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Inking the Deal: A Guide for Successful Academic Publishing
In this straightforward and sometimes hard-hitting guide, prolific author Stanley Porter shares the tools necessary for scholars seeking advancement in the world of academic publishing. From his years of experience as an editor, author, and active scholar in his own guild, Porter presents industry insights and practical suggestions for both seasoned scholars and newly minted Ph.D.s who have yet to develop an academic publishing profile. Written primarily for scholars in the arts and humanities, Porter's advice will help readers gain a valuable understanding of the publishing process and a new confidence with which to pursue academic success.
- GenresWriting
206 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
2 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Stanley E. Porter
192 books35 followersStanley E. Porter (PhD, University of Sheffield) is president, dean, and professor of New Testament, and Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Wolrdview at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. He has authored or edited dozens of books, including How We Got the New Testament and Fundamentals of New Testament Greek.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 10, 2022
In this book, Stanley Porter provides a comprehensive guide covering every aspect of the academic writing and publishing process—from crafting an argument and beginning your manuscript to choosing a publisher, editing and correcting proofs, and seeing your work in print. The book is practical, insightful, and motivating. Porter writes with a personal touch, and the insights and anecdotes shared from his own experience make the work unique and compelling.
One theme that I found particularly helpful throughout was the author's exhortation to "live a publishing lifestyle"—that is, to organize your time and your priorities so that you are "constantly seeking to make a serious contribution to your field of academic endeavor" (p. 151). Porter has a way of making cutting suggestions and assertions, penetrating through excuses one might raise to avoid making any academic contributions. The author is not afraid to be blunt, and he doesn't pull his punches. While this may make the experience uncomfortable or sobering at times, I believe that for those who are willing to listen and apply Porter's advice, tangible results will follow. In this way, I found the book convicting and provocative; I am glad to have read it as a young, aspiring scholar who is only just starting a PhD program.
One may not agree with his every suggestion, but Stanley Porter is nevertheless an astute and qualified guide on the subject. The fact that his CV is well over 60 pages testifies to the fact that his methods work and are worth imitating.
One theme that I found particularly helpful throughout was the author's exhortation to "live a publishing lifestyle"—that is, to organize your time and your priorities so that you are "constantly seeking to make a serious contribution to your field of academic endeavor" (p. 151). Porter has a way of making cutting suggestions and assertions, penetrating through excuses one might raise to avoid making any academic contributions. The author is not afraid to be blunt, and he doesn't pull his punches. While this may make the experience uncomfortable or sobering at times, I believe that for those who are willing to listen and apply Porter's advice, tangible results will follow. In this way, I found the book convicting and provocative; I am glad to have read it as a young, aspiring scholar who is only just starting a PhD program.
One may not agree with his every suggestion, but Stanley Porter is nevertheless an astute and qualified guide on the subject. The fact that his CV is well over 60 pages testifies to the fact that his methods work and are worth imitating.
August 6, 2025
Fantastic book on successful academic publishing. Stanley Porter answers many questions I had about publishing articles, books, and monographs. He also challenges upcoming scholars to “publish or perish” and provides the means to accomplishing your writing career goals
March 13, 2025
Some good insights on the publishing world, but his pompous attitude made me not want to be a scholar if it leads to that attitude.
April 28, 2023
"One time, Audrey Hepburn asked me out on a date but I had to turn her down since I had to finish writing a field-changing essay, but I won't tell you which one. Also, after I taught Bobby Fischer how to play chess he wanted to co-author a book with me but since he hadn't published anything I had to turn him down. And another time I was talking to this senator from Massachusetts, and he said when he became president he was going to urge us to go to Mars, and I told him why not start with the moon..."
Listen. This is a fine book if you want an insider's perspective of demystifying the professional academic publishing scene and the kinds of habits and attitudes one should embrace in order to be a professional researching-publishing scholar. Fine and dandy. Dr. Porter has earned the right to say "this is how it's done" - he has published and edited a great number of articles, textbooks, monographs, volumes, books, essays, bibliographies, Festschriften, and everything else under the academic sun. I am nobody.
But my irks are two. The first is he tells us not a single name of anything he has done. He waxes often on how he wrote this kind of field-changing essay and how it is still be used and quoted today in this field and that, but he does not tell us the name of it. He says he once wrote a field-changing textbook that, though it is no longer in print, is still making waves in the intellectual field as a ground-breaking innovation ... without telling us the name of it. He does this for virtually every single kind of professional writing: he tells you the inside scoop of how it is done, boasts about how he developed some heretofore unknown perspective on some diverse aspect of something, tells how his written work changed the lives of everyone in that field, but does not tell us the name or publication info for any of it. Nor is their a bibliography of his published work in this volume. On one hand, I admit, I typically despise when authors refer to their own previously published work in academic writing, but for a book that is all about "here's how to get published," having some specific examples of what "field-changing" articles look like so we can read them for ourselves is not nearly as humbling as Dr. Porter likely meant it to be - it is wholly irritating and does not make me want to do what he says needs to be done to be a professional academic writer.
The second irk is more temperamental. He avails himself, wholly unnecessarily and often, to excoriate people who write for "filthy, filthy, commoner popular outlets." (That is not a direct quotation, but his words are far more unkind.) Even though he admits that he himself has published popular-level writing (which, again, he does not name any titles or venues), the reader suspects he stopped typing and washed his hands after that confession before returning to vitriolic attack on popular-level writing. He goes so far as to say the scholar who demeans himself into publishing an article in a magazine people actually read is selling out the profession and should no longer be taken seriously as a scholar in a serious field. No serious academic professional scholar should ever publish something that does not require a subscription to JSTOR to read. Do not ever demean your field by letting the unwashed masses who do not have post-graduate credits learn anything about philosophy, history, archaeology, literature, or anything that should be the private concern of academics alone. His attitude is so repugnant on this point, it's baffling.
Yes, I understand, it's all about his intended audience. But there is a way to say "I like basketball" without then following it up with "But the people who like baseball are sub-human scum." I am indeed in favor of scholarly research and continuing the fine tradition of hard research, peer-reviewing, seriously intellectual and professional integrity. But to say that the people who actually know what they are talking about in a given intellectual field should never soil themselves by speaking to the peons is disgusting. If your intellectual professional field is such that you, in Porter's words, have to "dumb it down and then dumb it down again" so the layman can engage with it ... maybe that intellectual professional field should, oh, I dunno, shrivel up and die. I'm all for Ivory Towers, as you know, but this guy - sheesh.
As I said, that's all temperamental, since I have dedicated my life to being a sort of Prometheus, bringing what Keats calls the Realms of Gold to the kids and to the people. I may not get as much published in my lifetime (and according to Porter I'm already 2 books and about 20 articles behind schedule), but by golly, I will bring the Good and the Beautiful and the True (and a smidge of the Useful) to my fellow human beings, doctoral degrees or no doctoral degrees, and if Stanley E. Porter doesn't like it, well, that's just too bad. I'm not putting myself on the same level, of course, with CS Lewis, Gilbert Highet, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Fiedler, James Schaal, Bernard Knox, or Maynard Mack, but if they thought bringing the Finer Things to "regular people" was worthwhile, then it's good enough for me.
Listen. This is a fine book if you want an insider's perspective of demystifying the professional academic publishing scene and the kinds of habits and attitudes one should embrace in order to be a professional researching-publishing scholar. Fine and dandy. Dr. Porter has earned the right to say "this is how it's done" - he has published and edited a great number of articles, textbooks, monographs, volumes, books, essays, bibliographies, Festschriften, and everything else under the academic sun. I am nobody.
But my irks are two. The first is he tells us not a single name of anything he has done. He waxes often on how he wrote this kind of field-changing essay and how it is still be used and quoted today in this field and that, but he does not tell us the name of it. He says he once wrote a field-changing textbook that, though it is no longer in print, is still making waves in the intellectual field as a ground-breaking innovation ... without telling us the name of it. He does this for virtually every single kind of professional writing: he tells you the inside scoop of how it is done, boasts about how he developed some heretofore unknown perspective on some diverse aspect of something, tells how his written work changed the lives of everyone in that field, but does not tell us the name or publication info for any of it. Nor is their a bibliography of his published work in this volume. On one hand, I admit, I typically despise when authors refer to their own previously published work in academic writing, but for a book that is all about "here's how to get published," having some specific examples of what "field-changing" articles look like so we can read them for ourselves is not nearly as humbling as Dr. Porter likely meant it to be - it is wholly irritating and does not make me want to do what he says needs to be done to be a professional academic writer.
The second irk is more temperamental. He avails himself, wholly unnecessarily and often, to excoriate people who write for "filthy, filthy, commoner popular outlets." (That is not a direct quotation, but his words are far more unkind.) Even though he admits that he himself has published popular-level writing (which, again, he does not name any titles or venues), the reader suspects he stopped typing and washed his hands after that confession before returning to vitriolic attack on popular-level writing. He goes so far as to say the scholar who demeans himself into publishing an article in a magazine people actually read is selling out the profession and should no longer be taken seriously as a scholar in a serious field. No serious academic professional scholar should ever publish something that does not require a subscription to JSTOR to read. Do not ever demean your field by letting the unwashed masses who do not have post-graduate credits learn anything about philosophy, history, archaeology, literature, or anything that should be the private concern of academics alone. His attitude is so repugnant on this point, it's baffling.
Yes, I understand, it's all about his intended audience. But there is a way to say "I like basketball" without then following it up with "But the people who like baseball are sub-human scum." I am indeed in favor of scholarly research and continuing the fine tradition of hard research, peer-reviewing, seriously intellectual and professional integrity. But to say that the people who actually know what they are talking about in a given intellectual field should never soil themselves by speaking to the peons is disgusting. If your intellectual professional field is such that you, in Porter's words, have to "dumb it down and then dumb it down again" so the layman can engage with it ... maybe that intellectual professional field should, oh, I dunno, shrivel up and die. I'm all for Ivory Towers, as you know, but this guy - sheesh.
As I said, that's all temperamental, since I have dedicated my life to being a sort of Prometheus, bringing what Keats calls the Realms of Gold to the kids and to the people. I may not get as much published in my lifetime (and according to Porter I'm already 2 books and about 20 articles behind schedule), but by golly, I will bring the Good and the Beautiful and the True (and a smidge of the Useful) to my fellow human beings, doctoral degrees or no doctoral degrees, and if Stanley E. Porter doesn't like it, well, that's just too bad. I'm not putting myself on the same level, of course, with CS Lewis, Gilbert Highet, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Fiedler, James Schaal, Bernard Knox, or Maynard Mack, but if they thought bringing the Finer Things to "regular people" was worthwhile, then it's good enough for me.
March 7, 2020
This book provides a solid set of recommendations for academics who want to begin or step up their publishing activity. It presents the Research-1 model as the norm, but discerning readers can adjust the recommendations to their own context. (Community college instructors, for example, would be very hard pressed to publish at the rate Porter recommends.)
Porter gives a helpful overview of the various kinds of academic publication and how much weight each carries within the profession. He provides practical suggestions for writing toward publication in many contexts, how to prepare a manuscript for publication, how to handle rejections from publishers, how to follow up effectively, once a manuscript is accepted for publication, and how to develop and maintain a "publishing lifestyle."
The academic fields in view here are the arts and humanities, theology, and biblical studies. Scholars in the social sciences or natural sciences can still profit from this book, but some of Porter's specific recommendations, such as how to think about the hierarchy of publication values, may not be as applicable to them.
The book was published in 2010, and some of the advice is outdated, e.g., discussion of making submissions to editors who haven't fully made the transition to the computer age. However, most of the content still feels fresh and relevant.
Porter gives a helpful overview of the various kinds of academic publication and how much weight each carries within the profession. He provides practical suggestions for writing toward publication in many contexts, how to prepare a manuscript for publication, how to handle rejections from publishers, how to follow up effectively, once a manuscript is accepted for publication, and how to develop and maintain a "publishing lifestyle."
The academic fields in view here are the arts and humanities, theology, and biblical studies. Scholars in the social sciences or natural sciences can still profit from this book, but some of Porter's specific recommendations, such as how to think about the hierarchy of publication values, may not be as applicable to them.
The book was published in 2010, and some of the advice is outdated, e.g., discussion of making submissions to editors who haven't fully made the transition to the computer age. However, most of the content still feels fresh and relevant.
November 28, 2011
Good, personal intro to academic publishing. While I disagree on some points (I think it is absolutely fine to approach multiple publishers with a query letter--unless you've had lunch with someone and promised an exclusive submission), this is a good book for not just figuring how to get one article or book published, but getting into the habit of publishing--which should be the priority for all academics. The personal touch and an understanding of publishing outside the US are what makes this an original contribution to the (recently exploded) field of academic publishing guides.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews