Kimberly Kay Hoang is an award-winning scholar, author, teacher, current Professor of Sociology and the College and the Director of Global Studies at the University of Chicago, and the author of two books. Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets (Princeton University Press, 2022) and Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work (University of California Press, 2015). She also received the 2020 Lewis A Coser Award from the American Sociological Association Section on Sociological Theory. Her books and articles have been awarded over 26 prizes from several different professional associations. In addition to her research, she is the winner of the 2018 Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Teaching Award at the University of Chicago. 

Since 1976, the American Publisher Association’ Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Awards) have recognized the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by celebrating the authors, editors, and publishers whose landmark works have made significant advancements in their respective fields of study each year. In anticipation of the next round of outstanding entries, due Friday, November 10, we hear from recent award recipient Kimberly Kay Hoang, author of Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets. Hoang’s paper received the 2023 PROSE Award’s highest honor, the R.R. Hawkins Award, as well as the 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences, and the 2023 category award for Business, Finance, and Management.

The PROSE Awards are one of the few scholarly publishing awards that are presented to publishers, highlighting the extraordinary breadth and depth of professional and scholarly publishing. Hoang, published by Princeton University Press, gives us unique insight into the value that the PROSE Awards bring to the scholarly publishing community.

American Publisher Association: How has receiving a PROSE award positively impacted Spiderweb Capitalism?

Kimberly Kay Hoang: Receiving these PROSE Awards was an integral part of the increase in Spiderweb Capitalism’s visibility across scholarly communities and contributed to it gaining traction throughout the trade and public book market.

APA: How do the PROSE Awards strengthen the scholarly publishing ecosystem, from your perspective?

Hoang: The PROSE Awards are one of the few places that both trade and academic works can compete. It can be hard for scholarly works that publish within academic trade presses to gain widespread public attention, and PROSE is one of the few spaces that takes academic and trade presses seriously. It is an important platform to bridge the crossover of academics and trade.

APA: To follow that, what was the value of the PROSE Awards in your view as an author?

Hoang: PROSE is unique because the awards are truly interdisciplinary. There are individual sub-category fields, overarching categories, and the summatory R.R. Hawkins Award. Being exposed to works in other fields, and having your work alongside these works increases your scholarly profile and exposes you to new disciplines.

Often, authors are kind of ensconced in our individual disciplines, but when we branch out to second and third books, the subject matter is often interdisciplinary. Early in my career, I focused on gender and globalization, but later expanded to law and business. It was personally significant to win a PROSE category award in Business, Finance, and Management, as an author who pivoted scholarship genres.

APA: Can you talk more about the importance for you of not only winning the overarching R.R. Hawkins Award, but also a category award?

Hoang: For me, the category award was actually the most significant. It feels strange to say, also having won the R.R. Hawkins Award, as it was fantastic to get the R.R. Hawkins Award. However, it was so significant to win the category award, as it was an affirmation of my work crossing over from sociology to include business and law, especially as a woman in a male dominated field.

Anything related to politics and the economy is currently male dominated and it was great to crossover into that space.

APA: What sort of gaps in the field does your work in Spiderweb Capitalism address?

Hoang: Instead of gaps in the field, I would say that the book bridges interdisciplinary conversations. It draws from legal work, law faculty, geographers, anthropologists, economists, and of course my field of sociology. Often, there are these sorts of disciplinary binders that enable us to see one part of a structure. But, if we put them together, we reveal a much broader structure, and in this case a wider three-dimensional financial web of institutions and people.

In addition, network scholars have these very fancy models for building out networks, right? And I was really interested in the content, or the substantive material that flows between two nodes in a network, as opposed to just the network itself. How are networks in one region of the world connected to other networks in another region of the world, and how can we begin to map out these global financial webs?

APA: Much of your book focuses on people “playing in the gray.” Can you give a quick preview of what “playing in the gray” means in Spiderweb Capitalism?

Hoang: Playing in the gray is the language used to describe how these businessmen exist on the boundary between legal and illegal activity. It’s a practice where they’re taking strategies that are highly profitable in one market, but are then regulated, and moving those strategies to new frontiers where they are getting ahead of the formal regulatory apparatus in order to make huge amounts of profits.

I would also say playing in the gray is about an emotion. It’s about a gut reaction. It’s about how to make investments in a market where there aren’t highly sophisticated algorithms to calculate risk.

Ultimately, it is finessing the space between what’s legal and illegal.

This year, our team of experienced judges will again review hundreds of entries to bring recognition and visibility to another author and publisher embodying the very best in professional and scholarly publishing. Entries are currently being accepted here for the PROSE 2024 Awards until Friday, November 10, 2023.

For more information on the 2024 PROSE Awards, please visit the PROSE website or email proseawards@americanpublisherassociation.com.

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Following three years of litigation in the critical copyright case Hachette Book Group, et al, v. Internet Archive, we now have a strong and favorable result.  In granting summary judgement for the publisher plaintiffs, Judge Koeltl resolved all four fair use factors in the Copyright Act against the Internet Archive (IA). The opinion, issued a week ago on March 24, 2023, can be found here. 

Everyone who values our global, creative economy should read the Court’s opinion in Hachette.  The holdings are a forceful validation of well-established law and an unequivocal rejection of the defendant’s upside-down assertions that its activities support “research, scholarship, and cultural participation by making books more widely available on the Internet.” That description is meant to sound lofty, but it ignores the economic incentives and protections that make creative professions possible in the first place.  As the Court observed, “Any copyright infringer may claim to benefit the public by increasing public access to the copyrighted work” (P. 44, quoting Harper & Row Publishers v. Nation Enterprises).

The APA helped to guide this suit because we know that copyright is both the lifeblood of authors and the foundation of a sustainable publishing industry. Four companies—Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House—stood as plaintiffs to defend the principles at stake, but our membership includes a broad mix of commercial and nonprofit publishers of nearly every size and specialty, who in turn account to hundreds of thousands of authors. 

The suit was prompted by IA’s mass digitization and distribution of millions of books, without the permission of authors or publishers, in violation of fundamental principles of copyright law.  Internet Archive sought to justify its “Open Library” under a legal theory called “controlled digital lending” (CDL), but the Court firmly rejected that assertion, holding instead that it offers up a competing market substitute for authorized versions of the works in violation of authors’ and publishers’ rights.  

For the full analysis click here.

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Inclusive Access really began to gain momentum in 2015 when the U.S.A Department of Education issued federal guidance allowing institutions of higher learning to charge for course materials as part of tuition and fees, which meant that students could use financial aid to pay for the course materials they needed.

Since then, these course materials – known collectively as Inclusive Access – have rapidly gained traction on college campuses across the country. In fact, according to 2022 research from Student Watch, 39 percent of students acquired materials through Inclusive Access models, up from 15 percent in 2019.

Learn more about Inclusive Access and its benefits in this video:

The benefits of Inclusive Access range from first-day access, to affordability, to improving student outcomes for success.

Benefits of Inclusive Access

First Day Access for ALL Students

Students enrolled in an Inclusive Access course gain access on the first day of class to their instructor required course materials – promoting equity in education.

Lowest Market Rate

Required by DOE regulation, institutions can charge students the lowest market rate at scale for their instructor required course materials, within tuition and fees, so students can use financial aid money without delay.

Convenience

Students don’t have to spend valuable time shopping around for the lowest price and/or waiting for their materials to arrive. Course materials are delivered seamlessly within their learning management system, no access codes needed.

Flexibility – Faculty and Student Choice

Faculty decide if Inclusive Access is right for their particular course and students have the ability to opt out if they wish to obtain their course materials a different way.

Improvements in Student Outcomes

ALL students receive access to high quality course materials by the first day of class ensuring they have the necessary resources to begin learning day-one. Research shows an increase in student success and completion for students – with the highest increases for under-represented populations such as Black students and students over 25 years old.*

Of course, education publishers continue to offer high-quality content through other models, including purchased or rented digital materials, individual learning apps, and digital subscription models.

But because Inclusive Access offers so many benefits it has quickly become the first choice for many educators and students. In fact, it is now being used at institutions in nearly all 50 states.

*Source:
Moore, M., & Piazza, B. (2022). Inclusive Access Course Materials: An Analysis of Waukesha County Technical College’s Inclusive Access Program. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/nfu4g
Moore, M. (2022). Equitable Access: A Participant v. Non-Participant Course Completion Rate Analysis from 2-Year Institutions. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/drqz9

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Interviews With 2023 PROSE Judges

As we approach the end of the 2023 PROSE Awards entry period, we have our final piece in our PROSE Judges Spotlight series, in which we ask veteran judge Daniel Mack for his thoughts on what makes for a winning PROSE entry.

Judge Daniel Mack is an Associate Dean of Libraries for Collection Strategies and Services at the University of Maryland in College Park, where he provides leadership in policy creation and implementation, strategic planning, program development, and assessment for library collections. He has advanced degrees in library science and ancient history and has taught college courses in ancient history, Roman archaeology, classical literature, and Latin grammar, all of which lend themselves to judging PROSE entries.

American Publisher Association: What do you look for in a submission?

Daniel Mack: A successful PROSE submission is a work that sheds new light on a scholarly or professional topic while also exhibiting outstanding production values.  Whether the target audience consists of general readers or specialized researchers, a winning submission will employ clear writing, effective arguments, and appropriate ancillary matter to make its case.

 A successful submission will combine original scholarship with exceptional readability and excellence in production.

APA: How can libraries and scholarly publishers work together to highlight best in classical research?

Daniel Mack: Libraries and scholarly publishers are natural partners to promote excellent research in the classics. Librarians work at the hub of interdisciplinarity, and classical research is a highly interdisciplinary field, combining the study of history, literature, philology, and material culture. 

Because they support faculty, students, researchers, and general readers, libraries understand the varying needs of these audiences.  Librarians can work with publishers to promote excellent classical research that supports the multiple intersections of these disciplines and readers. 

APA: Do you have a favorite classical text?

Daniel Mack: My personal favorite classical text is the Aeneid of Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 BCE).  Published at the dawn of the Roman Empire in the late first century BCE, the Aeneid immediately became the national epic of Rome. Virgil’s great work is both sophisticated and elusive, and open to a variety of contradictory interpretations, and has been a major influence on Western culture for two millennia, inspiring writers, artists, and composers like Dante, Shakespeare, Purcell, and Voltaire. 

Submissions for the 2023 PROSE Awards close next week, Friday, November 18^th. Learn more about the PROSE Awards here.

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Interviews with 2023 PROSE Judges

In the second installment of the 2023 PROSE Spotlight series, judge Deborah Logan provides insight into not only the judging process, but also the importance of gender-balance in awards committees and scholarly editorial teams. 

Judge Deborah Logan is Publishing Director for Elsevier’s Energy & Earth journals’ program which is the largest global publishing programs in the energy and earth sciences, and which includes many flagship titles publishing world-class content. Deborah’s passions lie in raising standards, championing excellence, and promoting greater diversity in science.

American Publisher Association: What do you look for in a PROSE submission?

Deborah Logan: I want to see the author and publisher in perfect step with each other! A strong submission letter and endorsements can really help with this.

From the author, I want to see a compelling reason for the work to have been created. Will you tell the reader something new? Will you tell it to them in a new way?

From the publisher, I want to see the work presented well. Does the work look good? Does it read well? Is there a logical flow?

APA: Can you talk a little bit about the importance of gender-balance in awards committees?

Deborah Logan: I think balance in general is important in all areas of life. We know that a diverse team leads to innovation and better-quality decision making, both of which are critical for awards assessment, but let’s balance this where we can so that everyone feels they belong. I’ve been the only woman on a committee before, and it can be tough to feel you can introduce new ways of looking at things or influence the outcome in any way.

It’s particularly important to get different perspectives when you’re evaluating who gets an award. If you don’t have that diversity of profile, then will your candidates respect your decision? Will they even apply in the first place? Would the awards then have the value they have? I can tell you that all of the judges bring something different to the discussion and speak freely, and I know I’ve made better decisions as a result.

I feel strongly that a gender-balanced committee means we take a holistic view when we on the PROSE panel assess the awards. I also hope we can open the doors to works that might not have been submitted previously. I joined the committee to make sure I provided a fresh angle. It’s still the case that in the field I evaluate there are more men than women as authors. Yet those women authors are out there. Please encourage your publisher to submit your work!

APA: Can you talk about the importance of gender-balanced editorial teams for scholarly works?

Deborah Logan: As with awards, so with scholarly works. This is not just about doing the right thing or having teams that reflect the diversity of the scholarly world. Nor is it even that diverse, balanced teams can stimulate excellence and innovation. These things are true, but editorial teams have another role to play. This is where you find your role models. This is where you inspire the current and future generations of scholars to create their own scholarly works in whatever field of study they choose. Scholars care about the editorial teams on journals, and they make decisions based on what they see. For me, at least, I try to make sure there are no closed doors. There are only open ones and everyone belongs.

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Interviews with 2023 PROSE Judges

As submissions start to roll in for the 2023 PROSE Awards, our own Syreeta Swann, Chief Operating Officer here at the American Publisher Association, asked veteran judge Peter Berkery for some insights into what makes a PROSE entry stand out. Peter is the Executive Director of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses). AUPresses is a partner for the PROSE Awards.

Judge Peter Berkery brings a publisher’s point of view to the 2023 PROSE judges panel, having served as Executive Director of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) since 2013. Berkery also has extensive experience in government affairs and association management, and has a BA in Classical Studies from Boston College, both an MA and a JD from The American University, and a Master of Laws in Taxation from George Washington University.

Syreeta Swann: What do you look for in a submission?

Peter Berkery: Two things, I think: (1) the work itself advances scholarship in its discipline – or even pioneers a whole new field of inquiry; and, (2) the submission materials reflect the publisher’s belief in the work.

There’s nothing more disappointing to me as a judge than reading an entry form that’s simply a cut-and-paste of the jacket copy.

Syreeta Swann: What makes University, Professional and Scholarly Publishers unique in the publishing world?

Peter Berkery: AUPresses members share a commitment to editorial rigor, particularly as evidenced by thorough, thoughtfully-administered peer review. (The recently published 2nd edition of our Best Practices for Peer Review of Scholarly Books https://peerreview.up.hcommons.org/  is only the latest demonstration of our community’s high standards.)

This commitment bears ample fruit in the eyes of PROSE Awards judges as well: last year alone, university press publications won 30 of the 39 categories and received 4 of the top 5 prizes, including the ultimate PROSE Award honor, the R.R. Hawkins Award. 

Syreeta Swann: Can a book can be judged by its cover?

Peter Berkery: Always!!! Regardless of format or medium, production values matter, and are an important part of the overall value added by scholarly publishers. They definitely get mentioned when judges deliberate.

We thank Peter for taking the time to shed some light on the PROSE judging process and look forward to seeing the entries submitted for 2023! Over the next few weeks, look to our website to see insight from other 2023 PROSE Awards judges.

And don’t forget: submissions for the 2023 PROSE Awards will be accepted till Friday, November 19^th. Learn more about the PROSE Awards here.

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For the past ten years, publishers have forged ahead with a twin focus on quality and affordability, leading to a significant decrease in student spending on course materials. In addition, publishers have been able to provide students with innovative new products that increase accessibility, and provide them with a broad spectrum of course material options to choose from.

One of those innovations has been the course delivery model Inclusive Access, which provides students with access to course materials on the first day of class, at the guaranteed lowest market rate. The model continues to gain popularity, with more than 1,500 campuses (and growing). According to new 2022 research from Student Watch, 39 percent of students have acquired materials through Inclusive Access models, up from 15 percent in 2019.

What’s more, the reduced costs are also folded into tuition, reducing the need for separate materials at the beginning of the semester. Federal regulations permit students to pay for Inclusive Access materials through loans or grants under Title IV of the Higher Education Act and require them to be available at the lowest cost available on the market.

Research has also shown that Inclusive Access often leads to major increases in student success for diverse student groups.

Researcher Michael Moore from the University of New Hampshire found that Black students, female students, and students over the age of 25 had the “largest increase in success rates” when comparing student success before and after using Inclusive Access. Inclusive Access models may have a massive impact on increasing equity in the learning environment.

And faculty appreciate that students can have their materials on the first day of class, giving them more time to start their assignments and increase their chances of successfully completing the course. Inclusive Access also provides flexibility and can be implemented on a department level, on a course-by-course basis, or even by course section.

More research continues to be done on this innovative course material delivery model. Education publishers continue to prioritize affordability, offering high-quality content and course materials in a variety of delivery models that have been proven to dramatically reduce the cost to students – including Inclusive Access, as well as digital, rentals, or digital subscription models, and individual learning apps.

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Since 1976, the APA has sponsored the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics. Every year, upwards of 20 judges spend our precious hours reading about the mineralogy of meteorites, or the ecosystems of California, or solutions to boundary-value problems in diffusion science (to name but a few of the recent winning topics). You may ask, why does APA offer this prestigious award for Physical Sciences & Mathematics? To my mind, the answer is simple. The world needs more great science books and great science books deserve to be celebrated. You may not immediately agree with that statement, but hear me out.

First, a small philosophical digression.

Ever since Heraclitus, humanity’s deep thinkers have doubted the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the mysteries of the cosmos. In the modern era, proponents of a position known as mysterianism have followed this line of argument, suggesting that the solutions to certain “hard problems” (most notably, how consciousness somehow arises from physical processes in the brain) lie beyond the cognitive reach of Homo sapiens. After all, they say, everything we are, biologically speaking, is the result of a random process of evolution. Unless our distant ancestors were assisted in spreading their genes by a deep knowledge of the workings of the universe, why should we expect that evolution would have endowed our brains with such esoteric capabilities?

There are others who find this to be an overly pessimistic view. Having identified a mystery, are we not already on the path to solving it? The philosopher Daniel Dennett puts it this way: “As soon as you frame a question that you claim we will never be able to answer, you set in motion the very process that might well prove you wrong: you raise a topic of investigation.” Speaking for myself, a mere mortal with a limited grasp of these questions, I confess to (a) a headache brought on by thinking too hard and (b) a preference for the latter, more optimistic, approach.

What has all this got to do with books? Well, if hard problems are hard to think about, they are even harder to write about. And if you can’t write about them in a convincing way, your ideas are unlikely to gain much traction. Compelling writing is no less important in the scientific realm than it is in works of literature, say, or young adult fiction. In the sciences, I would argue, books (or, to use a more scholarly descriptor, monographs) provide the ideal setting for the careful laying out of a complex argument. Journal articles, with all their constraints and conventions and need for speed, are simply not suited to this purpose; they serve a rather different function in the research ecosystem.

As an exemplar of the power of the scientific monograph, I direct your attention to the winner of the 2021 PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics: David Merritt’s A Philosophical Approach to MOND: Assessing the Milgromian Research Program in Cosmology, published by Cambridge University Press. If this seems a challenging topic, see above, and I don’t propose to go into too much detail here. Just bear with me through the next paragraph.

In brief, MOND refers to Modified Newtonian Dynamics, a theory advanced by the physicist Mordehai Milgrom as an alternative explanation for an apparent anomaly in the dynamics of galaxies. The speed at which stars or gas clouds orbit at a certain distance from the galactic center can be predicted by applying Newton’s laws of gravity and motion, given the observed distribution of mass in the galaxy. Astrophysical measurements have shown that this holds true near the centers of most large galaxies, but perplexing deviations begin to appear farther out in the galactic disk: the orbital speed is found to be systematically larger than that predicted by Newton’s laws. In the “standard model” of cosmology, this observation is explained by assuming that galaxies are embedded in haloes of “dark matter,” a mysterious substance that has never been directly observed. By contrast, the MOND theory posits the radical idea that Newton’s laws are themselves modified in regions of very low mass density, such as the outer reaches of galaxies.

Is MOND an accurate description of what’s really going on, or should we stick with invisible dark matter? I have no idea, and Merritt does not claim to have answered that question definitively. What he does demonstrate, though, is the value of a carefully reasoned long-form scientific argument. Constructed with exquisite care over 270 pages and beautifully written for its intended audience, his book builds its argument with devastating logic. A glance at the reviews shows that even the skeptics are impressed with the way he develops his thesis. As a physics graduate myself (though in ancient times), I confess that I found the book entirely gripping, despite having to skim over some of the really complicated stuff. In some distant foggy recess of my brain, I am still pondering the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, and wondering whether modified Newtonian dynamics might have a part to play in that.

If Sir Isaac Newton is furrowing his brow, that’s got to be a good thing: it’s how the hard problems get solved. And so, in closing, here’s my heartfelt plea to the deep thinkers of the world: write more books like this, please. And to my fellow science publishers: publish more books like this, please, and don’t forget to submit them for the PROSE Awards. If we work together, maybe we can keep those pessimistic mysterians in their place.

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When was the last time you read a graphic novel? And when you think of them, do you think of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes, Batman and Superman, or webcomics like xkcd?

While many people associate graphic novels or graphic narratives with comics, the truth is that these robust works are often used to explore a wide range of complex topics, including scholarly analysis of historical events, educational materials related to science and medicines, memoirs, and biographies. Although scholarly graphic novels frequently tackle the same serious subjects that are found in traditional books, readers engage with them a different way.

In fact, Graphic narratives are often used in educational settings as a way of encouraging reluctant readers. They’re usually seen as fun, especially to those who view reading a book as onerous. But it would be a mistake to say that these works are ‘simple’ when compared to text driven publications. On the contrary, by using a combination of visual and verbal communication, these works are quite complex, simultaneously engaging multiple literacies. As a result, they can be used to convey information or emotion more effectively to the reader.

Recognizing the growing importance of graphic novels, last year the American Publisher Association created the Nonfiction Graphic Novels category for the annual PROSE Awards. This category recognizes the creativity and innovation in publishing graphic narratives and showcases the best of the genre.

Judging from the submissions we received for the 2021 PROSE Awards, the first year with the Nonfiction Graphic Novels category, publishers are making good use of the format. One great example is Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, published by Oxford University Press and authored by Charles F. Walker and Liz Clarke, which won the category last year. Part of OUP’s Graphic History series, the work follows the life of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, from his participation in the unsuccessful Tupac Amaru Rebellion in the Peruvian Andes, through his imprisonment following the revolution, brutal forced travel, first across the Andes and then across the Atlantic, and eventual release and return to South America decades later.

Chronicling the experiences of Bautista, Walker and Clarke engage the reader through a hybrid approach of nontraditional narrative of the Age of Revolution, filled with highly detailed illustrations, followed by a traditional narrative with additional details of the same story, and then primary sources. Witness to the Age of Revolution is well researched and structured in such a way that it nearly writes itself into a course syllabus.

As a librarian who often advocates for the use of graphic narratives in college classrooms, I like to refer to them as “sneaky vegetables”: students are often excited and, anecdotally, say they are more likely to read the graphic narrative on the syllabus. Even though they think of it as fun reading, they still engage with the material in a meaningful way.

While works like Witness to the Age of Revolution lend themselves well to classroom use, graphic narratives are not valued simply for their educational uses. The 2021 PROSE finalist, Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning, published by University of Toronto Press and authored by Alisse Waterson and illustrated by Charlotte Corden, brings together art and anthropology and asks the reader to reflect on their place and purpose in the in the world at this moment. Part of University of Toronto Press’ ethnoGRAPHIC series, the work is based on Waterson’s 2017 speech at the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference, the work offers those not present for the address the opportunity to engage with the work in a different way – in the graphic narrative, the reader is able to join Corden and Waterson, traveling together through space and time to meet more than a dozen writers and activists and engage in conversation with them, while presenting a call for action to create a new future.

I love graphic narratives because they’re fun, but also because they challenge me to engage with material I might not otherwise read. I’m excited to learn from this year’s submissions.

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“Accessible” has to be one of the best back-handed compliments: “Oh, you’ll enjoy that book; it’s very accessible.”  Wait, is that a crack at the book, or a crack at you? But accessibility in the sense of availability and appeal to a wide audience is hardly a shortcoming in the mind of a book acquisitions editor or an art director. Trade book publishers, in that sense, thrive on accessibility and make the Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher PROSE Awards category uniquely rewarding.

Appeal is not a disqualifier for significance, and Trade publishers have always been major contributors to scholarship. In the current publishing and academic environment, I would even venture to say that Trade publishers have a unique and essential role to play, bringing vital perspectives and distinct advantages, qualities that are helping to balance and propel professional scholarly work.

First, we rely on Trade Publishers to strike notes with current resonance. Academia tends to remain aloof from what it perceives as transient cultural trends, maintaining a distance social phenomena deemed temporary, passing. The Trade is not bound by this particular pretense. Indeed, the Trade Publishing industry thrives on being au courant, which means its contributions are often highly relevant to the current cultural moment and, at their best, help to contextualize and define as-yet undefined areas of exploration.

In 2020, the PROSE Award for Outstanding Work from a Trade Publisher went to W.W. Norton & Company for Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. Hall’s extensively researched work tells the story of three sisters springing from the Southern establishment who are carried by the currents and eddies of American social thought and geographic migrations to very different vocational end points. Among many other things, the story speaks dramatically to our current moment of splintered political discourse, suggesting that our rifts can be viewed in the context of America’s ongoing intellectual development, almost beckoning us back from the edge of apocalyptic interpretations of our political state. The use of rigorous scholarship to tell a politically or socially relevant story—one that is made more impactful precisely because of its meticulously documented factual detail—is a vital contribution from the Trade publishers.

Another space we look to the Trade to fill in professional and scholarly publishing is a widening gap of scholarship’s own making. Ever-increasing specialization and the curation and indexing technologies that drive professional communities into narrow and isolated channels have diminished the opportunity for (and benefits of) serendipity and cross-pollination, particularly in science but in the humanities as well. Unconstrained by rigid conventions manifest in the academy, the Trade Publishing industry has the luxury of a broader view, one that can take a chance on cross currents and meta-conclusions.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan and the 2019 PROSE Award winner for Outstanding Work from a Trade Publisher, published Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology, which weaves author Lisa Margonelli’s experience following researchers in biology, computer science, robotics, and natural history into an unassuming work of observation with strong contributions to engineering ethics, the history of science and even epistemology and philosophy of mind.  It’s a fine example of the Trade Publishing industry’s ability to apply an unorthodox perspective on scholarly pursuits to produce interdisciplinary insights.

I’m personally looking forward to the submissions from the Trade publishers this year. What emerging issues will get a unique spotlight? What serendipitous encounters are being synthesized? I for one will relish the “accessible” insights.

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