a perhaps difficult, time-consuming and demoralizing book
publishing process, you need to get clear whether there is a
reasonable chance of success for your doctoral research. You
should take advice on this issue from your supervisors or advis-
ers, and from departmental colleagues and your examiners. If
they are sceptical or not encouraging, it is probably not worth
pushing things. Your topic may just be unsuitable or the pub-
lishing climate may be very unfavourable in your discipline for
academic monographs.
Assuming that you have surmounted this first hurdle, your
next step should be to consider possible companies to approach
with a book proposition. Monograph publishers are arranged in a
rough order of general academic prestige that is also something of
an order of difficulty in getting an acceptance. It runs as follows:
◆ Major university pressesare at top of the hierarchy, such as
those for Oxford and Cambridge in the UK or for leading
Ivy League universities in the United States. These companies
still publish key works of scholarship as part of their overall
academic mission. There is often some bias towards their
own alumni’s doctorates, but they also have some general
sense of responsibility to academia more widely. They are
typically only interested in the cream of works, however.
And even they may specialize in areas where they already
have a well-established list and a reputation, or a series into
which your PhD might fit. These kinds of publishing houses
are very prestigious because they will carefully referee your
book and suggest changes before accepting it (usually taking
at least six to nine months doing so). If they like your text,
they may not worry overmuch about asking you to make
large-scale length reductions. Then they will painstakingly
sub-edit your text to a high standard and produce it well,
often taking a year to 18 months doing so. The main
drawback here then is that (after you have added in time for
you to make changes), the complete publication process may
stretch up to three years. And beyond that the publicity for
your book may be rather skeletal – you should bank on doing
most of the promotion work yourself.
◆ Major commercial publishers with monograph listsstill exist,
although they are a rapidly diminishing species. If you can
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