One of the emails I get *all* the time is from authors who have written a book, or hope to write a book, who want to know how they can get a publisher to take a look at it.   The short answer: it ain’t easy.  Often the inquiry comes from someone who wants to publish a book for scholars to convince them to take a different view on a matter of scholarly importance.  How does a someone get a publisher to publish a book like that?

People don’t like to hear this, but if you don’t already have scholarly credentials an academic publisher will almost certainly (or at least extremely rarely) even consider your manuscript.  And having the credentials, for a first-time author, almost always means having done advanced graduate level education in the field.

I know a lot of authors who think that it’s not fair that they can’t get their books published “just because I don’t have a PhD.”   It get that — it must be hugely frustrating.  But the problem is that word “just.”

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