5. How to Submit and Market Your Work

Whenever possible, you should determine likely avenues of publication for your ideas before you write. Rather than assuming that you need to first identify a subject to write about and then do an exhaustive review of the literature, you can manage your time more effectively by keeping a record of the subjects that occur to you when reading professional literature. For instance, what comments have other colleagues made that seem particularly specious? What research do other scholars call for in their implications and conclusions that seems worth developing? Because the impetus to write about a subject often emerges from asking these sorts of questions, you will usually have a pretty good idea about where to submit your work. After all, you can find the most likely publisher for your idea by checking your bibliography and determining which sources you cite most. Once you gain momentum as a scholar, innovative topics will emerge in response to previous writing projects, and your sense of publishing opportunities will be keener as you will be familiar with different journals and editors.
When your first, second, or third choice rejects your manuscript however, you should not give up hope of publishing it. Remember that reasonable people routinely disagree about what constitutes excellence, and then send the manuscript back out for additional reviews. The information discussed below can help you identify an appropriate publisher, present your work in a professional way and survive the peer_review process.

FORMAT YOUR WORK IN A PROFESSIONAL MANNER
With today’s personal computers and laser printers, there is no excuse for a shoddy presentation of ideas. Your readers—wrongly or not will judge the quality of your ideas in part by how they are presented. You should, therefore, see that final drafts of all ol your documents are carefully formatted. To help your work stand out in a competitive environment, print final drafts on a laset printer. Lasers nearly match the quality achieved by typesetting machines, and they often print eight to ten pages a minute. (Fortunately, lasers have dropped dramatically in price over the last decade. At the educator’s price, you can now purchase a solid non_PostScript laser for $800 and a PostScript laser for $2,000.) If  you do not have access to a laser, print materials on a good ink_jet printer. Although some of the more expensive ink_jet printers offer a printout nearly comparable to a laser, some users complain that the print of the inkjets smears. If a laser or ink_jet printer is not available, you should probably print your document on a daisy wheel letter_quality printer. Although agonizingly slow, the final product of a letter_quality printer is usually far superior to dotmatrix printers that have fewer than twenty_four pins.
Although most publishers want at least one_inch margins on al sides with at least twenty_seven lines per page, some prefer one and_a_half_inch margins and twenty_five lines per page, so yo should check the publisher’s guidelines for authors. On the first page of the manuscript, you may want to list your name, address, and phone number. Occasionally editors request a word count.

Figure 5.1
Sample Manuscript Page

George Nelson                 222- 444_1324
Department of Engineering       Word Count: 2,500 words
University of New City
New City, North Carolina 33617

Structural Analysis of Kaput Bridge

The extent of damage to Kaput Bridge caused by the hurTicane that hit Kaput, Florida causes us to re_evaluate its structural integrity.

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Some guidelines for authors request that authors center the number for the first page about four lines below the last line of text, as trated in Figure 5.1. On the top line of each page except the
first, you may want to provide a running head, which essentially repeats the first three or so words of your title and gives the page and promulgate new knowledge. A refereed journal is considered superior to a nonrefereed journal because the decision to publish is made by an editor and members of an editorial board rather than by a single editor. Because scholars volunteer their time to review manuscripts, you are expected to submit one manuscript to one rnal at a time. If you ever do submit an article to more than one journal and you need to retract it from Journal B because Journal A has accepted it, you can bet your year’s salary that you will never published in Journal B. More importantly, word can get around, you can find yourself unable to publish anywhere. In narrow disciplines where most of the scholars know each other, it is even possible that your manuscript could be sent to the same reviewers by different journals, thereby killing your chances to publish in either journal.
When you submit an article for publication to a refereed journal, editors usually scan the cover letter and manuscript to see whether or not it conforms to the submission standards and editorial mission of the press. Because the better journals and presses are flooded with manuscripts, editors are quick to scrawl their initials on a form rejection letter. Thus a work that you spent years writing may be rejected in ten seconds if you fail to follow the correct form of  documentation, fail to submit the required number of copies and self_addressed stamped envelope (SASE), or fail to present a readable copy.
Some editors of refereed journals take on a caretaker role rather than a leadership role, sending most submissions out for review relying strongly on the review process to determine whether or not to publish a manuscript. As anyone knows who has had the unfortunate experience of working with a caretaker editor, one negative review can torpedo your submission even if it is followed by several positive ones. In contrast, more dynamic editors send out only what looks good to them, and they look critically at all evaluations. Most journal editors send a manuscript to at least two reviewers. Once the reviews are returned to the editor, he or she will usually synthesize the criticisms and reject, accept, or describe the ways the manuscript can be improved. Caretaker editors will usually reject a manuscript outright if one of the reviews is strongly negative. Even when the editor requests revisions, the man usually will need to pass through the peer_review process again before being accepted.
Because scholarly journals usually do not pay scholars to serve on editorial boards or to review articles, the peer_review process can take a ridiculous amount of time. Since the prestige of a journal is somewhat influenced by who serves on the editorial board and who works as review readers, journal editors are caught in the Catch_22 of asking the busiest scholars to review manuscripts. When a senior scholar is several months late, all the editor can do is write strong letters, complain by phone, or—in the worst case—send the manuscript back out for review to another senior scholar. Some clever journal editors arrange for the top scholars in a discipline to serve on the editorial board but actually send the manuscripts to review readers, who generally are active yet junior scholars in the discipline who are willing and able to critique manuscripts quickly.
Once the reviews do come back, they often provide more disagreement than agreement. Before dismissing any critiques as eccentric or petty, however, you should remember that reading is inherently a subjective process. If you hope to reach a broad audience, then you must account for a diverse number of critical responses. This does not mean that you should accept all criticism  at face value. If an editor requests that you resubmit your work after revising it, you do not necessarily need to account for all of the reviewers’ criticisms. It is possible, after all, that one of the reviewers holds an entirely antagonistic ideological position to yours, and no amount of rewriting in the world will satisfy him or her. When a reviewer seems to be a member of a different academic camp, it is worthwhile calling or writing the editor and asking have the essay reviewed by a different reader on the next go around.
If the manuscript is flatly rejected by the journal that you originally targeted it for, you will need to pursue other publishers. To do so, you may want to review the table of contents of the other professional journals to which you subscribe. If an appropriate publisher still has not occurred to you, consult your colleagues, and review Current Contents, which reproduces the tables of contents of thousands of scholarly journals. You may also find it useful to scan the sources of information provided at the conclusion of this book. Next, go through a few issues of journals to which you would like to submit your work. By evaluating the current table of contents and editorial policy of a journal, you should be able to determine whether there is a good match between your article and a particular publisher. Record (in your writing and research notebook, if you have one) the editor’s name, address, and phone number and pay particular attention to the editorial policy and submission policy of the journal. Note, for example, how the journal prefers to publish statistical research, specularticles, ethnographic research, pedagogical suggestions, or reviews. What kind of primary audience is the journal targeted for__a trade (that is, a commercial) audience? Teachers? Technicians? Scholars? Scientists? How are the essays written? Do most authors use frequent headings and subheadings, graphs and figures, or lengthy bibliographies and appendixes? Are research methods hidden in appendixes or foregrounded in lengthy introductions? Do most introductions offer hints of the articles’ conclusions? Are the manuscripts thick with academic gobbledy-gook or clearly written? Are most of the authors big names from ious institutions? Is it necessary for you to submit camera ready copy? Are you expected to pay a subvention, that is, pay part of the costs of publishing? While asking these sorts of questions is admittedly time_consuming, you can save time now by eliminating unlikely publishers. As much as you might like to publish in Journal X, you really shouldn’t bother tying up your manuscript in the peer-review process for three to twelve months if that journal is a long shot.
Because it takes time to research potential publishers, you may want to record your findings now so that you will not need to take the “walk of depression” back to the library to find new places to submit the manuscript after it is rejected. Rank order five or so likely journals for a particular manuscript. When considering the best places to publish your work, consider where the important articles in your field are published, how many subscribers a particular journal has, how often the journal is published, how impressively the journal is formatted, even how impressive the title of the journal will appear to academicians in your department and college who have other specialties.
To overcome the tendency to allow an article to sit moldering in a desk drawer after a rejection, some industrious authors prepare five to ten envelopes for mailing. Thus, when their first choice rejects the manuscript, all they need to do is reprint the form letter, stick the manuscript in the prepared envelope, and send it back out for review.

Should You Write a Query Letter or Call the Editor?
Before writing a cover letter for an article, you should consider calling the journal editor and asking directly whether he or she would be interested in receiving your manuscript. Of course, goal is not to bully the editor into looking at the manuscript.  Instead, if the editor desires, you are willing to submit it provided it gets a quick review. While this human touch probably will not  increase your chances of publication, it often will ensure that your manuscript will receive some special attention when it comes in. Moreover, informal contact with editors may result in requests that you write book reviews, articles, or books on related subjects at a later date. Also, if the editor is not interested in your topic, he or she still may know another journal or anthology editor who is looking for material related to your subject.
Even after conducting extensive market research, you may be unsure about whether a particular manuscript is appropriate for a journal. For example, a journal’s editorial guidelines could be broad and the scope of the existing table of contents could be quite eclectic. You might also sense that interest in your topic has been exhausted by previous essays in the journal. If you are reluctant to call an editor or if you have heard at conferences or through the academic grapevine that an editor is not particularly approachable, you may want to write a one_page letter describing your project asking whether he or she wants to see it. Although this task may add a few weeks to the evaluation time for your manuscript, it actually may save you months or even a year. After all, if the journal has a caretaker editor, one who doesn’t carefully scan the pounds of manuscripts that come over the transom, then the query letter—since it requires a thoughtful response from the editor—may save your manuscript from unnecessarily entering the peer-review process.

What Do Editors Look For in Query and Cover Letters?
Submitting a poorly written query letter can be compared to driving a nail through your right foot and then trying to run a marathon. If you break with convention in an awkward manner, editors will assume that you are a neophyte. In fact, because so much academic writing is initiated by editors prodding senior scholars, your need to write a query already makes your qualifications suspect. Nevertheless, you can create a favorable first impression by addressing the following points in a single page on your institution’s letterhead:
1. Demonstrate that you are familiar with the editor and journal. Address the editor by name and relate the current submission, if possible, to earlier works published by the press.
2. Offer a dynamic overview of your project and its significance. Explain how your work contributes to scholarship.
3. Explain your qualifications for doing the work and, if possible, mention other publishing credits.
4. While you certainly want to avoid the impression that you are submitting a rough draft, you may find it useful to express your willingness to make any changes that the editor or editorial board deems necessary.
5. Be sure that you have correctly followed the journal’s submission requirements. While editors of journals in the sciences often do not require a self_addressed Stamped envelope for the return of the manuscript, most editors of journals in the humanities and social sciences will not even read your submission if you fail to include an SASE Errors in documentation style are extremely annoying to journal editors because they demonstrate your lack of awareness of disciplinary standards and typically require work on the editor’s part to be rectified. From experience, editors know that serious errors in documentation are nearly always correlated with shoddy scholarship.

Because some journals fail to acknowledgereceiptof a manuscript you may want to attach a self_addressed postcard so that the editor can mail it back when the manuscript arrives. This step help avoid the lame excuse that many productive authors have heard at one time, “Sorry, we never received your submission. It must have been lost in the mail!” If three or four months pass after your submission has been acknowledged, you would be wise to call the editor and inquire about it.

HOW TO MARKET SCHOLARLY BOOKS
The process of marketing a book proposal or a book is similar to, but more rigorous than, that of publishing a scholarly article. In fact, you can use most of the marketing strategies for journal  articles to help you find a book publisher. There are, however, some important differences between book and article marketing.
First, while authors of articles typically conduct the research, write the article, and then send it unsolicited to a journal, many university press books are actually solicited by editors before any  writing is done. In his survey of fifty_two university presses, Paul Parsons found that one third of the university press books published each year were acquired by editors before any work was  done. Because of increased competition among university presses acquisitions editors are prowling conferences and the halls of academe, encouraging promising junior scholars and pleading with senior scholars to transform important articles into full_length books.
It generally makes sense to determine whether there is any interest in your idea before diving headfirst into the research and writing. To find a publisher for your book idea, you can review the Literary Market Place, which provides a list of the major university presses. Take note of the senior editor’s and acquisitions editor’s name, the number of books produced by each press, and the list_building areas defined by each press. In addition, you may want to consult the annual Directory of the Association of American University Presses, available from AAUP, 584 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. Also, examine who publishes the important books in your field and the books that you enjoy reading.
In a three_ring binder make a list of the first dozen publishers you would like to submit your book or book proposal to. If possible, get catalogues of these publishers’ books and scan them to make connections between your project and others that the publishers have produced. If one of your colleagues has published a book with a publisher that is appropriate for your project, ask if he or she believes the editor would be willing to speak with you. Perhaps your colleague knows the private phone line to the acquisitions editor or would be willing to call the editor on your behalf. Because of the flood of books that comes over the transom, most editors are unwilling to take phone calls from unknown academic authors.
If your book is already completed, you may feel a strong urge to send twenty or so copies out for review at the best university presses. However, this is a needlessly counterproductive and expensive way to market your work. In his interviews with university press editors, Paul Parsons discovered that many editors dread unsolicited manuscripts and that more and more university presses are unwilling to consider them. In his survey of seventy_four American university presses, Parsons found that only 9 percent of the 9,610 unsolicited manuscripts received by fifty_two presses were actually sent out for review. Ultimately, 2 percent of these 9,610 manuscripts were accepted for publication.
To save time and money and to establish good will with an acquisitions editor, you should write a query letter rather than sending your book. As discussed earlier, query letters need to be energetic and well written. Editors want to know how your book extends the knowledge of your discipline, how it relates to their list, who the primary and secondary audiences are, how long it is, and when it can be completed or if it is already done. Some presses also want a guarantee of exclusivity__that is, they want your promise that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere and that it will not be submitted elsewhere while being considered by the press. Others want a right offirst refusal, which usually means that you can submit it elsewhere, but that they have the first right to publish it. If you do submit a book or book proposal to several publishers, you are honor bound to mention this in your cover or query letter.
While submitting a query letter rather than sending the book unsolicited is a more professional approach, it will not guarantee you publication. Parsons found that

Responding university presses collectively estimated that roughly one of every ten queries results in an editor’s request to see the complete manuscript. Of those reaching this intermediate stage, an estimated 18 percent actually proceed through editor review, outside peer evaluation, and editorial committee approval. Overall, then, responding presses collectively estimate that about 2 percent of author queries eventually result in a published book__identical to the percentage of unsolicited manuscripts eventually published. (54)

While practices vary from press to press, book publishers, particularly textbook publishers, tend to send manuscripts out to more reviewers, sometimes as many as seven or nine. Because most university presses pay for the peer reviews, you will generally find that reviewers go into more detail regarding the faults of your proposal or book than they do when critiquing your essays. Unfortunately, reviewers for presses are not necessarily more punctual than those for journals. In addition, academic book publishing adds another curve to the scholarly publishing maze: even if the reviews are mostly positive, your project still may be rejected. For after the review process, the editor needs to win the approval of the press’s editorial board. While the role and constituency of editorial committees vary from press to press, they are generally composed of distinguished faculty members from a variety of disciplines at the press ‘s home institution, and their primary role is to ensure that the books published by the press meet scholarly standards (Parsons). Once your project has made it through the review process, however, you are usually assured of publication. For instance, in Paul Parsons’s study of fifty_two university presses, he found that “about 3 percent of all manuscripts brought before editorial committees ultimately are denied the imprint” (99).
Before blowing your savings on a wild vacation after hearing that your book proposal has been accepted, ~ ou should take a long, hard look at the publishing contract. Even if your book proposal is accepted and you are awarded a small advance, your book can still be rejected once it is completed. Publishers nearly always reserve the right to reject a book that was accepted in proposal form. Because you can always be rejected, acceptance of a book proposal is not necessarily better than no acceptance. After all, in the proposal stage you may sign a lousy contract with a poor publisher. After agreeing to no or few royalties, after signing away copyright on the book, you are honor bound to send the book in to that publisher even if the completed book warrants a significant advance, royalties, and publication with a major press. On the other hand, few scholarly books make much money, so most academic authors are pleased with any book contracts they can get. A good publisher, as the says goes, is the one who signs the contract.

WORKS CITED

Fiske, Donald W., and Louis Fodd. “But the Reviewers Are Making Different Criticisms of My Paper! “ American Psychologist (May 1990): 591_598.
Parsons, Paul. Cetting Published: The Acquisition Process at University Presses. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989.