Bookstore in new york city. We will take motions from the floor. Thank you all for coming this evening. We are hosting this panel and how to publish with the University Press. Show of hands if this is your first time at old culture. We are so happy you found us. We have been proud to be a part of morningside intellectual and Academic Committee and happy to carry one of the widest selections of academic titles in the city. Columbia University Press is but one of our greatest partners and supporters in our efforts pretty nice conversational be moderated by Jennifer Crewe who is the associate provost of community press. Cspan booktv is here recording the stock said during the q a portion of tonights program please wait for a much vaunted come to you otherwise they will be able to record your question. Thanks everyone for coming out and i will turn it over to jennifer who will introduce her palace. Thank you very much and i want to say also we love you too too. Book culture is probably one of the most important bookstores for University Press. You wander the aisles you can see a lot of those representative here. I also want to thank the panelists. I will go in order. Nicholas dames i know you have a special title. He is the author of two books both published by University Press missed out to third getting an british fiction 1810th 1870 and reading and neuroscience and he also writes on contemporary literature and the humanities novel reading etc. For many publications including the atlantic and New York Times book review, the nation and public books. That leads me into Sharon Marcus who is orlando professor of english and dean of humanities still pray she ended her deanship. Her first book apartment story city and homes in 19th century london was published by California Press enter second look was published by princeton University Press. And also i should mention public books again because in 2012 sharon and katelynn at nyu cofounded publics books and on line magazine that features really great accessible writing by scholars but also other people in the community, activists as well as writers on arts and ideas and its a great publication. And then all the way over there to my left is Eric Schwartz my colleague at columbia University Press the editorial director and hes the editor of sociology and cognitive science books and runs acquisition department. Hes worked at princeton University Press in cambridge University Press. We have a lot of University Presses representative here. I just wanted to start by stating what is University Press because some people dont know what makes us different from another publisher either a commercial trade publisher that publishes mostly fiction and general nonfiction you might read but also how would differs from a commercial scholarly publisher. First of all we are notforprofit organization. That doesnt mean we are. We are not out to sign up for books that will earn money for the organization. Secondly we are situated within a university. Universities are middle name and seller goal, our mission at the university and the mission at the University Press are entwined in some way. The university wants to Foster Research and the generation of scholarship and disseminate that scholarship to curate it and get it out into the world. We also publish important looks that a commercial publisher would not take on because they would not make any money for the company. They may lose money. There are commercial scholarly presses that will publish an increasing number of scholarly autograph but they are out of reach for most normal human beings. The University Presses to try to reach an audience of educated general readers with their looks and pricing is usually set to that level. Next our method of acquiring books, the editors that eric runs the department is different from other kinds of publishers. Our editors often who have a degree in the field or they have had some kind of graduate training and they are given areas of specialization. We have a history editor who also does economics and we have a philosophy and relations editor. They go to conferences and read journals and they develop an expertise and a group of people that they cultivate and learn about. At trade house the editors main relationship with d with an agent. We do deal with agents sometimes but for the most part trade publishers the main person they are cultivating is the agent they are doing what they try to get the agent to submit books that they would like to publish. The other thing i wanted to say before we get started University Press has published several types of books. We have publish solid monographs that only specialists is rigged and we also publish trade books generally books he would find a barnes noble and we publish books that we know would be not a book that a mcgrawhill or Harrison Ford would publish because its too small of a market but we are happy to have it year after year. Then we do rigorous peer review and this is particularly important in todays atmosphere of fake news and concerns about inaccuracy and information that gets out there. We publish work that is vetted and verified. Finally we have a Publication Committee and nick happens to sit on that committee now. Most University Presses have such a committee. They read the pier reviews and they hear what the editor has to say about the book and they read a portion of the manuscript and they are the final okay. If they agree we can offer contract for a book and thats very different from another kind of publisher. So i thought i would ask questions around several topics that are important for University Presses and we will limit and get a sense of how we work and how we go about looking at them. I will group my questions were in various topics in the first topic is peer review which i just mentioned. This is briefly essential to our mission of advancing scholarships and what it represents when considering a manuscript or proposal to a couple of scholars who the author does not know. They dont know who the person is who has read it but its a very important part of what we do. I guess sharon and nick first of all as an author and is a graduate student adviser and in your case is a former administrator would you think is the value of peer review . Maybe sharon can start. I think peer review is having your ideas of valueadded by experts and its very important to do that. When you get a book from University Press you know its been a valueadded eye experts writing anonymously without worrying about any of the politics that may affect the academy. It would be interesting if the pier were doubleblind and the reviewers didnt know who they were reviewing. What peer review does is it the books for how original they are and how accurate they are and also helps them modulate their scope so book that might be narrow if someone might say this is really interesting in your argument and your questions about Housing Construction and inspection or they might conversely say you are overdoing it a bit with how termites are in understanding of so its great to have other people read your stuff without the dynamics involved and you get their honest opinion. A peer review is a great preview of your process and also against the internal politics of your department and universities. If outside experts are are book its working properly on its own terms. And a peer review is on this. I recently had an article peerreviewed and was valuable to know it was doubleblind. They didnt know anything about me. They were just reading my article and telling me what works and where they need a little more evidence. It was just a set of responses and feedback. Nick you can add to that but also add something about your role in our publications. The thing that i would add to what sharons great summary i would add only one thing to that which is the pier review system ensures an edict to books. The good things that peer reviews are good at weeding out his interpretations. One of the main characters was an impossibly lengthy monograph and determines that they have done that already. Its a shattering moment of the pier review but theres a way that peer review mitigates against repetition. Its a new contribution to knowledge. When i see peer reviews the main thing i tend to look or besides are their theoretical axes being ground that are unnecessary and want to see the reviewer provide a summary of the books argument argument. At least theres an attempt to read the manuscript with sympathy. If the pier review or only comes for the details that to me is a sign that the book is not read well and was red with some sub training ax to grind that im not aware of. It should be able to suggest the limits of the arguments. Thats the first thing i look for when i judge that. I want them to mirror back to me their sense of her readers stepping back and what it would look like. There are also times when i have to read between the lines. Sometimes somebody will sort if you will see they dont want to say this isnt groundbreaking original scholarship but they kind of get at it that way. You to learn a lexicon of terms that are strongly meant. You can tell an eric from your point of view as an editor. Was often interesting is when there are conflicts in those reviews. If theres a particular reading and a slightly different reading and the author has to engage with one of those readings to determine what is the argument that they want to make. It will make for a better and more engaged book and it lets the public should know the authors committed to this project and that they are going to defend and stand up for the arguments that they are making. The if peer review from an editorial perspective, think there is always a move to try to review the book was going to be more sensational or book thats going to sell more copies. Knowing that our projects are going to be judged by an members of the Publication Committee and we meet with our Publications Committee the final thursday of every month. Its a minidissertation at times where you were going in there and you have to work that you have spent time in and you are going to have to in some cases defend those projects. Sometimes you succeed and infrequently you dont succeed but i think its really important to keep it honest. We often think about books that will be considered for publication in what were the perceptions of the committee b. Of this project before we get started down the road in the review process. As im listening to this conversation i realized i should mention for anybody whos particular interest in peer review to aaup now called the aup. The University Presses recently put out a best practices booklet on peer reviewing if you are interested in what to expect. Its a handy guide. Also something that occurred to me that our committee there are people on it from really nine different fields and crosses humanity social science, science and business. The way scholars in different fields react to the review is always quite interesting. Also the types of reviews you get. In the humanities you might get a person that read every word and is making helpful suggestions on typos and things like that and then you might get something you know and the finance area and science too. Might get like a paragraph. Time is money. One person in Business School told me that. But anyway it is something that really stands out in one that works well it makes the book a better book and it helps the editor and helps guide the author and it helps us understand as publishers, this kind of publishing some of it is very specialized and none of us know the field well so these reviews help us situated in the market who would be interested. The review process is an opportunity for Network Building for the author and to add diversity to the reception of the book. I often look for, theres an book that would be interested people across the fields i will try to get a reviewer in one field and tried to get a senior person or a junior person. Oftentimes the readings can be very different and it can be really useful for the author especially for junior authors. Thinking about readers who would be important revamped for them to know people out in the field who know their work. Cervelli great opportunity to build those networks and use our placements to do that. Another thing i dont think we mentioned that we often say to authors. Review is picking out something in the book and the author doesnt want to deal with it. We often say well this could be a preview of whats going to happen when you have the book published and theres a published review of it. This is the kind of issue that could come up some eyes will catch it now before its published. I thought maybe we would move on to acquiring the books and eric what are the different ways to look for books to consider for publication and how do the methods differ depending on whether its a monograph book. We have a righty of different ways in which we acquire books. Their other projects that come in by email and such. Different fields are different that way. Could probably go several years before someone would come in whereas our the editor gets five projects today. Different fields are different in that regard. I would say the number of books that we acquire based on that method is very slim. Editors make campuses. We go to different academic campuses and we find out what projects people are working on. Each one of our lists has somewhat of a personality to it. Broadly speaking i think columbia books are contemporary. We want our books to have a certain flavor and feel across the entirety of the list. There could be perfectly Great Projects that simply dont fit that kind of brand identity and not my not provide for us. We get projects from agents on occasion paid we go to the frankfurt book fair. That is an enormous yearly book fair in germany where every publisher in the world attends. There are 300,000 attendees. They opened to the public on saturday and sunday. Ive had the good fortune of being in the train station and all of the players were swarming into the train station as i was reading. They were going to frankfurt. Also the Mission Projects by being in a field you often know whether the structure holds in a given field. Theres a roux need for an economics book on a certain aspect of Climate Change and would it be great if x person wrote that look. You are writing to people that way. Somebody writes an oped. Writing to those authors and saying hey when it beat red ideas be worked on this kind of project. A whole variety of ways that you can get them through the pipeline. Sharon im thinking about public books where you are really trying to reach a little bit. I am curious about what you think and now i think both of you are probably working on a third book. When do you think i want to reach beyond a smaller audience to a bigger audience and how does it play in your mind about what kind of publisher you go to to . I suppose every writer looks at list and often fantasizes about what fits them the best. Its often a process of discovery with an editor. They are good at identifying authors a government identified. You imagine as you are writing up look imagine its a dialogue that there may be a third party out there that you are talking to and you want to bring into the conversation and you were either too scared to or her you dont know fewer qualified or if everyone revealed she was a possible audience you want them revealed to you. In a way a list is seeing what a possible audience is a given press imagines and it says something i think i want to take on . One of the things you think about ahead of time is choosing between a University Press of the upper project that could go either way but am finishing a book right now on the issue of celebrity and ive been working on it for a long time. They say that would make it great trade. So if you have a book that can go either way. In many ways its great to have all the clamor that up when you publish with the University Press of first of all they will let you keep your footnotes and if you are a scholar you like your footnotes. If youve publish for the University Press i think you are free to write it look that his argument driven and these days if you publish with the trade press they are going to ask you to write a book that is narrative driven. And narrative driven book is true written us an idea like why are so many people so obsessed with celebrity. A narrative book is driven by characters and events any probably have to start with Something Like in november of 1882 Sarah Bernhardt and i personally didnt want to write this book that way but if youre going to write a book that is narrative driven you can see other stories from the start. There are only a few brilliant people and i am not one of them who can make an argument. That is a very tricky thing to do. Its easier to make an argument and that argument can be very compelling. I chose to put my energy into that and im very happy that University Press does embrace that. Historians often write more narrative driven books. I think that is all i will say. You are in the company of other scholars and you are in dialogue and their books help your book to be more compelling and it reflects on their book as well and thats a very good thing to do. Where is in the trade press in your book may not fit in as well you may end up eating the nerd at the party as opposed to being a nerd among nerds. And nerd among nerds over a long span of time, nerds all the way. The nice thing about