Loading...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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How you make something like this fascinatingly interesting to someone like me is incredulous to me!
Thanks Dr Ehrman. Re. your description of the PhD process, clearly, there’s no substitute for learning Greek, Latin, Hebrew etc. in the time honoured way. But it might now be relatively easy to put the French and German academic articles through some sophisticated AI translation system to avoid having to learn those languages, n’est ce pas/hein?
Yup! Ah, the hours, weeks, months, years I would have saved. Still, there’s something very satisfying to be trained well enough to read them on your own….
This is why I went no further than a master’s degree! But that was okay, because my scholarly ambitions never amounted to anything more than just teaching basic introductory world religions survey classes at community colleges, for which (fortunately for me) the humble M.A. was adequate qualification.
Completely off-topic question: are you familiar with Christian scholar T. C. Schmidt’s 2025 book “Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ”? I haven’t read it, but just ran across an article on it in an online British tabloid (!); evidently Schmidt defends the authenticity of Josephus’ testimonium flavianum as legit, rather than a forged and fabricated interpolation. Curious to see if you have any thoughts on his position and/or arguments.
Yes, he thinks the entire thing comes from the hand of Josephus, even the acknowledgment that Jesus was the messiah who was raised from the dead in fulfillment of Scripture. Like most everyone else, I think there’s no way Josephus wrote that part of it.
And yet T.C. Schmidt got his PhD from Yale University. He has produced peer-reviewed translations from Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic texts. His books have been published with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and others. (Source: his own website). So even all these massive and impressive credentials, and all this rigorous academic gatekeeping, cannot prevent a certain measure of balderdash from getting published. Whereas so often the major breakthroughs came from the amateurs (Granville Penn, Johann Bengel, Hershel Shanks, Clermont-Ganneau, George Smith). Do you think current academia has effectively locked out the potential for such outsider breakthroughs?
No, I don’t think so. The fact that a person is highly qualified to engage in an analysis does not mean that his analysis is right. It’s a matter of evidence, not degrees. Fields change precisely BECAUSE widespread views are challenged. But that doesn’t mean that a challenge should be accepted because it’s not a widespread view. All serious scholars have views they’ve advanced with their colleagues that go down fighting. I’ve had more than my share!
But people can get their books published by equivocating between scholarly and non-scholarly. A famous example is “Chariots of the Gods” by Erich von Däniken. Mainstream archaeologists rightfully dismissed his books, but the popular publishing industry didn’t. Ancient astronauts are hugely popular, and it produces a lot of sales. And lots of religious books, published by religious publishers, put out all sorts of Christian books that claim to be scholarly but are really the propaganda of apologetics. That kind of publishing comes from the bottom-line mentality and religious zeal. It’s great that academia has higher standards, but do you think those standards can be maintained given the frightening direction right-wing religion and politics is going? If the “Christian nationalists” have their way they could end up banning the scholarly stuff and using political power to replace scholarship with right-wing religious apologetics-like material. In Florida, lots of standard black history books are now banned, courtesy of Ron DeSantis and the GOP, and, tragically, censorship is on the rise.
Thanks for the detailed synopsis of your field of academic requirements and PhD process. Having spent over 50 years in academia and scholarly work (MA 1970, PhD 1977, Postdoctoral 1980, now retired Emeritus Professor), fields differ. In my world of public health and epidemiology, peer reviewed first authored articles in top journals are the “currency of the realm.” But I appreciate your clear guidance to those who want to get their “scholarly” writing accepted by an academic publisher. I would imagine that getting a scholarly article published in any of your field’s top journals is the same is ours. The peer-review is brutal and full of gate keepers with huge biases, particularly for articles not based upon rigorous independent scientific data collection or analyses. But even unknown people without academic credentials can get good original articles published. Regarding the standards and rigor to get PhD in public health, many of us are of the opinion that standards have declined dramatically. The dissertation process has been watered down to getting three first authored journal articles written (not accepted—just written and submitted (or about to be submitted)) before final defense. You and your colleagues in religious studies are doing better.
Thanks. I’m afraid the watering down is becoming ubiquitous throughout the disciplines. I has, though, always been interesting to me the different publication requirements/expectations, broadly, between the sciences and the humanities.
I totally agree with: “ Scholarship is a precious commodity. And it’s expensive. And it is not easily achieved. And it needs to be protected. And this massively guarded system is how it is protected. Anyone can post anything they want on the Internet. But not anyone can publish anything they want with a scholarly press.” Sadly, the many economic and political pressures on many academic fields are causing a sharp decline in the. standards and rigor needed to get things published. I praise the efforts of you and your colleagues in religious studies to keep your standards high.
Yup — it’s hitting religious studies as well, which, I might add, is not the first field one would think of when talking about academic rigor ! But surprises happen in the academy. There are HUGE differences just within religious studies too — it is very different getting qualified in, say, modern American religion from in the languages and cultures of the Ancient Near East!
At first glance I thought you must have written this in response to _my_ email of yesterday. But from the comments’ timestamps I see it’s just a coincidence.
Weird things happen!
This is pure nosiness and curiosity. Weighing their limited audience against their often extended shelf-life, have you ever made much money from your academic publishing? I have this mental image of you getting a royalty check for 75 cents every 6 months or so. (‘None of your business’ is a perfectly acceptable answer.)
Academic books almost never make money. They are to expand our knowledge, not to pay the bills. If they do bring in any royalties, it’s usually about enough to Supersize Me.
Since I started getting serious about my reading material, I’ve noticed the stark contrast between an author who has the academic credentials and the wannabes. I find that I’m spending as much time reading and verifying footnotes as I do reading the book itself. I recognize some authors like you have published academic and popular books with the popular books having fewer footnotes and less technical jargon. Nevertheless, some authors don’t have the credentials to write anything beyond popular books for the hoi polloi.
Most of those without credentials really shouldn’t be writing books for general audiences either. But it’s the reality of our world.
This may be a very simple question, but why are scholarly books so much more expensive than books written for a general readership? Is it mainly a matter of distribution channels?
I find it unfortunate, because the high prices prevent me from reading many books that I would otherwise like to read. This is especially true when ordering them from Japan, where they become even more expensive. I wonder why that is.
Historically I believe it has been because university libraries were constrained to buy them and had the funds to do so. Since so few copies sold otherwise to the public (including to individual scholars) it was the only way a publisher could make up the costs of production.
GeoffClifton comments, “it might now be relatively easy to put the French and German academic articles through some sophisticated AI translation system.”
My response would be, the current AI can hallucinate; many words are ambiguous and depend on context. Will AI be able to translate what the author means? Of course, many words/concepts don’t translate exactly from one language to another, so AI may be no worse than anything else.
One useful way of looking at this is to do an analogy with an MD degree. If I showed up at a neurology clinic and said that I’m fascinated by neurology and have read a great deal, and my lifelong dream is to be a neurosurgeon, would they consider hiring me for their clinic? No, of course not. They are “only” interested in hiring people who have gone through all the rigorous training required for a doctorate in medicine and have specialized in neurology in their residency (that would be the equivalent of writing the dissertation).
We are not shocked or indignant about this “exclusion”; in fact, we’d be shocked and indignant if the clinic in question said to the layperson “Come on in! You can do this morning’s surgery!” So why are people indignant that academic presses don’t publish works written by authors with no scholarly credentials?
I realize, of course, nobody dies if a scholarly press publishes a bad book, while people would die from treatment by unqualified surgeons. But it’s a useful analogy in terms of the length of time, depth of preparation, and development of expertise required for both a PhD and an MD.
Good analogy. And one most people just don’t resonate with. It’ part of the bias against the humanities as not involving seriously difficult subjects.
How hard can English literature be? Just read the books! Yeah, right. Talk to my wife about Shakespeare sometime and THEN see what scholarship requires!! (But it’s especially irritating for me with the Bible. The Bible?!? How hard can it be? Well, uh, where does one start?)