Ep. 92 - Become Your Own Developmental Editor (with Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer)

In this episode, Leslie welcomes back book publishing expert Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, author of The Book Proposal Book and the new release Make Your Manuscript Work: A Guide to Developmental Editing for Scholarly Writers. Laura shares her practical, step-by-step approach to developmental editing and how she helps authors create manuscripts that truly resonate with presses and readers. She discusses the most common mistakes scholarly writers make, how to clarify your goals, and why thinking like an editor can empower your publishing journey.

We also talk about the realities of balancing writing with work, family, and life demands, and how authors can view their books as investments in their future careers. Whether you’re working on your first book or revising a manuscript after peer review, this episode offers invaluable guidance from one of the field's top developmental editors.

Transcript

Leslie: 

Today, I’m thrilled to welcome back my first repeat visitor, Laura Portwood-Stacer! She was actually the very first guest I ever interviewed on Your Words Unleashed when she talked about best practices for choosing an academic press. If you want to go back and listen to that super helpful episode, it's Number 52. 

So before we dive into things, here's a bit about her: Laura Portwood-Stacer helps scholars around the world write and publish outstanding books. She's the author of The Book Proposal book and a new book titled Make Your Manuscript Work: A Guide to Developmental Editing for Scholarly Writers, both published by Princeton University Press. In addition to her books, Laura offers online courses and workshops and a free weekly newsletter with practical tips on the scholarly book publishing process. Before founding her company, Manuscript Works, in 2015, Laura earned a PhD in Communication from the University of Southern California, published a monograph based on her dissertation, and taught media and cultural studies at New York University. 

So, as you can gather from her bio, Laura has just published a new book about developmental editing, and I wanted to chat with her today about the process of writing it and how scholarly authors can think more developmental editors to improve the quality of their own manuscripts. So welcome again, Laura! 

Laura: 

Thank you so much, Leslie. It's a pleasure to be back. 

Leslie: 

Yeah, I'm so excited. It's just getting to the point where I can ask people tocome back because everyone's doing such great stuff. So I am very curious about this book. What inspired you to write it? 

Laura: 

Yeah. So I started my business 10 years ago as a developmental editor, and over those years, I have seen how that process of deeply engaging with a writer's manuscript could help that writer strengthen their ideas and present them even more effectively. And I saw the confidence it gave authors to know that someone had really paid attention, and they could feel really good about both approaching publishers with their manuscript and about releasing their work out into the world at the end of the process. 

But that process of working with a developmental editor and having someone really closely pay attention to your work is not accessible to everyone. And there are many very good reasons why someone might not want to turn their work over to a stranger, might not want to pay for help, may not even want to share their work with a known colleague for feedback at early stages, or doesn't feel ready to do that yet. 

So this book is really here as a resource that writers can use independently to bringthat process of developmental editing, that deep, effective assessment and revision to their manuscripts as they prepare them for publication. So I hope it will just be a tool people can keep on their shelf. And whenever they have a manuscript they are trying to publish, they can pull this out and apply it and feel good about what they are sending off to a publisher. 

Leslie: 

So exciting! And I'm just realizing now that I think there's probably going to be alot of people tuning in that are still like, “What is a developmental editor?” I know I didn't know what they were until I was on the tenure track. Then I was like, why hadn't I heard about this before? So maybe you can start there. 

Laura: 

Yeah, yeah. So there are many kinds of editors in the world. There are acquiring editors who work at publishers and their job is really to pull manuscripts through the publishing process. Not particularly to read the manuscripts and give really deep feedback. Some of them are able to do that, few are. And then there are copy editors, the people who take your manuscript at the very end of the process and make sure it follows the house style and that there are no major flaws in it. 

But between those two, you're also working to make your text, to make sure the ideasare coming across the way you want them to, and the argument is coming through, and that the text is structured in an appropriate way. And that's what a developmental editor really looks at is those big picture aspects of a text in the book. I delineate these as argument, evidence, structure, and style. Because those are the four make-or-break foundational aspects of a text that could result in it being really well received or not accepted for publication, or not well received by readers should it manage to get published. 

So those are the things that, as a developmental editor, I'm helping writers think about. And so that's what this book is really focusing on, those aspects of the text to help writers get them right. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. So I was lucky to get an advanced copy of your book. And so I did see these four pillars laid out quite a bit. Argument, evidence, structure, and style. 

So canyou talk a little bit about how developmental editors approach these pillars? And I think you mentioned that, maybe different editors focus on different things, but these are the four that you for sure focus on. 

Laura: 

Yeah, yeah. So, there are many developmental editors out there, and they all may have their own way of approaching manuscripts, but over my 10 years of doing this work, also teaching courses to other developmental editors, I figured out, “okay, these are the four things I'm really looking at when I'm looking at a text.” And I call them the four pillars because they really are the foundation of the text.

And, like I said, the text will not be successful with publishers or readers without thesefour fundamentals in place. So to think like a developmental editor, you have to step back from the content itself, from the actual ideas that you have grown out of your research, to now think about how the ideas are being presented to the reader. 

So, many writers I work with have an implicit argument that they are trying to make with their research, but haven't yet either articulated what that is or haven't figured out, “Well, how do I put that in my manuscript In a way that really engages the reader, helps them remember what I was trying to say, helps them organize all the evidence I'm providing to support that argument?” 

That's what a developmental editor is doing, is figuring outhow to present the argument, how the evidence can be presented and analyzed in a way that supports the argument, how the text can be organized and signposted so that the reader has a positive experience of it, and then how the style, the way the writer shows up on the page is aligned with the subject matter and with the audience that the writer really wants to reach. Because style can vary widely in scholarly publishing. 

As a developmental editor, I'm trying to help the author make a conscious choice about how do they want to show up on the page here. So all of those things are things that the book also walks through. 

Leslie: 

Right? Right. So it's teaching authors to be really intentional about how they present themselves on the page. And, I spoke with a different editor who said that authors need to earn the attention of their audience. And I do think that's something that a lot of scholarly authors don’t. They take for granted that they've got a built-in audience. And unfortunately, that audience is really small and you're just talking to your specific subfield. But everybody ideally wants to capture more people than that, right? 

And so when it comes to the argument, what are some of the mostcommon mistakes you see people make when it comes to approaching their argument? 

Laura: 

Yeah. So the book actually lays out the 18 most common mistakes that I see in scholarly texts. 

Leslie: 

18, wow! 

Laura: 

But they're divided into the four pillars. So with argument, I think there are four or five. But a really common one that I just alluded to is not stating the argument in the text. So that's a big one, is just figuring out, okay, what is the argument, and is it stated in the text? And if it is stated in the text, am I waiting until the conclusion? Could I pull that up to the beginning?

Another common one is notusing consistent vocabulary for the key words and the key concepts that are part of your thesis, part of your argument. And so that's a simple one to fix once you're aware of it. But using consistent vocabulary can help a reader recognize, okay, this author is supporting that point. They told me in the introduction, and now in chapter one, we're still talking about that same thing. And I can recognize it because of the way they're talking about it. And you can pull an argument through all the chapters of the book just by being really precise with defining the concepts at the beginning and then referring back to them as you take the reader through your argument. 

So those are a couple. Another one is I help people with book proposals. That's the text I'm reading a lot. And then the book proposal, you have to just state your argument. You don't have a lot of time to dance around it. You just got to say it. And I think people sometimes get a little unclear about what is the actual argument that grows out of their evidence that they have enough support for and could convince a scholarly readership of. And so sometimes people are confusing premises with arguments or assumptions everyone agrees on or observations that everyone can make. That's not really what you're arguing in your book. Most likely, you have something more interesting to say than that. 

So in this book, I explain how do you push your argument beyond that. But then don't go so far that you're really saying that the implications of your argument are your argument. You have to let the reader do whatever other work they have to do to be convinced of those implications. Your job is to prove the argument you have the evidence for. Some people want to make a normative argument, saying, “well, we should be doing this based on what I found in my research.” And that gets a little dicey with scholarly publishing. Sometimes that's appropriate in some fields, and in other fields, that's not going to be received well. 
 
You want to stay in your lane. So again, it's just about being conscious of what the expectations are in your genre and then really looking at your text to see if you're fulfilling them. 

Leslie: 

Right, right. Just in my own work with clients, one of the things I often see is people making too many arguments where they're like, “I argue this and I argue this and later I argue this.” And I'm like, you got to choose, because as soon as I see that word, I take it as the argument. So I usually recommend for folks to be very sparing with how they utilize the word “argue.” 

And then otherwise you can say “I propose.” “I suggest.” There are a lot of other ways you can state things but still show a hierarchy of ideas. Is that something you've seen? 

Laura: 

Yes, for sure. Yeah. And that is one of the things I talk about in this book is yes, choose the main argument that is going to drive the whole book, because readers can't hold that many in their heads. They're learning this material for the first time, whereas you've been working on it for years. So you can't just brain dump everything you thought about it on them. 

You’ve got to figure out what is the one thing I would want people to walk away from this book or article or whatever text you're working on and be able to tell acolleague, “oh yeah, this is what I learned from that.” One thing is probably all people will be able to hold in their heads. Remember, cite you for, remember that you were the one who came up with it. Those are all the things that academic writers want for their publications. So you can't ask too much of your reader, because the readers just don't have that much to give, honestly. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. No. And I try to encourage people to create a very sticky argument. It sticks in people's minds once they close the book and they're done. 

And something I see a lot of folks do is they try to pack so much into that one statement that you're like, what was the one point? Because I see four. So it's also the commitment factor. 

Laura: 

Yeah, for sure. 

Leslie: 

So, back to your book. How did you decide to structure it? 

Laura: 

Yeah, so it's a very practical step-by-step method for writers. So the structure of the book really follows the purpose of the book; to walk you through those steps. I developed something I call the “manuscript development cycle,” which are the steps that any author should take, or I'm proposing any author should take, as they go through their text to improve it. 

And so there are three phases in that cycle. First is clarifying your mission. Why are you publishing this? What do you want to happen after it's published? The second is assessing your text to see what is there and what could be improved, should you choose to improve it. And then the third is planning and executing your edits. So instead of jumping right into editing or a vision or whatever you want to call it, really making a conscious plan for what needs to be done, what could maybe be done if I end up having time, what would be nice to have for a particular readership, but really my main readership is over here, so maybe I won't do that this time for this book. 

So there are those three phases. The book really walks through all the sub-steps of those phases so that it holds your hand through the process of treating your text like a developmental editor and figuring out what you're going to do with it to make it even more successful with publishers and readers. 

Leslie: 

So when it comes to clarifying your mission, what are some of the differentoptions? Because I imagine a lot of folks don't even question. They're like, “well, I want to get it published, I want to get a job, I want to get promoted, I want…” So, what do you mean by that? 

Laura: 

Yeah, I see that all the time. So yes, one of the primary goals for a lot of academic writers is getting a job, getting tenure if they are already employed. And yes, those are very valid goals that someone might have. A book could be a foundational element of their career. So identifying that will help you make choices about how you develop this manuscript. Because I encounter so many writers who, yeah, they're writing a book because they have to for their career and then they layer all these other expectations on themselves, like, well, “I want it to be beautifully written. I want the prose to just be very elegant. I want to be really creative with this, I want to reach a larger audience, or I'm writing for the community that I researched.” 

Those goals aren't always in alignment. You wouldn't alwayswrite the text the same way to meet all of those different goals. And that can lead to difficulty making decisions about how you want to develop the text, dissatisfaction when you're not hitting all of those things you want. And then people can internalize it and turn it on themselves and feel like, “well, I'm not good at writing or I'm not good at writing books, or I don't know how to do this.” But in fact, from the very beginning, they set up an impossible task for themselves that would be impossible for anyone. 

So it's not that they're bad at it, it's that they weren't realistic in their goals or weren't clear really on what they wanted out of this process. So yeah, so the book offers, I don't know, a dozen things that I have heard writers say they want their books to do for them, and it's almost like a checklist. Like, okay, now you look at this list. Which ones do you like? Which ones are important to you? Now rank them, and we're going to focus on your top one or two, and that's going to help clarify the decisions you make about how to develop this book, how much time you're going to sink into it. Does it need to be your magnum opus? Or could it just be book one, and then book two, you could get to some of those other things you want to do completely. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. I see that tension a lot in folks in terms of,” I need this book for my career, and I need it to establish me in my field, and I want it to reach the world.” And I'm like, “well, okay, there's got to be some happy medium we can find.” And sometimes it leans more towards the first than the second. Because it's like, this is the first of, hopefully, a number of different books that you're going to produce during your career. Let's make sure you can get this first one done. 

So I really love yourideas around that. And so, who do you see as being this book's ideal audience? When should people pick it up and use it? 

Laura: 

Yeah. So, I mean, it's really written for any scholarly writer who wants to publish, who wants to write a text for other people to read, and that will have some impact in the world of scholarship. The book is focused around book writing and book publishing just for the sake of concreteness. There are so many different variables in different sectors of publishing. I could have written this book as how to revise or edit your dissertation. There would be a whole separate set of concerns for those readers. But I do think those readers can get something out of this book, people who are writing conference papers, journal articles, all of that. 

But the book is concretely focused around book writingand book publishing. That's my area of expertise, and that's what I can really guide people through. And when in the process, they should pick it up? Well, I think it does a lot of work to demystify the publishing process and the writing process to some extent. So certainly, I think graduate students or people who are early in their writing careers could benefit from reading it. They may not be ready to implement it yet, they don't have a text that they're really ready to publish, but it's really meant for people who have a manuscript in front of them, they've conceptualized it, they know what they're trying to write about, but maybe they aren't clear on the argument yet, or they know the structure needs some work, or they're worried about what peer reviewers are going to say about their evidence. 

So you can be at any point in the publishing process. In the book, I talk about three moments within the publishing process. The first is before you submit anything to a publisher, when you still have the text safe with you and you are the one who can get it to where you feel good about sending it off to a publisher. But I also work with many authors and this book is for authors who are later on in the process. So maybe they've already received some peer review feedback and are now at a loss for, “well, now what do I do? How do I integrate that feedback and revise my text? Or how do I interpret this feedback that actually is not that helpful, is maybe a little vague? Or I've got two conflicting peer review reports. How do I make sense of that?” So this book really helps you take the agency back to evaluate your text and take the feedback you've gotten on board, but figure out what is really right for your text moving forward. 

And then the third moment when people can use it is at that very last stage when you've gotten the sign off of the peer reviewers. The publisher says, “yes, this is ready, we want to publish it,” but you're not going to feel great about putting it out there because maybe again, you didn't get very thorough peer reviews. Or you feel like you were left on your own to revise it. You didn't get a ton of feedback from the publisher. So this book can help you give a final check on what you've written to make sure it's going to land with readers the 

way you want it to. So, yeah. I see it as being something to keep on hand for the whole writing and publishing process. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. And something to look at at different stages, even within the same project. Sounds definitely super useful. So zooming out a little bit. This is your third book, right? Oh my goodness. That you've written along with the thousands that you've helped people write and your second book for Princeton University Press's Skills for Scholars series. 

I'm just wondering, now that you are a seasoned book writer, what are somelessons you might have learned the first couple of times around that may have helped you this time? 

Laura: 

Yeah. So, something I've learned in the writing of all of my books is that it helps to be very clear on who you're writing for and why. I was not clear on that at all with my first book, my research monograph, and I really suffered through the writing of that book. It was a traumatic experience. And ultimately, that book did do some of the work I wanted it to do, but not all. I think, partly because I just wasn't really clear on, well, who is it most important that this book speak to, and what am I trying to get them to believe after they read this book?

The Book Proposal Book had a much clearer vision and purpose behind it, and fortunately, I found a publisher for it that was completely aligned. So that was the easiest of the three books to write. And it came very naturally because I was speaking in my authentic voice. I was speaking to readers who I'm very familiar with. They're the people I work with every day, aspiring authors. So it just felt like a really clear fit between what I was trying to do and who I was trying to reach. 

With this third book, Make Your Manuscript Work, it was a little bit of an indirect path to the finished book. In my proposal and my first draft, I wrote this book as an instruction manual for editors. And I thought, “well, writers themselves will be able to read it, and they'll be able to apply it to their own text if they want to. But this is really a method for editors to use who are working with other people's texts.” It went out to peer reviewers. They had really positive feedback, but they said, “well, there's potential here for it to speak more directly to writers themselves, to really give a method that writers can use, not just editors.” 

And so I realized that I really did want tobe talking to the same readers who had embraced the Book Proposal Book again. Those are the people I work with every day. Those are the people it's like my life's mission to support. And so that first version of the book wasn't fully aligned with that. So I ended up reframing the book entirely after that peer review so that it does speak directly to writers and that reframing with a lot of rewriting was a tough process. I made a lot of extra work for myself. I regretted my choices at some points in the process, but I do hope that it will pay off if writers find the book helpful, and the feedback so far is positive. So I think it was the right choice, but it was a winding road a little bit. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's great for people to hear as well, that there are pivots that you can make part of the way through, halfway through. And of course, the press wants to make sure that it has the widest number of people who are able to utilize it. So it makes sense in a lot of different ways. 

Laura: 

Yeah. And I will say I was in conversation with my editor throughout all of this. I didn't just decide, “Oh, I'm going to change the book from what was proposed.” He was supportive of it, and I could make that case that “well, actually, there is a much larger readership for a book aimed at writers than a book aimed at editors.” So everybody was happy with that. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things that I do know about you is that you have young kids. And I feel like this is something I want to be talking about more with folks. It is just like, we're not just writing, we're not just creating stuff. We are also juggling very, very busy personal lives, maybe complex family lives. You are also running a business at the same time, amidst all the chaotic stuff that's happened with this political administration. So how were you able to juggle, I guess, the whole life, the business, with writing and finishing another book? 

Laura: 

Yeah, I'm going to set aside the time management question for a second. We can come back to it. But I think it also went back to what were the goals for this book and how do I balance them against my other goals in life? I'm in a bit of a unique situation, as you alluded to, because I'm not writing books as a requirement of my job the way many of my clients on the tenure track are writing their books. 

But my last two books are very closely tied up with my full-time job of helping authors. Even though during the period of writing this book, I was having to pull time away from my daily work with writers, I had to make that choice, sacrificing the work I would normally be doing in order to write this book. Books just take time. And that was a hard pill to swallow because it meant forgoing a good deal of income in that period. My business had a 20% loss in revenue in 2024 because I was working on this book, directly attributable to the hours I had to spend on writing. But the way I squared that for myself was by treating writing this book as an investment in something bigger. The idea being that I could not only help a lot of people with this book in the years to come, even though I had pulled back on being able to help people in that year when I was writing it. 

But also that the book would feed back into my business by helping me get better at my job, connecting me with readers who might someday take a workshop or a course with me. So I think anyone writing a book or undertaking a huge project like this that has no guaranteed monetary benefit or relatively little benefit compared to the other ways you could be expending your labor. You have to get clear on your goals. Why are you writing the book? What will it do in the world? Will that be worth it if you can pull it off? 

And I guessI want to tell writers that it's okay to decide it's not worth it. It's okay to decide that money isn't the most important factor. So maybe you'll get some other really great things in your life from writing your book. And so maybe the trade-off does make sense. My oldest child says they want to be an author when they grow up, so it's hard to put a price on them seeing their parent do that and actually achieve that dream. 

So even though the book may take time away from things, there is a payoff that comes later. And writers can also be creative in how they leverage their published books into other opportunities that might be even more meaningful or even more lucrative than the book itself. So it's about thinking about books in the larger picture of your life and your career, so that you can make those conscious choices of is it worth it or is it not? 

Leslie: 

Right, right, right. And I think for some authors, seeing it as an investment you have to make now in your future self and your future life. Because I work with a lot of folks that are like, “I'm just adding it to the billion other things I have going on this semester.” It's like,” well, you've got to be ruthless about taking some of those things off if you're going to really shine a light this year on writing this book.” But it's that investment idea of, if I do this now, three years from now, there's going to be some payoff. It might be tenure - for a lot of folks, it actually is tenure. 

It could be new job opportunities, new collaborations, keynote speeches. But I think it's very hard for people to see that in the interim, in the moment where things feel so urgent with “my students need me. I'm on all these committees, and it's very stressful. And I've got a family life.” So I think the investment idea is very, very important to keep in mind. 

Laura: 

Yeah. And one of the things I hope this book will do, one of the most frustrating things for me is putting work into something and you don't know if it'll pay off. You don't know if peer reviewers will like what you're doing. You don't know if you're going to find a publisher. You don't know if your university will still have tenure in three years. 

Leslie: So, so true. 

Laura: 

And so I want this book to help people at least know they're putting their efforts in the right place. You're making the best use of your very precious time so that you're not just dumping labor and sometimes money and time away from your family into something that may or may not get you the affects you want from it. 

Leslie: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. “It may not have the tangible material outcomes, and is it worth it anyway?” I think is a good question to ask yourself. So what tips might you have for folks that have so many things they're juggling and they really need to make book writing central? 

Laura: 

Well, I would say, again, clarifying the mission is really helpful for that, because if you've taken that time and if you follow the steps in the book, it'll probably take you, like, an hour. It doesn't take that much time to really just get in touch with what your goals are, what you want to achieve, and write it down, put it up over your desk, stay in touch with that. 

That's going to help you make those choices of, “Well, I've got a student who wants to meet with me, and I've got this thing I need to do and, well, should I go to that conference to talk to editors?” Knowing what you're actually working toward and keeping it present, I think, can make a big difference. And also, one of the things I say in this book, and we've talked about here, is that it's a cycle. You're going through the cycle multiple times. So revisit those goals. Revisit that mission. 

When you're a year in, when you've already signed with the publisher, at different stages in the process. And it's okay for things to change, but stay in touch with what you're really working toward. 

Leslie: 

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's great. And I think also with a measure of flexibility and openness, because there is that tendency we all have to underestimate how long things are going to take, and then life happens. We are just at a stage of life, at least I am, where people's parents are getting sick, and we are getting sick. You've got young kids. There's just a lot that just arises, and a month or two of writing productivity is gone. And that's just normal and natural. So I think also bearing in mind that, you're not behind. You've got these goals, and maybe they weren't totally feasible because you didn't know what was going to happen in your life. 

Laura: 

Yeah, yeah. That's one of the other things. I don't know if we'vementioned this, but I talk about in that first part of the book of clarifying your mission. I also ask you to account for what are the other demands on your time, your labor, including caring labor, and what is your true capacity to work on the book? What resources do you have that can support you in that? 

As I've brought writers through this process (because I also have a course that walks people through it) I've had people say, “Okay, I have to ask my spouse to pick up some of the stuff for this next six months so that we as a family can achieve our goals, which is me getting tenure.” Because that's going to be important to everybody. So, actually taking account and understanding those things will matter in your writing and publishing process. And then you can see which levers you need to pull to make your goals possible. 

Leslie: 

And maybe being more vocal in your department about needing certain kinds of resources. One of those things being time. So you mentioned this workshop you've developed. Can you talk a little bit about how it works? 

Laura: 

Yeah. So this course is one of the ways that the book feeds back into the larger system of what I do and supporting writers. Something I learned with the Book Proposal Book is that some writers, they read the book, they apply its lessons to their proposal draft on their own. They go out, they get a great response from publishers. They write to me like five years later and say, “my book is coming out.” That's great! I love that for them. 

There are some writers who want more support. Justhaving a tool like the Book Proposal Book is not quite enough. They want a container, a course to help them structure their time. They want someone they can bounce ideas off of and come to for perspective. As they're implementing the lessons, they might have a really specific situation that isn't covered in the book that they would like advice on. So they come work with me more closely in my book proposal courses. The manuscript development workshop does something similar with the new book, Make Your Manuscript Work. I guide people through clarifying their mission for their texts. We can have back and forth, like, is that a realistic mission? Or which one's more important? I guide them through assessing their texts and making viable editorial plans that they can implement to make the text ready for publishers.

So the course uses the same method that I teach in the book, but I present some of it live. We have discussions about it. People can share their progress with me, and I can say, “that looks great. You're on the right track.” Sometimes people really need to hear that. Or I can say, “well, maybe thinking about it in this other way will help you get over this block you're experiencing.” Or I can say, “here's how publishers are going to look at that. It might not be the same thing your mentors have told you. So now you can make more informed decisions about how you want to write this.” And then, because it is a group course, people can see that others are experiencing the same things when they try to edit their books and that it's all a normal part of the process. 

No one really knows what they're doing. It's always an evolving situation that you're trying to adapt to. And then the course it lasts a month. And then when people finish, they stay in my author support community, so I'm available to them even after the course ends. Because writing and publishing a book takes years, questions will always come up. As writers are now talking to publishers, they're responding to peer reviews. They're having to make new decisions for their books. They may be making new career decisions. 

And unfortunately, as you know, Leslie, there's not enough support for thatinside academic institutions. And frankly, there's not enough knowledge inside of academic institutions about how book publishing really works right now. So I really love being able to use my knowledge of the publishing industry to demystify it for authors and help them make clearer choices and feel confident that their choices will get them where they actually want to go. That's the added benefit of not just reading the book, but working directly with me. 

Leslie: 

How long is it? How much time? 

Laura: 

The course? 

Leslie: 

The course, yeah. 

Laura: 

It's just a month. Because I know people don't have a lot of time to spend. You stay in my community indefinitely afterward. 

But people want to get results. Right? They don't necessarily want… I mean maybe some people do, and maybe my course is not for them. But I think people don't necessarily want to spend an entire semester or an entire year talking about their book. So my course is really designed to get you to the next step as quickly as I can. And realistically, it takes a month if you're working on a book. If you're working on a journal article, maybe you can get there quicker, but. 

Leslie: 

Well, a month, that sounds awesome. I mean it sounds like if people were able to actually feel like they've made progress and they have a lot of clarity, that's amazing. 

So what are the best ways for people to find out more about your courses, your books,ways to work with you? 

Laura: 

Yeah. So I have a website, it's ManuscriptWorks.com. Everything I do is there. If you want to learn specifically about the two books for writers, The Book Proposal Book and Make Your Manuscript Work, you can go to manuscriptworks.com/book. All the links are there and extra resources, downloads, things like that. 

But the best way to stay in touch is to get on my newsletter list because that is the most up-to-date source where I share upcoming free programs and courses. And it comes to your inbox. So you don't have to remember to go check my website and see if I've got a course coming up when the timing is right for you, when you actually need to do the thing. So that's at newsletter.manuscriptworks.com. And it's free! You just sign up, and it comes to your inbox every week. 

Leslie: 

Yes, I am on it. It's a great newsletter. I encourage everyone to sign up for it. So, Laura, thank you again so much for your time and huge congrats on this major, major achievement. Listeners, please go purchase her book, go to Manuscript Works and also sign up for her newsletter. And I will talk to you all again soon.