Key Tips to Identifying Your Target Publisher

In the first episode of Publish My Book, Avi Staiman offers strategic tips for identifying your target publisher, including: understanding where other titles in your research field have been published and how your research angle fits into existing series, using platforms such as the Association of University Presses and New Books Network to your advantage and introducing yourself to relevant editors to inquire about potential publishing fits.

Related resources:

Association of University Presses find a publisher matrix

Identify which New Books Network channel(s) most closely relates to your research field

Hear from acquisitions editors: The Authors Handbook to Academic Book Publishing

Identify your current stage within the publishing journey (and navigate the rest of the journey with success!)

Episode transcript:

Hello and welcome to Publish My Book, your one-stop podcast for navigating the publishing journey, from manuscript draft to published monograph. In each episode, we'll dive into a specific topic on the road to publishing your manuscript to offer you clarity, confidence, and an increased chance of publication success.

I'm Avi Staiman, host of the Publish My Book podcast. Over the past 10 years, I've had the privilege of being the CEO of Academic Language Experts, a company dedicated to helping researchers and research institutions publish their high-quality humanities and social sciences research with respected academic publishers. During that time, I've worked with thousands of talented scholars from research universities and colleges to museums, foundations, and scholarly associations all around the world, shepherding their research from ideation to publication. Now, I've teamed up with the incredible team at the New Books Network to share everything I've learned about the journey with you, to help you streamline your process and transform your idea into a book published by your dream publisher. Publish My Book, here we go!

In the first episode, we will talk about how to find the publisher that's right for you. The first thing that we need to think about is not only what the biggest brand names are - Harvard University Press, and Princeton University Press - obviously great publishers, but whether or not they are the right fit for your specific manuscript. Oftentimes, the publisher that will be the most excited about your book may not be the one that's the most well-renowned or that everyone knows ahead of time. There's nothing wrong with those publishers, but it's important to keep your mind open to different possibilities. So, how do you go about finding the publisher or the press that's right for you? The first thing we need to consider is which publishers are interested in your content, in your subject area, in your field. The best way to go about identifying that is to look at the different series.

Usually, books are packaged together in a series that have been published recently over the last two or three years. Check which publishers stand out in your field and which publishers have published multiple titles in your given field. Once you have that down, you'll be able to make yourself a shortlist of where your book might be able to fit in. It's much easier for editors at a publisher to accept a book if it fits into a series that already exists, as opposed to having to create a new series just for you. If you can't easily do a Google search and find out which publishers are publishing series in your interest, you might want to go to your own bibliography of your recent articles, maybe of the book you've already started writing, or even just peruse the library shelf. Pay special attention to who the publisher is, not just what the content is. If you get yourself into the habit of taking notice of the publisher, you'll quickly be able to make yourself a list of which publishers seem to be interested in your field.

Another suggestion that I would give to authors is to look at a special resource created by AU Presses. If you're not familiar, AU Presses are the Association of University Presses. It's an umbrella organization that organizes and brings together all of the different publishers, the university publishers, that publish in the humanities and social sciences. They have a great resource on their website, which we'll share in the show notes, that shows researchers exactly which subject areas each publisher is interested in. So, I can go through Duke University Press and see exactly what kind of titles they would want to accept. Or, I can search according to the subject area. So let's say my field is sociology, I can go to have a look at all the publishers that tell me that they're interested in sociology.

The next suggestion that I would give, the fourth and final suggestion, is to look at the New Books Network channel that is most closely related to your research. Have a look at the recently published works and see where your subject area aligns or overlaps with recent books that have been published. Go ahead and consider those publishers.

To finish off, make sure that you're not shy to ask questions. If you're at a conference or just want to reach out to a publisher or an editor that you think might be relevant, don't hesitate to do so. They're more than welcoming, they're more than excited to speak to you about your title. The worst thing they could say is no, and then you'll know to move on to another publisher. The other benefit of book publishing as opposed to journal article publishing is that you can actually send to multiple publishers in tandem or at the same time in parallel. You don't need to wait for an answer from one in order to send to the other. That gives you a big advantage because you can actually take your manuscript, shop it around to a few different publishers, and see who's most excited about it, who shows interest, who is jumping at the opportunity to publish your work, which is exactly the place that you want to be.

Thanks for joining us on the Publish My Book podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to some of the resources we mentioned and hit the subscribe button to get notifications every time we publish a new episode. Until next time, keep on forging ahead with your research and moving forward on the road to publication.