You—the author—have the ultimate insider’s perspective when it comes to your book. You know everything about each object you analyze and how your ideas develop over the course of your chapters. Publishers come to your book through a very different perspective.

Writing and submitting an academic book proposal can seem like a daunting task. Below, I answer some of your most common questions and offer the best resources to consult to prepare your academic book proposal.

Nothing seems to stress authors of first books more than this question: when should I write and submit my academic book proposal to university presses? When I was writing my own first book, the resounding answer my mentors gave was: wait until the full manuscript is done. For a while, this seemed like good advice.

You know that you will eventually work with an “editor,” on your book’s path to publication. But did you know that, beyond developmental editors or copy editors (people you or the press hire to help revise and perfect the manuscript), you might also work with two very different types of editors at your university press?