Contexts

Comments

• 

  mkefalas 11:06 am on May 19, 2010 | # | Reply

  Interesting piece, what is the more critical issue is that academic publishing is changing. Indeed, more and more sociologists will have to write so-called bestellers if they want anyone to publis their book at all. The days of selling 200 copies of a title are over, this model of publishing is no longer sustainable. More academic presses are taking over so-called “mid-list” titles that are supposed to sell 10,000. The top academic presses publish a good deal of journalists and other professional writers. You also didn’t mention that many of the books on your list are represented by literary agents. AGain, working with agents will help sociologists write more accessible books. Sadly, many academics fear such an approach. Accessible equals simplistic and bad to many people in our field…

• 

  anteropietila 1:08 pm on May 21, 2010 | # | Reply

  While the article is a good starting point, it only scratches the surface. As the author of a newly published book on race and real estate http://www.anteropietila.com, I am trying to break into the market and find it extremely difficult. One key pre-requisite of success, book reviews, has virtually disappeared from mass-market newspapers. So unless you are lucky enough to get reviewed by The New York Times and/or The Washington Post, you are pretty much dead. Similarly, not many radio listeners are likely to hear about you unless you are lucky enough to get on Diane Rehm or Terry Gross’s Fresh Air.
  Let me elaborate. My book covers a 130-year span from the Civil War to the subprime mess. Milesposts include Baltimore’s pioneeering 1910 residential segregation law, restrictive covenants, the redlining of 239 cities by FDR’s administration (which sanctioned predatory lending), blockbusting, white flight. My book, “Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City,” is arguably the most comprehensive treatment of those subjects available. It is highly readable: Beryl Satter, author of “Family Properties,” calls my book “a page-turner, chock-full of riveting and shocking stories and vivid, unforgettable characters.”
  As far as the trade goes, however, the book has one killer drawback. It documents the evolution of residential segregation and real estate through the prism of Baltimore Simply put, the book has been branded as a local book. Yet Baltimore was a trailblazer city that, in 1910 when the residential segregation law was enacted, was ruled by political Progressives. Because Baltimore also was a hotbed of eugenics, the book it offers some of the most compelling documentation available anywhere of such subjects as anti-Semitism (including anti-Semitism by Jewish builders who refused to sell or rent to fellow Jews) and black/Jewish tensions which in Baltimore began in 1910, when department stores were segregated and sharpened after Hitler came to power because black leaders were suspected of harboring anti-Semitism.
  In the “old” times, one could have reasonably expected that a book of this scope and ambition would have been widely reviewed. Alas, this has not happened in today’s circumstances. I don’t know why. But I know the following: In the “old” times, one paper that might have been interested in the topic (because of its home city’s history) would have been the Chicago Tribune. No such luck this time. Since the book was reviewed in the Baltimore Sun, which is owned by the same company, the Trib has not touched it. Instead a review appears on the Trib website. Ditto for the Los Angeles Times, also owned by the Trib.
  There are lots of other factors that I do not claim to understand. For eeample, it seems to me that many sociological titles may be hurt by the unforgiving returns policy that many bookstore chains have adopted.
  A final note: We are moving toward e-books. They may be a blessing or a curse. But the explosive growth that is forecast for the next few years surely offers new opportunities.