Demystifying Book Publishing

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Ethel Tungohan: My name is Dr. Ethel Tungohan. I'm a writer, a researcher, an activist, and an associate professor of politics. This is Academic Aunties. In today's episode, we are going to take a deep dive into the world of academic book publishing.

I released my first solo authored book, Care Activism, Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement Building, and Communities of Care. It took me forever to finish this book. My partner throughout this process was the formidable Dawn Durante, who was then the editor of the NWSA First Book Prize Series at the University of Illinois Press.

Many scholars don't know what it is that editors do, what the norms and expectations are when working with editors, and what the larger world of academic publishing looks like. Speaking for myself. All I knew back then was that I needed a book contract to make my academic job applications competitive.

And after I landed the book contract, that I needed a published book for my tenure file. Now, having worked with different editors at different academic presses, I know just how important it is to have a good supportive editor who I vibe with on my side. So I thought it would be a good idea for us to talk to Don about these questions and more.

Here's our conversation.

I am so jazzed to have Dawn Durante, who was my editor at the University of Illinois Press, who I worked with when writing Care Activism, who was awesome really in helping me think through my project in a really generative way. And Dawn is now actually the Wyndham Robertson Editorial Director at UNC Press, and she's here to talk to us today about the publishing process and to give advice to listeners on on navigating academic publishing.

So Dawn, thanks so much for coming and I don't know if that intro quite captured all it is that you do.

Dawn Durante: Well, thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor. Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm newly promoted to the editorial director position at UNC Press after having been there about a year and a half. So what I do in that role now is I lead a department of 12.

So it includes editors, assistant editors. We have an acquisitions coordinator. And in addition to that administrative management work, I also do what I like super love and have loved for many years now, which is acquire books. I work on a few series and a lot of my work centers on African American studies and black history, social justice, black feminist studies, and girlhood studies.

So I'm very lucky to be working in those fields.

Ethel Tungohan: Honestly, I was so lucky to have you as an editor. I just wanted to say that on tape as well, because I didn't realize until later when I've worked with other editors what a difference a good editor makes. And so, Dawn, how did you get into academic publishing?

I'm just kind of curious to see your journey into this world.

Dawn Durante: Yeah, I love this question. I think everyone finds academic publishing in their own way. And for a while it was considered and academic publishing was considered an accidental profession. I think that has really changed now. People are very intentional about going into publishing.

When I came to publishing, I was an undergraduate at University of Arizona. I was an English major and a classics minor. And I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do once I graduated. And one wonderful day across the department listserv, an email came advertising an internship at university of Arizona press.

And I applied and I got it and it was in the acquisitions department and I was like, wow, this is a job that really speaks to me because for me, I was really drawn to the parts of the job that are very, um, outward facing, um, like networking with authors, attending conferences, and also some of the more independent work, which is reading manuscripts and things like that.

So, I just was like, this sounds like the coolest job ever. And I had a little bit of a circuitous route to get there. I didn't know how to get into publishing exactly after that. I went to do a master's degree at Arizona state university and they had a scholarly publishing certificate program. So alongside my master's, I did this certificate, which was classes about.

You know, different sorts of like reading Ithaca reports on the state of publishing and our guest speakers were freelance indexers. And I got to do my thesis on basically eBooks and peer review when eBooks were kind of still very new. And after that, I applied for lots of jobs. I got no response for lots of jobs at university presses.

And then one day I got an interview at university of Illinois press for an acquisitions assistant. I got that job. I moved from Arizona to Illinois and I was there for nine years before being at University of Texas Press for two years as editor in chief and then coming to UNC Press. So that is my journey and I, I think that it was very lucky that all those things fell into place.

I'm always grateful I ended up in this job.

Ethel Tungohan: That's awesome. And I think I love how you kind of talked about the circular route, right? Like, a lot of us don't know that we'll end up in the jobs that we have. Like, certainly, I didn't grow up thinking that I would be a professor, but here I am, right? Like, I

Dawn Durante: didn't even know publishing was a job until, like, that, that lister of email came.

I was like, Oh, of course, there are people who make the books I read constantly. Why did I never think of this as an option? I

Ethel Tungohan: don't know. Oh my gosh. So one question I had for you as well is, you know, I've worked with a few presses now and I've gone to, you know, the book fair for conferences and I've kind of surveilled, you know, the editors who are present behind, you know, those desks and have talked to a number of them as well.

And one thing I've noticed, if I may be blunt, is academic publishing is like not that diverse. Why

Dawn Durante: do you think that is? I think that you are spot on in that observation. And I think that there are a couple reasons for that. I think that a lot of the reasons we see diversity issues and publishing near and parallel the issues of diversity we see in higher ed and beyond.

There have been some concerted efforts. In the last, especially five to ten years, some informal and some formal to remedy the lack of diversity in publishing. There was a Mellon project for fellowships at a variety of university presses that would bring in groups from historically underrepresented, or bring in people from historically underrepresented groups in publishing to do year long fellowships to try to set them up to move into acquisitions afterwards.

Some of the things that reason these initiatives at both formal levels and informal levels don't succeed is I think that sometimes organizations are unwilling and unable to grapple with the continued systemic issues that make it hard for groups to find community and support in publishing. It's not lost on me that some of the very same topics and issues that make revenue and keep presses in business.

Are the books that actually like give guidance on how we could better these situations but yet don't take them up so there are a lot of ways in which I think that there's a disconnect between management and especially early career folks where a lot of this is trying to be corrected and increase diversity at because of Like an apprentice like model, that is a legacy idea within publishing.

And so there's just not maybe some tools and skill sets to support a diverse group. And it actually is one of the reasons that I became interested in expanding beyond acquisition in my career to do more management level work. I approach all of my work in professional development, whether it's professionally developing authors or professionally developing publishing professionals.

From trying to be a really responsible white feminist ally, taking the tools I understand from the wonderful acquisitions work that I've been doing that has really educated me, trying to think about how can I, you know, use my own privilege to flatten power, which becomes such an issue with, I think, underrepresented groups succeeding in publishing.

You know, I, I think that we see a growing, an improvement in diversity within publishing the, the percentage of folks from underrepresented groups is increasing when we look at the surveys, but incrementally, and it's still as though that's not tripling in anything that's still an issue, but those are some of my thoughts on why the issues persist.

Ethel Tungohan: So I didn't know about this apprentice model. Can you speak a little bit more about this and why that might be a barrier to diversifying, you know, the, the academic press workforce?

Dawn Durante: Yeah, like, yeah, I love this question. So there's this idea that in acquisitions, especially you learn by doing. So there's a lot that goes into being an acquisitions editor, just like you and I have already talked about.

It's not a thing that You know, people are like, yes, I knew I wanted to be a publisher and I'm going to go into it, knowing everything. That's not really often the case. So learning, okay, what are best practices of peer review? How do I list build as an acquisitions editor? A huge part of acquisitions work is having networks.

So the idea is you start as an assistant oftentimes and you build those networks. This is not the only path with an acquisition. There are people who begin acquisitions and move right into the editor position. But it's very common and it's a very common mindset for a lot of managers to be like, we hire people who have little to no experience in an assistant position and they like learn by doing as they move through their career.

And I think some of the hurdles to that model become, well, assistants are paid the least. So you're asking people to like sometimes uproot their lives to work in person at a press being. Paid like maybe some people have raised their floors, their floor salaries to like 40, 000 a year to start and you're working in a variety of cities where that cost of living might not work.

New York is such a place. There's so many university presses in New York in that area. Chicago. I was in Austin. That's a really high cost of living. So that 40, 000 so far. And so like what I see is like, Oh, generational wealth really helps support people in publishing. We see the data on well, generational wealth is often really within white families.

So, so like I said before, it was really a lot of systemic issues. We see. Throughout the country and elsewhere that for me, it's into these press issues and there's, you know, an awareness of this But also I'll just say a lot of university presses are really limited in how they can change certain things like pay bans Because they have parent institutions at the university level and if University HR says Too bad.

This is our pay band for this level of work. You can't really raise it where, you know, a lot of university presses are at a tough spot of unable to make, unable to make those changes.

Ethel Tungohan: I'm just nodding because I think there's so many parallels to higher ed, right? As you've said, like, You know, there's a lot of kind of nepo babies who are like professors and, you know, even going to graduate school and the debt that a lot of people have to accumulate has meant that you have to have access to a certain amount of income.

In order to keep doing what you're doing right so how do we kind of diversify our ranks when you know you're there's an expectation that you already have money to begin with and there's also an expectation that you know the hidden curriculum so to speak like. I don't know if that's true in in publishing too that who you know matters as much as your skills like you have a pre existing networks or your parents have a pre existing network.

Dawn Durante: Um, I think that I definitely think that there are ideas of hidden curricula at work and publishing and just the same business professional thing like do you write thank you notes after an interview and things like that. I think that having had, I, my parents had nothing to do with the academy or higher ed, like I had no, so I, I, I imagine that there are some people who find this in different ways, but I also think that one of the big hurdles also becomes, A lot of times if someone is from an underrepresented group in a publishing department, they might be the only black person in marketing or the only person of color in acquisitions.

And even if not, there's all these kind of issues surrounded like this idea of tokenizing that a lot of presses aren't able to like fully grapple with. We see this magnified now that we're seeing all of these DEI issues come up and the limitations of having DEI groups and what that looks like in supporting folks is again parallel to higher ed because, well, again, a lot of presses have their parent institutions and have to follow those rules so it must be a broken record but I think there's a lot of the same issues at work.

Ethel Tungohan: Oh, my goodness. So I think what's what's so difficult is trying to fight against the grain. And I think, you know, just listening to you talked on one of the things you were saying is, you know, you're, you're also trying to manage take on a management role to kind of work within the press to to work out these like internal, you know, Issues including helping diversify the profession and also helping mentor and support, you know, publishing professionals while at the same time trying to broaden the press's reach and make sure that the works by racialized scholars, by female scholars are also put Into academic publishing.

So I guess my question is, you know, you, for example, are in charge of collections that quote focus on historically excluded authors and groups. Was this a deliberate focus on your part? Was this something that you were like, No, this is what I want to do. This is my calling. This is my mission. And what are the challenges and opportunities you face when trying to champion the work of historically excluded authors and groups?

Dawn Durante: I would definitely say this was an evolution of my editorial philosophy and commitments being committed to taking voices that have been existing at the margins or pushed to the margins and trying to center them. It's, it was kind of an outgrowth of the fact that a lot of the areas I began acquiring early in my career by chance.

were women's gender and sexuality studies, black studies, gender studies, and trying to figure out okay, well, there are so many books out there that an editor can possibly acquire, how do I find, like, an organizing strategy that not only speaks to, What is the practical amount of labor I can do and that's obviously can't take on every book and so but Managing that with like how also do I want to I get use the relative power that?

Exists with making decisions about books and approach it more as a cultivator Then a gatekeeper. Called gatekeeper, bad word. We don't want to be a gatekeeper, right? And so I think that it was thinking through how do I marry my intellectual commitments with my like philosophical and ethical ones. And, and because I also had the like luck, the good fortune of acquiring such vibrant, dynamic educational areas.

And so, as I acquired more in those areas, I also then understood some of the systemic issues that come into play for people in the academy. So, for instance, at Illinois and other presses I've been at, there have been a lot of areas that are the kind that, like, Asian American Studies, we see lots of reports about how that's questioned in the academy.

I'm like, why, why are you doing this? Authors report all the time and all sorts of different areas. Why are you doing this work? What is the value of that work? So when I'm, as you said, championing, trying my best to champion a book, sometimes I also get those questions from colleagues at the press. And so the idea of educating and being like, Of course, it's important to represent.

We have 17 books about a male baseball player. Why are you questioning one book about a woman, right? Like let's like kind of examine where our questions are coming from. And of course I'm not perfect. I mean, a lot of missteps along the way. So I just am very grateful that I had really wonderful authors who have either intentionally or just by product of sending me awesome projects, helped me learn people I follow on Facebook and.

Twitter, Twitter, no more. Who's trying to everything like the generosity of like so many black women talking about how they've encountered issues in the academy. And then also thinking about really listening and the capacity of being a manager to this struggles of early career professionals and the hurdles they encounter and trying to think about, okay, well, how can we.

Bridge those gaps.

Ethel Tungohan: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I'm not

Dawn Durante: sure if that actually

Ethel Tungohan: is

Dawn Durante: a

Ethel Tungohan: question. No, I'm just kind of mulling this over because of course you're also getting questions from your end, right? Because I get questions from my end, but when you take on a book, of course you have to kind of defend the book and fight that battle there, right?

Like I just, I think when you were talking, the penny just dropped, right? I was like, huh. You know, like, you also have to, you also have to fight that fight there, too. And I guess my question, my follow up question is, you know, what strategies have you deployed to try to get support for that, like, one book about, I don't know, my book was on migrant domestic workers, mostly from the Philippines, right?

Like, you know, how do you kind of marshal, like, what strategies do you use to try to get support for books that, you know, conventionally aren't seen as being that marketable, right? Or wouldn't have that wide of a readership? I

Dawn Durante: don't know. Yeah, that's something I continue to try and do better is get those strategies for being the best possible advocate I can be for books.

And some of the strategies I've cultivated over the years are, one, to go back to the mission. University Press is our non profit, and we are in the business of distributing content, disseminating it as broadly as we can. That benefits educational models, right? So there's not in there that mission of like must be marketable, right?

Like it's great when it is and we want to stay in business though Having books like recuperate the cost of their production Is important but with really smart pricing models and printing models and being just realistic about what books will sell that helps So, in terms of going back to the mission, also being like, just very careful on how I'm thinking about the life of a book, and the price of a book, and how we're going to print it and produce it.

But other strategies are like, I have had the immense fortune of working with some of the most amazing, Some of the most amazing series editors I can imagine, and I've learned so much from them in terms of their really broad networks in the field and how they've also mentored generations of scholars.

So finding the ways that they have advocated for scholars on the academy side, I've sometimes been able to learn from like, that language and those strategies to take back to my colleagues and be able to explain, this is the trajectory of the field. This is the reason this supports the discipline and the discourse.

This is the value to our organization, not only the mission, but also the idea that we are seen as a publisher who specializes in this area. And so by doing books that, you know, it might not be completely clear how they might make their way out into the world, you know, saying like, this is, this is like our, Our, our job, right?

This is my job to bring you the books in the field that are important. So trying to kind of manage some, some of those things. But I feel like the biggest strategy I've had is really stopping to listen to authors and series editors and other networks, like the generosity of people that I've had coffees or meetings with at conferences, never even about a book to just be like, how can I serve the field?

Thinking about like, okay, this is information I'm going to take back so I can make like the most compelling cases I possibly can and sometimes it's not always sometimes people remain unconvinced But I you know, not I'm not giving up. I'll go to the mat about some things The symbolic that I've never actually gotten into a fight with anyone.

Ethel Tungohan: I think what I love about what you're saying is something that we keep seeing in this podcast as well. It's about like having your community, uh, and your networks out there to support you. And you can kind of strategize and help each other figure out how to navigate, you know, these conundrums, how to kind of fight the fight and, you know, be good champions.

Right. So I really, I'm kind of not, you can't. You can't see me, but I'm nodding as you're talking, John, can we pivot a little bit because a lot of our listeners are first generation racialized working class academics, and they're just not aware of the norms surrounding academic publishing, certainly when we first worked together, I didn't know, uh, you know, cool.

Anything about academic publishing, I just knew that I had to get my book published, right? And that that was important for me to be competitive in the academic job market. But since then, I've realized that, you know, there's different conventions that a lot of Folks who are first gen racialized working class may not know when it comes to kind of even first contacting the editor to pitch them their ideas, right?

And even, you know, what types of supports people can reasonably expect their editors to provide. So I guess, you know, just asking you now, just bluntly, like, what should first generation racialized and working class academics know about getting their first manuscripts published? What are some tips that you have for them?

Dawn Durante: Yeah, one of the pieces of advice that I always try to give whether it's talking with a group of people during a publishing talk or a one on one zoom is to remind people that there is not one right way for the publishing process to go. I understand publishing can be in a really black box and it can be really intimidating as far as I've been told, because People don't know.

And there's these ideas that the power dynamics that no one wants to want. No one wants to approach an editor and have it go poorly and then not like sign their book. Like I know those are real worries. So I'm not trying to minimize any of those. I, I just hope it's empowering to hear that there's not one right way for this all to go.

And what that means is, for example, there's not one right way to build a relationship with an editor. Sometimes people reach out to me before they've defended to be like, I have this dissertation. I think you're the perfect press. Can we chat? Sure. Sometimes people wait until they have a formal proposal, send it over the transom, and it's very formal and they're like, would you consider my project?

There's all sorts of ways. One of the strongest relationships I've built with an author was just based on the fact that I saw them at several conferences a year for many years while they were a grad student and we built a relationship of our shared, like, mutual intellectual commitments and we've worked on two books together and it's super great.

Like, that is, you know, not the way every relationship forms, but there's Also, I hope an empowerment in hearing that most editors are not just navigating this profession, only interested in books. We're interested in books as part of our job, of course, but I really feel like a lot of us, and I do this, like, center the relationship.

So, I hope that Comes like something that people can kind of dig into the idea that like, oh, I'm building a relationship with an editor. So if I come to them with a question, it doesn't even have to be specifically about pitching my project. It can be as simple as like, can you tell me what books on your list might be congruent?

Am I like in conversation with mine? So those are some things I, I like to, to talk about, like what to expect. It's like, it can be relationship driven and it doesn't all look the same way. I also wanted to say that as part of the, there's a, there's a university press organization the same way there's the Organization of American Historians, for historian's example, and it's called the Association of University Presses.

And university press community has been working really hard to try to build up more resources for authors to try to minimize some of the disparities in knowledge and mentorship. So one of the resources that could be helpful to folks is also to look at the AU presses askup, A S K U P, U P as in university presses.

And you can just google that or go to the presses website and find it. But there is a archive of Just questions on all sorts of things you could imagine that people might have in terms of like, how do I do a proposal? How do I market my book all sorts of different things and that might be a helpful but the very best resource should always be your editor and Looking for an editor finding someone who approaches this as like a transparent resource Who's an ally who's a liaison between you and the process?

So, so I guess maybe I could also talk about some like really process oriented norms if that would be helpful though.

Ethel Tungohan: Yeah I'm just kind of and we could but I just kind of you know again the penny just dropped in my head when you said that this is a relationship right like I find that a lot of folks are just so scared that they don't realize that the editor that they're talking to is a person and so you have to build that relationship and in some ways.

I don't know. I've had numerous editors now for other books. And one thing I've noticed is that, you know, there are some editors that are just like not interested in your project, you know what I mean? And they kind of acquired it later on, or they had acquired it initially, but like, just the vibe doesn't seem to be there.

I don't know. I think that's like so vague, right? But I guess for me, one thing I was thinking about was, you know, You know, there is, there is a lot of opportunities to maneuver within this relationship first and second, I was thinking as well about, you know, what, what authors can reasonably expect from their editors, right?

It's similar to what we talk about in this podcast, like, you know, some students, graduate students are like, Oh, is it reasonable for me, you know, to expect that my supervisor respond to my emails? And I'm like, yes, of course, your supervisor has to respond to your emails. That's her fucking job, right? Like, do you know what I mean?

And so like, You know, I've heard from friends and colleagues who were like, Ethel, like, is it reasonable for me to expect that the editor, like, responds to my emails? And what would you say to that? I would say yes, right? Like, Yes, it is

Dawn Durante: our job to respond to emails from authors on the management side of things.

I have also had to be like, Editor, you should really work on getting back to people within like, you know, 48 business hours, right? Like, you know, even if it's to say, I'm working on a response. So, yes, that's like the baseline of what authors should expect from their editors is responses. Of course, we're human, so sometimes we forget to throw up or out of office when maybe we're, like, having an illness, but I, I've heard the horror stories, too, that just gave, like, months and months of no word, even after follow ups, and that is, is not a norm.

The norm, the norm would be to have an engaged editor, and, you know, if something happens, and something changes, and an editor, if a book's not under contract, and an editor's no longer interested in a project, I always say, That a kind decline is better than, like, stringing people along or a half hearted yes.

So, you can also, like, just really, like, the norm would be calm and courtesy and transparent communication, for sure.

Ethel Tungohan: I guess another question I had as well is, you know, to is it reasonable to expect editors to like, keep the author informed about what's going on with the manuscript, right? Like, you know, so for example, you know, the manuscripts out for review, is it reasonable for the editor to just kind of say, Okay, well, I've sent it out to reviewers.

This is the timeline that you can begin to expect. Do you know what I mean? So someone who can kind of talk you through the process. And I guess we can get about, we can get to questions about process now, too.

Dawn Durante: Yeah. Well. I can talk about my own practices, which is to say when a project is out for review, I write and update an author and I do exactly what you said.

I said, this is when we expect reports back. And I say that because I'm like, yeah, this is when you can nudge me. If you haven't heard from me, it's likely the reviewer will be late. We all, we all know reviewers are running late. So, but I do say those types of communication, but in terms of the general practice, Editors differ widely, um, different reasons I'm sure, volume, preference for communication, things like that.

But that's a great question to ask editors when you're having like initial conversations about your project with them. To say like, can you talk to me about how you communicate with authors and what are main checkpoints or milestones and things like that. When I, when people are asking me about my acquisitions work, I am like, let me tell you about my editorial philosophy.

And so don't be afraid to ask. And you know, not if all things about multiple presses that you're interested are equal on paper, but you just really feel like another one editor or two of them are, are really much more communicative. Or communicating in your style. I'm not everyone's cup of tea and I understand that.

And that's okay for people to make suggestions, selections on who to go publish with based on list plus having a productive working relationship with an editor. And that's another thing I feel like maybe people don't always feel empowered to do is say like, this person hasn't responded to any of my follow ups.

But there's like the power idea, right? Like, In a way, like, there's an immense amount of power in being responsible for guiding projects through things like peer review because those time, that time it takes, that's a ten year clock ticking really loudly for someone.

Ethel Tungohan: Yes.

Dawn Durante: And so, if you feel like there are some editors who are more or less attuned to that, making a decision on who to publish with, That can be a really important factor because, you know, if there's, you know, there's like certain prestige around certain presses and things like that, but that press isn't going to get your book out in time to meet your career goals.

That's also a problem. So those are totally fair things to weigh.

Ethel Tungohan: Absolutely and i think academia operates on this like perplexing prestige economy right where folks are like oh i have to like get my book published at x and y press or whatever right but then what if they're not responding to your emails or what if they like said yes and give you a contract but have ghosted you or what if there's not the same level of.

Care and attention or even support for your project, right? Like, what if your editor doesn't fundamentally get it? And so I kind of, as you're talking, I'm thinking, you know, obviously, like, different people have different priorities, but also that, you know, maybe just kind of being upfront with your editor and just kind of communicating well and asking them direct questions is totally the way to go, right?

Asking about editorial philosophy, asking about, you know, what their timelines are, Are I think a lot of authors don't know that they could ask those questions. Do you know what I mean?

Dawn Durante: Yeah, well if it's helpful the way I think of all of this is every book I work on Every author I work with we're a collaboration And sometimes that collaboration can be very short because i'm a most responsible collaborator for certain books when I say I can't publish this one on the timeline you need, right?

Like sometimes people are really under the clock for something. And I know the review process is going to take longer and things like that. But I don't see that as the end of a relationship because people are going to read another book and we're going to be around for a while publishing other books.

They could be a peer reviewer. So that's again where centering a relationship can come in really handy and hopefully make people feel okay about being candid about those sorts of things. But, but you're right, like sometimes in that collaboration, certain authors may need to weigh prestige more than, like, editorial temperament.

Because maybe they're in a department that is like, we will not give you tenure if you go with this other press. And like, of course, I would be like, very sensitive to that and be like, yes, do not publish with me if you are not going to get tenure, right? Like, I wouldn't be a good collaborator if I was trying to like, You know, minimize or derail them from their professional track.

Ethel Tungohan: Wow. No, I like this word that you're a collaborator. I think that kind of makes it less daunting than seeing your editor as yet another boss. You

Dawn Durante: know what I mean? Like Oh, definitely.

Ethel Tungohan: I don't know don if you knew this but you know how like you probably don't remember but I was so afraid to talk to you sometimes because I was like you know I I was on the job market and then I got pregnant and that do you know what I mean and so all of these delays happened and I was like oh no don will hate me but then but then thinking back I was like no I don't.

I don't think you hated me. I think, I think you were my collaborator and we're just trying to like, figure it out with me.

Dawn Durante: Like a second of even like frustration with you. Not even that. Like, you're right. I wouldn't be a good collaborator if I were like, send this book in even though you're dealing with like life because life will always be more important than the book.

Right. Like, I mean, I know, I know that the book becomes very important to life when you're talking about getting raises and promotions and things like that. So I'm never trying to forget that. But yeah, you can't like choose the book over your baby, right? Having a baby. I know. Biology will not allow it.

But I think that if it helped to hear a little bit more of my conceptualization of what that collaboration looks like, is it's a true exchange of ideas. I am trying to like enter this collaboration by saying like this is what I've learned about publishing in the years I've been doing it. I've been through like so many hundreds of peer reviews now.

This is like where what I think peer reviewers are going to say to your manuscript do you want to revise before we get it to them so they can really focus on things that I couldn't possibly point out. And then in exchange I get the collaboration back of like, here's all the knowledge that I've accumulated through my research and intellectual work in the book.

Right. I learned so much. I'm so lucky. And so that's like the bare minimum I can do is exchange my knowledge with the knowledge I'm receiving as part of this opportunity to read people's work. And so that's why even like, I don't move forward with a book because maybe another, maybe I don't feel like I'm at a press that can support it well.

But also I also never worry when someone's like, you know what? I think I'm going to go to another press cause it's just the right fit for me for now. I'm like, this is the point to make books go where they're meant to be. And I'm lucky when it's, I'm getting to be the editor working on a book that ends up at the press I'm at.

So. But yes, I promise you it never for once hated you, not even

Ethel Tungohan: personally. No, no, and I truly, truly appreciate that. Like when I started our conversation saying that I didn't realize what difference, what a difference a good editor made, I meant that sincerely. And honestly, I've had works that I, Feel like the editor didn't even read, right?

And so I guess that's another kind of side question. Is it reasonable to expect our editor to read our book?

Dawn Durante: It's, it's definitely reasonable to expect an editor to have, to be familiar with your book. I would be a liar if I had said I've read every word of every single book I've ever published. I would have had a lot fewer books come out if that were the case.

Because I'm also reading multiple versions of books over time, right? The proposal and sample chapters and then the complete manuscript comes in and then there's often a revised manuscript and then there's the final manuscript. So by the time we get to the final manuscript, I've read a lot, a lot about a book and I might be like, Oh, is there a new sentence on page 54?

I might never have read that sentence, right? Like, but being familiar, like we can't advocate for books that we're not familiar with in my opinion as well as We can. So I think you want an author, an editor who's like in conversation with the book, who's engaged with the book. And, you know, sometimes when I write emails, I specifically say like, I've spent time with your manuscript now because I don't even want to give the miss and I don't want to misrepresent the fact that I maybe read every word on every page.

And there are some books that I do do that for because maybe they need that or maybe that is just a different sort Maybe it's a shorter book but I I do think that it's a It's uncommon for an editor to have read every single word of every single Page of every single book they've ever published and i'm just being honest about that

Ethel Tungohan: But

Dawn Durante: you definitely want people to have read like a proposal before it's going out for in things like that You it it's good to have the sense that the author Uh, the editors invested in what you're doing and the best way for them to get invested is like, really take the time to know a project.

I don't think that's I don't think that's too much to expect.

Ethel Tungohan: Absolutely. No, I think that's, that's an important point to make and I think, I don't know, like I've just, I've just had encounters where it's like, did you even read the book or did you know the project and why are you kind of, you know what I mean?

Like, it was just clear that there wasn't that, that level of collaboration there. Dawn, can I sneak in one last question? I know that You know, we're over time. But first, okay, last question, pivoting back to people who might want to be an editor as well. Since you know, some of our listeners might not even have considered that as a potential career track.

Any advice for those wanting to become editors for academic presses?

Dawn Durante: This is such a great profession. It's not without its But I find it very rewarding and fulfilling, and I know that higher ed is a mess, but the ways in which we get to engage with higher ed, being a little bit on the outside, one foot in it, one foot in the business of publishing books, can feel really impactful.

I don't have the same things that bind me as a tenure process. I have a peer review process, but I love when those two things meet. Work in confluence with one another so the actual advice would be a one It's not I I often get people emailing me hold emails for informational interviews to say I'm really interested in this profession Do you have, you have 30 minutes to talk with me?

Sometimes I'm saying, I say, Oh, I'd love to connect you with this other quality, maybe because that colleague will have more time or now I'm, I'm now in a little bit further in my career, past entry level, and I might not be as in touch with the best again. So I want to make sure that I'm connecting people with the best resource.

There is wonderful resources out there. There's some things on that AskUp AU Presses area I mentioned on that website for resources. I'm involved in an HNET feminist editorial collective called Feeding the Elephant. And on Feeding the Elephant, we have some posts. that are about like, how do I take my academic background and make it appeal to like, make it translate to applying for a job in the academy.

So little things like that. There are a lot more journals out there than university presses. And so sometimes if you're a special and say a grad student in department or in a university that has a journal and you can do some work at a journal, sometimes that's work that can translate into a cover letter to move into say acquisitions or the book part of university press publishing journals are great too.

That's a great part of working in university press world too. Yeah. So that's one piece of advice. There's also a really excellent book called What Editors Do from University of Chicago Press by Peter Ginna. Actually, not sure if I'm saying that right. G I N N A. And each chapter in that book, in section, devotes material to different sorts of editorial work.

So acquisitions work, copy editing work, agents, things like that. So that could be a really resource for just like people thinking about where they might want to work within the editorial world. And there's different sorts of places out there that, you know, you could subscribe to places like Publishers Weekly.

They have a Publishers Lunch Digest email. And there's a wonderful blog from the Society for, the Society for Scholarly Publishing called Scholarly Kitchen. They put posts out Monday through Friday on all sorts of things related to the publishing industry. So a great way to learn. But in terms of like getting into publishing, I also like to say it's almost just, it's, it's really competitive in the same way as that getting into like a tenure track job is.

So I never want to like misrepresent it as maybe like easier, uh, but it definitely in terms of getting into the job, it has only become more competitive as people are more like, you know, finding ways to be academic adjacent.

Ethel Tungohan: Okay, well, thank you so much, Dawn. Was there anything else that you wanted to tell our listeners?

Dawn Durante: Well, I just want to say thank you again for this opportunity to chat about publishing. I am sure we could talk for like three more hours. I find a lot to talk about. I think this is, um, you know, ask 10 editors, you get 10 different opinions, but I hope some of this will, will be helpful or interesting or anything like that.

Just, I think that, uh, Academy can really drag people down, but a good editor is someone who's really gonna help facilitate the book you dream of writing, and I just think that's really important. I just can't wish any, I wish everyone just the best in writing their books and finding the right editors and publishers for them.

Ethel Tungohan: Thank you so much, Dawn. Thank you. I learned so much when talking to Dawn and I hope you did too. Don't forget to check out the resources that she pointed out. These are available on our show notes. And that's Academic Aunties for this week. We don't have grants to support this work, nor do we get ad sponsorship.

This is truly a labor of love. We rely on listener support for this podcast, so please consider becoming a Patreon supporter or buying academic aunties swag. Check out ways to support the pod on academicaunties.com. Follow us on all social media and spread the word about her podcast or on Instagram at @academicaunties.

And you can email us at podcast at academucaunties.com. Today's episode was produced by me, Dr. Ethel Tungohan, Wayne Chu, and Dr. Nisha Nath. Tune in next time when we talk to more academic antis. Until then, take care, be kind to yourself, and don't be an asshole.