6 ways to sabotage your own book
Hello Manuscript Workers,
Last week, I began working with a new group of scholarly authors in my Book Proposal Accelerator program. They’ve had lots of great questions about the book publishing process and they’ve also been refreshingly open about sharing their goals and struggles with their books.
Based on some of the conversations we’ve been having, I thought it might be time for a general newsletter post about some of the ways that I’ve seen prospective authors get in their own way when it comes to getting their books out.
I’m sharing these not to call anyone out or make anyone feel worse about their own anxieties. My hope is that by learning about these issues that I’ve observed over and over, you’ll realize that your struggles are common. My other hope is that by recognizing these struggles, you’ll give yourself permission to eliminate the aspects of the struggle that you may be imposing on yourself. I’m not saying there are not external and structural obstacles, or that these are equitably distributed! But if you can get out of your own way by changing your mindset in just one small area, maybe you’ll suffer just a bit less.
So, here are six common ways that authors sabotage their own books:
They set the bar too high
It’s great to have ambitions. But some authors expect their books to satisfy institutional research/publication requirements and be beautifully written and land a lucrative contract with a trade press. Is it possible for a scholarly book to do all three of these things? Maybe, but it’s rare and it’s hardly necessary in many cases. It’s certainly a nearly impossibly high bar for a first book or a book based on a dissertation.
I recommend getting clear on your professional goals and your hopes for your book. Then make a ranked list of your desired outcomes in order of priority. For example, if tenure is your primary goal, then figure out the minimum requirements your book needs to attain that. If you end up having extra time on your hands before your tenure clock runs out, then maybe you can allow yourself several months to refine your manuscript’s prose or build up a public-facing platform that would allow you to secure a literary agent and a trade deal. But when you inevitably find yourself worrying about how you’re going to meet your deadlines (because life happened), it’s totally fine to let go of the beautiful prose and the agented deal. You can always decide to prioritize those things for Book 2 if you still think they’re important down the road.
They don’t aim high when exploring publishers
Sometimes my authors say things like, “My dream is to publish at X university press, but they publish a lot of famous people. I doubt they would be interested in my work.” An author may come up with “safety presses” and submit a proposal there first because it seems like a more realistic option. I strongly advise against this approach.
For one thing, your dream press may not be as unrealistic as you think. Publishers and editors understand the arc of scholarly careers. They are not expecting every author to be a celebrity from day one, and many enjoy discovering emerging talent. Author platform is one factor that goes into acquisitions decisions but it’s not the only thing (and the expectations really do vary depending on the book and intended readership).
If you show up with a book idea that is clearly aligned with the press’s offerings and you’ve taken the time to write a well-conceived proposal, you will likely be taken quite seriously at any scholarly press, even as an “unknown” first-time author. I always encourage my authors to at least try for the dream press, so they won’t have any regrets down the road. I’ve seen it work out more times than I can count!
(That said, it’s important to keep an open mind when researching presses. Sometimes the “dream press” doesn’t turn out to be the best fit, and that’s ok too.)
They downplay their qualifications to write their books
It can be really easy to discount our accomplishments, especially when we’re surrounded by people who are equally or seemingly more accomplished than us. This comes up a lot with my authors when they are thinking about introducing themselves to editors at prestigious publishers. Rather than seeing all the preparation they are bringing to the table, they focus on the things they think they lack.
I recommend going through your CV and thinking about how the various lines on it have provided experience and expertise that make you the right person to write your book. Don’t overlook items that might seem less directly related to research and writing. For instance, if you’ve held a leadership role in a scholarly organization, that will tell a publisher that you’ve made an effort to be visible in your field and well-networked with the kinds of readers who might someday want to buy your book, assign it in their courses, or request that their library purchase it.
You can also consider experiences that might not make it onto your academic CV but have nonetheless brought you insight into your book’s topic or connected you with communities that will be interested in your book when it comes out. You don’t have to disclose personal information to publishers when pitching your book, but if you would feel comfortable sharing—for instance—your history as a martial artist when proposing your book about mixed-martial arts stars, publishers will appreciate it, as will your readers someday! (Yes, this example is a shoutout to my client Jenn McClearen, author of Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC.)
If you can’t think of anything special about yourself that makes you qualified to write your book, I suggest enlisting a friend or family member from outside academia to talk through it with you. Choose someone who doesn’t have a PhD, doesn’t teach college courses, doesn’t present papers or publish journal articles, or do any of the exceptional things you probably take for granted because many of your colleagues do them too. Your friend may be able to point out several things you’ve done that might seem ordinary or baseline to you, but are in fact outstanding qualifications to be a scholarly author.
They compare themselves to the wrong examples
It’s common for authors to identify books they admire and use those as models to aspire to. This is a great way to figure out how books can be structured engagingly or use evidence and analysis in compelling ways. But when you fixate only on how your favorite books are written, you may doubt that you could ever write something that good.
Try looking around for some mediocre examples you could compare your work with too. Surely you’ve read a book or two from an “elite” publisher (maybe even your dream publisher) that you didn’t think was all that great. You can do at least as well as that right?
They think the fact that it’s hard means they’re not cut out to publish a book
In my book proposal programs, I push my clients to really solidify their conceptions of their books, including who their intended audiences truly are, which recent books they want to be in conversation with, and what the portable thesis is that will drive their manuscript. I do this because having a well-conceived project at the proposal stage will give them much more power when they pitch their books to publishers. And I want to equip my authors to have the positive publishing experiences they want and deserve to have.
But I’ve noticed that many of the authors I work with have an “oh shit” moment when we start working on this stuff. They realize that there’s more to conceiving a compelling book than they’d realized, and self-doubt starts to creep in. When confronted with the work of articulating their book’s contribution and appeal, they might start to think “hmm, I don’t have immediate answers here. Maybe the fact that it’s hard means that this book idea isn’t any good or I’m not smart enough to actually write it.”
To these authors I say: writing a book is hard. I don’t know anyone who finds it otherwise. So you’re not uniquely bad at it or unqualified just because it feels more challenging than you expected or you realized there was more work—or different kinds of work—involved than you expected. In my experience, the authors who succeed are the ones who admit that it’s hard and keep going. Who don’t expect perfection from themselves at every step, but who are willing to say “giving 80% is better than nothing, so let me see how far that could get me.”
They lose sight of the bigger picture
This last point is not really about how people sabotage their books. It’s more about how people can sabotage their lives for the sake of their books when they think THE BOOK is the most important thing in the world.
Books are great. It’s exciting to announce you got a publishing contract and even better to hold the real book in your hands. But books are not the be-all-end-all of life. Books don’t love you back. Your life will probably not change dramatically once you’re a published author.
So, be realistic about what you expect your book to do for you. Ask yourself whether you really need THE BOOK or if your broader life goals could be attained by different means that might be more in alignment with your skills or how you enjoy spending your time. You might decide that actually, writing a book is too hard and in fact you’d rather be doing something that isn’t quite so hard. That’s perfectly ok too! (Just don’t give up only because it’s hard, because many things in life that are worth doing are hard at some point.)
If you’re currently at this kind of crossroads and wondering whether you really want to publish your book, read my post on 4 reasons to keep working on your book and 4 reasons it’s ok to quit.
If you recognized yourself in any part of this newsletter, then you’re in great company because I think most of the hundreds of authors I’ve worked with have felt the same at some point. Many of them went on to successfully publish their books. Some decided to take a different path, and that’s alright too!
As I said toward the top of this post, there are real external and structural obstacles that make writing and publishing books harder for some people than others. If you’re a scholar from an underrepresented or marginalized group, you may face some particular challenges, and I never wish to downplay them or invalidate your experiences.
If you’re wondering what some of those challenges might be, or you’d like to know if what you’ve already experienced is normal, I encourage you to check out a panel discussion on Navigating Scholarly Publishing as a Racially Minoritized Author that I convened a couple of years ago with a group of university press editors. The recording is free to access and you’ll also find a written summary of the major points covered and additional resources for scholarly authors.
Thank you for reading and spreading the word about the Manuscript Works Newsletter!
If you have a scholarly book coming out next month (February 2024) that you’d like to share with the 10,000+ readers of this newsletter, drop an email to support@manuscriptworks.com with a link to your publisher’s webpage, an attached image file of your cover, and any discount codes you’d like to share. We’ll by happy to include it in the February 7th newsletter.