Editor’s Note: Previously in this series, our expert on scholarly publishing has offered advice on approaching an editor, getting a book contract, and turning a dissertation into a book.
“Timely” is one of those words that gets used — and overused — a lot in publishing. It appears in blurbs on the back covers. Editors may ask peer reviewers to assess a manuscript’s timeliness. Writers sometimes pitch their projects as timely when reaching out to publishers.
A few years ago, in a Q&A with Kirkus Reviews, I said that, as an acquisitions editor, I get nervous when I see the word “timely” in proposals. Publishing a book can take a few years. A topic that seems especially trendy now may not have the same resonance by the time the book comes out. More important, claims of timeliness don’t tell me much about a book’s significance — what you’re arguing, why it matters, and to whom. Those factors are what most interest editors and publishers.
Academic publishers seek projects that will resonate beyond the immediate future and have a long shelf life — books that will make enduring contributions and give readers ideas and arguments with which to wrestle for years to come. That may sound like an impossibly tall order, but remember: The temporality of scholarly conversations is not the same as that of, say, the news or real-time reporting on social media. They move more slowly — and not just because academic publishing is “slow.”
Research is, by its nature, long and laborious. Thinking, writing, and revising all take time. And so can the process of reaching your audience once your book is published. Just think about how tall your to-be-read pile is and how each new book you read alerts you to others you’ve missed.
The slow pace, careful vetting, and intellectual capaciousness of scholarly books are what make them so vitally important right now. At a time when academic freedom is under flagrant attack, they are fundamentally timely.
That said, it can be helpful to distinguish between different registers of timeliness. Many books are quite explicitly about contemporary culture, events, or politics. They may be rooted in ethnographic observations or provide practical tools (e.g., for teaching). I would characterize them as timely in a historical sense. Other books are not about the present, and that’s OK. They do, however, still need to be timely in a scholarly or discursive sense — i.e., they need to have up-to-date references and be attuned to conversations in pertinent fields, if only to upend them and break new ground.
A book’s timeliness — its feel of urgency — depends then, not just on its topic, but on how it’s framed. Here are some dos and don’ts for making your book timely throughout its life stages — proposal, manuscript, and marketing — whatever its subject matter.
The Book Proposal
Don’t confuse current conversations with current events. Scholars are under immense institutional pressure to produce high-impact research, in order to get a teaching job or tenure. That pressure can leave a mark on proposals, leading writers to make sometimes unconvincing claims of their book’s relevance to, and even power to fix, real-world crises. But changing how your fellow specialists think about something — say, an earlier historical period or a philosophical concept — is already a major feat without also expecting your book to change the world.
I’m not trying to plug scholarly work that imagines itself as utterly separate from the world. Nor am I seeking to undermine presentist, politically committed, or more personal or auto-ethnographic approaches that reflect on the position of the critic. After all, as I noted in an earlier column on how editors assess a book’s “fit,” my own list has a “social-justice bent.”
What I am saying: Don’t fixate on — or worse, force — your book’s ties to current events. The nature and scope of a particular book’s unique contribution will depend on its field(s), argument, and anticipated readership, as well as what the author and the publisher plan to do to help get the book to those readers.
Editors get a lot of proposals, and we see trends. In recent years, I’ve received pitches that were framed in terms of the Covid pandemic but weren’t actually about it and didn’t really bear on it. I’ve seen similar things happen with the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. I worry about a tendency across disciplines to reach for crises and social movements as proof of relevance at the risk of exaggerating or misstating a book project’s likely ramifications and trivializing contemporary historical phenomena.
Publishers want scholars to think big, but it’s also important to have a clear sense of what you’re arguing and for whom. There are many ways for books to be good and valuable and have “impact” within and beyond different fields, whether or not they touch on current events.
Do highlight recent titles on your topic. Book proposals typically include a section on competing (or comparable) titles — books on your subject published in the last five years or so from similar presses (e.g., academic, indie, or trade) with similar markets (e.g., undergrad courses, libraries, and fellow specialists).
While nominally indicative of a book’s sales potential, this section of your proposal tells me far more about which writers you are in conversation with, and what their books bring to the table. For each title you mention, it’s important to explain briefly how it relates to, and/or differs from, your book and, ideally, why that difference (your unique focus, method, or dataset) is significant.
The Manuscript
Don’t agonize over writing up to the current moment. When finishing your manuscript for submission for peer review or production, it may be tempting to try to account for everything. You may want to wait and see how some relevant situation plays out so you can incorporate it into your analysis. Or maybe another book on your topic has just been published, and you feel like you absolutely must comment on it in your manuscript.
More likely than not, you don’t. More events will always happen; more books will always be published. You can only do so much. It’s best to just let your manuscript go. If a peer reviewer dings you for not citing some new publication, you can add a reference to it later. If your book happens to come out shortly after another on the same topic, that’s often all the more reason for people to read and discuss yours.
Do use historical and rhetorical markers to situate your reader. I’ve cautioned against over-the-top claims of real-world relevance. Still, drawing connections between your project and the present — putting what’s unfamiliar in familiar terms — can be an effective way to make seemingly ancient history or abstruse ideas more relatable to contemporary readers. Just be forewarned that those comparisons can become dated fairly quickly. My 2018 monograph on modernist literature includes a reference to something the former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said in 2012, which now seems like a lifetime ago.
Some writers may want to mark the moment of writing (e.g., “As I write …”) to establish their point of view and register the status of some still-unfolding historical event. Prefaces and conclusions can be especially good places for this sort of momentary scene-setting and reflection.
The Marketing Questionnaire
Don’t skimp on substance. When your manuscript is ready for production, or shortly thereafter, you will need to complete a marketing questionnaire for the press. These forms typically ask authors to provide a brief description of their book (for the back cover, website, etc.) and a list of selling points (features that will appeal to readers).
You should absolutely sing your book’s praises. But the strongest marketing copy promotes by explaining — it shows, it doesn’t just tell. When listing your work’s selling points, don’t just say “my book is timely” (or groundbreaking, original, exciting) but show how (for example, “it provides a new framework for understanding the worsening crisis in higher education”).
Do note upcoming events or anniversaries. Marketing questionnaires also ask authors for information about occasions that might provide promotional opportunities. Maybe next year marks the centennial of a literary work you analyze, or it’s a presidential-election year and your book is about the history of an issue on the ballot. Work with your press to identify ways you might capitalize on such connections — for example, by organizing a conference panel or pitching an essay or excerpt to a mainstream publication.
Some scholars are squeamish about self-promotion, but publishers need authors as our partners. On this point, I highly recommend a recent exchange on “book marketing as collaboration” between Derek Krissoff, a longtime university press worker and publishing consultant, and Neema Avashia, whose 2022 book, Another Appalachia, was published by West Virginia University Press.
Those of us in publishing share the eagerness to get your scholarly book into the world as speedily as possible. While our job often entails managing expectations, we also do a lot of hurrying up and anxiously waiting. I may rush to offer you an advance contract for a manuscript that I desperately wish I could publish tomorrow, but which you still need a year to write. Then you may end up taking three years to finish, and be frustrated when the peer reviewers take longer than planned to complete their reports. You may have other very legitimate professional reasons — say, a ticking tenure clock — to be worried about how long the publishing process takes. As editors, we take those concerns seriously.
But you should know that an extended timeline doesn’t mean your book will have any less import by the time it appears. Time isn’t just your enemy, or a source of stress. Academic books bear powerfully on the present while giving writers and readers permission to be untimely — to dive down obscure rabbit holes and pursue peculiar lines of thought wherever they may lead, however long they may take.
