I submitted a proposal for a new book about whiteness and rap music. Much of the material has appeared on this blog in some form or another—the Macklemore/Kendrick stuff, visualizing rap, the introduction, some of the rap on trial material, and pedagogical stuff—and the reviews were pretty positive. I’m also helping another colleague with a book proposal, and I’m working on submitting the final draft of Functional Hearing to the publisher, so book stuff is very much on my mind these days, especially as my summer break winds down.
For those of you who might not know how this kind of thing works, once you have an idea for a book you start contacting publishers to gauge interest in the project. Typically, this involves having a decent chunk of the book written: most publishers are looking for at least a sample chapter. So you submit the proposal, a sample chapter, and a CV to a publisher and they send it out to a handful of reviewers. In my case, I was asked to recommend some reviewers (this is typical) and I suspect they chose one or two from my list and picked a few on their own. The reviewers read the proposal and the sample chapters and offer feedback on a questionnaire from the publisher along with a recommendation. Usually there are three options: 1) recommend to publish; 2) recommend to publish with revisions; 3) do not recommend to publish. In my case, the first review was very positive; the second had some legitimate concerns and useful critiques—they recommended not publishing in its present state. The third reviewer also had some concerns but an overall positive impression.
My editor is interested in moving ahead with the project pending me writing a response to the reviewers. The editor will then take all of these materials, along with a budget, projected timeline, and some other behind-the-scenes stuff to the editorial board and they decide to go ahead or not.
So I’ve been working on the response to the reviewers and starting to strategize about how to actually write a book in my present non-academic situation. One of the things that academic authors rely on heavily is good libraries, which at the moment I don’t really have access to. I ordered a bunch of books (thanks University of Chicago Press, University of North Carolina Press, and Haymarket Books!) and have been able to get most of the journal articles I’ve needed through a variety of avenues. To this end, I’ve been compiling a bibliography using Zotero, which is immensely helpful (I’ve been doing things the old-fashioned way all this time).
I’m trying to think of how to maximize my time in terms of reading and researching, given that I’ll be going back to school in a few weeks. There’s also a chance that I’ll be working on a second edition of Listening to Rap concurrently—the reviews are still out on that one—which complicates things a bit. I do think that since the two projects more or less overlap, and that one is a revision, not an entirely new project, that I can find a way to make this work.
The other thing that I’m thinking about is trying to get into a daily writing habit. By “writing,” I don’t necessarily mean “writing,” but spending at least an hour doing something to further the book project. That could be reading, writing, brainstorming, outlining, formatting, editing—anything along those lines. I’m hoping to use my blog a bit more to stay accountable in that regard.
I’m going to say one last thing then I’m going to start another post: what about deadlines? Well, I have a good bit of “say” over my deadlines. I’m hoping to get this project done in about a year: I have 35,000 words or so out of a projected 85,000. Now if the Listening to Rap thing comes into being, I may adjust one or the other a bit. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for updates!