Other academics, particularly younger scholars, often ask me about how to get an academic book published. When I recently floated the idea of writing a series of blog posts about this issue, on social ...

In my first post in this series, I went over the criteria that should guide your decision on whether to try to write an academic book in the first place. I also explained the limitations of this ...

Writing the first book is time-consuming. So, you may wonder, why should people still write one—especially if a book is not required for tenure at their institution? Many people may advise you to just ...

After eight years of researching and drafting chapters of my academic book, I finally addressed the nagging sense that I was not writing the book I really wanted to write. From my drafts of four ...

Just as a prospective surgeon might study medicine with aplomb only to learn that academic prowess doesn’t necessarily translate to success with a scalpel, researchers often learn that their success ...

When scholars approach me for help writing a book proposal, especially when they believe their topic will be of general interest, my first piece of advice is always: Read Thinking Like Your Editor by ...

There’s been much discussion about the needless complexity of academic writing. In a widely read article in The Chronicle of Higher Education last year, Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at ...

Gordon Rugg received funding from the Government Office of the East Midlands for some of the work reported in the article "Selection and use of elicitation techniques for education research". If ...