With the release of this latest
work, I thought that I would celebrate by sharing what I have learned about the
process of writing a book, and then getting it published. Mind,
Body, World is my sixth book; three have been published by Wiley-Blackwell,
two by Athabasca University Press, and one (a really
cool study of the relationship between connectionism and classical conditioning)
has appeared as a monograph in Comparative
Cognition & Behavior Review.
Hopefully I have learned something about the process with all of this
practice!
Tip #1: Write a book because you feel that you need
to. Writing
a book is a great deal of work, and you can spend a lot of time working on a
manuscript without any immediate reward.
In short, in the ‘publish or perish’ world of academia, book writing can
be a dangerous activity. So, write a
book because you have a strong need to create a more in depth manuscript,
because you are both interested and committed to the project, and because you
want to learn a great deal about the domain that you are going to be writing
about.
Tip # 2: Write a complete draft of the book before you do
anything else (like contact a prospective publisher. With one
exception, every book manuscript that I have written was in the form of a
solid, complete draft before I began
shopping it around to publishers.
Acquisition editors have expressed puzzlement over this policy of mind;
they are willing to consider offering a book contract on the basis of a
prospectus and a couple of draft chapters to be sent to reviewers. However, I have found that complete drafts
are useful for a number of reasons.
One is that publishers can be
whimsical. For instance, I knew before I
started my last sabbatical that I was going to write another book – see Tip #1 –
and I had a nice chat in my lab with an acquisition editor from a major
publisher who was interested in it. I
told them (in violation of this tip) that I would consider sending them a
prospectus and the first five chapters when I was happy with them. Before these chapters were written, there was
a change in acquisition editors, and when I was ready to send a part of the
manuscript for review, they didn’t even want it!
Another is that the publication
process can be fairly lengthy, because it involves one or two stages of
manuscript review, creation of a document (and figures) in formats that are
used by the publisher, copy editing, proofing, index creation, and the
like. While all of this is going on, you
can test your completed book (Tip #2) in your course. I did so in Fall of 2012, and used student
feedback to try to make parts of the new book make more sense. Students also found lots of copyedit issues
that I was able to pass on to the publisher.
Tip #3: Write your prospectus – a brief summary of the
book, its goals, its intended audience, with chapter summaries – after a full
draft of the book is completed. It is easier this way, particularly if you buy into Tip
#2. Also, I don’t write well
from outlines – having a prospectus in hand does not help me much with the
writing process.
Tip #4: Be patient when you shop your manuscript
around. With a complete draft of the book, as well as a prospectus,
in hand you are ready to contact a publisher to determine whether they are
interested in pursuing your project. You
might be told nearly immediately that they are not interested for a variety of
reasons (Tip #4a: Develop a thick skin!). If they are interested, then they will send
the manuscript out for review. This will
take a while, and after this process they still might decide not to offer a
contract (Tip #4a). It can take a long while to find a publisher
who is interested in bringing your manuscript to life.
Tip #5: Take reviews to heart. If you do get a
set of reviews back, take them to heart.
They are not personal attacks (usually – not true for my first book!),
and by considering them objectively and constructively you can improve your
manuscript. This is particularly true if
your manuscript has been rejected.
Indeed, you should not only revise your manuscript, but pass the reviews
(and how you used them) on to the next publishers. The more information a publisher has about
your manuscript, the better they are able to make an informed decision about
taking your project on. Publishers are
usually interested in, and thank you for, reviews that you received from other
publishers that you have contacted.
Tip #6: Do not trust contracts. Just because you have signed a contract with
a publisher does not mean that they will produce your book. True story: I signed a contract with a major
publisher for my first book, and then spent six months revising it on the basis
of a lengthy review that they gave me. They
even gave me a sizable advance on the manuscript. As the revising proceeded, I sent things to
them, but did not receive any replies, which puzzled me. Eventually, they did send me a letter:
telling me that the fellow who had signed me had died, that they were not going
to publish the book (the contract provided an out for them), and that I needed
to repay the advance. After a year of
legal hassles, I paid them back half of the advance in exchange for the rights
to the book (which they maintained because of the signed contract) in order to
sign a contract with a different publisher.
Tip #7: Do not accept an advance. See Tip #6. I have only been offered an advance once, and
was foolish enough to accept it.
Tip #8: Be committed and confident. Finding a
publisher can be a challenging and frustrating and time consuming process. I have been lucky enough to have been able to
get all of my book projects ‘shipped as product’. However, it has not always been easy. Surviving the period of shopping a manuscript
around requires that you feel strongly that the project is good and
worthwhile. This is why Tip #1 is
probably the most important one in this list!
Happy writing – and publishing!
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