University Press Week: What’s #NextUp in Publishing?

Continuing our celebration of University Press Week 2022, we’re happy to share what’s #NextUp in publishing! We’ll turn it over to Charles Brower, Senior Project Editor of Journals here at Duke University Press.

Since 2020, the books and journals project editors of Duke University Press’s Editing, Design, and Production (EDP) department have sponsored a mentorship program for BIPOC students and recent graduates who are interested in pursuing a career in scholarly publishing. Our goal has been to provide a solid grounding in editing and editorial project management particularly, and more generally to try to offer a solution to that perpetual dilemma faced by so many—especially those from underrepresented groups—who aspire to enter the profession but have no publishing experience. In addition to the practical experience they get as student interns working for our editorial group, our mentees participate in in-depth discussions of copyediting, house style, workflows, interacting with authors, and many other topics that fall under the broad umbrella of editorial and scholarly publishing professional skills. By the end of their participation in the program, mentees are conversant, if not yet fluent, in the Chicago Manual of Style and have a specific, detailed sense of the work we do. 

The program had a relatively modest beginning: our mentee would meet with me and a colleague from the books side of our editorial group in a weekly or biweekly Zoom meeting, as the mentee’s work and/or school schedule allowed. In a sense, the Great Cloistering brought on by the pandemic had a silver lining with respect to these sessions, since we were able to meet the mentees wherever they happened to be working or studying. The colleague I partnered with for the first two years has left the press, but two other colleagues have stepped up to participate this year. And our ambitions for the new year are to involve even more colleagues from around the press to introduce our mentees to many other scholarly publishing roles and professional opportunities. 

It’s our hope, of course, that we have a lasting, positive effect on the nascent careers of these young people, even if they decide to enter another profession. Without exception, the participants in the program have been engaged, enthusiastic, and idealistic, and if they do become colleagues in scholarly publishing, they’ll be boons to the profession. And while our mission always is to support and inspire our mentees, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I too have gotten a great deal out of participating in the program, whether through revisiting the habits and ethos that define how I edit or through interacting with and being inspired by a talented young person. I encourage anyone in the scholarly community reading this to look for opportunities to mentor, whether through similar programs at your institution or by reaching out to a junior colleague. The potential benefits for them, you, and the profession generally can’t be overstated. 

-Charles Brower 

Please continue on the blog tour by visiting the other university presses participating today. Head over to Temple University Press to read about their new Transformations book series, then check out the University Press of Kansas‘s feature on their new Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures. The University of Pittsburg Press shares an interview with their new Acquisitions Editor Will Hammell about starting new areas of acquisition, and the University of Nebraska Press features a blog post about their Provocations series. The University of Minnesota Press details new developments in the Manifold digital publishing platform, the University of North Carolina Press unveils their new Black Women’s History series, and Leuven University Press spotlights the book Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation. The University Press of Kentucky gives an overview of the Appalachian Futures series with Editor Abby Freeland, the University of Notre Dame Press posts the results of their first-ever Publishing Boot Camp, and the Hopkins Press Internship Program enters is second year. The University of Florida Press offers a video with editors of their new series Caribbean Crossroads series, and the University of Michigan Press features an interview with Acquisitions Editor Ellen Bauerle about a newly emerging Greek/Modern Intersections series. Read about another internship program at the University of Alabama Press, and learn about the Texas A&M University Press‘s TV show on PBS. Penn State University Press shares a post from Acquisitions Editor Archna Patel about developments in their Africana studies list, and Purdue University Press Director Justin Race outlines their new Navigating Careers in Higher Education series as well as their new website. The University of Washington Press runs a Q&A with editors of the new series, Abolition: Emancipation from the Carceral, and the University of Toronto Press features a post by one of their editors about a new series. Finally, the University of Illinois Press highlights exciting changes to their Disability Histories series. 

University Press Week: What’s #NextUp in Journals?

We’re celebrating University Press Week by participating in a blog tour! Today, we’re joining several presses in describing what’s #NextUp for our journals. This coming year, we’re thrilled to welcome two start-up journals to our publishing program: Critical AI and Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim. Both journals will begin publication with Duke University Press in spring 2023.

Critical AI, edited by Lauren M.E. Goodlad, is an interdisciplinary journal based at Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural Analysis and is affiliated with the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. Open to ideas born of new interdisciplinary alliances; design justice principles; antiracist, decolonial, and democratic political practices; community-centered collaborations; experimental pedagogies; and public outreach, the journal functions as a space for the production of knowledge, research endeavors, and teaching ideas that focus on the ongoing history of machine technologies and their place in the world.

Critical AI is legible to scholars across disciplines as well as to interested readers outside the academy. At the broadest level, the journal’s mission is to widen circles of scholarship across disciplines and national borders, encourage informed citizens, and activate a democratic culture through which the research, implementation, and evaluation of digital technologies is undertaken in dialogue with scholars, students, citizens, communities, policy makers, and the public at large.

Monsoon, edited by Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf and Jeremy Prestholdt, is an initiative of The Africa Institute. The journal seeks to offer a new forum for presenting research, debating critical themes, and highlighting emerging trends in Indian Ocean studies—with an emphasis on Africa and the Western Indian Ocean. Likewise, it will fill a gap in the extant literature on the region, which has consistently sidelined African and Gulf societies.

The name of the journal—Monsoon—is inspired by seasonal rains and winds for interregional sojourns that have facilitated the integration of the Indian Ocean rim over thousands of years. The journal aims to interrogate these multitudinous forces, examining overlapping forms of cosmopolitanism, circulation, inequality, and exploitation.

Please continue on the blog tour by visiting the other university presses participating today. University of Chicago Press features what’s new with their journals. Medieval Institute Publications introduces their newest journal, Medieval Ecocriticisms. Johns Hopkins University Press highlights their new journal, Cusp. University of Pennsylvania Press shares an interview with Jacob Remes, co-editor of the Journal of Disaster Studies. University of Toronto Press has a post by a member of their journals team. The University of the West Indies Press highlights the Caribbean Conjunctures: The Caribbean Studies Association (CSA) Journal. And Catholic University of America Press introduces their three new journals.

University Press Week: Who’s #NextUp at DUP?

It’s University Press Week! This year, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) has chosen the theme “Next UP” to highlight the dedicated work performed by those in the university press community to seek out, engage, advance, and promote the latest scholarship, ideas, best practices, and technology. Read more about University Press Week and check out the Next UP gallery and reading list featuring publications published by our peer presses.

Today, we’re responding to the prompt, “Who’s #NextUp at your press?” to spotlight an early-career staff member on the rise. Continue reading for an insightful Q&A with Assistant Editor Ryan Kendall!

What got you interested in academic publishing?

It was maybe inevitable that I ended up in the publishing world. I’ve always loved reading and writing. I’ve built homes in books since I learned how to read, and I’ve learned to think through writing. I have delighted in the ecstatic fullness that language can offer, and I have been devastated by its resistance to be full again. It is a love story, after all.

I came to academic publishing because, after completing a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies PhD in 2020, I was not done thinking. I am not done thinking. Academic publishing is compelling to me because the books we publish want to challenge what and how we think. Academic publishing is a space where ideas, methods, and practices are given so much care. It’s also a space (though certainly not the only or primary space) where more livable worlds are envisioned. To be in a position to support and guide these processes is incredible.

More exactly, what brought me to academic publishing is love. I have a deep love and respect for the writing process and for what writing can do. For me, an opportunity to share in that process is a life-giving one. Academic publishing lives within the expansiveness of what it means to write, and that is so exciting to me. Each book is teeming with the echoes of formative conversations between authors, scholars, editors, reviewers, and a whole host of individuals. In each book, there is a world, and with each book, another world is becoming.

It’s too simple to say that what brought me to Duke University Press is their incredible history of consistently publishing stellar books. Of course, that wasn’t not why. But it was more personal than that. I can locate the exact moment when I knew I wanted to build a publishing career at DUP. It was 2019, and I was attending the Duke Feminist Theory Workshop as a graduate student. There, the late Laurent Berlant announced their Writing Matters! series at Duke University Press. My heart swelled. I felt giddy. I knew where I needed to be—where writing mattered.

How would you describe your career trajectory so far? How was the transition from your PhD program to your work at the press?

I would describe my career trajectory so far as challenging and a little dizzying but mostly exciting and promising. I joined DUP just ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I had to learn the ropes as they were moving. The absence of in-person talks and conferences made networking especially challenging, so I’ve had to be creative. Despite these difficulties, I feel as though I am in a really promising and supportive place to establish my publishing career.

The transition from a PhD program to a publishing career is a unique one. Graduate programs are geared toward preparing you for tenure-track professorships, though I do think we are now seeing more and more discussions within graduate programs about alternative academic jobs. In the move to publishing, you’re shifting from budding scholar to budding editor. Your relationship to the work changes. I recall, in my first week, my supervisor asked me what I thought about an author’s work on affect theory. I answered with something along the lines of: “I think their work is really productive, but I question the ways in which affect here inadvertently becomes a way of sanitizing sexuality.” He stared at me blankly. I came to realize later that the disconnect happening in this moment was a result of me trying to answer his question as a graduate student, not a potential editor. My relationship to the work now is less about my own personal investments (though I am absolutely personally invested) and more about its quality, scope, intervention, significance, reach, and marketing potential (I know, marketing potential, gross, but it’s a real concern in publishing). It’s a shift that takes some learning and unlearning. Of course, this is not to say that my graduate training has not been useful here. I have drawn, again and again, on my graduate experience in this job.

What advice would you give to those wanting to move into this field?

My advice is to start seeking out experiences that translate within the world of publishing. If you’re a graduate student, you might assist a professor who is preparing an article or book manuscript for production. Formatting manuscripts, obtaining permissions for text reprints or images, and assembling art programs are all part of publishing. Are there any journals housed at your institution? Do any of your professors serve as editors for journals? Do they need an editorial assistant? I worked as an editorial assistant for the James Baldwin Review for a couple of years prior to graduation, and though I was coming to publishing with a PhD in a relevant field, my editorial experience is what helped set me apart. If your institution has a press, they likely have part-time positions for students. Some presses have paid internships as well. You also might be surprised by what sorts of job skills can help you advance in publishing. Having some experience with administrative work is a great thing. Publishing is a lot of that too.

My other piece of advice is to do your research. What books are you most excited about, and who is publishing them? What does peer review look like there? How many books do they typically publish a year? Are there any talks on publishing you can attend? So many talks have virtual options now, so they’re becoming more and more accessible. Some have been recorded and are available on YouTube. The Association of University Presses also has a wealth of resources online about publishing, though I believe it is behind a paywall. Also, reach out to editors! Start a conversation. If you’re interested in a job, make it known. There is little to be lost and much to be gained by letting presses know that you’re interested in their work.

You are currently an Assistant Editor who acquires books in feminist philosophy. What do you look for in a project? What gets you really excited about a book?

What I look for in a project is a refusal to take its own terms and the terms of our contemporary moment for granted. I’m most excited about books that are theoretically and politically engaged and are committed to thinking with race, gender, sexuality, class, and (dis)ability. Truly, I am interested in books that challenge modes of thinking, feeling, and living in our contemporary moment (while still being historically-minded).

Feminist philosophy is near and dear to my heart. For me, feminist philosophy means attending to the philosophical exigencies of gender and sexuality. It also means attending to the gendered and sexed exigencies of philosophy (*gasp* a chiasmus!). What is most compelling to me about feminist philosophy is the way it calls on feminism’s historical investments in antifoundationalism—a refusal to let the dust settle on essentialisms and metaphysical truths. What I’m looking for in a project, then, is one that deeply interrogates its own assumptions and needs—what it needs from gender, from feminism, from philosophy. Feminist philosophy is, for me, as much a project of critique as it is of philosophical exploration.

What are some hopes that you have for Duke University Press moving forward?

I am hopeful that Duke University Press will continue to strengthen its reputation of theoretical rigor and political edge, and I am also hopeful that DUP will continue to close the gap between the politics of the work it publishes and the politics of its workplace. It is not a secret that scholarly publishing generally struggles to be a hospitable and supportive place for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Several of my colleagues have done incredible work to identify and remedy this problem—namely Alejandra Mejía, Jocelyn Dawson, and our Editorial Director Gisela Fosado, all of whom have leading roles in creating the Toolkits for Equity Project with the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications. This project is an invaluable resource for the scholarly publishing community, and it has a wealth of free materials for download. Anyone interested in scholarly publishing should take advantage of this resource.

Going forward, I hope to see more structured mentor/mentee opportunities within and beyond DUP, so that young professionals, especially BIPOC young professionals, have built-in support and guidance as they carve out their own publishing identities and futures. From what I have seen, scholarly publishing tends toward a competitive culture of ‘every person for themselves.’ So long as this is the case, few will thrive, and those few are likely to be buoyed by social and racial privileges.

***

Check back here tomorrow and Thursday for more great blog posts, and don’t forget to share your love for university presses online with the hashtag #NextUp.

Please continue on the blog tour by visiting the other university presses participating today. At MIT Press, several MITP acquisitions editors share what is #NextUP on their lists. Hopkins Press spotlights a new staff member and University of Georgia Press offers mini profiles of several of their newer employees (or employees in new positions). Head to University Press of Colorado for an interview with editors Allegra Martschenko and Robert Ramaswamy, and then over to University of Notre Dame Press for an interview with their 5+1 Postdoctoral Fellow. Princeton University Press offers an interview with their Publishing Fellows in Content Marketing and Editorial; this Publishing Fellowship aims to address a lack of diverse representation across the publishing industry by offering unique mentorship opportunities. Penn State University Press introduces some of their early-career employees in acquisitions, marketing, and production, and University of Toronto Press shares a first-hand account of being at UTP for over a year and the journey of getting into publishing. Check out an interview with Press Assistant Shalini Nanayakkara about her first year at University of British Columbia Press and then read a feature with Vanessa Parnell-Burton, the University of West Indies Press Accounts Payable Officer, about joining the UP publishing world. Purdue University Press shares a Q&A with their Acquisitions Assistant and SUNY Press  shares a Q&A with two of their early-career employees. Finally, check out a spotlight of new innovations coming to University of Michigan Press.

University Press Week: Q&A on the Scholarly Publishing Collective

We’re celebrating University Press Week by participating in a blog tour! Today, we’re joining several presses in describing how we #KeepUP by innovating and collaborating. After reading our post, visit the Temple University Press blog to learn about North Broad Press, check out the University of North Georgia Press’s post about their collaboration with Affordable Learning Georgia, and read the University of Cincinnati Press’s post on when a book is more than the printed word. Syracuse University Press writes about audiobooks today, Texas Tech University Press spotlights collaborations with organizations dedicated to publishing early-career writers, and the University of Notre Dame Press highlights its new grant-funded projects. Oregon State University Press describes local collaborations addressing climate change, Leuven University Press posts about the KU Leuven Fund for Open Access, Princeton University Press discusses its Supporting Diverse Voices Grants, and Athabasca University Press presents a collaboration with the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. Finally, Clemson University Press launches a new imprint with a local library consortium, Bucknell University Press discusses partnerships between small and large university presses, the University of Toronto Press covers the relationship between editors and marketers, and Columbia University Press presents a Q&A about changes in book publishing and design. We hope you’ll take some time to check out a few of these great projects!

In 2021, Duke University Press partnered with Longleaf Services to provide journal fulfillment services to Cornell University Press, Texas Tech University Press, and UNC Press. In January 2022, Duke University Press will debut an expanded set of services with the full launch of the Scholarly Publishing Collective (“the Collective”). The Collective will provide journal services including subscription management, fulfillment, hosting, and institutional marketing and sales and will welcome four new partners: Michigan State University Press, Penn State University Press, SBL Press, and the University of Illinois Press. For University Press Week, we spoke with Allison Belan, Director for Strategic Innovation and Services at Duke University Press, about what the Collective is, what it hopes to do, and what it means for the future of university press publishing.

What is the Scholarly Publishing Collective?

The Scholarly Publishing Collective is an initiative from Duke University Press, begun in response to needs we were hearing from fellow university press journal publishers (“UPs”). UPs face a dearth of options for infrastructure, sales, and hosting. The Scholarly Publishing Collective affords these publishers, especially those who don’t have the resources that we have built over the last fifteen years, a vibrant and sustainable option. 

Essentially, the Collective offers the nonprofit scholarly publishing community—largely UPs or society publishers—some core services: subscription and fulfillment management for print and/or electronic subscriptions; direct collection sales to the institutional and consortium market; and digital content hosting and access fulfillment.

What is Duke University Press’s role in the Collective?

Duke University Press has developed infrastructure for our own publishing program that we can share with our fellow UP journal publishers and society publishers, to support them at a time when sustaining their journals program is critical to sustaining their overall mission. Our technology toolkit lets us scale our hosting infrastructure to support 150 additional journals on top of our sixty and more in the future. More than fifteen years of investment and experience and skill-building have gone into being able to do this, and we want to leverage our experience for our Collective partners. 

Part of the theme for this year’s University Press Week, “Keep UP,” is a celebration of how UP publishing has changed over the past decade. Do you think something like the Collective would have been possible ten years ago?

Another way to think about the question might be “Was it needed ten years ago?” And the answer is probably “No.” There were a greater number of providers in these different service spaces then. In addition, there were ways other than direct subscriptions for UP journal programs to basically generate the revenue they needed and make the scholarship available in the formats that librarians wanted, such as by licensing the journal content to aggregators and earning royalties on it. 

In the last ten years, though, both the services marketplace and the institutional marketplace have changed significantly. There are many fewer options available to nonprofit journal publishers to offer and fulfill institutional subscriptions to electronic journals, and revenues from aggregation royalties have leveled off or are not as easy to access for new journals. Several UPs eliminated their subscription sales and content platform management capabilities between 2010 and 2015, turning to JSTOR’s hosting and direct subscription services and the Project MUSE aggregation, as well as others, to generate revenue. When JSTOR announced the sunset of its Journal Hosting Program at the end of 2021, it left a lot of nonprofit publishers without institutional order management and digital hosting capabilities. In addition, consolidation means we’re down to just a handful of commercial platform service providers and a handful of journal subscription and fulfillment management services.

But the piece of the puzzle that’s really been missing in recent years is marketing and sales to international institutions and to consortia. These markets have become so much more critical in the last decade as sales to North American institutions have slowed. And when you move into the international market, you’re often trying to get the attention of consortia who can only engage if the publisher brings a certain bulk to the table. They cannot manage deals with a multitude of smaller publishers. It’s more important than ever to reach these markets to grow and sustain the overall mission, and UPs and societies don’t necessarily have the in-house marketing and sales expertise necessary to navigate this really specific context.

The other part of the University Press Week theme focuses on how UPs produce “forward-thinking work,” making them “a force to keep up with.” How does the Collective contribute to that?

I see “Keep UP” as an imperative, one that then requires “forward-thinking work.” The Collective is happening now because several UP journal publishers saw the need to keep up at the same time that they were losing the capacity to do so, as the services market consolidated and the consortium market changed. That drove the group to have conversations that weren’t possible in the past. I remember times—2007, 2010, 2014—when folks in the UP journal world tried to explore collaborations, saying “We have a shared set of interests. Could we combine our resources? Could we cooperate more?” Those conversations typically faltered at “But we’re competitors, and we’re doing okay on our own. Maybe we don’t need to.” 

Clearly, we’ve reached a point where we need to collaborate. That’s especially true given that so many services out there are geared toward marketing and presenting STEM content. The Collective is a recognition that university presses know humanities and social science journals the best and understand the market for them the best. 

Do you see the Scholarly Publishing Collective as a way for university presses to demonstrate to their journal editors and societies that, yes, UPs are the right place to be?

Absolutely. Very few UPs on their own can offer what the commercial publishers can in terms of raw resources and income. But through the Collective, the partners expand their ability to disseminate, promote, and increase the impact of scholarship.  

The Collective’s online platform provider is Silverchair. In addition to hosting Duke University Press’s e-book and digital journal collections, Silverchair is home to publications from the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Wolters Kluwer. The Collective publishers can say to their editors and members, “You are getting the best digital publishing platform technology there is, while also benefiting from the responsive and individualized care that a university press provides.” 

Through the Collective, the publishers can also offer journals sales representation to the global library market, including large consortia that wouldn’t otherwise be able to engage with a single publisher. The Duke University Press sales team has long-standing relationships in that market. Our team is known and respected and appreciated by consortia representatives and sales agents, and we can tap into that to bring attention to the publishers’ collections and journals.

Do you see increased collaboration along these lines as the future of UP publishing?

I do. It’s my hope that we, the scholarly journals community, will continue to find ways to leverage our knowledge, expertise, and skill to enrich the entire community. Journal publishing is a complex business and it’s challenging to do it well. We see the Collective as a space in which current and future partners can all get a closer look at what each is doing particularly well and then share that knowledge and these strategies and tactics, as well as cultivate new collaborations. The UP community is noted for its generosity; as our publishers gain insights that could benefit the whole, we can share them through all the channels that AUPresses makes available to us, like UP Commons, webinars, and annual meeting sessions.

University Press Week 2021

It’s University Press Week! In the summer of 1978, US President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a University Press Week “in recognition of the impact, both here and abroad, of American university presses on culture and scholarship.”

In 2012, the Association of University Presses revived the idea of this celebration to recognize the impact that a global community of university presses has on every one of us. We mark University Press Week each November with a new theme, events, featured UP work, blog tours, and more.

This year’s University Press Week theme is #KeepUP. “Keep UP” is significant in a time when great change has come to all quarters of book publishing and the media. For university presses, the past decade has presented opportunities that have allowed these nonprofit publishers  to explore new ways to reach readers, amplify ideas, and sustain scholarly communities while remaining steadfast in their commitment to advancing knowledge. To mark a momentous and eventful decade of university press publishing and UP Weeks, this year AUPresses members have suggested a “Keep UP Gallery” and Reading List that showcase books, journals, open access reading platforms, podcasts, and other efforts that put member UPs at the forefront of today’s issues and ideas.

Our contribution to the Keep UP Gallery is one of our newest ventures, the Scholarly Publishing Collective, a partnership with nonprofit scholarly journal publishers and societies to provide journal services including subscription management, fulfillment, hosting, and institutional marketing and sales.

Through the Collective, publishers have access to resources that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive, such as a best-in-class web platform, proven customer relations and library relations teams, and a network of global sales agents with insight into university press content. 

On Wednesday, we invite you to check back here for an interview about the Scholarly Publishing Collective with Allison Belan, Director for Strategic Innovation and Services. That post will be part of the annual University Press Week blog tour.

Each day this week you can visit university press blogs for #KeepUp posts. Today Temple University Press shares how they have evolved over their history; MIT Press staffers pick their favorite university press books; Manchester University Press staff share what university presses mean to them; University of Toronto Press features a conversation on the future of scholarly publishing; and Bucknell University Press features a guest post by their author Manu Chander.

And on Friday at noon ET, we invite you to an online event featuring authors and editors from the Black Outdoors series. Series editors Sarah Jane Cervanak and J. Cameron Carter join authors Rachel Zolf, Mercy Romero, fahma ife, An Yountae, Eleanor Craig, and Marquis Bey for a conversation and Q&A. Register for the event here.

We hope you’ll share your love for university presses this week on social media with the hashtags #KeepUP and #ReadUP.

Raising Up the Work of First-Time Authors: University Press Week 2020

It’s University Press Week! This year, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) has chosen the theme “Raise UP” to emphasize the role that university presses play in elevating authors, subjects, and whole disciplines. Read more about University Press Week and check out the Raise UP gallery and reading list featuring publications published by our peer presses.

We’re excited to be part of the first day of the annual University Press Week blog tour. The theme is “New Voices.” After you read our post, please check out the other posts on the tour, from University of Illinois Press, Georgetown University Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, University of Toronto Press, University of Missouri Press, Bucknell University Press, University of Manitoba Press, and Amherst College Press.

Here at Duke University Press, we’re particularly proud of the role that we play in helping to bring new voices into scholarly conversations. Below, book acquisitions editors and journal editors discuss the particular joys of working with first-time authors.

Contributors:

• Elizabeth Ault, Duke University Press Editor, Books
• Courtney Berger, Duke University Press Executive Editor, Books
• Sarah Lerner, Managing Editor of Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies
• Susan Stryker, Editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona and Visiting Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University
• Ken Wissoker, Duke University Press Senior Executive Editor, Books

What unique contributions can a first-time author offer to a publishing program [or journal]?

Courtney Berger: First-time authors are often working on the cutting edge of scholarship. They are pushing against the boundaries of fields and conceptual paradigms. As an editor, I look to these scholars to stay attuned to the conversations and debates that are happening in and across fields and to learn about new fields in formation. This is incredibly valuable to me as an editor and to the Press as a whole, since it keeps our list dynamic and helps us tune into new or underserved audiences and emerging areas of knowledge making. As an editor, I am constantly learning, and my first-time authors teach me a lot, not just about their fields of study but also about changes in the academic world, how people are reading and teaching the things we publish, and the needs of scholars and teachers in the current economic and political climate.

Ken Wissoker: I always treat first book authors as the future. They frequently combine perspectives from different professors and theoretical movements they encountered in grad school (and since) and put them together in ways that the people who taught them never would. That’s true about theories and about topics to investigate as well. Also, first time authors often have had the most time for research—whether fieldwork or archival. They are writing up a project that started as a dissertation many years before.  They get guidance in how to shape and focus that research and receive feedback on the earlier versions of their work.  You’d be surprised how many times authors of subsequent books don’t know how to proceed without those advantages!

Susan Stryker: I’m always looking for the fresh hot takes that do more than add a statement to an existing conversation, but rather approach a topic in some truly new way. First-time authors often have a really generative “beginners mind.” 

Sarah Lerner: First-time authors have profound enthusiasm for their subject, and in the case of Camera Obscura, they are also excited about working with the journal’s editors during the manuscript revision process. New authors bring innovative perspectives, theories, and methods to the discipline that can change scholarly conversations about a subject. When they do, they can expand the journal’s reach.

Elizabeth Ault: Among many other things, first-time authors offer publishers a chance to engage some of the freshest perspectives in our field, and the joy, for an editor, of bringing a new voice into print and getting to build a long relationship with someone.

Are there any experiences working with first-time authors that stand out to you?

Elizabeth Ault: I have worked with so many first-time authors, especially as an emerging editor. Learning together with authors is such a gift—I’m so grateful for all the first-time authors who’ve helped me map the landscapes of their fields and the conversations their books are in as I get to teach them about the publishing process. One book I’m really proud to have worked on is The Black Shoals, Tiffany Lethabo King’s first book, published last fall. She just did a wonderful interview with Jenny Davidson at the-rambling.com about what the process of developing her central idea and navigating her archive was like through the multi-year process of developing the manuscript. It’s such a generous reflection on process. 

Courtney Berger: I really enjoy working with first-time authors, although at times the process can be stressful (on both sides!). Sometimes a manuscript goes through several rounds of review before it is ready for publication. An author might struggle to find time to write while they are also getting acclimated to a new job and new responsibilities. They may have a tough time shedding ideas and materials that are interesting but don’t serve the project as a whole. The review and revision process can be arduous, but it’s invaluable when it comes to shaping a book. It’s exciting to see a project develop and come into focus, as an author starts to recognize the critical aims of their work and can see how to enact that in their writing. Those are the best moments for me as an editor—helping an author figure out how to make the book their own and to make their ideas available to readers. 

Ken Wissoker: How quickly a scholar moves from being a first time author, unsure of their authority and whether what they write will be okay, to an expert in their field.  It’s hard for a scholar to anticipate that ahead of time, or to write in a way that takes advantage of how they will be seen. I love when authors feel passionately about their work and their topic, but haven’t fully realized how widely it will be of interest.  Some of my best experiences have been reflecting back to an unsure author how many people would be excited about what they are doing.

Susan Stryker: I once received a submission from a grad student for a special issue I was editing that I really wanted to publish because it was fresh and insightful but also kind of a mess structurally. I offered to work closely with the author to get it the piece in publishable quality before sending it out for peer review. Going that extra mile as a hands-on editor for a first-time author resulted in what has turned into a years-long friendship with a really innovative emerging scholar. I feel like I got back as much or more than I gave.

What advice do you have for first-time authors?

Susan Stryker: Really, really, think about audience/editor/press and the scholarly conversation you want your work to be situated within.

Sarah Lerner: I would encourage first-time authors to ask the journal’s Managing Editor or shepherding editor (if they have one) questions about the publication process. Gaining insight into the stages that a manuscript will move through from submission to publication supports authors as they navigate an unfamiliar process. If an author knows what the next step is, they can address revisions, proofs, and other tasks with more confidence.

Courtney Berger: Don’t be afraid to share your work and solicit feedback. I find that a lot of authors hesitate to do that. They worry that the project isn’t developed enough, and they strive for perfection. Join a writing group; share your work with colleagues and friends; participate in a manuscript workshop; find out what editors think about the project. While there certainly are risks to putting your work out there, especially at an early stage, I think the benefits far outweigh those risks. Criticism can help an author shape their project and find their voice. Soliciting feedback allows you to think of writing as a conversation: you want a response. And the response can help you to reshape, clarify, or reconsider what you want to say. 

Ken Wissoker: Think about what parts of books in your field you love, and what parts you skim past. Ask your cohort. Where do you need the detail and where the big picture? Where the author’s voice and where that of others in the field? Try to write accordingly! Write for the people in grad school behind you who will look up to you, not for the senior people who you are worried will judge you. Take yourself seriously as a theorist (big or small) and write to convince people of your theory, not as if you were turning in a long report to someone. Find your voice. As mentioned above, the time from post-doc to person with book is comparatively short in the time of a career. In a way one has to write in the voice of the person one is just in the process of becoming. Find an editor who gets your work and will imagine it with you. 

Elizabeth Ault: Briefly, I think the most important advice is to understand and embrace the power that you and your ideas have. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or reach out–to colleagues, editors, mentors, etc. But also, be prepared when you do. Have a clear sense of what your project is about, what your argument is, how it’s different from the dissertation, what you imagine your book doing in the world, and who you imagine reading it.

But even if you have all this, it’s important to know that the process can often take a lot longer than anyone hopes! It’s not unusual for me to talk to first-time authors at conferences or over email for several years prior to their formal submission of materials for peer review. During this time, we’re building our relationship  (one of my favorite parts!) and developing the project through discussing ideas, giving feedback on introductions, talking through the structure of the project, suggesting participants for book manuscript workshops, etc. While one round of peer review usually only takes a few months, the full cycle of review and revision and Board Approval—from initial submission till a book appears IN PRINT (!)—almost always takes at least two years, and usually longer (though about a year of that is while the book is in production, being copyedited, designed, proofread, and printed, so the author’s substantive writing work is done). That can sound daunting, but I really think of it as a gift, as Ken has outlined elsewhere when talking about the importance of peer review. This long process is especially important for authors who, like most of the people I work with, are interdisciplinary scholars with ambitions to speak across scholarly conversations. 

Read more of Elizabeth Ault’s advice for first-time book authors in “Asking the Editors” in Inside Higher Ed.

What could publishers do to better support first-time authors?

Courtney Berger: Most presses and editors make efforts to help first-time authors navigate the publishing process by giving talks at conferences and at universities or through one-on-one discussions with new authors. At Duke, we’ve worked hard to connect with and support BIPOC scholars, queer & trans scholars, and scholars from marginalized groups, although there’s room to strengthen those efforts even further across the publishing industry. I also think we could do more outreach to scholars working at HBCUs, smaller universities and colleges, and non-research institutions, who may not have as much access to travel funds for major conferences (where editors tend to meet with authors) or who may not have ready access to publishing workshops and other opportunities to learn about the book publishing process. 

Ken Wissoker: Judge work on its quality, intervention, and potential impact, not the seniority or location of the authors.

Susan Stryker: I think “meet the editors” events do a lot to demystify the process, and help authors get a sense of the wide range of ways that different journals work.

Elizabeth Ault: I think posts like this and other talks/videos/etc/ that my colleagues and I have done are hugely important in demystifying the process. Being upfront about expectations and timelines is important especially with first time authors on the tenure track, since the timing can be so important. Not assuming authors understand the process—either the concrete steps of publishing (including things like selecting images and navigating fair use claims), or the more abstract parts like imagining the audience for your book or thinking about how the chapters should be ordered.

Are there any upcoming projects from first-time authors that you’re particularly excited about?

Courtney Berger: Oh my. So many! A few exciting first books that are about to be released: Evren Savci’s Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam; Ma Vang’s History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies; and Hentyle Yapp’s Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic. All three of these books push against conventional disciplinary boundaries and offer readers new theoretical tools for thinking about the complexities of race, religion, politics, and sexuality. And next fall keep an eye out for Xine Yao’s Disaffected: The Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth Century America and Rana Jaleel’s The Work of Rape, two stunning first books that make us rethink the relationship between gender, sexuality, race, and U.S. imperialism.

Ken Wissoker: Two just out: Alex Blanchette’s beautiful ethnography of a grim subject in Porkopolis—the way every part of a pig’s life cycle is commercialized in a next generation taylorization products one wouldn’t even associate with a pig—while also taking over a town’s life. And Vanessa Diaz’s Manufacturing Celebrity, an ethnography of two groups that keep People and other popular magazines in business. Paparazzi, who are mostly Latinx men working independently to take photos of stars. The magazines depend on the photos, but the men are disposable and easy to vilify as if they were stalkers rather than key to the star system. She also writes about the mostly white women deployed to industry events for gossip, and become likely targets for harassment or abuse.

And one in production: Mercy Romero’s moving and deep memoir of Camden, New Jersey is one I’m really excited by.  The beauty of her writing, combined with the way she gives a picture of race and space in her hometown is totally moving.  A truly exceptional first book!

Elizabeth Ault: I just had a slate of wonderful new first books come out! Please read my recommendations for books to buy to honor the American Anthropological Association conference that, in a parallel universe, is happening right now, to find out more about several of them.