So I’m nearly done with my latest book, Futureproofing Humanity (which will also have a cool subtitle, obviously). The book was inspired out of a class I have taught for the past few years to students who, I think, generally enjoyed it. The class/book covers the relationship between existential risk and religious visions of technology. I was under the impression that I could basically just draw on the things that I use in class and write up a book. That turned out to be mistaken. The project is definitely subject to the 80-20 rule (where the last 20% of the project is 80% of the work) … and maybe more like a 95-5 rule. But I’m nearly finished!
When it’s done I have to publish it so that people can read it. Here are my options: (1) self-publish, (2) find a popular press to publish.
I have pointed out both in this blog and in places like LinkedIn and Twitter that academic publishing has a broken cost model. My books just keep getting more expensive. Even the Kindle versions. As far as I’m concerned, Oxford long ago recouped its costs on my books so the Kindle versions could be $5 and we’d sell a book now and then. No one is going to buy a $50 Kindle book. Sometimes the prices drop to almost reasonable levels, and then they go back up. To worsen matters, academic publishing is now subject to GPT review decisions and GPT editing. This is on top of the problem with authors who think they should outsource their work to GPT in fiction and in academia
So academic publishers are out. I am not interested in playing their game, and I’m fortunate that I don’t have to do so. I’ll just let whatever reputation I have managed in twenty years of research on artificial intelligence (AI), religion, technology, etc. stand for its own. Either I have something to say or I don’t, and I’m not going to let an academic publisher say “yes” and then say “but only in exchange for egregious amounts of consumer cash.” I want people to actually read the things I write, so that I can help with the public conversation around the technologies I study.
Back to the choices: self-publish or pop publish. The thing is, self-publishing comes with obvious limits to consumer enthusiasm and suchlike. Folks might be inclined to think that if I self-publish it’s because no one else would have it. That’s not fair or reasonable, but it seems possible. Pop publishing, on the other hand, probably requires an agent. Publishers like Harper and Viking probably get inundated with queries. So, an agent with contacts would be nice.
So I tried reaching out to an agent who seemed (for a variety of reasons) like he might be interested in what I’ve written. He said he was. He asked for a proposal. Then he ghosted me.
This is an agent who uses the professional querytracker site … but who has ignored all messaging since requesting the proposal (which, technically, I’d already attached to my initial query letter but I went ahead and uploaded a fuller version upon receiving his request).
So…keep looking for an agent, try querying a publisher directly, or self-publish? Anyone got thoughts?
Robert M Geraci 