David bos see next is bill killing england and wrapping up our best look at the nonfiction books according to new york city times is new yorker staff writer and National BookAward Finalist david grant with killers of the flower moon about a string of murders in oklahoma during the 1920s that target ad members of the osage Indian Nation they have or will be appearing on booktv you can watch them on our website, booktv. Org. Take moax he is in the floor. Thank you all for coming this evening so pleased to be hosting this special panel on how to publish with the University Press. Sponsored by Columbia University press for University Press week 2017. Incase you couldnt tell we really like University Press this year. [laughter] so show of hands if this is your first tile at book culture. Well welcome, were so happy you found us. [laughter] so over 20 years proud to be part of the community and so happy to carry onefelt widest selections of academic titles many the university and klum use press is one of our greatest supporters in our efforts tonight monitored by jennifer associate and a director of University Press but before we begin i have a quick mote as you may have noticed cspan booktv is here recording this talk. So during q and a portion of the tonight program wait for microphone to come to you ors they wont be able to record your question thanks everyone for coming out o ill turn it over to jennifer to introduce you to our panelist. Thank you very much and i do want to say also that we love you too one of the most important bookstores for University Press as you can see if you wondered aisles you can see all of us represented here. I also want to thank the panelist panelist, i will go in order so nick james is i know you have a special title. Comparative literature at a Columbia University hes author of two books, boats published by University Press, and sells british fiction 1810 to 1870 and reading neuroscience and form of victorian fiction and he also writes on contemporary literature and the humanities, the novel reading, et cetera for many publications including the atlantic and plus one new york tiles book review the nation. And public book and that leads me into Sharon Marcus who is orlando hairman professor of english an comparative literature at Columbia University and dean of humanities i think still or ended her first book apartment stories sitting at home in 19th century parses many london published by university of California Press and her second book between women marriage signer an friendship in victorian england was published by princeton University Press so we have yours were oxford i think. And then and also i should mention public books again because in i think 2012 sharon and katelyn at nyy cofounded public books and online magazine that features really great accessible writing by scholar but other people in the Community Activist as well as writers on arts and ideas and a its a great publication. And then all the way over there to my left is Eric Schwartz my colleague at columbia editorial director, and hes the editor for sociology and cognitive science books and running Acquisition Department worked at princeton University Press so we have a lot of University Presses represented here. So i just wanted to start by stating what is the University Press . Because some people dont know what makes it different from another sort of publisherrer. Either a commercial trade publickish what publishes most of the fiction and general nonfiction you might read. But also how it differs from a commercial scholar publisher. First of all were not for profit organization. All University Presses are it shall that doesnt mean were for a loss we dont try to incur a loss but not for a profit and were not out to just sign out books that will earn money. For the organization secondly, were situated within a university, in fact, university is our middle name. And so our goal our missions of the university in the mission of the University Press are entwined in some way the university wants to postpoer research in the generation of scholarship and University Press really wants to disseminate that scholarship to cure rate it and get it out into the world. And we also will publish important books that a commercial publisher would not take on because they would not make any money for the company. They might even lose money. There are commercial presses that will publish publish in increasing number of off autoimf but published for normal human being and published them for the library so University Press do try to reach an audience of educated general readers with their books and pricing is usually set to that level. Next acquiring books eric runs the department. It differs from other kinds of publishers so our editors often do have a degree in the field or they have had some kind of graduate training, and they are given areas of specialization to acquire in so we have a history editor who also does economics and we have a philosophy in religion editor so they become specialists in those areas go to conference and read journal and meet people so they develop expertise and group of people they cultivate and learn about new trends in the field. A trade house the editor main relationship would be within agent. Now we do deal with agent seems but for the most part, the trade publishers are their main person that theyre cultivating is the agent that theyre dealing with and they try to get agent to submit books that they would like to publish. And the other thing i wanted to say before we get started is University Press is published several types of books do publish autograph that only specialists would read. But we also publish trade books general interest books that you understood find in barnes noble and we publish course adoption books that we know would be not a course adoption book that mcgraw hill or pearson would publish because it is too small market but were happy to have it. Because book sale year after year. Then we do rigorous peer review for book we sell and important in todays atmosphere of fake news and concerns about inaccuracy and information that gets out there. We publish work that is have thed and verified. And finally we have a Publication Committee and nick happen to sit on that committee how. They read peer review and they hear what editor has to read and reads a portion of the man ewe script and then theyre the final okay if they agree then we can offer a contract for a book and thats very different are from another kind of publisher. I thought i would ask questions around several topics what are important for University Presses, and will in the end give a sense of how of how we work and how go about about looking at book and accepting them so 50 eu78 going to group my question around various topics and first topic is peer review which i just mentioned. So this is just briefly essential to our mission of advantaging scholarship and what it means sends something were considering a man ewe script or proposal to a couple of scholars who the author does not know were sending it they dont know who the person is who has read it but peer review is very important part of what we do. So i i guess sharon and nick first of all, i guess as an author and as graduate student advisors, and in your case maybe as formaller administrator what do you think of the value of fear re . Riew maybe sharon you can start and i think that peer review is having your ideas evaluated by experts and it is important to do that and when you get a book from a University Press you know that it has been evaluated by two experts writing anonymously without worrying about any of the politics that might affect the academy. I think it would be very interesting if peer review were double whriend and people writing review didnt know with who they were reviewing and produce interesting results. So what peer review does is it test books how original they are and a accurate they are and also i think helps them modulate their scope so a book to come across as narrow in peer review process may say this is interesting and you may expand your argument about term mite to include Housing Construction and inspection or they might conversely say youre overreaching a bit with this argument about how termites are key to understanding cosmology maybe ratchet it down a bit so great to have other people read your stuff and without all of the die maamics involved when you give things to friend or o advisors get their honest opinion. I think for young scholar peer review is a great preview of the tenure process and inspection of the internal politics of the department and university these are outside experts who are rad if iing your book. If it is working on your own o term and peer review keep use honest. I had a book article Peer Reviewed important in this case that it was double blind didnt know anything about me but reading my argument and telling me what worked and where they wanted a little more evidence and it is extremely helpful set of responses and feedsback. Thicke if you want you could add to that but also add a role to review about fields an how you sort of judge hose. The thing i would add to what sharon gave a great summary of that. I have one thing to that which is did i best peer review system ensures a sort of knewness to books one thing peer review is very good at weeding out reputation or reiteration is a you know my own field is fiction and a great parable about this novel middle march and some of you will know what im aiming at but main character one is not main character but one of the main is working on a impossibly lengthy monograph midway hes informed but a young man doapght you know germans theyve done all of that already. And theres a way with in which thats shattering moment of peer review but a way in which peer review does mitigate against reputation many a field. And so if something is in peer review theres a stronger claim nationally a new contribution to knowledge. Than without that when i see peer reviews main thing i tend to look for besides are there theoretical ground that are unnecessary. I actually want to see the reviewer provide a summary of the books argument. That shows that at least there was an amendment to read the manuscript with sympathy. If a peer review or only concentrates on details, that to me is often a sign that book was not read well and it was read with some sub training that im not aware of. So it should be able toll recapitulate the argument. It should be able to suggest the limits of that argument as well as the newness of it. Those i mean thats the first thing i look for when i judge that. You know, i it cost me much nor informative than that but i want them to mirror back what their expanse stepping back from a whole look line. Yes, and i would say theyre also times when we have to read between parking lot lines you know sometimes somebody will sort of with praise they dont want to say no this isnt groundbreaking original scholarship, but they bsh did you you can kind of get at it that way. Is you learn to read kind of lexicon of terms that are faint praise in lech con of materials that are strongly meant praise are. You can tell, and prerk your point of view, view what was being said is when theres conflict in the room so reader e has a particular read and b has a slightly different reading and author has to engage with one of those one of those readings to determine what is the book what is the argument that they actually want to make . And it just will make for a better more engageed become and let the publisher know that author is really committed to this project and that they are going to defend and stand up for the argument that they are making. Peer review from an editorial perspective keeps us honest. Theres always a move to try to do the book thats going to be more sensation mall or book thats going to sell more copies. And knowing that our projects are going to be judged by scholars in the field be judged by the members of the Publication Committee in our work is judged by the members of the Publication Committee. We meet with Publication Committee the final thursday of every month, its like many at times where you know you are going in there, and you have work that youve invested time in, and youre going to have to in some cases defend the projects some times, sometimes you succeed and you know, infrequently you dont succeed. But its setting really important to keeping us honest and we often think about to consider for publication what would perception of the the publication comet be of this project before we even get started down the road of a review process. Yes, i think as im listening to this conversation, i realized i should mention for anybody who is particularly interested in peer review that had the aaup now called the aup association of u. S. Presses recently put out of a kind of best practices booklet on peer review units if youre interested in had it, or what to expect if your book is going to be sent out for peer review it is a handy guide. I also wanted to something that occurs to me about our committee there are people on it from really nine different fields and cross Humanity Social Sciences and science and business, and so the way scholars and different fields react to reviews is always quite interesting. And also the type of reviews you bet when you humanity you might get seven pages seven space with loss of person who actually reads every word and is making helpful suggestion and typos things like that and might get something thats in [laughter] in, you know, finance area or science and actually one person from Business School once told me that. How much do you . So anyway, it is something that really stands out and i think when it works well it makes a book better book and hes editor help guide the author. Helps us understand and this kind of publishing is some of it very specialized and none of us knows the field well. So these reviews help us situate it in the market who would be interested in that book. We can also use the review process too as an opportunity for Network Building for the author and to add diversity to the reception of the book. So i will often look for a book interest across fields, ill celebrity reviewer try to get reviewer in one field and reviewer in another try to get a senior person and a junior person. Often tombs readings can be very durchght, and it can be really useful for the author. Especially for european authors thinking about leaders who would be important to them for them to know for for those people out in the field to know their work. Its a really great opportunity to just kind of build americas within fields and use our kind of placements to do that. Another thing we often say if peer review is picking up something in that book that seems amiss and that the author doesnt want to deal with it, we often say well this could be a preview of what is going to happen when you have a book published and theres a published review of it. This is the kind of issue that could come u up so might as well catch it now before it is published. So i thought maybe we would move on to acquiring these books and eric you know what are the different ways acquisition editors look for books to consider for publication and how and how does do their methods differ whether it is a monograph or trade bock or a textbook. So i think you know we have a variety of different ways in which we acquire books. You know, there are the projects that just come in you know over by email and such different fields or different that way, our science editor could probably go several years before somebody would come over for him whereas our plos if i editor probably gets five projects day. So there you know, theyre different. Were in different fields or different in that regard. I would say that number of books that we will acquire based on that method is very, very slim. Editors make visits to campuses, we go to economic conferences. And use those as Networking Opportunities to find out what projects people are working on. And we each within of our list has something of a personality to it. Broadly speaking i think columbia books are global or been and contemporary we want our books to have a certain kind of flavor and feel across the entirety of the list. There could be perfectly Great Projects that come into us that simply dont fit you know that that kind of imrand identity and might not be right for us. We get projects from agents on occasion and go to Frankfurt Book Fair and thats a enormous yearly book fair we have a publisher in the world attends the 100,000 attendees to open to the public on saturday and sunday and i had a good fortunate of being in train station is part of the players were swarming into train station as i was leaving to go to he were beginning to frankfurt. And we also commissioned projects so you often know what are the structural holes within a given field. You know theres a real need for you know economic book on a Climate Change and wouldnt it be great if x person wrote that book. And so youre writing to people that way being somebody write an oped seeing something . Public books. Writing to those authors and saying hey, wouldnt it be a great idea you worked on this kind of project so whole variety of way in which we can get books into the pipeline. And sharon, im thinking about public books where yo