The Pre-Publication Gauntlet

Drafting a book manuscript is daunting! I thought that, after I’d located and collected sources, organized my notes, crystalized my argument, and put together the narrative, the heavy lifting would be done. It turns out that wasn’t exactly right. The heaviest lifting was done, but I still needed to get through the pre-publication gauntlet.

This post covers the plethora of tasks that need to be completed before the book can go to press. If you’re writing your first book (or contemplating doing so!), you’ve likely heard about many of these steps. I hope this post helps you get through the list more easily.

Acknowledgments

Every book has an acknowledgments section, even if not everyone reads them. (I love reviewing acknowledgments, but even I’ll concede that many readers skip past those pages.) Crafting the acknowledgements ended up being one of my favorite parts of the book writing process. It gave me a chance to reflect on the many people who had made Family Matters possible, from my advisors during the PhD program, to the archivists who tracked down documents, to the friends and family members who supported me throughout the process.

 I hope that I managed to convey my sincere gratitude to everyone involved in making my book a reality However, it’s entirely likely that I missed some names! I regret leaving the acknowledgments at the end. If I had to do it over again, I would have kept a running list of people who helped me with the book as I was researching and writing it. That way, I could be sure I hadn’t inadvertently left anyone out. 

 Images

I should have kept a running list of potential images too! Images can make a book stand out. However, securing the rights to print them can be a challenge. Even if a repository has an image, they do not necessarily have the copyright from the photographer.

That means securing image rights can require some sleuthing. Let me give you an example. A few months before my manuscript was due, I contacted the New York Times in hopes of licensing a photograph that had appeared in their pages in 1991. They had the image, but not the rights. My efforts to track down the photographer, Donna Binder, stalled, until I saw Sarah Schulman’s recently published book on ACT-UP. The notes mentioned an oral history interview with Binder! I didn’t know Shulman, but I emailed her anyway, asking if she would please pass along my information. She kindly did—and Binder agreed to license the image, which appears on page 207 of Family Matters.

 Although it took weeks to track down that image, I was very fortunate to have a lead on the photographer at all. In my research, I came across quite a few snapshots from the 1950s and 1960s that perfectly illustrated my chapters…but no one at the archives knew who had taken the photographs. As a result, I could not secure permission to print them in the book.

 Obtaining the right to publish an image was one obstacle. Paying for the licenses was another. I ultimately had to spend several thousand dollars to reproduce and license the photographs in the book. I was able to use funds from a William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Fellowship to cover some of the costs—which is yet another reason to apply for these grants! Although I spent thousands on images, the bill could have been much higher. I was quite fortunate to publish Family Matters with Cambridge University Press for many reasons, one of which was that they have an agreement with Getty Images. That allowed me to include any of the photographs in the Getty database without paying them a license fee.

Indexing

Images were not the only cost associated with publishing the book—indexing was another. Many authors index their own books, but I wasn’t familiar with the process. I therefore decided to hire a professional—and was very glad I did. My indexer, Derek Gottlieb, did a fantastic job. I might have been able to create a workable index, but he identified entries that I would never have thought to include. The index he created was much more comprehensive, and therefore much more useful to users, than anything I would have done myself.

Page Proofs

The indexing happened around the same time as the copy edits. A few months later, I received the page proofs. By that time, I was exhausted. I’d been working on the book for years, had just submitted my tenure packet, and was teaching a new course. But the manuscript needed to be proofread.

Thankfully, I had a team of students to help me get through this final task. Once I knew when the page proofs would come in, I contacted my Associate Dean for Research and Academic Programs. I asked for permission to hire additional research assistants for the limited purpose of proofreading the book. I’m so very grateful he agreed. At least two students read each chapter, and while they worked, I reviewed each chapter twice. They all found errors the others had missed. They also found several typos that I overlooked.

By the time the students and I reviewed the page proofs, multiple editors had reviewed the manuscript several times, and a professional copyeditor had proofed the entire book. And yet…we still identified hundreds of typos and formatting errors in the manuscript. I wish I had caught all of those mistakes earlier, but I am really glad we found them before the book went to print. (I am still very nervous that a few errors got through. If you see any typos in Family Matters, please don’t tell me!)

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All book authors have to get through the pre-publication gauntlet. In my next and final post, I’ll talk about another challenge that all writers face: deciding which stories to include and which to leave on the cutting room floor.