Guest Post: Five Things that Surprised Me about Writing My First Book (Part I)
AND: An August pop-up writing challenge and more.
Hi friends!
Exciting news - we have our very first guest author today!
I was lucky enough to work with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd on her fascinating (and oh-so-timely) book Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars, which is out NEXT WEEK from the University of North Carolina Press. Lauren had pretty much the dream experience of converting her dissertation into a book, which received a Kirkus starred review. She’s a rock star! So I asked her to take over the newsletter this week and next to share her experience about writing and publishing her first book. (You can read Part II here).
But first, a few updates from me —
The semester is starting! We still have writing to do! Make room for the writing during a free August pop-up writing challenge, August 28-September 1 (I know, APSA. But if you’re not going to APSA, write with us instead! Or write on the plane on the way to APSA!). Most of you know the drill by this point - commit to writing for 5 days, write every day, set goals in a dedicated Slack channel where we cheer each other on, reward yourself for your hard work by taking Labor Day off). I’ll also schedule daily co-writing sessions, timing TBD, and you can also schedule your own. Register here! Tell your friends! It’s free, so why not?
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’m booked until January for coaching and books! You all continue to amaze me with the work you’re doing - I LOVE being a part of it. If we haven’t already talked about working together this semester, I am fully booked until January for individual coaching and book editing (though I have some space in October and beyond for articles and shorter documents like grant proposals or tenure materials and we can always schedule consultations on an hourly basis). This is an amazing position to be in, so thank you. And this is the perfect time to set up a conversation if you want to work together in the spring or summer of 2024, so please be in touch.
That said, there is one way we can still work together this fall: through Writers’ Circles! I’m hosting two circles: Mondays from 12-130 eastern, and Tuesdays from 12-130 eastern, and we’ll do a group co-writing session from 11-2 on Fridays. There are still a few seats available in both, and I’d love for you to join us (and we can work out a package with individual coaching/editing). More information is here, and the application form is here. Also, you can use the application form to indicate that you’re interested in participating for spring!
Finally, next week I’ll have an EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT (dun dun) about the next writing retreats Mirya Holman and I are co-hosting, so watch this space.
And now…Lauren!
Greetings, writers!
If you’re reading this, you’re already aware of Kelly’s magical Academic Editing Services. That’s why I’m here, too. I hired Kelly to review my book manuscript in early 2022, and I am excited to share that the book is already off the press and will be on shelves this August 22, 2024. Kelly’s feedback was, of course, a key step along the way. If you want to know how I got the manuscript out of Microsoft Word and into Barnes and Noble—and the surprising things I learned along the way—keep reading.
First, some context. Like most academic authors, my first book is adapted from my dissertation. I won’t spend much time here talking about how that transformation occurred because there are so many good resources—ones on which I personally relied—that lay that process out much better than I can. For the diss to book process, see William Germano’s classics, From Dissertation to Book and Getting It Published. Also from University of Chicago Press, check out Katelyn E. Knox and Allison Van Deventer’s The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook.
In no particular order, here are five things that surprised me when it came to writing and submitting my first book.
1. I got to write the book I wanted. Even if this seems obvious, stay with me. My dissertation was written for the five (wonderful) people on my committee. My arguments didn’t go beyond the department’s conference room. But once I had my PhD in hand, I wanted to write for the readers I wanted to reach and tell a story in the way I wanted to tell it. You don’t need a PhD for that, of course, but it’s the step most of us want to take after doing the research that goes into our dissertations.
Now, a caveat here. Because of my area of expertise, I am not on the tenure track and never will be (the profession of history has almost completely collapsed and there simply are no more jobs). This devastating circumstance freed me from all discipline-specific expectations that I needed to do XYZ things with my manuscript that are necessary to land the coveted TT-job. Call it a silver lining of precarity. Without those types of restraints, I was able to write the book I wanted. I’ll come back to this point in a minute.
2. People in other disciplines want and need to hear what you have to say. My book is both an educational history and a political history. These are two unique subfields of a singular discipline, and they don’t tend to do a lot of cross-talk. One of the best, most rewarding things about writing this book was attending conferences in political history, media studies, and other fields where I got to meet historians and social scientists outside of my research niche who have been as excited to learn from me as I have been from them.
Turns out, political historians want to know what our politicians were up to as college activists, and how those activists’ work over the last 60 years has led us to today’s right-wing panic over critical race theory and wokeism. I’ve been happy to tell them. In exchange, they’ve opened my eyes to the entire political, media, and religious panacea of the Right, both domestic and globally. And now that the book is finished, I still want to keep up with their research because it’s just fascinating even if it is beyond my home field. I encourage you, as much as possible, to read outside of your own subfield and engage with scholars in other disciplines.
3. There’s a method to selecting an editor and sending them your proposal. I knew that my dissertation had to be revised out of its original format and reworked into the type of academic book we’re accustomed to reading. I also knew I needed to craft a book proposal. But after getting the thing into shape, I was surprised to learn there was an entire hidden curriculum surrounding the proposal and determining exactly which editors to send it to. One doesn’t simply cold email any editor with their giant manuscript—who knew?!
Thankfully, there are great resources in this domain that guided me step-by-step through the acquisitions process from selecting potential presses, to contacting a handful of carefully chosen editors, to crafting different variations of my proposal (presses each have unique requirements), to communicating with review boards and anonymous readers. Laura Portwood-Stacer’s The Book Proposal Book (plus her awesome newsletter, Manuscript Works) and Melody Herr’s Writing and Publishing Your Book were immensely helpful here. They’re both pictured on the shelf above, and I recommend them as much as Germano’s two guides.
4. I got multiple “YES”es! Here’s an embarrassing story. Before I knew better, I sent inquiry letters out to multiple editors at different presses and received several “no” responses. Yikes.
What The Book Proposal Book taught me is that presses (especially university presses, where I wanted to publish) have their own publishing specialties. Once I narrowed down the presses whose publishing list my own book was a nice fit for (hint: which presses do you see at your academic conferences?), I got multiple enthusiastic “yes” responses. As it happens, my research wasn’t irrelevant, uninteresting, or terrible, I was just bringing it to the wrong places.
Now, with these multiple yess'es, I had decisions to make. Remember Bullet 1 above when I said I got to write the book I wanted? This is where that mattered. After successfully making it through peer review, one prestigious press that I thought would never in a million years consider publishing my book (I also thought this about the press that is publishing my book!) wanted me to write a slightly different story than the one I was telling. Could I have revamped my manuscript to be able to publish with a universally prestigious press? Sure. But the prestigious press I did sign with, which is regarded as a top academic press especially in the field of history, wanted the manuscript I wanted to write. And for this reason, I have been able to sleep very well with my decision to sign with UNC.
5. People that I didn’t yet know while I was writing would be the ones I’d be most grateful for after finishing. Some of the people I’ve worked the most closely with at my press are people I didn’t meet until after I submitted the final draft—especially my publicist and marketing team! I Because of the sheer amount of work they’ve done towards connecting readers to the book, I regret that I didn’t thank them in my Acknowledgements. If you’re writing your first book, it would be thoughtful and wise to preemptively include your own publicity and marketing team in your own Acknowledgements section. Ask your editor to introduce you or at least provide you with their names once they’ve been assigned.
So readers, what do you think? Did anything on this list surprise you? If you already knew some of this information, where did you learn it? Would love to check on your thoughts in the comments. Also, look out for Part II of this guest post which will cover things I learned about the publication and marketing process after the contract.
If you want to keep in touch, you can find me on my website and across social media at @llassabe. And if you’re interested in the book, which will be out August 22, 2023, you can find it here. It’s about the long history of right-wing attacks on US higher education. The narrative is set in the late 1960s around conservative backlash to the peace and Black Power movements. Kirkus gave it a Starred Review!
Another big thanks to Kelly, whose thoughtful comments shaped my thinking and writing throughout the book.
Thanks for reading!
Lauren
(You can read Part II here).