite one. Offer to write for a site like PhD2Published, for example, and use it as a chance to talk directly to publishers. (We’ll even you get you started with ideas on things to write about and how to use the opportunity to get your book published!).

5. Be Relentless. If you’ve survived a PhD then getting a book deal should be a walk in the park, but that’s no excuse for slacking off. A disproportionate amount of work goes into getting the deal, so don’t underestimate how much you have to do now, before you even start writing the book! In addition to researching the publishing industry, your markets and doing lots of networking, you’ve got to plan the book, write a winning proposal and work out how you’re going to fit the actual book-writing into your life. If you want it enough, it will happen, but as with the PhD, you’re going to have to adopt a ‘dog with a bone’ mentality! My video blog entries and more personal blog posts will give you an idea of how I’ve spent much of this year and I’ll give you a clue, my TV was broken for months and I didn’t even notice!

If you follow these tips and learn how to write a killer book proposal I’m confident you’ll get offered a book contract in no time. Keep checking in with PhD2Published and we’ll get you there!

Link: /articles/how-to-get-your-first-academic-book-published

Tags: Publishing

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