Pitching Your Book: A Conversation with Press Editors

The New Faculty Program will host the first of several publishing events planned for the year. This will feature Masako Ikeda from University of Hawai’i Press and Michelle Salyga from Routledge on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 2:00 p.m. on Zoom.

The event is open to all faculty, though we will give new faculty the first opportunity to ask questions of our speakers.

The purpose of this event is to help you get your book noticed by acquisitions editors and ultimately under contract. This event will feature two very experienced editors from two major presses, Masako Ikeda from University of Hawai’i Press, and Michelle Salyga from Routledge. Masako and Michelle will share their insights about many aspects of the academic publishing, for example, what they like to see (and don’t like to see) in book proposals, and what are some of the common pitfalls that academic authors make when pitching their books in proposals.

Please RSVP by emailing Pam Lothspeich (ploth@email.unc.edu) and Philip Hollingsworth (pholling@email.unc.edu).

Join on Zoom: https://unc.zoom.us/j/97929026259

About the speakers:

Masako Ikeda received her PhD in history from University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Instead of the academic career path, she decided to work as a book editor. For the past two and half decades she has worked for University of Hawai’i Press, first as a managing editor and then as an acquisitions editor. As Executive Editor, her current lists include Asian studies broadly defined, spanning history, archaeology, anthropology, and ethnomusicology. She has also worked on “fun” non-scholarly titles such as hikers’ guides and cookbooks.

Michelle Salyga is a native North Carolinian and graduate of UNC Wilmington where she majored in English Literature. Having discovered her passion for publishing early on, she’s been commissioning academic projects for nearly eight years. Michelle is currently Senior Editor for Literature at Routledge, Taylor & Francis, and actively commissions a variety of text types, including textbooks, companions, and research volumes across a range of topics, from Medieval to Contemporary Literature. She welcomes authors to submit their proposal for further discussion and initial assessment for consideration in one of Routledge’s prestigious literature lists.