Key Tips for Academics Wanting to Write for the General Public: A short guide for post-ac, alt-ac, or academics
In this five-part series, I am sharing insight on the path for post-ac, alt-ac, and current academics to create a book for a general public or trade audience. Writing a trade book can be an important stepping stone in an academic career or used as a pivot point for those interested in transitioning out of academia. Below is Part 3 of this series. You can read Part 1 by clicking here and Part 2 by clicking here.
Parts 1 and 2 covered audience and goal setting for your book. Now that you have a sense of who you are writing for, what you are going to write, and your goals with writing a book, the next and perhaps most obvious thing is to … write the book. It seems simple, but if you recall the process of writing journal manuscripts or your dissertation, writing something that long is no joke. Without looming deadlines and goals like “I need to write this so I can graduate” or “I need to publish this so I can get tenure,” it can be difficult to find the stamina and motivation to write a book. My book, Biology Everywhere:How the science of life matters to everyday life is quite a bit longer than my dissertation and clocks in at 222 pages, not including any of the front and back matter (table of contents, testimonials, acknowledgements foreword, and author bio). However, I was writing content that I was passionate and excited about (and also happen to be a very fast writer), so it (only) took me a few months to write the full manuscript. Editing took several additional weeks.
Obviously, if you were able to get a PhD, you’re a capable writer. However, we all have our blind spots, especially when it comes to reviewing our own writing. Having a good copy editor is critically important to the success of your manuscript. In fact, some bookstores or book festivals won’t even consider your book if it hasn’t been professionally copyedited. Even the slightest mistake undermines the quality of your book and can impair your sales and/or overall goals with career pivoting. Think about it. If you are in a bookstore and you open up to the first chapter of a book and see grammatical errors, are you going to buy the book? Sure, it’s nearly impossible to produce a perfect work, but nothing will undermine your cause more than overlooked grammatical or formatting errors. Copyediting isn’t cheap either — expect to spend a few thousand dollars (depending on the length of your manuscript) on copyediting alone.
Another early consideration in the process of producing a book is if you plan to self-publish or go with a traditional publisher, and if you go with a traditional publisher if you seek a University press or one of the “big five publishers.”
This comes back in part to A) your available capital if you self-publish, since you’ll be individually financing your book B) how much time you want to spend submitting dossiers to publishing companies and/or finding an agent and C) your audience. There are some great resources on the internet on the pros and cons of self-publishing and traditional publishing, so I won’t go into that here. You may be tempted to use an academic press. There are a variety of academic presses, many associated with prestigious universities like Oxford or Princeton. However, think about your target audience: who reads books from academic presses? Other academics or the general public?
Self-publishing can eventually lead to connecting with one of the big publishers. This is actually the strategy I’m using now: at the time I started writing my book, I decided to focus my energy on writing and not preparing dossiers to go to publishers. Now, I’m collecting data and when I’m ready, I’ll go to publishers with data showing that I can write a book that people will buy, that my reviews are good, and that the size of my community is large. I’ll also simultaneously pitch my next book.
Once you have a completed manuscript in hand, the next stage is book design. This is an area where the amount you spend can be quite variable depending on your overall goals and your technological skills. Book design is the process of taking a manuscript and typesetting it so it looks like a “real” book. While not mandatory, it is an essential step if your goal is to put forth a professional, salable product. The difference in expense comes with how you’d like the book to be designed and how good you are at learning and then using LaTeX or Adobe InDesign. Both have templates available that are free or for purchase, or you can develop something on your own. Both allow you to typeset a manuscript.
LaTeX requires some basic understanding of computer programming, and the templates/outputs don’t have quite as much flexibility and can look a bit textbooky. It is easier to make corrections in LaTeX and automatically generate a table of contents or index (which has to otherwise be done by hand).
Adobe InDesign allows for more flexibility but requires additional work on the final product to ensure that there are not stray words (called “widows” and “orphans”), something LaTeX does automatically. It is also harder to make corrections once the manuscript is typeset, because any changes in one area will affect the other areas, requiring entire pages or chapters to be re-typeset (think butterfly effect). You also can pay someone to design the book for you, and it is typically charged on a per-page basis depending on the complexity of the work, for example, if there are lots of figures and tables included. Typically, if you employ someone to design the physical book, the e-book design is an additional charge (but usually less than the print design).
The other aspect of book design is the cover. Having an eye-catching, professionally designed cover is essential for marketing. You want your cover to draw the buyer into picking up your book, whether the buyer is seeing it at a bookstore, or a book buyer is looking online for new titles to bring into the store. Think about it — what cover aspects would draw you into picking up a book? Once you’ve drawn the reader in, and then they start reading, they are more likely to buy the book. Unless you’re an ace with Adobe Photoshop, the cover design and a good copyeditor are the two most important places you can spend money to achieve success with the book.
In this part, I talked about the process of writing and designing a book, and briefly touched on considerations to make when deciding whether or not to self-publish, and which publishers to target. Before a book can be published, there are a few more final steps, many of which may not be intuitive the first time around. This potential pitfalls and book printing is the subject of Part 4. Be sure to sign up for my mailing list at www.biologyeverywhere.com so you don’t miss the next installment in this series!
Dr. Melanie Peffer is the author of Biology Everywhere: How the science of life matters to everyday life. She is interested in how people learn, understand, and engage with biology content. Visit www.biologyeverywhere.com for more information about her book, advice on writing for the general public, building an Alt-ac career, and upcoming speaking engagements.