PHILIP LAUGHLIN: Thank you.
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And I'm happy to say we did not overlap at all in our content.
We're safe.
First of all I'd just like to start off
by thanking Amy Brand, the former Cognitive Science
Editor at MIT Press for inviting me to speak at the Harvard Club
today.
I'm confident this will be the only time in my life
that someone asks me to speak at an Ivy League institution,
so I'm particularly grateful that today's proceedings are
being videotaped and posted on the web.
I'm looking forward to sending URL to my incredulous friends.
In addition to giving me my 15 minutes of internet fame,
I'm happy to be here because preparing this talk
was an educational experience for me.
I have to confess that although I've
been in my current position for about 15 months,
I had never even seen, let alone read the MIT Press submission
guidelines for book proposals until Amy had sent them
to me about three days ago.
It turns out it's an extremely useful document, definitely
more thorough and professional than what
I have been giving authors, so I strongly encourage everyone
here to refer to it when you begin approaching publishers.
I think the advice contained in it is universal enough that you
could follow these guidelines for just about
any academic publisher, not just MIT Press.
As useful as these proposal guidelines are though,
they don't give you a sense of the process
that I go through when trying to decide what to publish.
It's sort of the difference between reading a recipe
and cooking a meal, so I'd like to supplement these guidelines
you have with some background information
that you might find useful.
The first point that I'd like to emphasize
to any aspiring author is one that I'm
sure that we can all sympathize with.
And that is, yours is not the only email
that I received today.
Like most of you, I'm drowning in e-mail.
I receive about 1,000 work-related emails
every month, and the vast majority of them
are about dozens of book projects
that are already under contract and being written, recently
completed and need to go into production, and currently
in production and need to be ready for the next catalog
season.
And at any given time, some percentage
of these projects, hopefully a small percentage,
are in crisis mode.
Sometimes I'm involved in a very delicate contract negotiation
with some big name author.
Sometimes a manuscript has to be rushed into production
immediately to meet some important deadline.
And sometimes an author is irate about a copy editing,
typesetting, or a cover design job.
That one doesn't happen too often,
but it does happen occasionally, it
and needs to be addressed quickly.
So, a significant chunk of my attention and energy
is already monopolized by authors
who submitted book proposals to me at least a year or two ago.
I don't say this to discourage anyone from contacting me.
But I do want to make it clear that, on a typical day
I'm not just sitting on my hands hoping that someone sends me
a book proposal to look at.
I usually have a pretty full plate already.
The second point that I'd like to emphasize
is I already received far more book proposals than I
could ever hope to publish.
Buried somewhere in those 1,000 work emails
I received every month, are about 20 to 30 queries
from potential authors who are interested in seeing
their books published by MIT Press.
So during any calendar year, I'm likely to receive somewhere
in the neighborhood of 250 to 350 book proposal submissions.
Essentially what this means is that, even
if I apply the most rigorous standards for acceptance
and rejected 90% of what I received,
I would still have enough book projects to meet my signing
goals and to keep MIT'S production department busy.
And in case you're wondering, an acquisitions editor
should be publishing between 20 and 40 new books per year,
depending on what field you work in.
So I'd like to emphasize that no matter
who you are, or where you got your PhD,
or how good your ideas are, if you submit something
to me at MIT Press, there's a very good chance
that you will receive a polite rejection
letter from my assistant.
Please don't take it personally.
The problem isn't necessarily with you,
the problem is really the system that we all operate in.
I believe academics refer to it as a social dilemma.
This embarrassment of riches that I sift through every month
definitely has an influence in how I respond to authors
and their book proposals.
So a third point I'd like to emphasize today
is, there are entire catalogs-- or entire categories of books
that I frequently reject out of hand.
For example, English language translations.
For whatever reason, whether it's
the subject areas I've worked in or the publishers
I've worked at, English language translations
don't seem to do very well.
And when I say work very well, I am
speaking in the crudest possible way about copies sold
and revenue generated.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that I would never
publish a book translated into English
from a foreign language, but it's pretty unlikely
that I'll be interested in them.
Anthologies of previously published material
is another category I'm wary of.
MIT Press used to publish anthologies very successfully
in the 1980s and 1990s.
Many of those anthologies are still in print
and continue to sell steadily, but we've
seen a pretty dramatic decline in the sales of new anthologies
over the past decade.
So I'm not quite so eager to publish in this book category
anymore.
In philosophy, the edited conference volume
is very difficult sell these days,
and I've passed on quite a few of them in the past year.
And finally, the humble festschrift, the edited book
in honor of an esteemed professor,
is something that we'll do occasionally,
if the right people are involved and it fits our list,
but for the most part, I try not to make a habit of it.
I realize I'm starting to sound like a broken record here,
but without wishing to be negative or discouraging,
I would also include the revised doctoral dissertation
on this list.
I don't think there's any publisher anywhere in the world
that is currently plotting to corner the market on revised
doctoral dissertations.
I'm not sure exactly how many dissertations
are written in the US every year,
but I'm pretty confident that only a tiny percentage of them
are worth publishing.
And the ones that are worth publishing, generally
have very modest sales potentials.
And by modest, I mean a few hundred copies,
so the potential return on investment is pretty low.
To put it in stark, realistic terms,
even if your revised dissertation
merits publication, we're still kind
of doing you a favor by publishing it,
not the other way around.
However, I will confess that I've recently broken
my own self-imposed rule in four of the five categories
that I've just listed.
Within the past year I've signed up
an anthology of previously published material,
and within the past month alone, I've
signed up an edited conference volume by a philosopher,
a festschrift for a philosopher, and a revised
doctoral dissertation from a philosopher.
Furthermore, it's quite possible that in the spring of next year
I'll sign up another revised doctoral dissertation
from a political theorist.
So it is possible to get a book published by a respected
University Press, even if it falls
into one of these less desirable categories.
What did these authors do to beat the odds?
I'll focus on the two doctoral dissertations
since that's the purpose of today's gathering.
In the first example, the philosopher
who I've already signed up did something very simple,
he shamelessly used his connections.
He became friendly with a series editor of ours
and asked her for help in crafting his proposal
and submitting it to us.
This was a very clever strategy because, if I didn't
want the book, I would have to reject two people, not just
one.
And the second person would have to be a senior faculty
member who had previously published a book with us
and is a pipeline for future book projects.
So even if I really wanted to reject this project,
I would have been forced to come up
with a very compelling reason to do so and communicate
that in a very delicate way.
And the second example, the political theorist
who has not yet signed up.
I had actually approached her last spring
to review a manuscript for me, which she did a great job on,
by the way.
A couple of months later, she contacted me
and asked if I was interested in reviewing
her award-winning dissertation, and in seeing if it would
be of interest to MIT Press.
The fact that this person had written
a very constructive review for me in a timely manner
put her in a positive light already,
so I was a bit more receptive to her proposal
than perhaps I would have been otherwise.
But what really got me interested in the project
was that it had a unique interdisciplinary thesis
that I had not seen anywhere else-- attempting
to merge empirical psychology with political theory.
Plus she clearly knew the MIT backlist very well,
and could articulate how her book would
fit into our overall publishing strategy.
So she had clearly done her homework
and presented herself in a way that
made me take her seriously.
In both of these instances the authors
had a tentative connection to the press
that they were able to exploit-- one
through a series editor, one by acting as a reviewer.
Because of these connections, I probably gave these authors
a little bit more of my time and attention than they normally
would have.
And by a little more of my time I mean,
gave their emails a couple of minutes
rather than a couple of seconds.
Of course, if the proposals they had submitted to me
had been poorly conceived or uninteresting,
the conversation probably would have stopped there.
But the fact that they were also able to deliver that they were
able to deliver well-crafted proposals that
were able to withstand the peer review process
was what really sealed the deal.
But what if you don't have an in with the publisher?
What can you do to improve your chances
of being taken seriously?
The first thing I would suggest any aspiring author
is do your homework.
And I've always wanted to say that
to a roomful of professors, do your homework.
Don't just start sending queries out to any random publisher.
Spend 30 or 40 minutes on Amazon looking for the three or four
most relevant publishers for your work and focus on them.
By relevant publishers, I mean publishers
that consistently produce books on your subject area
to this day.
If the last book that a publisher produced
on a particular topic was over 10 years ago,
that's usually a sign that they pulled out of that area
and aren't looking for new projects.
Maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago one could
be acceptably ignorant on this point,
but today there's really no excuse
for the author who sends his manuscript
on pre-socratic philosophy to the MIT Press, which actually
happened to me recently.
Second, when making an initial approach to a publisher,
keep it brief.
Really, I only need three or four sentences
to determine whether or not I'm interested in seeing something,
not three or four paragraphs, not three or four pages,
certainly not three or four chapters.
Three or four sentences are fine.
If I want to see more material from you,
I'm perfectly capable of asking for it.
What you want to avoid at all costs is this,
is my lone, low tech visual aid.
This is an actual book proposal that
was sent to me about a month ago from an author.
The very first email that he sent me.
And as you can see it is six pages
of single-spaced material, full of all the jargon
that Elizabeth was railing against a few moments ago.
Plus another 20 pages in attachments.
Unless this is a love letter written
to me by Gisele Bundchen, I'm not going to read this.
I think I spent about 30 seconds perusing it,
and then I forwarded it to my assistant to. reject.
So, don't be this guy.
Really, there's absolutely no need
to send that much material in an initial email.
Third, if I do respond to your initial query
and ask to see more material, you
will really help your case if the material you submit
follows APA style or Chicago Manual Style.
If I have to make formatting changes to read what I've sent,
that's not a good starting position for you.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with double-spaced,
New York Times Roman font at 12 points.
And it will greatly increase the likelihood
that I will spend a few minutes, rather than
a few seconds on your project.
This seems like a very simple thing to do,
but you'd be surprised how many authors get tripped up
on this small detail.
Fourth, if you think your submission is--
if I think your submission is interesting and worth
considering, I'll send it out to three or four
external reviewers to look at.
When choosing a reviewer, I'm not
looking for your arch nemesis or someone who
wants to make your life miserable,
but it just so happens that reviewers can be harsh
and a little nasty sometimes.
So when you respond to reviewer reports,
it's best to stay above the fray.
Don't get petty and personal in your response.
Try to separate the substantive criticisms
from the personal ones, and respond to those.
When I present projects at are publishing committee meetings,
my colleagues definitely reward mature adult behavior.
So, an author who responds to reviewer feedback
in a constructive way, not a defensive way,
is more likely to be approved.
And finally, after all this, if we do get to the stage
where I send you a contract for your revised dissertation,
I do have one piece of advice for you on negotiating--
don't do it.
Standard contracts don't vary much from publisher
to publisher.
And unless there is language in the contract about waiving
constitutional rights or giving up a firstborn child,
just sign it and send it back.
Getting your first book published by a reputable press
is more important than haggling over electronic royalties.
Save it for contract number two.
Thanks for listening.
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