If you find mentoring and teaching writing difficult, mystifying, or time-consuming, here are two important things you should know:
You’re not alone. In our experience, most scientists find teaching writing at least one, and usually all three, of those things.
My new book (with Stephen Heard) can help! There are ways to teach writing (in the classroom) and to mentor writers (grad students and other early-career folk) more easily and more efficiently, and our book—Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach—can help you discover and implement them.
That second part is especially good news today, because Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences is now available for pre-order from the University of Chicago Press! [1]
If you order now, you’ll be among the first to have a copy [2].
You’ll also help us make the case to the publisher that people want and need this book! Pre-orders are a semi-mystical but very important part of how book publishers decide how much to support any individual book. And, your pre-order (along with all the gift copies you’ll certainly want to order for your colleagues, and even for your mentees 😉) will help boost our publisher’s willingness to market the book and help us spread the word about it!
Meanwhile, the publishing machinery is humming along. This is my first book published in this way, and it’s been fascinating to see all the behind-the-scenes steps unfurl. Copyediting took about a month, with us responding to some individual queries, then receiving back the whole manuscript to review the copyeditor’s suggestions, and then another week or so of back-and-forth emails as we finalized the last adjustments. The copyedited manuscript is now in the proofing stage, and we expect to see the proofs quite soon. At this stage, we cannot make any major changes; just minor issues can be fixed! From my experience reviewing proofs of essays and peer-reviewed papers, I anticipate the proof review stage to be (a) quite important and (b) fairly tedious, as this will be the zillionth time I’ve read the manuscript.
Since we’re up for pre-order now, it seems certain that incredibly sophisticated marketing schemes (like the blog post you’re reading right now) are being devised. 😂The honest truth is that publishers don’t put a lot of money into marketing most books anymore. That task has largely shifted to the authors, hence this notice to you!
Sadly, the book’s cover is still an amorphous grey rectangle on the press's website. The shape is labeled “Cover to Come.” I’m so curious to see the real thing!
And, if you’re new here, full book details are here, and you can subscribe here to receive email updates as the book’s release gets closer. Or, you can read the jacket copy and our more detailed summary of the book here.
Meanwhile, and above all, please do place your pre-order, folks! Pre-orders will help this book find its feet in the world and increase the chances it reaches the people who need it!
Note: we’re giving a workshop, “Mentoring Scientific Writing Efficiently and Effectively”, at the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution meeting this June (in Sherbrooke, QC). If you’re coming, we’d love to have you. And if you’re not: you can contact us about possibilities for workshops where you are.
NOTES
[1] Technically, the book is also available for pre-order on the behemoth website that has put a lot of booksellers out of business and negatively pressured the publishing industry overall (plus a lot of other not great stuff). I’m not linking to it, because I’d love to have sales of our book make even a small difference to sustain local economies and communities. It’s highly likely your local book store would (a) appreciate you placing an order through them, and (b) be able to get you the book through the press or some other non-behemoth avenue. You can order from them directly, or via this Bookshop.org pre-order link! (Just note, the press is selling the book for $5 cheaper than Bookshop.org; no idea what’s driving that discrepancy.)
[2] You should get your copies in November of this year, just in time for you to harness the advice we offer for all your year-end gifts and new-year resolutions!
Comments