University press

Yeah

... is an initiative through University Press.

It has three hosts, myself, uh, Dorina, uh, uh, Gilmore, uh, Lazo Gilmore, and, uh, Terah Beth Leach.

Mm-hmm.

So just to be able to say, oh my gosh, Like there are a lot more women in the Bible doing various things that I originally thought.

I went to my publisher, University Press.

I said, can we do anything about this? And they connected me to the youth kids division.

And the first thing I thought was I got Carmen involved in this because she'll just hit it out of the park.

And so in order to practice illustrating a 32-page picture book, I wrote one just to have something to practice.

And it ended up being the first book published that I had published by the university press here in Lafayette, Louisiana.

After that, a local folklorist here who studies Cajun folktales, he had a book with the University Press and he asked me to illustrate that one.

And it was a Cajun folktale, kind of a short Cajun folktale that he needed.

He wanted some illustrations.

The purpose of this podcast is to bring you information and insights around the mechanics of academic publishing, how it works, and how best to navigate it.

My guest today is medieval historian David Perry, recent author of The Public Scholar from Johns Hopkins University Press.

I've followed David on social media for a long time, and I was excited to see him publish this book.

The Public Scholar is a true step-by-step how-to guide for academics who want to write for public audiences.

Um, and there are lots of interesting hybrid spaces as well.

Again, the first thing to do is read a bunch of trade books and don't just read the trade books, but read them critically, but also like read the acknowledgements, read the introductions.

Who is their agent? Who is, who are they talking to? You need to be able to think what are the other books like mine that are successful, that are not published by a university press, that are not published by an academic press.

but that are in the trade world that are like mine but not too much like mine because that is how you're going to have to pitch it that the list of comparable books is an art form and eventually if you get an agent the agent will help you really craft that but you have to be on your way kind of from the start in order in order to do that agents are not shy about talking about their work in podcasts in their own books so go listen to what they say and then also you know i have now been in multiple events where I've had agents sitting next to me.