Customer Reviews

Handbook for Academic Authors

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a useful book, although I think that the title is somewhat misleading. The book covers a very specific topic: the many details of submitting and publishing an academic book. It does not cover writing for peer-review journals and thus will be rather unhelpful for the academics in fields where articles rather than books are the royal road to tenure.

What Luey covers, however, she covers very well. She comes to the topic with a wealth of experience -- true "insider's knowledge". She edited scholarly books and textbooks for a decade; she's taught scolarly editing and publishing; she even formed a small publishing company. All in all, as she puts it, she's been an "editor, indexer, publisher, production manager, and shipping clerk."

Luey covers the details of publishing scholarly books from start to finish, including specific types of books such as textbooks and multi-author collections of articles or essays. Financial details, such as royalties, are explained from the point of view of both author and publisher. Luey is very helpful in giving professors a sense of publishers' pressures and business considerations. She discusses how to consider which publisher is most appropriate for submitting a proposal as well as the form and mechanics of submissions. She describes contracts and tells what to look for before signing. She tells how to prepare the typescript and illustrations professionally. I thought that her explanation of why the prices of academic books varies was an interesting topic.

I am a professional counselor and coach to junior faculty and graduate students and I'm very glad to have found this book. I will definitely recommend it to the people I work with who are in the process of revising their dissertations to be published. Her explanations of how the content and style of a dissertation must be transformed in order to publish are excellent. This chapter, "Revising a Dissertation" and will be especially useful to junior academics in humanities and social science departments in which turning the dissertation into the first book is an expected prerequisite of tenure. If you are working on your first scholarly book Luey's advice will help you through the process.

This is a well-written, entertaining look at academic publishing that is filled with valuable advice. Luey breaks down the processes involved in different kinds of academic publishing into steps that are easy to understand. What is particularly valuable is the perspective that she provides on how the publishing industry works, answering typical author questions such as "Why does it take so long to get a response?" and "Why do academic books cost so much/ make so little money?" Her practical information about how royalties work is worth the price of the book alone, as is the extremely helpful section on the difference between a dissertation and a book. Highly recommended for any academics worrying about publishing (and who isn't?).

Very comprehensive, especially, of course for the American market. I bought it because I wanted to have ideas about how to find a publisher after I had all but finished my book; but I wish I had seen it before I started writing, because it makes many technical points about how to prepare a typescript. It will take a fair amount of time to adjust my script to satisfy the technical requirements publishers apparently make.

This is a good book, just not what I needed. (I was looking more for information on copyright rules.) But for an academic author learning the ropes, it has some solid information.