My phone pinged with a text from an old graduate-school friend who, like me, is now a professor. He had just heard that I signed a contract with Random House to write a “trade” book. Could I talk with him about the process? He was thinking, he said, of writing a popular nonfiction book, too.
Since that conversation, I’ve fielded more than a dozen similar texts, calls, emails, and Zooms — all with academic peers thinking about writing a book with a traditional (read: nonacademic, mainstream) publisher. My forthcoming book — Allergic: Our Immune Systems in a Changing World, due out in May — tells the story of the global rise in allergies over the last 200 years. In talking to peers about the publishing process, I’ve realized that a lot of academics think they want to write a book for the general public but might balk at what it takes to do so.
In other words, writing a trade book is not for every academic.
In 2019, after spending a year working on my book proposal with two different literary agents, I finally signed a contract with Random House. It felt like a major victory. As a medical anthropologist, I had always wanted my work to reach larger audiences and had won a coveted Public Scholars award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I used the award to take a year off from teaching to do research and start writing my allergies book. Before going to graduate school, I earned a B.A. in journalism and spent a few years in marketing jobs. So as a professor now, I felt uniquely prepared to take on the challenge of writing for a general audience.
But guess what? I still found the transition from academic to popular writing to be rocky, partially due to the fact that I didn’t really understand what to expect along the way. The result: Writing for a general audience was a more grueling process than writing for an academic readership.
I struggled — especially on the first draft — to crank out readable prose. Switching from a traditional academic writing style to a more approachable one was more difficult than I had anticipated. Even with a strong background in journalistic writing, my editor cautioned that my first few chapters felt “too academic” to her. I had to find my nonacademic voice again but, once I did, the process of writing the book became smoother. Not easy, by any means, but easier.
This summer, I handed in the final revisions, so it seemed like a good time to dust off my old role as writing coach and offer advice to those of you who have been tossing around the idea of writing a book for a general audience. What follows is an amalgamation of the questions I received from friends and colleagues.
“How do I get a literary agent?” This is the query I get most often and the answer is: You have to hustle. If you haven’t written anything for the public before, you’re walking into this without anything to show an agent besides your academic writing and a book proposal. Chances are, it’s written like an academic-book proposal, which is not going to fly.
My best advice: Start writing op-eds, features, or reviews for mainstream publications, or create your own Substack or other type of public blog and write regularly. The best introduction to an agent — and eventually to book editors — is a track record of scintillating prose in outlets they recognize.
Most literary agents are wary of working with academics because they are afraid of two things: first, that we can’t really write well for general audiences, and second, that we won’t take kindly to heavy editing of our book proposals.
And to be honest, from what I’ve seen, both of those can be true. As a former digital editor for my discipline’s premier academic journal, I tried to start a public-facing blog and solicited pieces written in an engaging, nonacademic writing style. I often got essays that were riddled with jargon and citations — both of which are no-no’s when it comes to public writing. It was hard to get these very smart people to see that their prose style was, well, stuffy.
And that’s why my first piece of advice to people who want to follow in my footsteps is to submit your (jargon- and citation-free) work to public-facing outlets. It creates a body of work that a literary agent can read to see if you’re a viable author for them.
For those of you who have a track record of public writing and are ready to start querying agents, here’s some additional advice:
- To find a good agent, you can do two things. First, read the acknowledgements section of popular nonfiction books that you admire and want to emulate. Most of us thank our agents by name and that’s honestly the best way to find someone who will fit your own project. If that doesn’t work, do a Google search or scan the book-deal announcements on Publisher’s Marketplace to find possible agents and get a sense of which literary agencies work most often with academic nonfiction authors.
- Once you have a list of names to query, send them a short email with a very brief (two to three sentences) description of your project. Say that you have a book proposal and a sample chapter ready (if you do) and link to your op-ed pieces or other public writing. If any agents are interested, they’ll email you back, and the process starts from there. Think of this process as akin to dating several agents. Eventually, you’ll choose one to marry and start down the path of getting your submission ready to ship off to editors at major publishing houses. Pro-tip: Go with your gut on this one, and don’t be swayed by a fancy literary agency. The largest agencies aren’t always the best at walking new authors through this grueling process, simply because they are too big and don’t have the time. Make sure to ask how closely they’re willing to work with you in editing your proposal or drafting your eventual book. Then choose accordingly.
- Literary agents generally take 15 percent of your gross profit from any book sales. And that’s in perpetuity. Even if you get another agent down the road for a different book, your first agent will still get a cut of that first book. See? It really is like a marriage — and the book is your offspring together.
- You’ll need to sign a contract with a literary agent (and by extension their agency). That contract will bind you until one or both parties officially end the agreement. This is standard protocol. Once you’ve signed with an agency, another agent will not even look at your work before you’ve severed all ties with your first agent.
- Occasionally, as happened with my first agent, the working relationship just isn’t working (wordplay intended). It will be fairly obvious when one or both of you is unhappy with the process. Don’t be afraid to fire your agent if you feel like that person isn’t capable of adequately representing you or is trying to push you into writing something entirely different from what you envision. If the work is good, other agents will want to talk to you.
“How do I write a nonfiction book proposal?” First, and I cannot underline this enough, a literary or popular nonfiction book proposal is not the same as an academic one. (Find advice on academic book proposals — and yes, you need to draft a book proposal for scholarly presses — here and here.) They look the same on the surface, and contain many of the same parts (intro, chapter descriptions, potential market for the book), but are written very differently.
A trade book proposal is a sales document, and it has to zing! You have to write it as if the proposal is going to be read by the public. No jargon, no literature review, no citations. Just engaging prose that tells a good story and has a solid argument.
Often, literary agents will want to see your book proposal after you send them your idea. More than likely, they will want you to heavily rewrite your book proposal before they send it out to publishers. Why? Because they know how to sell books to editors, and they know what editors want to see. In other words, they know what they’re doing and, for the most part, you should listen to them.
Here are some general rules-of-thumb about writing book proposals for a trade press:
- For a first-time author (please note: big presses will slot you into that category even if you have multiple academic books under your belt), book proposals are a bit longer than for any subsequent books you might pitch as a “known” writer. Mine was 80 pages, which included a 15-page overview and very detailed chapter descriptions (about two to three pages for each chapter). Because you need to prove that you can do this kind of writing, you have to begin doing it in the proposal itself. These sections should all be written in the same prose style you would use to write the actual project, giving the editors a feel for your voice and the tone of the book.
- By far, the most important section is the overview. This is where you must really sell the “So what?” of your book. Think of it as a prologue to your eventual book, wherein you’re telling readers why you’re writing the book, what it will contain, and why they should care enough to spend hours reading about your topic.
- You may or may not need a sample chapter in your book proposal. If the overview itself is well crafted and if you’ve already written about the topic in public-facing venues, then you might not need one. You and your agent will determine if the proposal is strong enough on its own or needs a sample chapter.
- The market section of the book proposal matters because it helps to answer the “why me” question — or, why should an editor give you thousands of dollars to write this book (trade contracts offer advances of anywhere from $30,000 to $150,000, although the average is $50,000). Do your research. Go online to see what other popular books have been written on or adjacent to your subject. How many copies did they sell? If you’re writing something that’s been written about before, you’re going to have to tell potential buyers how your book differs. Be prepared to be turned down if, for instance, the publisher already bought a book on allergies last year. Some of this is simply timing and luck.
“What is it like working with a trade editor?” The biggest difference between writing an academic book and a trade book is the editing process. When you write an academic book, the scholarly press sends out your manuscript to reviewers who nitpick about where it needs work. But for a trade book, no outside reviewers are weighing in on your manuscript — no one is reading it at this point except your editor (and maybe an assistant editor).
The writing and revision process for a trade book is a dialogue — not a monologue. Instead of looking at reviewers’ comments and deciding which bits you will and won’t incorporate, you’ll be getting one set of comments and line edits from your editor. It is as much their book as yours, and that means that you need to either take the editor’s suggestions for major revisions or argue your case. It’s a pas de deux between writer and editor.
A friend who is a mainstream writer explained it to me like this: Your trade editor is like your partner, and the manuscript is your baby. It will contain pieces of both of you. But ultimately, your editor has the final word. It’s your book, but it’s also the publisher’s book. After all, this company bought it from you, and owns it.
Pertinent case in point (and little-known fact outside of publishing): You don’t get to choose your own book title or cover art. At best, you’ll get to choose from among some options that your editor and design team came up with.
If you balked at that last paragraph, or the idea of being heavily edited, then maybe trade publishing isn’t for you. Editors at big publishing houses sometimes second-guess working with academics because they worry that we either can’t really write well for the public, or that we’ll be too precious about what we’re writing to listen to their solid reasoning about little things like narrative, clarity, and flow.
Guilty admission: I had at least one temper tantrum during the editing process of my book. My agent had to patiently talk me through it. And my editor is fantastic, but seeing all of those corrections on a draft can make anyone feel like a grad student again — and not in a good way. Consider yourself warned: It can be a rocky, ego-bruising transition from writing alone for an academic audience to writing with several rounds of edits for a public audience.
After all this, one might think that I’m advising academics against writing a trade book. I’m not. In fact, I’m about to start work on my second book proposal, and I’m excited about it. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years, and I’m eager to see if writing another trade book will be easier now that I’ve gotten the gist of it. I promise to report back.
