A Little Bit About the New Book . . .

Taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming for some behind-the-scenes glimpses into book production and promotion.

This month I have been deep into preparatory tasks—and some celebrations and obligations—for the new book, which will arrive at your door stops in around four months. One would not imagine the four-month mark as a pivotal one in the life cycle of a book’s publication, and yet here we are. In response to the time-consuming nature of this work, I am taking a month to step away from this column’s usual focus on philosophy, literature and higher education to discuss new-book matters. (Although I promise to have a question-inducing essay for you next month, based on a new project from the political theorist with whom I shared a bedroom as a child.)

First and most importantly, the book’s cover arrived! Book covers almost always represent a series of compromises between the author and the publisher, and not just about the book’s artwork or color scheme. I can only speak for nonfiction books, but the most important area of compromise relates to the book’s title and subtitle. As a very broad generalization, authors like clever and even enigmatic titles that they have been carrying around in their heads for a long time, while publishers like titles that state clearly the book’s subject matter.

Both parties have valid reasons for pressing for their preferences. Writers like to play with words; publishers like to sell books. I tend to push hard for my chosen title, and then yield more easily on the subtitle, which is where we can stick the words and phrases that will catch search engines. You can see this most easily in Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. I fought hard for Small Teaching, which captured the whole book’s philosophy, and as a result I let the publisher slap a clunky subtitle on there as a compromise. The title and subtitle of the new book represent the outcome of lots of back-and-forthing between me, the editor, and the marketing folks, and I ended up being very happy with what we developed.

I am even happier with the cover design. The press asked me if I had any preferences on cover design or color schemes, and I essentially said not really, I’m sure you’ll come up with something good. To their credit, the press urged me to offer something to the designer. Trying to be a good citizen of the book, I sat down and looked at all of my book covers and started by describing what I liked and didn’t like about all of them; when I was finished writing it all down, I realized that I did have some preferences. I sent the message off, and the perfect cover came back a few weeks ago. Solid colors, unfussy font, and just a little flair with the dotted trail from the paper airplane, which represents a writer’s journey to somewhere new in their publishing career. Nailed it.

The book’s cover reveal, which of course has to happen on whatever social media accounts you have (in my case, LinkedIn)*, triggers a bunch of new tasks for the writer and the press. For the press, it means that the book, with cover, becomes visible not only on the press website, but also on the major retail publishing outlets. The press’s page for the book gives the full table of contents, so you can click there for an overview of the book, or you can click on the retail link to get those pre-orders rolling in. For this writer, having the book’s cover in hand meant setting up a meeting with the designer of my website, and updating my speaking agent so he could feature it on his pages as well.

One task that often surprises new book authors is filling out the author questionnaire, which might sound benign enough, but in fact requires an enormous amount of work—or at least if you do it well, which you should. The marketing and publicity plans for your book, whether you are writing a crossover title for a trade press or scholarly one with a university press, will largely draw from the information you provide on your author questionnaire. This can seem annoying to authors, as they wonder why they have to expend a lot of energy on tasks that they feel the publisher should be handling. But remember that the marketing and publicity departments at publishers have to craft plans for books across many disciplines and fields, and not a single person in those offices will have the same level of expertise that you do on the subject of your book. Nobody is better positioned than you are to identify the best possible audience for your work, or provide text and creative ideas for its promotion. The more effort you put into your author questionnaire—and your subsequent promotion efforts after the book has been published—the more success your book will have.

Based on that description, you can surmise that the author questionnaire is not like the questionnaire you get at the doctor’s office that you can fill out in the waiting room. It will begin innocuously, with questions about your address, your positions, awards you have won. Then it will intensify by asking you to describe your book in multiple ways, in shorter and longer versions: maybe a few paragraphs, a short paragraph, a single sentence. Then it will finish with a series of questions designed to help the marketing team get your book in front of as many influential people and places as possible. It might ask you to describe places where you have lived, places where you might have done extensive work, or travel plans you might have around the time of the book’s publication; parts of your book that might be good for serialization in various media outlets; college courses that might feature your book, or conferences in your field where you might speak or attend; the names of “big mouths” in your field—in other words, influential people who have an outsize voice through their social media platforms; people who could write blurbs for your book.

And more. I usually allot several writing sessions to tackle this document, spreading out the work over the course of a few weeks or even months. As I am doing so, the finishing tasks for the manuscript are happening simultaneously. First comes the arrival of the copy-edited manuscript, with its many corrections, suggestions, and questions from a very detailed person who always makes my writing more concise and clear (all praise to copy editors). Finally—and I am taking on this task right now—the proofs arrive, triggering a final close reading. Perhaps more technically savvy-writers have found a way around this laborious demand, but the only way I know to catch every infelicity in a piece of writing is to read the entire manuscript aloud. Requirements: lots of hydration, caffeine, patience, and many breaks.

When the author questionnaire has been filed, and the proofs have been returned, the publication process enters a quiet phase for the authors, and in this case that phase will coincide with the holidays. I intend to spend my quiet time doing the things I love, first and foremost hanging around with my family, as my two youngest will be home from college, and the older three will be staying or visiting with us for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. On the intellectual side, I started learning Italian a couple of weeks ago with Rosetta Stone,** and continue to pick away at my ancient Greek with a textbook. My main reading project for the break is tackling the one-two punch of listening to Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. Will see if anything comes from that experience for this space.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers, and watch out for one more column in this space before the end of the calendar year.

*I see you all moving over to Bluesky, and I wish you all well, but I am happy with my social media-lite life for the foreseeable future.

** When I was in the hospital three years ago waiting for a heart transplant, my children, who knew how much I loved learning languages, bought me a lifetime subscription to Rosetta Stone for Christmas, thinking that I would have lots of time to learn a new language or two while I was recovering from the transplant. They gave it to me shortly after the surgery, right around the same time as the doctors were realizing that I had suffered a stroke during the operation and couldn’t speak. Oh irony! Fortunately, I learned to speak again, and I will be always grateful to those thoughtful kids.