Tommy Kidd on Platform Publishing

Over at the Anxious Bench blog, Philip Jenkins and Tommy Kidd have been posting a lot of helpful advice on publishing. In his latest post, Tommy Kidd talks about platform publishing as a significant factor for prospective authors.

As a prolific historian who has published nearly six single-authored titles, Tommy is an appropriate resourceful for giving advice to young scholars. Indeed, his many books provide a platform for him to speak to people on this subject. We need scholars like Tommy and others who are serious academics that engage with the public and serve as foils to charlatans posing as leading authorities on various topics. I do, however, believe that there is an important dimension to publishing that needs to be stated. While some authors write in order to sell books and to speak as guest lecturers around the country, I hope that academics don't loose sight of the need to disseminate knowledge, correct misrepresentations in scholarship, and writing for the sheer joy of intellectual curiosity.

Tommy and others are right in saying that you do need to have a marketable topic in order to publish even with academic presses. But some of the most important books in one's field are not necessarily best sellers, and have taken individuals years to produce. Some of my favorite monographs are by authors who have written two books or less. One particularly author I have in mind took over ten years to write his most recent book, an award-winning monograph. I admire this person because of his scholarship, even if his book cannot be found on the shelves at Barnes and Noble.

I think that all academics, including myself, want as many people as possible to read our books. But I hope that we remember what our main goal should be: to produce first-rate scholarship that fills important gaps in our field and challenges current perceptions.

Academic Publishing

Over at the Religion in American History blog, Randall Stephens offers some sound advice on academic publishing in his post, "Turning It into a Book."

There are several good books for prospective authors, but the one that I followed was Beth Luey's Handbook for Academic Authors. I simply bought the book and followed the step-by-step instructions for putting together proposals for academic publishers. This was the only source that I used, as it offers comprehensive advice on how to break into the academic publishing world. I sent out close to a dozen letters of interest and proposals, received four yeses, a few maybes, and the rest were nos.

How Much Should You Publish?

I often ask myself the question: How much should I publish? There seems to be a variety of opinions on how much a professional, or aspiring, academic should publish. Answering this question is vital for PhD students and academics who are looking for a tenure-track job.

When it comes to research-based institutions, the answer seems obvious: the more publishing, the better. In fact, you can be denied tenure if you don't publish enough. But how much is enough? Do you need to publish a book to receive tenure? Does your book need to be with a university press? Are certain university presses valued more than others? What about journal articles? Do you need to write a book if you have published a certain number of journal articles? Do all your journal articles need to be peer-reviewed to count towards tenure? These are important questions.

Answering these questions becomes more complicated when you factor in liberal arts colleges and regional state schools. How important are publications when compared to teaching experience? The standard answer is that research-based schools care more about publishing than teaching. But what about liberal arts colleges and regional state schools?

There seems to be no universal answer to what liberal arts colleges want in a professor. I know of cases in which people have actually taken publications off their cv when applying for faculty positions at liberal arts colleges in order to show that they care more about teaching than research. Supposedly, committees at liberal arts colleges can be suspicious of applicants with lots of publications because that can mean a) that person will spend most of his or her time researching and not teaching b) that person is a better writer than teacher c) that person will only take the job as a last resort and intends to move on to a R1 institution. Analyzing this information is fascinating, if you think about it.

In my experience, when I taught at various liberal arts colleges, several of the faculty were content not to publishing anything other than the occasional book review. Yes, they could say that they were "working on" such and such project. But, of course, that "project" would never come to fruition. Why wouldn't professors at liberal arts colleges want to publish? In many cases, I believe there is a simple explanation: they teach a 4-4 (or higher), have committee/advising/club work, and, most importantly, are not required/encouraged/expected by their chairs and/or administrators to publish. If you don't need to publish anything for tenure (or very little), and you are not rewarded for your productivity (recognition, promotion, reduced teaching load, etc.), why would you want to teach a heavy load during the day and spend your spare time in the evenings, away from your family, working on publications? If you teach a heavy load and are not encouraged to publish, wouldn't you only do research if you wanted to leave your school for an institution that did not require as much teaching and valued a higher level of productivity? Or, are there faculty at liberal arts colleges who work on writing projects simply out of intellectual curiosity (or perhaps duty)? Of course, there are liberal arts colleges that are very concerned about publications of their faculty members, and even require them to publish heavily despite a high teaching load.

My original motivation for becoming a professor was to teach. I enjoy interacting with college students and teaching subjects in my field. But I came to believe that I needed to publish to secure a job, whether that would be at a liberal arts college, regional state school, or R1 institution. As I worked on various publications, I developed a love for research in addition to teaching so that now I get anxious if I am not working on a writing project. But even with more than five years of teaching experience, I still don't know how much an academic should publish and how productive a candidate applying for a faculty position should be in order to land the elusive tenure-track job. And, is it possible to publish too much? Perhaps you can enlighten me by answering these questions.

University Press or Trade Book?

A few days ago, I received my first royalty check and sales report for Enlightened Evangelicalism. From looking at the report, which shows the number of books sold from last April to September, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend who is finishing up his PhD at the University of Chicago. We discussed the current job market for professors as well as ideas for future publications. I posed the question of whether it is better to publish with a firm like Eerdmans, Baker, and InterVarsity or an academic university press.

My friend proceeded to tell me about a session he attended about a year ago at ETS or SBL in which a representative on the panel from a Christian trade publisher commented on how the firm only wanted to produce books that can sell thousands of copies, as opposed to a non-profit university press that will most likely sell only a few hundred copies of a particular title. While discussing the matter, my friend reminded me that university press books, although fewer in number, make a significant contribution to scholarship. That is not to say that a trade book cannot also be a work of scholarship, but the primary objective of a trade publisher seems to be, first and foremost, to produce a book that has wide appeal.

The other issue, especially for professors to consider, is that academic press books are often necessary for tenure and promotions. While publishing a book in general will be helpful for an academic's career, university press titles are usually given more weight in the tenure process and by a promotion committee since there is a rigorous peer-review process with university presses that is not necessarily present with trade publishers.

The ideal, of course, would be to publish a best-seller with a university press--a book that not only helps with your promotion but also sits on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. But that is an unlikely scenario. Most university press books are priced too high to be bought by the general public (especially in a hardback edition) and are marketed to college libraries.

This is a topic I will need to continue to think about as I work on future projects.

Jonathan Yeager