Blog CCXV (215): The Mechanics of Trade Book Publishing Revisited

In the early days of this blog, I wrote several essays on the publishing process.  Three focused on what it took to get a book into print:

• Blog XXII (22): Book Publishing
• Blog XXIII (23): The Mechanics of Academic Book Publishing
• Blog XXIV (24): The Mechanics of Trade Book Publishing

What does it take to write for the general public?  While I have five academic books to my name and five writing awards, I might not be the best person to answer that question.  I think the observations offered in Blog XXIV are pretty sound, but I have never published a trade book. 

Even if I had, that question is difficult to answer, and the experiences of editors, authors, and literary agents tend to be very different.  The American Historian, a publication of the Organization of American Historians, published an article on this topic: "Writing History for a Popular Audience: A Round Table Discussion."  What makes this article so valuable is it is a roundtable of three individuals involved in the trade book world: Danielle McGuire, an award winning historian who teaches at Wayne State University; Andrew Miller, a senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf; and T. J. Stiles, the Pulitzer Prize winning biographer.   It is a very insightful exchange on publishing, offering a number of perspectives, but one point Stiles made stands out: "Trade publishing exists in the commercial economy. Here, you try to expand your audience, rather than more deeply penetrate a closed market, as in academic publishing. You do that not by dumbing down, but by maximizing the reading experience. The ultimate goal of the trade book is not to advance the state of the field, though it certainly may do that, but to succeed as a book—as an organically complete and satisfying work."

In another article from The American Historian on this topic, Brandon Proia, the history editor at the University of North Carolina Press who previously worked at Basic Books and PublicAffairs, tries to explain what works and does not work in the trade book industry: "The Art of the Serious: Writing History for an Elusive Mass Readership."  As he admits, "There is much mythmaking surrounding the jump from publishing revised dissertations and monographs to writing history for the masses. What makes a trade book 'trade' is the fact that it targets the broadest possible book-buying audience. Yet how to accomplish this is less settled." 

Proia explains that any number of things can go wrong: the editor that acquired the project leaves the press, the manuscript is rushed into production without enough editing, there is not enough marketing support, and so on.  These facts can be a bit demoralizing, but it is hardly surprising.  Books--trade books in particular--are part of the entertainment industry and the whims of what are popular do not always go hand in hand with what is good.  There are too many examples of good television series or films failing to find an audience despite their artistic merit. 

There are a number of differences between television, film and books, but one that works to the advantage of authors and publishers is that books often get the time to become successful.  "What few publishers will admit out loud is that it takes time for a readership to find an author, and vice versa."  Overnight successes are often years in the making.  "It may take multiple books, a multitude of lectures and interviews and reviews before an argument begins to sink in and audiences begin to arise around one’s book."  Basically, he argues that historians make their audiences book after book.  "The serious historian and publisher must cross over to larger and larger audiences—and keep pushing even when the initial attempt doesn’t take. They must do so, not out of a faith that readers must be out there, but precisely because they know that they’re not—not yet. Readers spring up only where we sow."

Anyone interested in going the trade route should read these two essays.  They have much to offer.

Blog CCIV (214): Writing in History Some More

What does it take to be a good writer in the profession of history?  That is an issue that does not get discussed much in graduate programs—at least not at the schools I attended.  Despite that fact it is an important skill set, and I am not the only that thinks so.  "The Junto" is a group blog on early American history.  The contributors tend to be ABD grad students and junior scholars.  The site addresses many issues, not all of them limited to the period before 1815.  There are a couple of interesting interviews with historians about a number of topics.  The ones that focus on the writing process are listed below:

• Edward E. Andrews: "As a teacher, I find that my students understand course material best when it is communicated through stories, anecdotes, and little vignettes, and I think that holds true for our scholarly endeavors, as well."
• Ann Little: "I’m not so much a planner as a noodler. I just noodle along in a pile of sources—or with a few sources and get interested in one detail, which leads me to another detail, which might lead eventually to a story."
• Zachary Hutchins: "For those interested in editing a collection of essays, I have three pieces of advice. First, before circulating a [call for papers], have a preliminary discussion with editors at one or more press... Second, try to select and shape proposals in a way that emphasizes the unity of your collection and the continuities between individual essays... Third, pay more attention to the proposals of your contributors than their CVs."

The New York Times also has a series called "By the Book."  It is a series of Questions and Answers with authors of new books, both fiction and non-fiction about their literary lifestyles.  As a result, many of these entries discuss things other than the craft of writing; what writers would you invite to dinner party, and so on.  Some of the "authors" are not even writers, but the celebrities who have "written" a book with a co-author.  As a result, this series is less useful than the one that The Chronicle of Higher Education published.  Nonetheless, there are several useful comments and the historians, journalists writing history, and even a historian turned novelist featured in this series are listed below:

• H.W. Brands: "To a writer...tone and voice conquer all. Dickens knew it. Tom Wolfe has dined out on it forever."
• Jeffrey Toobin: "I love mastery and confidence in a writer — the feeling that she knows exactly where she’s taking you and why."
• Joseph J. Ellis: He likes writers that "know how to tell a story with a style as distinctive as their fingerprint." 
• David McCullough: "The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. I read it first nearly 50 years ago and still turn to it as an ever reliable aid-to-navigation, and particularly White’s last chapter, with its reminders to 'Revise and Rewrite' and 'Be Clear.'"
• James M. McPherson: "Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, a novel about the battle of Gettysburg that, to my mind, provides the most incisive insights into the various meanings of the war for the men who fought it."
• Erik Larson: "Hemingway may not have been the nicest person in the world, but his work gave me a new way of thinking about writing — the value of weeding out adjectives and adverbs. He was, above all, a master at the art of not saying."
• Sara Paretsky: "Believable characters first, a good story, an understanding of how to pace dramatic action. I like commitment by a writer, to the form, to the story."
• Rick Perlstein: "I look to historians for their power to illuminate not just the invisible lineaments of the present, but also that which is not present. What are the roads that were not taken that most shape our own time?"
• Lynne Cheney: "Some of the best history today is being written by people who aren’t professional historians. Several have journalistic backgrounds — David McCullough, Ron Chernow, Jon Meacham — and they know how to create a gripping narrative, which is pretty important when you are telling a story the ending of which is known."

Blog CCXIII (213): Life in Hell Again

The best parody has an element of truth in it. Here is another cartoon from Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip.  I never dropped out of grad school, but everything else has the ring of truth to it.

 

Blog CCXII (212): Writing in History

In previous posts--Blog XXII and Blog XXV--this blog has stressed the importance of writing well.  As I have argued, this skill is a factor--more indirect than direct, but significant nonetheless--in professional advancement. Rachel Toor, an associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University, tends to think the same way. She has a series that she publishes in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Scholars Talk Writing" in which she interviews a number of individuals from different academic disciplines. Only three of the individuals she has interviewed are historians, but I have included all of them because the issues they discuss are often not that different, in my opinion, from what a publishing historian encounters:

• Carl Elliot: "In academic writing you’re given a lot of latitude to be boring."
• Jennifer Crusie: "It’s an incredibly arrogant act to publish anything."
• Steven Pinker: "Good prose requires dedication to the craft of writing, and our profession simply doesn’t reward it."
• Jay Parini: "You have to write a lot to get better at writing," so "don’t stop."
• Michael Bérubé: "I still have the standard anxiety of a struggling musician: Regardless of the gig, I want to be invited back."
• Deirdre McClosky: "You know the standard is not high in economics. Whenever I get the slightest bit vain about my allegedly good writing, I open The New Yorker and weep."
• James M. McPherson: "I learned how to write mainly by the trial and error of writing."
• Laura Kipnis: "Writing for wider venues is actually a lot more challenging; at least that’s been my experience."
• Camille Paglia: "I must stress that all of my important writing, including my books, has been done in longhand, in the old, predigital way. I absolutely must have physical, muscular contact with pen and page. Body rhythm is fundamental to my best work."
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: "You have to think about what you’ve written from the point of view of someone who isn’t you."
• Sam Wineburg: "The two most important tools a writer has are his ears."
• Anthony Grafton: "It’s a matter of establishing your voice on the page, in the first sentence, while hoping to win the reader’s attention and not put her off,"

HistoryNet, the on-line presence of a number of popular history magazines (American History, America's Civil War, Aviation History, Civil War Times, Military History, MHQ, Vietnam, Wild West, and World War II) has also been interviewing a number of historians, journalists, and biographers about their work.  These interviews published in the various print magazines that HistoryNet represents, focus on a number of issues, but all of them discuss the importance of writing as part of the interview:

• T. J. Stiles: "I try to write the kind of book I like to read. I want to be transported to another place, to have the visceral pleasure of following a subject in peril, and to have those “aha” moments, when I come to see the world in a different way."
• Nancy Plain: "Just try to tell a good story, and tell it, as much as possible, as if they are talking to a friend. Tell it simply and clearly, with colorful details and plenty of primary-source quote."
• Bill O'Neal: "I realized early that I’m not a gifted writer, so I’ve worked very hard (armed with my trusty thesaurus) to become a good craftsman, a wordsmith who can produce a smooth read."
• Rick Atkinson: "My ambition is to have a distinctive narrative voice, to bring a literary sensibility to writing about war, and to make that voice compelling enough and vivid enough that even people who are well read about World War II feel that they are coming to the story fresh."
  

Blog CCXI (211): Patton as an Academic

Mark Grimsley

Mark Grimsley of The Ohio State University is one of the leading military historians in the profession.  He writes primarily on the Civil War time period.  His first book was: The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), which won the Lincoln Prize.  He has written, co-written, or edited five others.  He has won three teaching awards at OSU.  He is also a blogger of the first order.  He developed the website, Facebook page, and blog of the Society for Military.  His website is warhistorian.org and the blog of that website is: "Blog Them Out of the Stone Age: Toward A Broader Vision of Military History and National Security Affairs." 

An essay he posted on "Blog Them Out of the Stone Age" really spoke to me in several ways.  As many of you might note, I wrote a book on the making of the film Patton.  The introduction is the piece of writing I am most proud of at the moment.  I modeled it after the Frank Sinatra film The Manchurian Candidate (1962), cutting back and forth between George C. Scott shooting the scene, the scene itself, and reactions to that section of the film.  (Francis Ford Coppola wrote this section of the script, by gluing several speeches the real Patton gave into one short address).  The chapter that was the most difficult to write was the one, where I discuss all the references to it in films and television shows since  and various other appropriations of the film.  In one of the more clever of these efforts, Grimsley rewrote the scene with Patton as an academic. It begins:

Now I want you to remember that few PhDs ever get the job they really wanted. They get used to taking a job at some college where they feel under-placed.

It ends:

Now, all this stuff about there not being many jobs, much less tenure-track jobs, is absolute gospel. Colleges love to exploit PhDs.  Most real colleges love to make you adjuncts. 

Oh.  I will be proud to lead you gullible fools down the garden path any time I can get my readings course to subscribe 

That’s all.

I am not sure if I should laugh or cry.

Blog CCX (210): People News

A couple of new developments in the history business have transpired of late that are worth taking note of.  Here they are:

Benjamin H. Irvin

The Journal of American History has a new editor.  Benjamin H. Irvin, associate professor at the University of Arizona, is taking over the journal and will also serve as associate professor in the department of history at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors (2011).   His next book, which is in the works, focuses on veterans of the American Revolution in the early republic period.

Alex Lichtenstien

The American Historical Association is also changing editors. Alex Lichtenstein, professor of history at Indiana University, will take over as editor of the American Historical Review in August of 2017.  Unlike Irvin, Lichtenstein is already a member of the Indiana faculty.  His research focuses on labor history and the struggle for racial justice against the forces of white supremacy.  He is no stranger to the journal.  He served as associate editor of the AHR in 2014–15 and interim editor in 2015–16. He has also been the editor of another academic publication, Safundi: The Journal of South African & American Studies.

Angela Lahr

The blog of the American Historical Association has a feature called "Member Spotlight."  This feature is a series of interviews with individual members of the AHA.  On May 5, the series focused on a friend of the blog: Angela Lahr of Westminster College.  Lahr wrote one of the first entries in the "Eight Questions" series.  To be specific, she wrote Blog CX (110): Eight Questions: Religious History.

Edwin J. Perkins

A few months before, the "Member Spotlight" series focused on another friend of the blog, Edwin J. Perkins, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California.  We were both at USC at the same time in the mid 1990s.  I never took any classes from him, but he gave me a good deal of professional advice--he was the associate editor of Pacific Historical Review at the time.  He took a look at the first academic article I ever published.  Much of his input  has percolated into this blog in many ways. 

Blog CCIX (209): Faculty Unions the California Case Study

I have never really believed that faculty unions will solve the problems facing history.  With that said, while I am a bit skeptical, I am open-minded.  The Organization of American Historians has published several articles on its blog about the status of contingent faculty.  Donald W. Rogers, an adjunct lecturer in history at both Central Connecticut State University and Housatonic Community College, argues, "The most impressive gains for contingent faculty members have come from local campaigns waged on a campus-by-campus basis."   Labor unions have secured collective bargaining agreements that have the states of  part-time faculty.  "The gold standard for these contracts has been set by faculty associations in Canadian institutions like Concordia University and the California State University system."

Trevor Griffey, a former adjunct professor in the history department at Long Beach State, begs to differ.  He has an interesting article on the blog about his experiences as an adjunct and as a union organizer: "Can Faculty Labor Unions Stop the Decline of Tenure?"  The answer seems to be: not really.  "Arguably, they have slowed the decline of faculty pay and job security more than they have reversed it," Griffey states.  He also explains that two-thirds of all unionized faculty are located in five states: California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York. 

In 2001-2002, the California Faculty Association, the union representing faculty in the California State University system got the California state legislature to commit to having a tenure density of 75 percent.  The results were immediate.  Cal State schools hired nearly 2,000 new faculty positions--all to the good.  The thing is--almost at the same time, the state legislature cut funding to the system by half a billion dollars.  What happened?  Tuition went up, non-teaching elements of the system were cut to the bone, and salaries for faculty went down.  The average is $38,000 and that is in California, which is a bit more expensive than other areas of the country. "The biggest lesson that I take from my brief experience in the CSU system," Griffey observes, "is that college faculty in labor unions currently lack the power to effectively resist or reverse the decline of tenure."  Griffey also notes that administrators are not the real problem, although he admits that many in the Faculty Association disagree with him.  The real problem is the state legislature, which the union is reluctant to criticizes, for partisan reasons.

The essay is interesting and thoughtful, presenting a complex issue without dumbing it down.  I suggest a careful read.