Former University Press Editor Gives Free Teleclass May 11 on How to Publish Your Academic Book

The Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, has issued a report after surveying 1,330 language and literature departments at major universities. This report states that 35 to 40% of tenure-track professors do not receive tenure at the university that originally hired them.

They confirm that "expectations for tenure and promotion have increased." Furthermore, they noted, there is an increased emphasis on publishing books at a time "when universities have lowered or eliminated subsidies for scholarly presses and libraries have dramatically reduced their purchases of books in the humanities."

What's an academic to do? It has become more incumbent on assistant professors (and even graduate students still writing their dissertations) to understand the world of academic publishing, in order to avoid making mistakes during their only chance to publish and succeed in academia. Yet it is hard to find information about the inner workings of the academic publishing world.

Gina Hiatt, Ph.D., President of Academic Ladder LLC, a company dedicated to helping both graduate students and professors navigate their academic career, is attempting to bridge this information gap. She is bringing an expert to the "academic public" to give a free teleseminar called "Publish Your Academic Book (and avoid the countless dreaded pitfalls that can sink it)." The teleseminar will take place May 11, 2009, at 7:00 PM EST, and will be 75 minutes long.

The expert presenter, David Emblidge, Ph.D., began his editorial career at Harvard University Press and then Cambridge University Press, where he was a humanities acquisitions editor. He worked also for Continuum, a scholarly for-profit publisher. He then transitioned to trade books (for non-scholarly, general readers), founding Berkshire House, a small press that was eventually sold to WW Norton, one of America's best publishers. He ran David Emblidge — Book Producer, a book-packaging firm and then became Editor in Chief at The Mountaineers Books.

Currently, Dr. Emblidge is Associate Professor in the Writing, Literature and Publishing Department of Emerson College, Boston, where he gives publishing courses in the MA in Publishing program. He has presented publishing workshops at the University of Virginia, University of Massachusetts – Boston, and the Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley (St. Lawrence University, Clarkson University, SUNY Potsdam).

Various publishers have published work by David Emblidge, including Oxford University Press, Da Capo Press, Stackpole Books, and Watson-Guptill. He has published many articles in literary and scholarly journals, and last year his essay "The Palmer Method: Penmanship and the Tenor of Our Time," won the McGinnis Prize for best nonfiction, 2007, in Southwest Review. His own current book in progress is The American Bookstore, to be published by University of Massachusetts Press.

The seminar will focus on how academic authors can make the process of getting their book published go more smoothly and successfully. Dr. Emblidge will talk about positioning the scholarly book intelligently, within the tightly defined publishing world. He will explain editorial involvement in the creative process and authorial involvement in the publishing process, explaining steps authors can take to make to improve this process. He will help participants target the appropriate publishing house for their work explaining how the published book can be turned into other projects.