And weve been so happy to carry one of the widest selections in the City Columbia University press has been one of the greatest partners and supporters they will be moderated by a jennifer crew. Before we begin we have a quick procedural note. Cspan bucket tv is recording this talk. During the q a portion please wait for a microphone to come to you. Otherwise they wont be able to record your question. Thank you very much. We love you too. But culture is probably one of the most you see a lot of us represented here. I will go in order. I know you have a special title. The author of two books and the physiology of the novel. He also writes on contemporary literature in the novel reading et cetera many publications including the atlantic and the plus one. Her first book apartment stories city and home in 19th century published. Between was published by Princeton University president. I think in 2012 sharon and caitlin that features really great assessable writing by scholars but also other people in the community and activists as well as writers on arts in ideas and is a great publication. And then i get all the way over there to my left is the editor first sociology and he has also worked at Princeton University president. Some people dont know what makes it different from another sort of a publisher. How it differs from scholar publisher. We try not to incur too much of a loss. Were notforprofit and were not out to just sign up books that will earn money. We are situated within a university so our goal and mission of the university and the mission they will Foster Research in the University Press really wants to disseminate that scholarship. The commercial publisher would not take on because they would were not make any money for the company. There are commercial scholar precious publishing an increasing number of graphs they have priced them out of reach need to try to reach an audience of educated general readers with their books in the pricing. Our method of acquiring that. Our editors often do have a degree in the field. They are given areas of specialization to acquire and. We have a history editor who also does economics and we have philosophy in religion editors. They go to the conferences they read journals and they get to meet people. The main relationship would be with an agent. We do deal with agent sometimes. The main person that they are cultivating as agent that they are dealing with. The University Press has published several types of books. Only a specialist would read. But we also publish trade books. Not a kind of course adoption book. It is to small market. We are happy to have it because the book sells year after year. We do rigorous peer review for every book that we consider and then in the atmosphere of fake news and concerns about an accuracy and information that gets out there. We publish work that is vetted and verified. And finally we have a Publication Committee and neck have insisted on that the committee now. They read a portion of the manuscript. If they agree then we can offer a contract for a book. I thought i would ask questions around several topics that are important for University Presses and then in the end will give a sense of how we work and how we go about accepting them. With the various topics. This is just briefly essentials to our mission of advancing the scholarships and it means that we consider a manuscript or proposal to scholars that the author does not know we are sending to. I guess as an author as as a graduate graduate student advisors. In a maybe former administrator. What do you think of the value of peer reviews. I think it is having your ideas evaluated by experts and its very important to do that and when you get a book from a University Press you know that it has been evaluated. Without worrying about any of the politics. We could do some interest interesting results. For how original they are and how accurate they are. And it helps them modulate their scope. It is really interesting. And you may expand the argument to include or they might say you are overreaching a bit. Maybe ratchet it down a bit. Its great to have other people which are self and without all of the dynamics and the things that you give to. Their honest opinion. And also protection against the internal politics they are ratifying their book. Mostly if they are working properly on its own terms. I think it keeps us honest. It was very valuable to know that the person it was double blind. They were just reading my argument in telling me what works and what they wanted a little bit more evidence on. And also add something about your role on the Publication Committee. The thing i would add i would only add one thing to that. I think it ensures a newness to books. Its very good at weeding out those reputations. My own field is a victorian fiction. Its a great parallel parable about that. The mean character. Working on an impossibly lengthy autograph dont you know that germans actually they have done all of that already. And there is a way in which that it does mitigate against reputation in the field. There is a struck claim. For a new contribution to knowledge. When i see. Reviews of the main thing i tend to look for i want to see the reviewer provide a summary of the books argument. That shows that there was an attempt to read that manuscript with sympathy. If they only concentrate on details that to me as the sign that it was not read while it was red with some sub training. It should be able to suggest the limits of that argument the first thing i look for. I want to to mirror back to me. There are times when we have to read between the lines. They would sing the praise. You dont want to see that groundbreaking original scholarship. But you can kind of get at it that way. You do learned to read a lexicon of terms. You can tell. And eric from your point of view as an editor. What was just been set also. When there is conflict in the reviews so reader a has a particular reading has a slightly different reading and the author has to engage with one of those readings to determine what is argument that the action want to make. The author is really committed to the project. On peer review from an editorial perspective keeps us honest. There is always a move to to try to do the book that is going to be more sensational. Or the one that will sell more copies. And knowing that our projects are good to be going to be judged by scholars in the field and be judged by that members of the Publication Committee. We meet with our Publications Committee the final theres a thursday of every month. At times you are going in there and you had work that you have invested time and juergen have to defend those projects. Infrequently you dont succeed. It is really important to keeping us honest. We often think about books that we are to consider for publication in what with the perception of the Publications Committee be before we even get started down the road of a review process. As im listening to this conversation i realized i should mention for anyone that the aaa up recently put out a best practices booklet on peer units. Or what to expect if its going to be put out for peer review. A something that occurs to me about our committee. There are people on from nine different fields. The way scholars in different fields react is always quite interesting. The types of reviews you get the person really actually read every word and is making helpful suggestions in typos and things like that. You may get something in the finance area or science. They understand that time is money. One person from Business School actually told me that. It is something that really stands out. When it works will and makes the book a better book it helps the editor help guide at the author and helps us understand as publishers some of it is very specialized. These reviews help us situate it in the markets. We also use it as a review opportunity. I will often look for if there is a book that we have interest to people across the fields i will select the reviewer. And try to get a senior person in a junior person and they will oftentimes have very different readings. It can be very useful for the author. Thinking about readers who would be important to them. For those people to know theyre worth. It is a really great opportunity to just kind of build networks within fields and user placements to do that. Another thing i dont think we mentioned. Pure view is picking up something in that book that seems amiss. We often say this could a preview of what will happen when you have the book published. In my book catch it now before its published. I thought we have maybe move maybe move on to acquiring these books what are the different days and ways on how do the message differ. We have a variety of different ways in which we acquire books there are that projects it just come in by email my email and such. Different fields theyre different that way. They can go several years before that. The philosophy editor probably gets five projects a day there are different fields in that regard. I would say the number of things that you acquire is very slim. They make visits to campuses. And we use is as networking opportunities. Each one of our lists has something of a personality to it. Broadly speaking i think columbia books are global, urban 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 in it might not be right for us. We do get projects from agents on occasion we go to the Frankfurt Book Fair and that is a enormous yearly there are 300,000 attendees at this years. They open it to the public on saturday and sunday. At a good fortune of being in the train station when they were swarming and as i was leaving to go we also commissioned projects so by being in the field you often know what are the structural holds and there is a real need an economics book on a certain aspect of climate change. And when it would be great if x person wrote that book. I need to people that way and seen someone right the oped. Writing to those authors insane hey wouldnt be a great idea if you worked on this kind of project. A whole variety of ways thinking about public books where youre really trying to reach beyond the academy a little bit. Both of you are probably working on your third books. When you think i want to reach beyond a smaller audience into a bigger audience and how does it play in your mind about what can a publisher you would go to. I suppose you mean every writer looks at lists. In the list that fits them best. I think its often a process of discovery. Out of ignorance you imagine youre writing a book. You imagine as a dialogue. There may be at their party out there that you are talking to. You dont know if they are qualified to. He very much want that person to hear what you have to say. So in a way skinning a list is a way of seeing what are the possible audiences and is it something i think i want to take on. And one of the things you have to think about is choosing between the trade press. I am finishing a book right now on the history of celebrity. They say that would make a great trade book. But im actually publishing it with with the University Press very happily. If you have a book that could swing either way. Why would you go with the University Press in many ways the trade press seems to have all of the glamour. First of all, they will let you keep your footnotes and if you are a scholar you are attached to your footnotes. We can actually say anything properly. I think you are free to write a book that is argument driven. And these days if you publish with the trade press they are going to ask you to write a book that is a narrative driven. Meyers only people summit people so obsessed with celebrity. It would probably had to start with Something Like on november 21882 Sarah Bernhardt woke up to find out that i didnt want to write this book that way. If youre gonna write a book thats narrative driven and has to be conceived as a story from the start there only a few and im not one of them. Not one of them can make an argument through a narrative. That is a very tricky thing to do. I think its easier to make an argument as an argument. Even have their own assessments and i chose to put my energy into that. I think that is all i will say. There are a lot of other reasons. You are in the company of other scholars with whom youre in dialogue. They help it seem more compelling and your book can reflect on their book as well. That is a very good thing to do. It might not fit in very well. Or you might end up being the nerd at the fancy party. Over a long span of time. The nice thing about University Press works is that we really want the book to have lasting staying power. We want our books to contribute to a debate or spark a debate that may lack for decades. The ideal Successful UniversityUniversity Press book is one that held a thousand copies. That means in your 10,000 copies has a book that is meaningful. Theyre using it they are using it for teaching and learning. It has have a meaningful impact on its field. They exist to make money. And if the book it doesnt sell while in the beginning they move on to the next product and so on and so forth. And we make a little bit more of a commitment. Its interesting ear, about the argument book. We have that conversation around our table does this book really have an argument as a going from beginning to end or they will submit books that are just chapter on this. They hope that it will bring altogether. It really doesnt work. If we can articulate that argument. That is what we are looking for. In response to you. Our sales in any given year 65 of our revenue comes from back list books. They are ones that are used in courses. They were developed as course books a lot of them were monograph. And some of them were books that were field changing. Enough people noticed it and noticed it was worthwhile and to further the field. Some of these books may only sell 5200 copies per year but they keep selling and they were really published as that monograph. They are there. Its very hard to predict which ones they will be. Actually, about these the textbooks in the trade books when youre sitting on the Publication Committee you realize and you know this book we think will be a trade book we will sell a lot of copies and this one is a monograph. What goes through your head when you think about those different types that we are doing. You are obviously aware of those different types. The answer is always the same. If it is a textbook is it still being adopted in courses. Is it something that banished eight years ago without a trace. Or does it something that will be ford looking enough. Its funny. The genre can be so different and so many ways. But i think that sense of the longer futurity that you might have and other present situations is intact okay. Publishing your book with the University Press so often a first book is a revised dissertation usually. Not always. But im happy when someone decides that was that. Im moving on to my next thing. For both of you im wondering what were the differences in your experience a publishing between the first and second book. I had occasion to go back and read the introduction to my first book and i was really struck by how much i felt like i have to engage with other scholars i would Say Something and then i would say soandso said this. Im building on this. As someone who did not yet had that. That it would be evaluated by ten to 20 people outside of my field. They would have been selected because of the relevance. I dont know who those ten or 20 people are good to be in advance. I thought like i have a spend a lot of energy on situating my ideas and the scholarship and foreground that. And then my second book while i was still as concerned as i was. What am i saying that builds on what people have said before. I flipped things and i presented my ideas first and i put much later in the introduction how does that build on an overturned previous thinking. In one of the reasons i did that was i gave the introduction to a friend of mine who is a journalist and a woman who does not mince her words. I want to know what you have to say. Thats what im reading your book. And i have the freedom to do that now. Give a lot more freedom with your second book in terms of topic, methods of presentation and freedom to foreground your voice and your ideas more. I realized we have similar experiences but reflects in opposite ways. When i think about my first book i have a tremendous time writing it because i was so ignorant of the audience that i was writing it for. In installments. I knew that they would like what they said. It was easy writing and happy writing. But i can detect in my first book on archaeological layer that came at the very end which is exactly as sharon described it a sudden anxious defensiveness about all of the various things i hadnt said and that is just topsoil on top of it. The second book is much more thoroughly integrated. I was already aware of who the audience was. And felt reasonably comfortable among them. It is more integrated. That was not always the happiest writing experience. You trade happiness for Something Like a sense of security i guess. Thats all sounding very downbeat. I think that sense of security meant it was much harder to tug at that layer of discussion of other scholars than simply remove it. I can see that glaring now. My graduate students often say what should i do to turn the dissertation into a book and i feel like if the dissertation advising process as gone while the actual answer is very little. But i know that that is not what editors ever want to hear and actually once youre hired at a job you have to demonstrate that the book you published was really different from your dissertation. I think what happens is a lot of people spend three to four years laboring to transform their dissertation only to find that there really wasnt that much to change. They probably couldve sent out in the first year. Maybe they shouldve just cut the wiki the weakest chapter. And then add