In my role as a developmental editor and publishing consultant, I specialize in working with scholarly authors. These authors hold PhDs and want to publish books based on their original research. For most of them, publishing with an explicitly scholarly press—such as a university press or other publisher who focuses on reaching scholarly readers—is the right path.
However, many scholarly authors are curious about trade publishing and what it might mean to write a trade book. I’ve written this blog post to answer the most common questions I get from authors and clear up some myths and misconceptions. I think it will be helpful to shed some light on the publishing industry so you can make an informed decision about which sector of it you want to engage with, whether that’s trade or scholarly publishing.
I’m going to structure this post in terms of five overarching questions:
What is a trade book and how does it differ from a traditional academic monograph?
Who publishes trade books?
Why would a scholar want to write a trade book?
Is a trade book actually aligned with your goals as an author?
What do you need to do if you want to publish a trade book?
I hope that by the end of this post you’ll have a better understanding of whether you actually want to write a trade book and how to go about doing that if so.
What is a trade book and how does it differ from a traditional scholarly monograph?
Let’s start with some Publishing Terminology 101, to make sure we’re all on the same page about what we mean when we say “trade book.”
When publishers assign a price to a book, it’s called the list price. That’s the price you will pay to purchase the book from a book store, an online retailer, or the publisher itself. However, in order to get bookstores and online retailers to stock the book, the publisher has to sell it to them at a pretty deep wholesale discount, to allow the retailer to make some profit on selling the book.
This is why Amazon might sell the book at lower than the list price — they’re still making a profit because they bought the book from the publisher for a much lower amount than they decide to sell it for. It’s also why scholarly publishers often hand out coupon codes for buying books on their website — that discount is usually less than the retailer discount, so the publisher is still seeing more money if you buy the book directly from them, even with the coupon code.
A trade book is a book that publishers expect to mostly sell through external retailers. Because they will have to give those retailers that deep discount, they are counting on selling a high volume of books through retailers — enough copies that the publisher will still be able to cover the cost of publishing the book even with the discount included.
The publisher doesn’t get to decide which retailers will stock the book. They have sales teams that pitch their books to retail stockists a few times a year. Big online retailers might agree to stock nearly any book, because they are not giving up physical shelf space and or keeping many copies on hand in their warehouse space. However, brick-and-mortar retailers will be very selective about which books they order from publishers. If they don’t think the book will sell to people who physically come into their store, they won’t stock it.
You can probably see why most books written for academic audiences are not particularly appealing to retailers. When people want to read an academic monograph or textbook, it’s not usually because they discovered it by browsing the shelf at their local bookstore. Purchasers of academic monographs and textbooks are a very niche audience and they discover books and decide to buy them for much different reasons than most of the books you would see on the shelf at Barnes & Noble or your favorite indie bookseller.
Academic books aren’t worse than trade books. They just have different readerships. There may a few hundred people who will really care about and benefit from your scholarly research enough to want to buy your book. This won’t be enough to make most retailers take notice. Again, this isn’t to say your scholarly research isn’t valuable, however the particular set of people to whom it is valuable aren’t best reached through retail or “the trade.”
For a book to have trade potential, it needs to deal with ideas that transcend academic conversations. In other words, the subject matter has to be interesting to people who aren’t experts and the stakes of the author’s take on the subject matter must feel vital to those with no investment in scholarly debates.
Beyond the subject matter, the style and structure of trade books are often different from academic books. While all books benefit from a confident authorial voice, an engaging arc from beginning to end, and arguments that are readily parsed, the bar for all three of these qualities is a bit higher when targeting the “general reader.” This isn’t because the general reader isn’t as smart as the academic reader; it’s because the general reader is usually reading purely for the enjoyment of it or because they think reading the book will improve their life in some way. If your prose isn’t pleasurable to read or doesn’t offer up its lessons in clear and relevant ways, the trade reader has little incentive to be there (unlike a scholarly reader who may be driven to absorb the information you offer even if they don’t particularly care for the way you write it up).
Who publishes trade books?
Scholarly publishers specialize in the marketing and distribution channels that can effectively reach scholarly readers, i.e. the set of people who are most likely to buy academic monographs and textbooks. This is why the vast majority of academic authors will be looking for a scholarly publisher, such as a university press or other academic press — because they know how to reach your most important readers. Trade publishers have a different infrastructure, designed to publish books for a different type of audience
It’s important to understand that “trade publisher” is not synonymous with “commercial publisher.” There are many academic presses that are categorized as commercial presses in that they operate as for-profit entities. Yet if their focus is on academic monographs and textbooks — the majority of which are not stocked in bookstores or marketed to the general public — they would not be considered a trade press.
University presses are also not considered trade presses, again because their main focus is on publishing scholarly books and selling those books to scholarly audiences.
Importantly, scholarly publishers such as university presses may decide to treat some of their books as trade titles. This means they would put sales and marketing resources into selling these books differently than most of their other titles. They would have their sales reps highlight these books when they talk to retailers and they might plan sophisticated marketing and publicity campaigns to make sure that potential readers outside of traditional academic circles find out that these books exist.
Trade titles require a great investment by the press. Not only does the press expect that most copies sold will have that deep retailer discount, but they will also be putting substantial labor into making the book appealing to buyers outside of academia. This labor will come from editors, designers, marketers and salespeople. Because scholarly publishers are generally operating on tight budgets with thin margins, they can’t afford to invest in all their books this way. Nor would it make sense to invest this effort for books where the realistic audience will be best reached through regular academic channels such as conferences, journals, and word of mouth in academic networks. You can have the best publicity campaign in the world, but if your book is really only for the 300-500 PhD-level experts in your niche subfield, it’s best for everyone if your publisher stays in that lane to make sure those most-likely readers find out about your book and doesn’t worry about anyone else.
For a scholarly publisher to decide to publish a book as a trade title, they would have to see a lot of sales potential in order to offset all that investment and the retailer discount. They would probably expect to sell several thousand copies (maybe tens of thousands), rather than the thousand or less they might expect from most of their academic titles.
To get a sense of how many trade titles and what kinds of books your favorite scholarly press treats as trade titles, I recommend taking a look at their recent catalogs. Try putting “[Name of Press] Catalog” into your search engine because sometimes they’re not super easy to find on publisher websites.
Trade titles are often listed at the front of the publisher’s catalog, because the main audience for catalogs is retailers and librarians who might decide to stock their books. You’ll often see nonacademic books like cookbooks and guides that have regional or popular interest. You might see serious nonfiction books written by scholars for a nonacademic readership. You may also see “academic trade” titles (like The Book Proposal Book) which are written for scholarly readers but have a broader intended audience than a research monograph. Some university presses have separate imprints for their trade titles, meaning the books are branded with the name of the trade imprint, rather than the name of the university.
Academic trade books are sometimes called “crossover books” because, while they have solid academic appeal, they also have the potential to cross over to nonacademic readerships. My client Matthew Morrison’s book Blacksound is a great example of an academic crossover book. Dr. Morrison’s book on the history of race and popular music in the United States is meticulously researched and grounded in academic frameworks such as critical race theory, feminist theory, performance theory and musicology, as well as the historical and theoretical literature on blackface minstrelsy and intellectual property. Yet his arguments are also directly relevant to conversations happening in popular culture on a daily basis. This made his book a good candidate for the academic trade treatment at his press.
If you’re writing a book that you think could have crossover potential, a university press might be a great home for it. As Dr. Morrison discussed in my newsletter on March 6th, by publishing with the University of California Press and being very clear with his publisher about his goals for the book, he was able to write a book that could both earn him tenure and get his ideas out to a broader audience.
Why would a scholar want to write a trade book?
Reason 1: to have their work made accessible to nonacademic readers
I sometimes hear from authors who are concerned that if they publish their research in an academic book, the book will be too expensive or otherwise inaccessible to the communities outside of academia they want to be in conversation with. This is a completely valid concern, yet publishing a trade book will not necessarily solve the problem of accessibility. Nor are scholarly books inherently inaccessible.
While many scholarly publishers do put out comically expensive hardcover editions of their books (mostly destined for sale to institutional libraries), some also offer more affordable paperback and ebook formats. A few scholarly publishers have digital open access programs that don’t require funding from the author. In other cases, you may be able to seek external funding that you pass along to your publisher in the form of a subvention, enabling them to sell your book at a more accessible price point.
Accessibility isn’t only about price, though. You may want your ideas to reach readers who can materially benefit from your research, even if they aren’t invested in the scholarly discourses to which you are contributing. In cases like this, a trade publisher may be able to help you reach those readerships. However, the publisher is not going to do the work of translating your writing into the kind of style and structure that is more likely to connect with nonacademic readers. That will be your job before the publisher will even entertain the idea of acquiring your book. Only you can decide if the up-front labor investment of writing your book this way is worth it to you.
Reason 2: to make more money from book sales
It’s a huge myth that trade books are necessarily more financially successful than academic books. Yes, when a press decides to invest in a book as a trade title, they are projecting a higher volume of sales, and thus potentially more profit. However, trade books fail to be commercially successful all the time. Many trade books sell just a few hundred copies or less, meaning they are performing no better than the average academic monograph. And with the cost that goes into producing and promoting them and the lower retail price point, they may be even less profitable than academic books.
The profitability of a book is also not directly correlated with how much money the author sees. Money that goes to an author comes in two forms: advances and royalties. An advance is the money a publisher pays the author before the book is published. Royalties are the small percentages the author will make from each copy sold. The advance is actually an advance payment against your royalties, so if you get a large advance up front you may not ever see actual royalty payments later on. It will depend on how many copies of your book your publisher is able to sell.
Advances are more common for trade books than for academic books. The size of the advance you will be offered very much depends on the publisher’s projections for sales (which depends on the potential market they see for your book) and the extent to which the publisher thinks they will need to compete with other presses to get you to sign a contract with them. You will not be making Stephen King or Prince Harry money on your nonfiction trade book. You may be offered no advance at all.
Royalty percentages do tend to be higher in contracts for trade books. However, the amount of money that those percentages translate into for you as the author depends on the number of books your publisher sells. Overall, it is possible to make money from sales of your trade book, but never guaranteed. And even a very successful trade book will probably not make the author enough money to live on without other sources of income.
Reason 3: to get more public attention on yourself and your research
Many scholars aspire to build platforms as “public intellectuals” or “thought leaders” in their areas of expertise. It’s true that having published a book can serve as a credential or proof of authority that can lead to other opportunities, such as media appearances or paid speaking engagements that help your ideas reach new audiences that your academic research might not otherwise reach.
However, the order of operations isn’t what you might think. Trade publishers are often looking for evidence of this kind of platform and reputation before they will consider signing a nonfiction author. That’s because they are expecting you to do as much or more work promoting their product (your book) as they will. Your trade publisher likely has connections you don’t have, which may be helpful in building your public profile once your book is published. Yet you will also need to do a good deal of the publicity legwork yourself, both before and after your book is acquired.
At this point you may be thinking that some help with publicity is better than nothing, and nothing is what you will get at an academic publisher. Yes and no. Most scholarly publishers do engage in marketing and publicity, though their capacity might indeed be less than what you would hope for. Yet there is no guarantee that a trade publisher will be any better. Complaints about being neglected by their press when it comes to book promotion are not at all unique to academic authors. The grass is not necessarily greener in trade publishing.
Reason 4: to stretch yourself as a writer and explore other genres beyond the academic journal article and monograph
This is, I think, the best reason to try your hand at writing a trade book. It has to be as much about the journey as the destination, because the destination is far from guaranteed (in all the ways I’ve just laid out).
And don’t count scholarly publishers out as a place where you can publish less traditional work. In fact, smaller university presses are often more open to taking chances with form and dealing with authors whose existing platform is mostly situated within academic networks.
Reason 5: to stretch your marketing and publicity skills
Ok, this isn’t actually a reason anyone has ever told me they want to write a trade book. But the fact is that if you want to have a “successful” trade book—and thus be given the opportunity to publish more of them—you will have to actively explore new ways of reaching your potential readers. Some people are intrinsically excited by the idea of organizing a book tour, reaching out to bookstores and other venues to arrange readings, pitching op-eds to national newspapers and magazines, trying to get on as many podcasts as possible, and engaging readers on social media. But if absolutely none of that sounds like fun to you, trade publishing might not be your thing.
Is writing a trade book aligned with your goals?
One of the first things I ask all my author clients to get clear about is what their goals are for their books. As you’ve just seen, if your goals are to have your work be accessible to certain communities, to make money from book sales, to leverage your book for other opportunities, or to get a lot of marketing and publicity support from your press, a trade book may get you there, or it may not.
If your primary goal in writing a book is professional advancement within academia, you need to understand how your book will be evaluated by the institution that employs you or the kind of institution you hope to be employable at. In most cases, when a book is required for tenure or promotion, it must be a peer reviewed book. Most trade publishers do not conduct peer review, so publishing your book at a trade press might be a nonstarter for that reason. There are some trade presses that will sometimes conduct peer review if the author requires it. You’ll want to confirm this before signing a contract if peer review is important to you. All university presses conduct peer review.
Hiring committees and tenure evaluators may also expect to see certain conventional hallmarks of academic research and writing when they assess your work. If your book seems to be written for a broader audience – which often necessitates stripping out some of the academic apparatus – it may not be seen as “rigorous” enough in the eyes of people whose opinions matter for your academic career. (I’m not endorsing these kinds of judgments, I’m just saying that you should be aware that they are out there.)
If your primary goals for your book have little to do with your academic career, then you may benefit from casting a wider net in terms of exploring different publishers. In most cases, I encourage my clients who are considering trade publishing to keep scholarly publishers on their radars and at least explore what might be possible in terms of publishing a crossover or trade book with them. Authors sometimes find that scholarly publishers are more equipped than they had realized to provide the publishing experience they want to have, including competitive advances and royalties and robust marketing and publicity support.
What do you need to do if you want to publish a trade book?
There are five major hurdles you’ll need to clear in order to be offered a trade contract for your book.
The first is something I alluded to above: you need to write your book for a broad audience. This will likely mean honing your writing craft in different ways than you’ve been accustomed to in the academy. If you have previous experience with creative writing, journalism, copywriting, or other forms of nonacademic writing, you might already be well prepared. If not, you may want to invest in some education and/or the support of a professional freelance editor who has experience with trade books.
Second, you’ll need to establish that there is a viable market for your book’s topic. This means doing some research to find out whether any books comparable to yours have been published recently (like in the last couple of years) and you’ll need to figure out what features of your book will appeal to the readers who have already proven that they will buy similar books. Many authors think that if they write about something that has never been written about before, that will be a selling point for a publisher, but that’s not the case at all. Most publishers are risk-averse, and will see a lack of books on your topic as evidence that no one wants books on that topic. (Is this risk-aversion fair? Not always. Can it reinforce conservatism and a lack of diversity in the publishing industry? Yes.)
You also can’t assume that just because people will read a magazine article or watch a TikTok video about your topic that they will buy a book about it. You have to show proof of demand for books like the one you want to write.
Unfortunately, timeliness and relevance of your topic aren’t enough. You could write the most timely, relevant book about gun violence or climate change, only to find out that trade publishers don’t want books about those topics because they just don’t sell well enough. (This actually happened to a client of mine recently. He’s now exploring university presses, which have been much more enthusiastic about his project.)
Third, you’ll need to build your author platform and sketch out a promotion plan. Whereas scholarly publishers will place a lot of value on your academic credentials and your visibility within academic networks, trade publishers (or scholarly publishers considering positioning your book as a trade title) will be looking for proof that you are already known and trusted as an expert outside of academia. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need a social media following in the millions, but you’ll need to show some proof that people in the “real world” seek you out when they want knowledge about your area of expertise. Publishers will also expect you to show up with a detailed plan for promoting your expertise and your book both before and after your book’s release.
Fourth, you’ll need to write a strong book proposal that demonstrates your book’s potential to win over a large readership. Every element of your proposal from your project description to your table of contents to your author bio to your writing sample must reassure publishers that your book will appeal to a broad book-buying audience and by extension make the publisher money. Even if you plan to approach university presses, your proposal must communicate your book’s commercial appeal, if you want them to take your project seriously as having trade or crossover potential.
Fifth, depending on the publishers you want to target, you may need to obtain representation from a literary agent. University presses and some small independent trade presses accept unsolicited, unagented proposals. But most trade publishers require book proposals to come to their editors through a literary agent. That means you must first identify the agents who are most likely to appreciate your project, query them with your book idea, win them over with your book proposal, sign a contract in which you agree to give them around 15% of the money you make on your book, and possibly spend additional time revising your proposal and manuscript according to the agent’s advice. At that point the agent will shop your proposal to editors at trade presses on your behalf. I’m not at all knocking the value of working with an agent, because they can be extremely helpful in shaping your project, attuning you to market trends, and negotiating great deals that make you more money than you might be able to get on your own. But all of that takes time and effort and you should be prepared for that part of the process.
I’m exhausted just thinking about this list, to be honest. But if you’ve read this far and still feel exhilarated, trade publishing might be for you!
How I can help
If you are dead-set on pitching your book only to big corporate publishers, or you want to write a trade book in a totally different genre from serious nonfiction (like memoir, fiction, or poetry), I’m probably not the right editor or consultant for you. Look into the resources offered by people like Jane Friedman and Kate McKean.
However, if you are still exploring possibilities for your publishing path and remain open to publishing with a university press or other scholarly publisher, I can definitely help you with that. I’ve worked with a number of scholarly authors who have written “academic trade” books (and I’ve published one myself).
The Book Proposal Book, my Book Proposal Accelerator group program, and my self-paced Book Proposal Shortcut course will all help you write a strong proposal that you can take to acquiring editors at scholarly presses or to literary agents who represent scholarly writers, should you decide to go that route.