Here’s Rachel Toor, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Not so many years ago writing a trade book would bring accusations of popularizing, an academic sin worse than spending a Sunday night watching the Super Bowl. No more. Now university presses are turning away from cranking out piles of narrow monographs too expensive even for libraries and are actively looking for books that have at least an academic/trade market, books that will cross over to scholars in other disciplines or outside a narrow subfield. At the same time, commercial presses are hungry for serious, well-researched books that will appeal to people who want something more substantial than the next John Grisham. Trade publishers are also willing to pay big advances for the prestige of having heavyweight authors on their list. It isn’t hard to think of powerhouse intellectual scholars who have become rock stars of the scholarly firmament. Hey, I’d line up to get Simon Schama’s autograph.
How do these “popular” academic books happen? Do their authors instinctively know how to write for a broad audience? No stinking way. For the most part, rock-star academics are made, not born. And the people who make them are literary agents….
Read the whole thing here. And before the mud starts to fly, I poached this link–but I don’t know where I got it. I bookmarked it a few days ago, then got immersed in writing, and now I can’t remember where it came from, arrgh.
You know who you are. You know what to do. But please–I beg of you–don’t do it.