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.
Discouraging feedback from your dream publisher
Published about 21 hours ago • 7 min read
The Manuscript Works Newsletter
Essential knowledge on scholarly book publishing that every author should have
How author Lily Kelting pivoted to a new press for her book, Against Heritage
Free resource: How to Publish a Book from Your Dissertation (webinar recording in case you missed the live event last week)
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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.
These days, it feels as if every online space where scholars and writers hang out is inundated with discourse about AI. I understand why this is, but I gotta say that, personally, I'm exhausted by it. I've been thinking about how to make this newsletter a haven apart from such discussions (necessary as they may be elsewhere), and how to offer something valuable to my readers that you can't get by asking a robot.
I think we are all hungry to hear from real humans about the real shit that has happened to them as they've navigated the scholarly publishing process. And so, this week I offer you a conversation I had with Dr. Lily Kelting, an alum of my Book Proposal Accelerator whose book came out earlier this year. Lily's journey had a couple twists and turns that were challenging at the time but ultimately led to the right outcome for her book. I hope you'll find her story instructive and inspiring, especially if you've ever encountered feedback that felt really wrong—or feared that this would happen to you when submitting your work to a publisher.
Here's the description of Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional Foods from the University of North Carolina Press website:
A provocative look at how traditional food movements erase culinary pasts
The rise of “heritage” foods—that is, the reinvention of traditional foods—has enjoyed a high profile thanks to the oft-praised efforts of chefs such as Sean Brock and René Redzepi. But Lily Kelting observes the popularity of heritage foods as something more: a global movement in response to climate catastrophe and the rise of right-wing, populist movements that center a return to the past as part of their ideology.
Weaving ethnography, discourse analysis, critical theory, and sensory, embodied critique, Kelting tracks and critiques the boom of traditional food revival movements in the American South, Denmark, and India. Ultimately, Kelting argues that the heritage culinary professionals wish to revive is equal parts nostalgia and invention: They engage, subvert, and ignore food histories in their creation of new food movements. As Kelting documents our contemporary moment, she shows how the conversations surrounding these new food movements leave out people already keeping their traditions alive. Against Heritage, then, serves as a reparative revaluation of the work of the cooks largely excluded from the contemporary media conversation about heritage revival.
And here's part 1 of my interview with Lily:
Laura Portwood-Stacer: We worked together on your book proposal in 2020. How did working on the proposal prepare you for the rest of the publishing process?
Lily Kelting: I wasn’t done writing my manuscript when I did the Book Proposal Accelerator program. I did the program as a kind of kick in the pants (and also to “feel productive” while home with newborns during Covid lockdowns). The Accelerator program basically helped me put the whole book together: the proposal I drafted became a North Star version of the book for me to write toward.
LPS: Once you felt ready to send the proposal to a publisher, what happened next?
LK: I sent the proposal and a few chapters to a press that had a series I had decided was a perfect fit. (Reader: it was not a perfect fit.). The press was interested! What a thrill! They wanted to see the full manuscript! I got to work on my full manuscript. Writing and revision felt like it took forever, but it was maybe 18 months in reality. I spent the whole time so embarrassed that it was taking so long. I wish I could go back and tell my former self to chill. I also sent a feeler email to another series editor at a different press who wrote back interested in seeing the full manuscript. I was still starry-eyed about the original series and so I didn’t end up following up with the second press.
LPS: How did peer reviewers respond to your manuscript and how did you feel about their response?
LK: My manuscript was not fully peer reviewed at the first press. Instead I got a two or three page editorial email from the acquiring editor based on feedback from the series editor. It was technically a revise-and-resubmit but it definitely felt like a rejection. At first I was surprised, because the book itself delivered pretty directly on the promise of the proposal that had initially interested the editor: same abstract, same chapters. It hurt to read the response to my manuscript.
It also seemed to me that the feedback was weirdly off-base. They called the book “too politically correct” and compared it to “all your faves are problematic”—that defunct Tumblr blog. This last comment really stuck in my head because I didn’t want to be part of a cycle of cancellation and reactionary “anti-woke” posturing. I prefer the term “calling in” over “calling out” (though, to be frank, I think that the global hard swing rightwards since 2021 has vindicated my perspective and approach).
The feedback letter from the press also called the book “relentlessly depressing,” which struck me as absurd. Do academic books about genocide or ebola get called relentlessly depressing?
Although I disagreed with some of the feedback, I now realize that the series and press editors were right that the book wasn’t ready to go to peer review. Before taking the proposal and manuscript to a different press, I ended up writing a proper conclusion (which my original manuscript didn’t have), as well as rewriting the introduction and strengthening the argumentation throughout. I also came up with a clearer title (which ended up becoming the final title of the book). The manuscript definitely needed work, but I wanted to keep intact the ethos of the book, the anger behind it. This meant I was no longer interested in publishing with the series I had originally had in mind.
LPS: Once it became clear that you wanted to publish your book with a different press, what did you do next?
LK: I think it was David Sedaris who said, “never worry alone.” Maybe he meant it as an argument for therapy, but I made my book rejection a problem for everybody in my life, which was such a good thing because I ended up getting great advice.
My sister helped me understand that the series editor who had read my manuscript did not represent my ideal reader. The feedback seemed to be coming from a different place and politics than I was writing from: literally, in the sense that I was writing from India. My sister asked me about other books in the series, and I realized that my “comp titles”, books I loved and was trying to emulate, were actually not in line with the work this series was doing at the time.
My husband also amplified the “never worry alone” advice: “call in your favors!” So I asked the senior academics I knew in my small field and one recommended I reach out to editor Cate Hodorowicz at University of North Carolina Press. Lightbulb! Who published Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs, an absolute classic in my field? Who consistently publishes strong race-conscious work in American Studies? UNC! I had also published a chapter in an edited volume with UNC Press before and one time even saw that book in an actual bookstore in Minneapolis, so I knew that they are interested in reaching audiences beyond academia. It felt like a great fit, so I reached out to Cate with an introduction from the senior scholar and we were off to the races. The process at UNC was still long and fairly involved, but working with Cate was so smooth and I am so proud of what the book became through the editorial process there.
The conversations with my friends and family really helped me to figure out what I wanted to say and then double down. “Oh, the book is too polemical? What if I make it even more polemical?!”
From this experience with both presses, I learned a valuable lesson about trusting that a book will find its readers. Something not being for everyone is OK!
To reiterate Lily's very important point: your book probably won't be right for every publisher, every series, every peer reviewer, or every reader. And that is to be expected! Sometimes the journey involves some misses before you get the hits, and that's ok too.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview where Lily will discuss the challenges of writing a book for both academic and nonacademic audiences. See you soon!
Last week I held a free webinar on How to Publish a Book from Your Dissertation. I've made the recording freely available and will leave it up for a few more days in case you missed registering for the live event. Please share with friends, colleagues, and students!
P.S. Registration is now open for the next and final cohort of my Book Proposal Accelerator program (September 8–October 16) and for my next Manuscript Development Workshop (November 2–30). Sign up now and lock in your enrollment!
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.