How to write an academic book proposal: tips for securing a contract

Pieter Claeszoon: ‘Still life with a skull and a writing quill’. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

After having published 20 academic books as author/co-author and a further ten edited/co-edited collections (see here for a complete list of my books), I’ve had quite a bit of experience in writing book proposals.

Here’s what I’ve learned about how to go about securing that contract.

What are publishers looking for?

Your book will need to fill a gap in the market. How to identify this ‘gap’? Publishers are always looking for the next big idea: this could be a new topic, an emerging theoretical approach or innovative research methods. The commercial appeal of your proposed book will never be far from their minds – they need to be able to make money from the book.

Your book can be based on your research project findings, your teaching content, the way you use social theory or your research methods – I have published books on all of these topics (sometimes combining two or more in the one book).

Ideas for edited collections are often initiated through your research networks or from themed symposia.

My ‘go to’ source of inspiration for new books is when I find myself thinking – “I would really like to read a book on this topic”. I only ever write books about ideas in which I am excited and interested to pursue at a book-length scale.

Once you have identifed ‘the gap’ in the market

Sound out the specialised commissioning editors with an email first to ‘pitch’ the idea and see if it has any prospects. Speak to publishers at their displays at conferences – they always ready to discuss ideas. Otherwise find the relevant commissioning editor’s email on the publisher’s website and contact them that way.

Consider your favourite books – who publishes them? Is there a book series into which your idea would fit well? Contact the editors of the book series (they are always academics) to sound out your ideas with them.

Ask a colleague who is an experienced author to give you some feedback on a draft proposal.

The book does not have to be written before you get a contract. In fact, it’s best if you don’t spend too much time on writing it before you have secured the contract.

What to put in the book proposal?

Look on publishers’ websites for advice and download any proposal information and forms. Many publishers have pro formas they want prospective authors to use for the proposal.

The proposal should usually include the following:

• Brief overview of the book (why this book, why now, what will be the main themes of the book?)

• Brief author/editor bio (why are you the ideal person to write/edit this book?)

• If an edited book – brief bios of each of the contributors

• Chapter titles and brief summary of chapter content (like abstracts)

• Target market – who will want to buy and use this book?

• Course adoption – what uni courses might suit adoption of the book? (Warning – textbooks will get more sales but fewer academic kudos)

• Word count and timeline – realistically, when can you deliver the finished manuscript to the publisher?

• Some publishers want to see some full chapter examples (particularly for first authors) – many don’t

What happens after you submit your proposal?

The proposal will be evaluated by the commissioning editor, who may ask for some tweaks. If they think it is a good idea, it will be sent out to external reviewers (other academics) for their views on whether it should be published. If these reviews are favourable, the commissioning editor will take your proposal to the publisher’s editorial meeting and present it for approval to issue a contract (you may be asked to tweak it again first).

If all goes well at this meeting, the publisher will offer you a contact – now the real hard work begins!

 

Top 10 tips for increasing your citations

Who doesn’t want more people to read and cite their work? Here’s some tips I have learnt along the way about what kind of publications attract attention and citations. They are most relevant for postgraduate students and academics in the humanities and social sciences.

1. Make sure you have a Google Scholar profile set up. People can then easily find your work all in one place. Google Scholar is much more inclusive of humanities and social sciences publications and citations than are the science-oriented citation databases such as Scopus or Web of Science.

2. Write books. My top-most cited publications are nine of my books. Some of these were published more than two decades ago and are still regularly cited.

3. Write about a diverse range of topics. This means a much wider readership for your work. It will also help keep you and your writing fresh and interesting, which in turn, will make you more interesting to your readers.

4. Publish in a wide range of journals. Ditto.

5. Be one of the first to write about a new topic or concept or apply a social theory in a new way. Get in early and you will become the ‘go to’ reference to cite.

6. Write ‘how to’ pieces. Here again, introductory publications that clearly outline how to apply a particular method or a new social theory will attract interest and attention.

7. Make your writing easily accessible: Use open access repositories such as your university’s e-repository or ResearchGate to publise your outputs and make them readily available to people. You can upload preprints or postprints of articles and book chapters, and ResearchGate makes it very easy for people to request a PDF of the published version and for you to supply it.

8. Use social media to spread the word about your new publications. Tweet, blog, notify Facebook special interest groups, make an introductory YouTube video.

9. If you write book chapters, make them readily available open access as soon as they are finalised. Book chapters can take ages to be published, but you can share preprints once they are ready and people can start citing them.

10. Be bold and take risks in your writing. Readers are attracted to new shiny things and will be more interested if you are trying to do something different or innovative.

COVID society – some resources I have put together for social researchers

 

 

Over the past fortnight, I’ve put together a few open-access resources concerning what an initial agenda for COVID-related social research could be and research methods for conducting fieldwork in the COVID world.

Links are below:

Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic (Google Doc crowd-sourced resource)

Social Research for a COVID and post-COVID World: An Initial Agenda (blog post)

Conducting Qualitative Fieldwork During COVID-19 (PowerPoint slides) (Webinar presentation with voice and slides)

 

Photo credit: Daniel Tafjord on Unsplash

 

Advice for successful academic research – now all in one place!

I’ve published a number of posts over the years on this blog that have provided advice on how to undertake successful academic research. I’ve created a short PDF document that brings six of these posts together in the one place. It is available here: Lupton – Advice for Successful Academic Research.

This is the content of the PDF:

1. 30 Tips for Successful Academic Research and Publishing
2. 15 Top Tips for Revising Journal Articles
3. Ten Tips for Increasing Your Academic Visibility
4. Tips for Qualitative Researchers Seeking Funding – What Not to Leave Out of Your Grant Applications
5. Opening Up Your Research – Self-Archiving for Sociologists
6. Why I Blog

 

Vitalities Lab Newsletter Number 1

The Vitalities Lab’s first newsletter is available here: VLab Newsletter 1.

Ten tips for increasing your academic visibility

It is important that academic researchers draw attention to their research. We don’t engage in scholarship just for our own benefit. We want others to be aware of and use our research, including those outside the academy. Quite apart from the high value given to factors such as impact, stakeholder engagement and numbers of citations to your work, promoting goodwill and strong networks with your colleagues is important for your flourishing, including feeling part of a community and that you are making a difference.

Here are some ideas for increasing the visibility of your research to as great a range of publics as possible.

1. Actively use social media: blog, tweet, sign up to Facebook groups of interest or make one of your own to bring like-minded researchers together. Use these networks to publicise your activities – including new publications, calls for papers, and event announcements. Be a good academic citizen and also publicise the outputs and activities of your colleagues – they will likely return the favour.
2. Sign up to platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu and maintain your profile, updating new publications on it. These platforms provide an easy way for people to request copies of your publications and for you to share them.
3. Publish preprints and postprints in open access outlets such as your university e-repository, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Social Science Research Network etc. This will make your work readily accessible for those who can’t access academic journals.
4. Ensure that you have a Google Scholar profile that lists all your publications and citations. I can’t emphasise enough how important this is to make your publications and citations visible in one place. Google Scholar automatically links to all your open access publications as well, helping people to readily find your work. Important! – ensure that you check your profile regularly to weed out any inaccuracies that the Google Scholar algorithms may have created, such as not including a publication of yours or wrongly attributing someone else’s publications (and citations) to you. An inaccurate Google Scholar profile is not a good look, particularly if it appears that you are taking credit for someone else’s work.
5. Sign up to Google Scholar alerts for your name – this will mean that every time you are cited, GS will email you a notification. This a fantastic way not only of seeing who is citing you but also how they are using and building on your work.
6. Create some kind of web presence for your research projects, so that you can share updates, calls for participants, invite feedback on preliminary findings, announce events and list outputs (hopefully with as many as possible available in open access form). Consider including a section that provides resources such as links to other relevant websites and research groups, methods toolkits, curriculum ideas and reading lists.
7. Take every opportunity to do interviews for mass media outlets and write pieces about your research for forums such as The Conversation.
8. Make podcasts and videos to talk about your own research or interview other academics working in your area about their research.
9. Don’t be afraid to self-cite in your publications (particularly if you are female – research shows that women academics are far less likely to cite their own work than are men).
10. Use a platform like Slideshare to publish your presentation slides.

Edited to add: Also be aware that at times, increased visibility can bring with it unwanted negative attention, particularly if you research contentious or controversial topics that bring out the trolls, and if you are identify with a marginalised or vulnerable social group. If this is you, be careful in your choices about how to communicate your research publicly. (Thanks to Emma Renold for drawing attention to these issues when commenting on this post.)

Using graphic narratives for research translation and engagement

Today I attended a workshop to learn how to draw graphic narratives — in effect, comic strips. I was interested in learning this technique as research translation and engagement tool. I thought that it could be a fun way to visually represent findings from a research project. The method can also be used to plan research projects, as an alternative to tools such as mind-mapping or concept-mapping. The idea is that using a comic-strip format helps to simplify issues and present them in narrative formats.

We focused in the workshop on the best way to represent emotional states using simple drawing techniques. We started with drawing Donald Trump’s grumpy face using several different methods. Here’s the last Trump drawing I produced. We only had a minute to draw this one.

 

Then we moved on to practising drawing different facial expressions to convey emotion. Here I am working hard on this task.

 

We finished the workshop with a big task, which involved drawing a comic strip on a topic we had chosen. I decided to try and represent some research findings from a current project I have been analysing interview data from: on young people’s use of digital health. The project’s findings showed that young people constantly google health information and appreciate learning about the experiences of other young people, so that they feel less alone. YouTube is one source where they can find other young people talking about their health and illness experiences. But young people are also willing to seek medical advice if they feel this is needed. I tried to convey these key findings in my comic strip.

Ideas for participatory arts/design activities with a digital health focus

I’m currently interested in innovative and creative ways of conducting research on people’s use of digital health technologies. (See my posts on design sociology here, here, here and here, and a report using these methods for a stakeholder workshop here.)

Here’s some ideas I’ve put together, some of which I have tried and others of which I plan to try soon.

Mapping the service ecology

What works?

• Each participant writes on a card, answering the question …. Think about a time you used a digital device (smartphone, tablet, desktop, laptop, health monitoring device, wearable device etc) for health or fitness-related purposes? What was it? What did it do? What did you like/dislike/find useful/useless about it?

Then share their experience with the group.

Future digital health? ‘What if? scenario …’

• Each participant writes on a card, answering the question …. Think about an object or service you would like to see designed that would help people prevent or manage illness and disease. It can be digital or not digital. It can be anything you can imagine – something that is purely science fiction, or something that perhaps could realistically be invented. What is it? What does it do? What does it look like? Who would use it? Who wouldn’t use it?
• Write a brief scenario outlining an example of someone using this technology to promote their health.

Then share this idea with the group.

This will develop two catalogues of devices: what works, and future directions. This could involve presenting this information in a number of formats: sketches or cartoons, film scripts, personas, written scenarios etc.

Inspiration cards

These are a set of cards that can be used to inspire conversation and ideas in workshop.

E.g. I’ve created ‘Blood, Sweat, Tears … Digital’ cards for a digital health workshop. They can be found here: Blood, Sweat, Tears … Digital inspiration cards.

Collages

Give participants materials (pens, paper, glue, images) to make collages on a theme, expressing their thoughts and feelings. They can write words or draw images on the collage as well. They then present their collage to the group, explaining the choices they have made.

E.g. Make a collage showing how using digital technologies make you feel.

Story completion

Provide an opening to a story and ask the participants to complete it.

E.g.

“X decided they wanted to try an app to improve their health. They went to the Apple App Store and searched the health and fitness section …. [What happened next?]

“X decided to buy a fitness tracker to improve their health and physical fitness. They took it home and tried it on …. [What happened next?]

 Body mapping, more-than-human mapping, time-lines, sensory mapping (smell, sound, taste etc).

E.g. large sheets of paper with a blank outline of human figure in the centre. Participants asked to draw on the figure and around the figure, showing sensations, feelings, emotions concerning their health and fitness. Make links to other people, other living things (e.g. pets) and to non-living things (built environment, bikes, cars, digital technologies). Then explain their maps to other participants.

E.g. Draw a map of their life (or a typical person’s life) with a time-line showing how that person would use digital technologies/be tracked by digital technologies that can monitor/measure/reveal aspects of their bodies and health – how would this person access or use this information? How would other people access or use this information?

Memory elicitation

E.g. Think about the last time you went online to find information about a health or wellbeing topic. Write about what you looked for, what information you found, and how you acted (or disregarded) the information. Do you remember any emotions or physical sensations that were part of this experience?

Photo elicitation

E.g. ask people to use their smartphones to take photos of them using digital devices in the usual places. These can be added to timelines, maps etc. Or just record them talking about the photos and their practices.

Personas

The participants are asked to generate profiles about archetypal users of technologies. They give them names, describe their sociodemographic characteristics, sketch them and generate a short narrative describing their life, goals and behaviours related to the topic in question (e.g. use of a specific digital technology).

Make your own health app

Ask people to create an app store page for an app they have invented for health purposes. Ask them to give the app a name, write a promotional blurb for it (What will it do? What is so great and new about this app? Why should people download it onto theirphones?). Include some sketches of screenshots for the app, just like on the app stores.

Digital storytelling

Participants make short films using smartphones or other mini digital cameras to tell a narrative – could be autobiographical. Uses music and voice-overs as well as images, including art-work, photos or video footage. Stories can be created as a group exercise and shared with the group.

E.g. Participants make a film about their use of health apps or wearables and share with the group.

Design sociology review

Earlier this year, I published four posts about design sociology. At the time, I was working on a review article on the topic for Sociology Compass. The article has now been published – see here. It’s behind a paywall, but I’m happy to send you a copy if you email me.

This is the abstract:

In this review essay, I introduce and map the field of what I call “design sociology”. I argue that design research methods have relevance to a wide range of sociological research interests, and particularly for applied research that seeks to understand people’s engagements with objects, systems and services, better engage publics and other stakeholders, work towards social change, and identify and intervene in futures. I discuss 3 main ways in which design sociology can be conducted: the sociology of design, sociology through design and sociology with design. I explain key terms in design and dominant approaches in social design research—participatory, critical, adversarial, speculative, and ludic design. Examples of how sociologists have already engaged with design research methods are outlined. The essay concludes with suggestions about what the future directions of design sociology might be.

Tips for qualitative researchers seeking funding – what NOT to leave out of your grant applications

It is grant reviewing season and I’ve been reading through some very interesting applications from some accomplished qualitative researchers in the social sciences and media studies. The rationale and background for projects are usually very well described and justified, as are the track records of the applicants.

But I’ve seen some common areas across several of the applications that need more detail. These are:

1. There is often not enough (or sometimes even any) information about the approach taken to analysing the qualitative data you are collecting. Simply saying you are ‘using NVivo to analyse the data’ and leaving it at that is not enough. NVivo seems to have become a magic word to use to explain and justify qualitative data analysis. But it is just a data management tool. I want to know what you are going to do with it. There are many approaches to analysing qualitative data. Which approach are you using? Have you had previous experience with this approach? Please justify the reason for your approach and provide some information about what you will be looking for in the data, and why.
2. If you are recruiting research participants for interviews, focus groups or other types of participation, please provide details of whether you have used your recruitment methods before and how successful they were. I know from experience that recruiting participants can be difficult and time-consuming, and achieving this successfully is crucial to the feasibility of your project. I would like you to explain to me more carefully how you are going to find people, and how you will keep them involved if they are required for more than one activity or you are asking them to be involved over quite a long time in the project.
3. This issue is particularly important if you are proposing to recruit hard-to-reach or marginalised social groups, and also high-status groups (such as busy professionals, for whom time is money). Here you need to provide even more information about how you will successfully recruit these participants and commit them to be involved. What will persuade them to be part of your study?
4. Which leads on to the ethics of recruiting participants from marginalised groups, or those you wish to engage in discussions about potentially distressing experiences. How will you persuade these people to want to speak to you? How will you protect them from harm, if you are raising sensitive and distressing issues and inviting them to discuss them with you? How will you protect yourself and other researchers involved in the project from the distress you may yourselves feel at discussing sensitive and very personal issues which may be very sad or otherwise confronting for all involved? I am concerned to see that often these very important issues are not discussed in enough detail, or are even glossed over, as if the applicants do not consider them important or have not considered their implications.
5. Many qualitative researchers now make statements suggesting that their research will have impact outside universities. Yet here again, often not enough fine details are provided to convince assessors and funders how feasible these claims are. Please tell us more about how this impact will be achieved.
6. And finally … many major funding bodies now mandate that the publications generated from the projects they fund should be made available open access. Yet very few qualitative researchers demonstrate any awareness of this, or describe how they will meet these requirements. Here again, more detail is required. Will you be depositing your publications into your university’s e-repository? Will you need to ask for funding in your budget to pay journals to publish your accepted manuscript as open access? Please explain your strategy.