In this 90-minute online workshop, publishing consultant and developmental editor Laura Portwood-Stacer will guide participants through the often opaque world of scholarly book publishing, providing the clarity you need in order to approach publishers and pitch your book with confidence. Topics covered in the workshop will include the acquisitions process for scholarly books, how to select presses to ensure the best response, and when and how to approach editors (and how many to approach). The workshop will also cover the differences between an "advance" contract and a "full" contract and how to ensure that your book pitch doesn't sound like an unrevised dissertation. Supplemental handouts and worksheets will be provided to all participants.

Presenter bio:
Laura Portwood-Stacer has been a publishing consultant and developmental editor since 2015. Through her business, Manuscript Works, she has helped hundreds of scholarly authors craft compelling book proposals, and her clients have landed publishing contracts and released books with dozens of competitive university presses. She is the author of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors, published by Princeton University Press in 2021.

Prior to launching Manuscript Works, Laura earned a PhD in Communication with a certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Southern California in 2010. Her first book, Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism, was a revision of her dissertation and was published by Bloomsbury in 2013.