Interview with Mary Dougherty, PhD, Director of the University of Massachusetts Press

Asking The Question What Family Historians Need to Do to Get Published with A University Press?

You are a family historian and conduct research; at some point you are going to want to write up the research and stories you’ve collected. Do you draft an article, a presentation for your local library, or a book?

If you author a book, who’s the audience, just your family? Your town? Or do you think your stories will resonate for a bigger audience? How do you take the stories that are about your family and place them in a wider context?

If you are authoring a book about your family and want it to go beyond your cousins and grandkids, consider advice from the Director of a university press on how they choose which projects to publish. Even if that book proposal is never sent, the Director’s advice will help you think about how to structure any history book.

We asked Mary Dougherty, PhD Director of the University of Massachusetts Press in Amherst, Massachusetts, what a family historian would need to do to attempt the process of publishing their history book with UMass Press and university presses in general.

If you are authoring a book about your family history and want it to go beyond your cousins and grandkids, consider the advice from Dougherty, on how the Press chooses which author to publish. Even if that book proposal is never sent, the director’s advice will help you think about how to structure your history book for a general audience.

What Family Historians Need to Do to Get Published with A University Press?

Good Fit

When approaching UMass Press, you’ll want to consider if your book is going to be a good fit for the publisher. Dougherty explained that for UMass Press, the author’s proposal is their audition. Authors need to read the Press’ book proposal guidelines. Your proposal should show that you understand the guidelines.

1) “a cover letter with a concise description of the book (250 to 400 words), including the working title, your arguments, main topics, and themes and goals

2) a table of contents and one-paragraph description for each chapter

3) the approximate length of the manuscript, measured in words

4) examples or descriptions of any artwork, including the total number of illustrations proposed (there is no need to send originals at this stage) as well as estimated numbers of maps, figures, and graphs

5) your sense of the potential audience(s) for the work

6) comparable and competing books and how your book differs and/or adds to existing works, whether in coverage, approach, or style

7) your timetable for completing the manuscript if it is not already completed

8) a CV or résumé

9) consideration of possible funding sources or “subventions” for the book (see Funding Considerations for more information)

10) if available, please provide a sample chapter and the introduction (if it is well drafted).”

Beyond the guidelines for UMass Press you’ll need to review or consider the publisher’s most recent publications, such as the last 3-4 books. Even then, do not assume that what you have written is what a university press is looking for. What will work depends on how your book topic fits into the list of books published by UMass Press and the industry. There is deliberation on the part of the publisher to see if your book is a good fit.

Dougherty explained that when working on your book proposal for a university press, if you are researching the publisher’s books, avoid going too far back in time. So, no going back to the 1980s to look at their greatest hits. Rather find out what has been published in the last few years. Your book might have been good 5-10 years ago, but maybe the reading public just does not need another book about a topic that has been amply covered. .

Dougherty explains which imprint UMass Press uses for local histories, “When we're looking at a project and considering a possible regional history, we would be thinking about something that may or may not work with our Bright Leaf Imprint. Our Bright Leaf Imprint is for general readers, and it's about New England, so it's a potential vehicle for regional histories.”

This is a key point that your book might work for a small audience, but if you are going to make the effort to create a book, you’ll want it to sell, right? If the book concept as conceived will not sell, you will want to know if the project is worthwhile pursuing. If it doesn’t, you can spend your time working to make the book work for a bigger audience or not publish through the university press.

Local history books just about family history don’t work for the university press, there has to be more. Dougherty highlighted this by saying, “When it comes to family history, if it's written for the grandkids, it's not going to find a broad readership. That's not to say that the family is not super interesting. You might have an amazing trove of sources, but if the narrative is shaped in such a way that only the family’s going to care, then we can't responsibly publish it. It won't even cover its costs. It's just a pragmatic decision. You know, we need to publish books with enough scope so that they find a wide readership. And we're state university press. So, when we commit our resources, we're committing the resources of the state. And so, we ask, will the project cover its costs, meet its targets, and reach enough people?”

For the independent scholar and family historian, even if you have skillful writing; if the story is too tied to the chronology of every member of the family, and cataloging each in turn, it’s very unlikely you’ll make it past the publisher’s audition, the book proposal.

Dougherty talked about the differences between memoirs, autobiographies, and family histories. “We make a distinction between memoir and autobiography because a memoir is framed around an event or story, a particular aspect of life the person wants to share. Whereas autobiography begins with, “I was born”, and even that opening can be a challenge to your audience because they don't want to know when you were born, they want to hear about the day you got arrested and hauled off. Cut to the chase, friend. And I think family history can suffer from a similar structure that doesn't serve the core story because the writer feels beholden to the entire genealogy and that just can be hard on a reader.”

Beautiful Writing

Next, is the proposal beautifully written? Or is it riddled with errors? How your book proposal is written makes a difference.

To be among the publisher’s choices, your book must have an exceptional story, but even more importantly, the book must have beautiful writing. The story should also have structure. A beginning, a middle and an end.

Whereas beautiful writing is in the eye of the beholder, Dougherty said “beautiful writing is the sentence, it's the paragraphs and they must be grammatically correct. They should be elegant. They should be varied. They should not be overwritten and not underwritten. They should offer telling details. I should be entranced by the writing and make me feel like I can relax because I know I’m in good hands. It's all that writerly stuff, strong sentences are key. You want the craft to be invisible. So not drawing attention to itself.”

If you can structure your book, find the right angle, and write beautifully, you still might fit into the publishers’ queue of books to be published.

Scholarly Work

Not surprisingly, the UMass Press team wants to know the author engaged with the current scholarship on the subject. Dougherty used an example to illustrate why it’s important to develop a book that’s a new story within the collection of works on a subject, “We've published a lot of books on Emerson. So, we're looking at how the books that we published on Emerson situate themselves within scholarly conversation around Emerson, whether it's historical or literary, so that's one of the first things that we look at for in scholarly books.” When a university press looks at a book proposal, Dougherty explained that the Press always asks the question, "Is the subject matter in a much larger conversation about American history or specific type of history?"

For the family historian who is an independent scholar, how do they catch up to get a pulse on what's going on in academia? Here’s some guidance on how to get up to speed.

The advice from the UMass Press is that you’ll have to pick five book titles that you most want to emulate. Cultivate a sense of what’s happening in literature on a topic by reading those books. Don’t be surprised if there are different opinions. There might not be a consensus amongst the historians.

Dougherty encourages the independent scholar to “Make sure that your assertions would pass muster,” with the community. You need to understand the big arguments in the community, and what their flash points were.” However, as Dougherty insisted, if you do read about what’s current in the community, “You don't need to be expert on those [arguments], but you want your book to be within the conversation. . You don't need to repeat those arguments. You want to be correct within that scholarly understanding”. Consider this list of things to consider:

• What's the consensus? What do the historians all agree on? Where do they disagree?

• What topics do historians talk about that are relevant to me?

• How do the books talk about women as opposed to men?

• How do they talk about the new American republic in this period?

• How does a state history provide a good synthesis or overview?

• Just as important, look at the notes and bibliography in the books.

A case study: Minds and Hearts

Here’s an example of engaging scholarship while writing for a general audience.

According to Dougherty Umass Press doesn’t usually publish books by independent scholars and history associations because the books aren’t always in tune with the scholarly community, and books don’t meet the expectations of their academic readership. Dougherty explained “Because we published the scholarship, there has to at least be a lot of understanding of the scholarship.”

One book UMass Press published by an independent scholar was “Minds and Hearts” by Jeffrey Hacker, about James Otis Warren and Mercy Otis Warren.

Dougherty explained the book was written for general readers. However, Jeffrey Hacker read the body of scholarly biographies about the two Warrens.Hacker’s book is a good reference for how an author positions their narrative relative to scholarship while writing a book for general readers.

Dougherty described how “he's not recapitulating the scholarly debate. Every book should be some kind of intervention into an ongoing conversation. His intervention is to say these two were close, and how does their relationship recast what we know about them as historical figures? She [Mercy Otis Warren] has become famous. Scholars established that. But what's his role? [James Otis Warren] The difficulty of his role is that he burned all his letters. So, it makes it pretty hard.” Check out the book to understand how you might be able to get a general audience book published by a university press.

https://www.umasspress.com/9781625345745/minds-and-hearts/

Developmental Editing*

Developmental Editing is provided at the preliminary stages of the book production process. The purpose is to address any big issues with a manuscript and help produce a manuscript that's publishable. If the book requires more structure or even restructuring, a developmental editor is required. Dougherty explained “the project must come to us ready to be judged and peer reviewed as it is, we just don't have the staff or the bandwidth. Generally speaking, university presses do not do developmental editing.”

Developmental Editing includes:

• Discovery of gaps in content

• Providing a consistent tone

• Structure and organization

• Argument and clarity

• Scholarly support

Neighbor History

Dougherty’s insights about how to get published with UMass Press brings home important themes if you want to be published as an author and reach a wider audience. First, you’ll have to think about your story, and second, if it fits into the current scholarship about their history. You might not get published with a university press, but the advice about how-to can help you think about how you approach scholarship for history books, and the importance of writing.

This is the whole point about neighbor history. The concept is to not focus on your relatives. Rather look at your ancestor’s life and see how their story fits into the wider context of society. By turning to the neighbors, you’ll find a bigger story that fits your ancestors into their neighbor’s lives.

If you do work on a community neighbor history project and work with your neighbors your approach is more likely to be more thorough and perhaps scholarly. That’s the opportunity for historical associations. They can be the catalyst, bringing together independent scholars and family historians to work on neighbor history projects. Whose final goal might be to develop a program, database or book.

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Subscribe to the neighbor history newsletter and read on to get extra insights with our author’s checklist for structuring a book. Additionally, we’ve written several Generative AI prompts in our subscriber’s section to help you discover the Historiographical Landscape for your book topic.

*Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers by Scott Norton, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2009 by The University of Chicago. https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/595146.html