Essential knowledge about scholarly book publishing that every author should have. Get weekly tips on writing and publishing your scholarly book from developmental editor and publishing consultant Laura Portwood-Stacer, PhD.
How curiosity can help you publish your book
Published about 10 hours ago • 8 min read
The Manuscript Works Newsletter
Essential knowledge on scholarly book publishing that every author should have
Hello Manuscript Workers!
What's in this edition:
Why curiosity and collaboration are key to scholarly book publishing, according to acquiring editor Alison Syring
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This newsletter is coming to you from Laura Portwood-Stacer, PhD, professional developmental editor and publishing advisor. I help scholarly writers navigate the book publishing process with more ease and agency.
I hope you'll stick around for practical tips on writing and publishing your scholarly book, but if you'd like to adjust your subscription settings, you can do that at the bottom of this message.
In this newsletter, I spotlight the stories and perspectives of real people who write and publish scholarly books. This week, I bring you a conversation with acquiring editor Alison Syring, writer of the Acquiring with Alison blog series over at the University of Illinois Press blog.
In our interview below, Alison emphasizes the importance of curiosity and collaboration in scholarly book publishing. Present yourself as an author who is curious about the process and willing to collaborate in making your book successful, and you'll definitely score points with acquiring editors like Alison! Read on to learn more.
Laura Portwood-Stacer:Who are you, where do you work, and what kinds of books do you acquire?
My name is Alison Syring, and I’m a senior acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press. I acquire broadly in history and religion, and within those I have a few specialties. Within history, my main list areas are labor, radical, migration, disability, and Illinois/Midwestern scholarly history. I’m drawn to histories of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and the Cold War periods, and I’m increasingly interested in how historians are understanding the late 20th century. While most of my work is in US history, many of my lists cross over into transnational or global histories. Within religion, my main area is Mormon studies, and I am building a broader religion list where I am interested in American religion, New Religious Movements, and the margins of religion, including areas like humanism, secularism, atheism, and interfaith.
Because Illinois has a long history of publishing interdisciplinary titles, I also consider projects that use interdisciplinary methods, especially in labor and radical studies, migration studies, and religious studies. I am drawn to projects that center history from the bottom up, or stories that have been made invisible or marginalized. I also love projects that help reveal how we have arrived at our present moment by articulating why this study matters now.
Before I worked in acquisitions at Illinois, I earned an MFA in fiction writing at UIUC and an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins, so my approach to acquisitions is more about writing effectively than subject-matter expertise. I have also worked as a production editor, technical writer, and freelance editor, so I’m broadly familiar with many processes that go into writing and publishing.
LPS: What’s your top green flag when you are contacted by a prospective author that tells you “I could definitely be interested in working with this person?”
Alison Syring: My green flag is probably authors who convey that they are open and collaborative during our first interactions. Authors have probably heard how individual this process can be, so it’s important to keep an open mind. Once they start the acquisitions process, authors will be interacting with an editor (and maybe an assistant), peer reviewers, and potentially series editors, and their acquisitions editor will convey feedback from their colleagues in marketing; editorial, design, and production; and the press’s faculty board. In my experience, all of these stakeholders have the best interests of the project in mind and offer feedback from their expertise, but sometimes those interests may seem at odds and we need to work through them. Or sometimes someone has a great idea we haven’t thought about before, and it is in the best interest of the project to pivot. Maybe this is a different title or cover design, or even a different organizational strategy.
If an author has been working on a project for a very long time, it can be difficult to hear feedback that something they intentionally developed should change to be more effective. I get that. But publishing a book is a collaborative project in ways that writing sometimes isn’t, and we are all experts in our piece of the process: the author is the subject-matter expert, as are the peer reviewers and series editors. I have expertise in writing and publishing, and my colleagues have expertise in style and layout and design and promotion and rights. Any author who signals that they are open to this process is someone I want to work with, and they are someone whose project will be more successful for this combined effort.
LPS: What’s your superpower as an editor?
Alison Syring: Wow, what a great question! What really drew me to acquisitions, after working in writing and publishing in other capacities, was my curiosity. I love digging into a proposal or a manuscript on the utopian socialist origins of Latter-day Saints and then moving into place in disability history. The ability to both dig into a project and then jump to another keeps me going, because while the overall process is similar, the development of each project is unique. When I get a new submission in my list areas, I am always excited about the potential for this author’s work to contribute to their field and about how I can help them make it as effective as possible. As I discussed above, I love working collaboratively with authors to unlock what makes their work especially effective and relevant.
While I am super curious about book projects, I am also curious about the scholars who write them and their goals beyond publishing. Derek Krissoff wrote recently on his Substack that “You sign the author more than the book,” and this has become truer for me the longer I acquire. I want to get to know an author and their work not only for this one project, but also as a contact for the next book—or as a series editor, reviewer, contributor, or supportive scholar I know in the field. Forging these relationships has helped me build list areas that I’m really excited about and support those areas in the long term.
LPS: If you were meeting with an author at a conference and not talking shop, what would you love to chat with someone about human-to-human?
Alison Syring: If I’m not talking about books—either those I acquire or those I read!—then I am probably doing something with my kids, Emmeline (8) and Rhys (5). One of my favorite moments at a conference recently was when an author I had worked with for years, Eladio Bobadilla, brought his wife and children to see his book, Dangerous Migration, at the Illinois booth. He won the Gutman dissertation prize right out of graduate school, so we worked together as he moved jobs and had children, and this was a lovely moment of that all coming together. I want authors to know I’m a human, too, and we all have human things going on that are sometimes more important than books. I’ve really enjoyed being part of scholarly communities that normalize life outside the academic tower.
I also really love being outside (even if I’m just reading outside!). I am very much an amateur gardener and hiker, but I love spending time in my yard in Urbana and exploring parks around Central Illinois. This year we put in a raised vegetable garden, and I’ve learned so much about local bird life from my Merlin bird app. I also started playing piano with my daughter last year, which is so much fun.
LPS: Is there any other advice you’d like to leave authors with?
Alison Syring: I describe my job in a lot of ways. Even in this interview, I’ve described being an editor and collaborator and relationship-builder. I also see myself as a translator and an advocate. With my colleagues at the press, I translate my list areas, and with authors, I translate the scholarly publishing process. I need to understand my lists well enough to explain them to colleagues who work on all the lists at the press, from marketing to editorial, and explain the nuances of how those areas might see things like cover design or citation styles. I need to understand publishing—both acquisitions, and the other areas at the press—to guide authors and answer their questions.
I also advocate for the projects I acquire. I tend to like quirky projects, those that have strong arguments and clear value, but that also push the envelope in one way or another. Working in Mormon studies (and I am not a Latter-day Saint myself), I have become especially attuned to navigating difficult topics. I recently published Mormon Garments: Sacred and Secret by Nancy Ross, Jessica Finnigan, and Larissa Kanno Kindred. Garments can be a taboo topic, and I’m sure there are many who don’t think people should write or publish on this topic. But this study is so important for understanding how people—especially marginalized people—live their embodied religious practices. I also have a book in production that is essentially a coauthored monograph and an edited collection in one: a duo of historians wrote a history of a diffuse union, and they solicited other historians to contribute essays on specific aspects of this history to build out the understanding—and to show the importance of writing history collaboratively. I enjoy taking on projects that are a bit different, especially when authors are collaborative and open, because I don’t think every scholarly book needs to look the same. There is room to expand our idea of what a project looks and sounds like, while maintaining scholarly rigor. Yet these projects especially—though all projects in their own way—require an editor who will advocate for them within their press and beyond.
It’s important that within this process, when authors think about who they want to work with, they think about who will be able to best translate their work, who will be able to translate the publishing process to them, and who will advocate for them when they aren’t in the room.
LPS: If an author wants to reach out about a book project they’re working on, how should they contact you?
Alison Syring: You can always reach me at asyring2@illinois.edu. I aim to respond to queries within a week, at least with an update for when I can respond more completely. I enjoy reading and responding to queries, and I also love chatting at conferences and meeting via zoom to discuss ideas. I also write a blog series for the press, which is a great way to find broader information about working with me at Illinois
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Essential knowledge about scholarly book publishing that every author should have. Get weekly tips on writing and publishing your scholarly book from developmental editor and publishing consultant Laura Portwood-Stacer, PhD.