“Why Didn’t Anyone Teach Us This?!” An Introduction to Academic Book Publishing
Despite the fact that publishing a book with an academic press is an important part of the tenure process at many universities, quite often academic book publishing is an opaque process for early career scholars. In this talk, I will walk potential first time authors through the publishing process, including how to target the correct press, draft a successful proposal, and navigating the peer review process. In addition to a general overview of academic publishing, I’ll also discuss publishing at the MIT Press specifically, including the fields we publish in, our commitment to open access publishing, and the directions I am taking the new media, digital humanities, and game studies lists, as well as our recent forays into science fiction.
Noah J. Springer is the acquiring editor for new media, digital humanities, game studies, HCI, and design at the MIT Press. He holds a PhD in media studies from the University of Colorado, Boulder where he wrote his dissertation on the cultures, economies, and politics of Reddit. He is currently based in St. Louis, and when not working on books for the Press, you will probably find him writing about hip hop for the magazine Unwinnable or baking too much sourdough.