The Pluses and Minuses of Traditional Publishing for Scholarly Monographs

The internet is full of advice for creative writers wondering whether they should find an agent and go through traditional channels or to self-publish their next book. Not much has been written for academic authors. I don't think many academicians consider self-publishing as a viable option, because those same scholars need, for the purposes of promotion and tenure, the reputation and social validity that publishing presses offer.

Still, I've been thinking about self-publishing serious and scholarly nonfiction for a long time, and have now self-published two manuscripts. I don't, however, expect them to impress my colleagues or help me with promotion. Thankfully, I've reached the rank of professor and therefore don't feel the pressure of promotional review. That is an important context for considering all that follows.

Self-Publishing Scholarly Books

Given the ease and accessibility of self-publishing, I have decided to self-publish my next five or 10 books. In this post, I take a careful look at traditional academic publishing and share the pluses and minuses of doing so as I see it. I worked it out so that there were six pluses and six minuses. In subsequent posts, I will give general recommendations for who might want to stick with the traditional publishing route and who might want to blaze their own path.

Where I’m Coming From

I’ve published five books using established academic presses (Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington Books, Palgrave). They have all been fine (some great) to work with, and I’m generally happy with the finished product. I have also served as a blind reviewer of around 50 books (those first three plus Routledge, Springer, SAGE, and Cambridge UP among others).

 

Pluses of Traditional Publishing

 

1.     Social validity – Going through a traditional academic press means the author gets the seal of approval from that particular press. If this is Cambridge University Press, then the seal is a valuable one and difficult to obtain. If you are a newer scholar, then this seal of approval is an essential way to let future readers (and employers) know how serious to take your level of scholarship.

2.     Peer-review – although the process is full of problems, peer-review improves the quality of scholarship, range of impact, and breadth of coverage. It also improves writing quality, organization, tone and voice, and so on. Again, this is especially important for early career scholars who haven’t yet developed the skills of high level writing for a specific audience. (I’ve reviewed dozens of manuscripts that have an important message, but the execution is all over the place and is a chore to read.) 

3.     Copy-editing – Book presses employ expert copy-editors who will go through your work line by line and correct any glaring spelling, grammatical, reference, and word choice errors. Copy editors also format the manuscript with page numbers, margins, headers, footers, font, and so on such that the finished product looks seemless and professional. The author ultimately pays for this out of book royalties, but I suspect it’s worth it for the majority of writers who don’t have 50-100 hours to spend on this process. This is a big benefit if you want to focus only on the writing part.

4.     Relationships with libraries – The books that I have published through this route always sell 200-500 right off the bat because of relationships set up with university libraries. These libraries have contracts with publishers to immediately buy up any new books in a specific field or series. It’s a great way to make your book available for free to thousands right away.

5.     Availability to institutes and centers – Universities may want to buy your book for an entire department or for their faculty and staff, but I don’t imagine they’d be able to use grant dollars to do so unless your book comes from a reputable press.

6.     Advertising is built in – Each book has an advertising budget, although I can’t imagine it’s very big. The publisher lists your book on their website, and they might send out fliers to potentially interested readers.

 

Minuses of Traditional Publishing

1.     It takes forever – There is a rhythm to traditional publishing, and it goes like this: write your article or book, then submit it for review. Wait six months to two years before you hear anything back. Do revisions or submit elsewhere and repeat the delay process. When a press is good and your book is received enthusiastically by reviewers, you can expect the whole thing to take about 12 months from acceptance of the final version of the manuscript. (Of course, exceptions are made to popular authors for whom the process is streamlined.) IF that matches your writing rhythms, then this delay is perfect. If you don’t like writing books more frequently than once every other year, then there won’t be a problem. But my rhythms don’t match up very well. By the time I get a review back from a publisher on Book 1, I’m already done with Book 2 and no longer interested in Book 1. Then it’s like I’m rereading Book 1 for the first time and I completely rewrite it, losing interest in Book 2. And so on.

2.     Cover price – I’ve refused to work with publishers who were unable to offer my book at a reasonable price. Reasonable for me is <$40. The problem is that first runs of books are usually in hardcover, which are a lot more expensive. Sometimes 200-pg books start off going for >$100. That was too expensive for me to afford in graduate school, and I don’t want me work to be out of reach to poor grad students—the ones who are likely my target audience. (This is less of a problem for higher ed books, which can be purchased directly by an institute or university center.)

3.     I can’t afford them – I like giving copies of my books away to colleagues, but I’m not going to spend $30 for each copy. I’m too stingy for that. Plus, it doesn’t take very many of these author-discounted-purchases to negate any royalties I’ve made in the first place. Which leads me to minus 4,

4.     Royalties are poor – I think I’ve actually been pretty lucky when it comes to royalties for books, but most of those are generated by just one book. Most of my books have earned $0 in royalties over their lifespans.

5.     Just because the publisher says its ready doesn’t mean its ready – It can be easy to think that the book is ready when the publisher says it is. Plus, given how long the process takes, I am usually ten months past caring about making more improvements, so I’m not very eager to go page-by-page looking for mistakes (during the final proofing stage). (This, by the way, is a huge mistake. Hire someone if you must, but absolutely go through the final proofs carefully. I always spot nightmarish errors!) The point here is that the editor and copy-editor don’t care as much as you do about the finished product, and this even goes for reputable presses.

6.     It dampens creativity – For my last two books, I had the advantage of reading the reviews that over 30 scholars gave (the editor was uber-dedicated). I couldn’t believe how divergent the reviews were. Occasionally, a reviewer would appreciate a creative measure I had used in the book (whether it be figures, writing style, organization, etc.). Most reviewers didn’t want to be surprised. During revisions stages, I am typically walking back creative choices I had made. The result is a product that feels a bit more stale and predictable, which is what the publishers know will reliably sell. But I’m not terribly proud of them the same way as I’m proud of an essay I’ve written for nobody but myself.