Getting a Book Contract: Lessons and Takeaways

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to write a book. In fact, some of my most vivid memories are attached to writing experiences, including:

• Getting a smiley face stamp for a story I wrote in primary school about a lady who bought a foot spa (for context, I was seven, and can only suspect that I’d come across a foot spa in my mum’s mail order catalogue).
• At 14, my English teacher telling me to send him a copy when I wrote my first book (no pressure).
• Finishing writing my PhD thesis, only to find out then that the word limit was actually 80,000 words, and not the 100,000 that I’d randomly made up in my head and had been working towards for three years (whoops).

If you’re curious, to rectify the latter I managed to rejig, cut a chapter, and submit it elsewhere as a journal article… all fiiiiiiine in the end. Anyway…

So yes, I’d always wanted to write a book. Even during my PhD though, I never managed to pin down what that book would be. After my viva there were noises of turning my thesis into a book, but deep down I felt like I’d taken my research as far as I could, and was eager to move onto something different. It’s only since starting this blog that ‘my book’ really started to become a tangible idea… a practical handbook, guiding researchers through career transition beyond academia and drawing on my (now) 10 years of experience in supporting them to make these transitions.

As an overview, here’s a timeline of how the idea evolved:

• February 2021: Started the blog, let’s see what happens.
• April 2021: Had an abstract accepted for a book chapter on post-PhD employability.
• Summer 2021: Wrote the chapter over the summer, and started to think about how the literature review and concepts in within could go further. Also felt like I’d started to identify a ‘gap’ in the market… there were books already out there on leaving academia, but none of them seemed to be both written by trained and qualified careers professionals, AND be relevant to researchers across all subjects (i.e. not just STEM).
• 2022 – 2023: Busy, life, things, etc. In the background though, a few people in my network had books published off the back of building their profiles on other platforms (blogging, social media, etc.). Whenever this happened, I got a fuzzy excited feeling for them.
• October 2023: finally felt like the ideas and the motivation had come together. Started by looking in the book review section of a professional magazine for careers advisers to identify presses with a track record of publishing books in the field of careers and professional development. Plus my 40th birthday was rapidly approaching, so there was probably an ‘I’m not getting any younger’ cliché in there somewhere.
• November 2023: Set up chats with a few people I already knew who had published with two relevant presses. These people kindly also passed on contact details of the editors they’d worked with, so I had people to email directly when the time came. Using a template from one of the publisher’s websites, I put together a proposal.
• December 2023: Sent the proposal to the first publisher. They seemed keen, and suggested setting up a call to discuss further.
• January – March 2024: Busy, life, things, etc.
• March 2024: Chased up the publisher and set up a video call with a commissioning editor. They were very positive about the proposal; the next step was to write a sample chapter so that they could pitch the book to their marketing and sales team.
• April 2024: Wrote sample chapter. Had a lovely time. Envisioned life as a writer, spending time in a cabin in the woods by a lake and basically being Virginia Woolf.
• May – June 2024: The commissioning editor then pitched my book to the wider team, including colleagues from sales and marketing. In June, the verdict came back that they felt they wouldn’t be able to find the market (i.e. PhDs and postdocs) for the book, so it was a ‘no’.
• June 2024: Surprised myself by not really feeling too downbeat. Reflected on their feedback, hatched a plan to approach another publisher for whom finding the market was less likely to be an issue. Realised I knew someone who had published a book in a series targeted at researchers, so contacted them and they kindly referred me to the series editors.
• June – July 2024: Call with the series editor; feedback on and tweaking of proposal; approval of proposal by series editors and commissioning editor.
• July – August 2024: Proposal sent out for peer review (four reviewers – agh!). The previous press was more of a professional press, so didn’t do peer review. This second one were a more academic publisher, so they did. When the reviews were in, I then had to respond to the reviewers’ comments (which were nowhere near as scary as I envisioned). I had to read through their suggestions for changes and additions to the book’s proposed content, and say which of these I felt were doable within the scope and word count and which weren’t.
• September 2024: Approval by editorial board and wider team, and… CONTRACT OFFER!

First of all, I thought I’d spell all that out because before I went through this myself, the process of getting a book contract was a bit of a mystery. I’m not saying that it’s the same with every publisher, but at the very least it might help to demystify a few parts of the process.

Based on this experience, I also wanted to compile some top tips for any of you with aspirations to secure a book contract. This comes with the caveat that it’s based on my experience of proposing a semi-academic book (based on research and evidence, but written for a generalist lay audience).

1. Talk to people. Whether it’s people working in your academic or professional field, people who did their PhDs a few years ahead of you, other academics, people you’ve met at conferences… whoever it is, you may well know someone (or know someone who knows someone) who has published in the same or a related area. See if they’re happy to have a quick chat about their experience; they may even be happy to refer you to the editor they worked with, or to share their proposal with you.
2. If you are really stuck with who to approach, research which presses publish in your field. Look up which presses have published books that you have used in your own work or research, or which are reviewed in any professional publications or academic newsletters or journals in your field. When you find a potential publisher, their website may list commissioning editors in certain subject areas; try to find the one that matches your focus and reach out to them. They may also have a preferred proposal template on their website, so make sure you use this.
3. When choosing which publisher(s) to approach, think about your audience as well as your subject area or topic. My first instinct was to approach a press who had a track record of publishing in careers and professional development. What I didn’t fully appreciate, however, was that the press in question had never published anything aimed at researchers before, so it’s unsurprising that they felt unable to find the market.
4. Before writing your proposal, have a good sense of what’s been published in the field already. It’s likely that part of your book proposal will be an ‘analysis of the competition,’ i.e. a section where you show your awareness of what’s out there, make a case for how your book will be different, and say why that’s needed. Your reviewers may have to comment on whether you show a deep enough understanding of this, so make sure you’re on it.
5. Another part of your proposal is likely to focus on ‘marketing platform,’ ‘network’ or something similar, where you give details of connections to any organisations, networks, social media or other platforms that you can use to help to promote your book. This will help to reassure a publisher that the book will reach your target market. I read an interesting book chapter called ‘Diverse Careers, the Waning of The Prestige Regime, and the Rise of the Influence Economy in Academic Publishing’ by Michael J. McGandy, in a super book called The Reimagined PhD: Navigating 21st Century Humanities Education (2021). In there, McGandy interviews editors, one of whom states that ‘when an author can use an extensive network to help get the word out not merely among her colleagues but to the wider world, we can see that reflected in sales and publicity attention’ (p.31). Perhaps the network I’d built through my blog scored me points here, so consider what ‘interim’ things you could do (like blogging, podcasting, social media activity etc.) to gain visibility amongst your target audience before developing your proposal.
6. Don’t let the ‘mythology’ around publishing deter you. In all my years of working either in or adjacent to academic research, I feel like I’ve seen enough ‘Reviewer Two’ memes to doom scroll away any hopes of ever getting past peer review. If you have aspirations to publish a book, but find yourself thinking that there’s no point in trying, then ask yourself where that feeling is coming from and what the evidence is for this. Chances are that if you feel your book idea is too niche, too different, or breaks from the ‘norms’ of what has been published previously… it’s probably important work that’s needed to bring a new perspective or fresh approach.