WHY WOULD ANYONE WRITE A BOOK ON THAT?

By DAVID D. PERLMUTTER

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, June 17, 2005, p. B10.

Most professors have faced a choice that they know will affect their career, and possibly their health and sanity: Should I write a book on ... ? Over the last five months, I have considered, avoided, rethought, dithered about, and finally committed to a new book project. Colleagues at my home institution and around the country in various disciplines tell me that I am not alone in experiencing such long-drawn-out angst: The confident demeanors of many an academic hide anguish about whether, when, and on what subject to roll the dice of writing a book.

On the surface, we seem to have a much easier time writing books than our scholarly predecessors did, thanks to personal computers, augmented support for research, more and increasingly varied publishing venues, and so on. But even today the obstacles to completing a manuscript and publishing a book are many.

University presses, increasingly pushed to earn profits comparable to those of trade publishers, place an ever-greater stress on "marketability." The technical standards of scholarship today are higher, too: Scholars in the 1920s, for instance, were somewhat fast and loose about quoting, paraphrasing, and attribution, but now the omission of a footnote could get you labeled as a plagiarist.

And the vast weight of accumulating scholarship makes conducting the research for a book on any subject more exhausting, even if computer databases ease the task of looking things up. I recently completed a book-length manuscript on how the American press depicted China in images -- including photos, maps, and cartoons -- from 1949 to 1989. I finished a decade after my original self-imposed deadline.

My excuse was that I had to wait for Chinese and Russian archives to open (as they did in the 1990s) to reveal key documents about the motivations and behind-the-scenes actions of the leaders of those countries during important historical events. It turns out that my delay brought more complexity than clarity: My manuscript now contains 1,700 footnotes. Worse, many "primary" documents contradict each other so that now, for example, I provide three possible explanations for the initiation of the Korean War.

In the last months of finishing my China book, I had begun to ask myself the alarming "What next?" question, and all the signs -- from news reports and research findings to the focus of my students -- were pointing to a very different subject: blogs. Then in December I received a phone call from my literary agent. She had had a conversation with an editor at Oxford University Press, who said he was looking for someone to write a book on political blogs.

The blog or Weblog -- as I assume most people on the planet now know -- is an online journal, diary, or communal Web site where people can post commentaries. The millions of blogs already in existence have wildly varying themes, including political analysis, sexual self-revelation, and even a mixture of both. For many Internet users, blogs like Instapundit, Daily Kos, and Little Green Footballs are news and editorial sites of record, replacing traditional newspapers, news magazines, and television news programs. Blogs have, famously, driven big stories, like the Dan Rather "Memogate" affair. Blogs are being co-opted by the mainstream media, too: Almost every newspaper Web site, for example, features blogs by its reporters. Some nonaffiliated bloggers have press passes and imitate professional journalists; others hope to make corporate journalism obsolete.

As a student of mass communication, I had been paying attention to blogs for some time. I had also noted the deep skepticism about them expressed by many of the professional journalists and political consultants I know, who feel that bloggers are not qualified to comment on the major issues of the day. Political blogs, they charge, were hyped before the 2004 presidential election as the next big thing, but bloggers had little impact on the final vote and ended up wasting the campaigns' money and time.

In short, I could easily make the case to myself that blogs were a prominent, controversial, and interesting subject, worthy of extensive study.

But the argument against writing about blogs was also easy to put forward. First, even though I am in a field that is necessarily concerned with current events, blogs might seem too much of a fad. Just because a subject is newsworthy does not mean that it is bookworthy. One colleague asked, "Will blogs still be around by the time you finish your manuscript?" Another demanded bluntly, "Why write a book on that?"

In putting together a book proposal for my agent to relay to Oxford and then responding to reviews of the proposal, I began to formulate an apologia in my mind for writing about blogs. I realized that it was also a checklist that other scholars could use to assess the risks and rewards for writing a book on any topic.

Why should I write the book? That is, would it simply duplicate existing work? Or would it do a better job of covering a topic that others have written about, or look at the topic in a new way?

In my case, I plan to write not just about blogs. I want to explore what I call the IDS -- Internet, digital, satellite -- revolution, the rise of technology that enables us to see a battle live, from ground zero; to phone a friend in Kurdistan; and, most interesting of all, to create online content that is instantly available to a global audience, without filtering by political or media elites. That revolution also allows us to express to anyone and everyone the emotions and ideas that once were restricted to the private diary or the circle of intimates.

Will the subject keep your interest until you've finished writing? Seen as part of a long academic career, a book is like a short but intense love affair. Some subjects seem intriguing at first but become boring over time. Write about something that fascinates you and that will continue to lure you to the keyboard.

Do you want to write this book? Don't let a publisher, agent, or reviewers force you to write a book that doesn't appeal to you. A friend of mine recently received a series of reviews of a book proposal, all of which pushed her to revise her plans in ways she didn't find compelling. Convinced that the reviewers wanted her to write their book, not hers, she walked away from the project.

Who will publish the book, and who will read it? A book must fit with other publications at a press, or marketing the title becomes prohibitively expensive. But be realistic in predicting the audience for your book when you contact a potential publisher. Editors laugh when they read a book proposal for a study of Thuringian crafts in the 14th century that the author promises will reach a wide readership.

Are you ready to write this book now? It is difficult for professors to acknowledge that anything is beyond us -- even for the moment. But ours is a business with longevity; therefore, don't start a book before you feel fully confident about writing it. An emeritus professor told me about his current project, "I'm glad I'm writing this book when I'm 80; I wasn't mature enough to write it when I was 60."

Will you be able to finish the book? I have seen colleagues paralyzed by the inability to complete a book manuscript. Although unforeseen disasters like illness are sometimes to blame, more often the problem is that the author is obsessed with perfection, wanting to write not just a book but the book on the topic. While I would never suggest abandoning the quest for quality, no volume can treat any subject to exhaustion. If you don't think you'll be able to finish a book, don't start it.

Do you have time to write a book? A professor's day can easily fill up with class preparation, meetings with students, bureaucratic work, institutional service, and all the minutiae of higher education. Grabbing an hour here and there is not enough for a book. Plan ahead how to put aside for the book days or large sections of days during the semester, or weeks or months during vacations and sabbaticals. If you're writing a book, you will need lots of time to sit and think -- with no interruptions, or even a threat of an interruption.

What about logistical support? Writing a book may involve costs like hiring an assistant, traveling, or paying to use proprietary data or copyrighted material. Make sure you know where the money will come from before you get started. In the case of my China book, as an example, the rights to reproduce photographs will cost several thousand dollars.

Does your department head know what you're planning? Few of us enjoy the good fortune of Harvard's John Rawls, who -- as Richard Bradley reports in Harvard Rules (HarperCollins, 2005) -- published almost nothing for two decades but received no pressure or admonitions from his superiors, and then produced A Theory of Justice, "perhaps the most important work of political philosophy published in the last half-century." You should discuss your goals with administrators, giving them a realistic estimate of the time and effort the book will take.

I answered those questions to the satisfaction of a publisher, an agent, and some anonymous readers. In a year or so I will (I hope) have to answer to a wider audience. But the decision to write any book begins with honest self-evaluation: Is this the right book for me to write, right now? No one can answer that question but you.