Laura Davulis is the editor for history and current affairs at the Johns Hopkins University Press. She has also worked at the Naval Institute Press and the Yale University Press. She seeks books for both academic and general audiences in American history, with a particular focus on African-American history, Indigenous history, early America, religious history, and Civil War and Reconstruction;  she also seeks current events books for a general audience. She can be reached at davulis@jhu.edu and welcomes inquiries from authors at all stages of the writing process. You can find her on twitter (@Davulis) dispensing both publishing advice and cat pictures. 

What was the transition like for you, in moving from Yale University Press, to Johns Hopkins University Press?

All university presses have some things in common—peer review, faculty boards, and accountability to our parent institution are the big ones. But Yale is a books-only press, and Hopkins has several different divisions, including journals, Project MUSE and Hopkins Fulfillment Services (which handles distribution for client presses.) One thing that’s been really fun and interesting is learning about these different businesses, which I previously knew very little about.

How did you get your start in book publishing and what has it been like to see publishing go through so many transitions in recent years?

Funnily enough, I started as a student intern at Johns Hopkins, in the manuscript editorial department. One of my major tasks was copyediting indexes, which I did with a red pencil, on paper—this was in the early 2000s, so not that long ago. The way we do things now is really different, but the core work hasn’t changed that much. I do still occasionally edit on paper, though.

“Academics don’t always love the process…but peer review helps to catch a lot of errors.”

What do you feel academic book publishing can offer authors that major trade book publishing cannot? Are there instances where an academic book can also perform well in the trade book space?

Academics don’t always love the process—it can be really nerve-wracking—but peer review helps to catch a lot of errors. Every error or omission that we catch in peer review is one that won’t be called out in a book review once the book is published. Similarly, editors at university presses tend to specialize by discipline—I’ve been acquiring in history for fifteen years, and current events a little less than that—which means we’re well positioned to spot trends and advise authors on shaping their manuscripts. Academics who specialize in subjects that the public are interested in and who are committed to writing accessibly can absolutely succeed in the trade book space. And though we don’t publish uninvited fiction, many university presses do, and they do so successfully—West Virginia University Press has seen amazing success for Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, for example.

What was it like for academic publishers, such as JHU, in having to cope with the aftermath of the recent COVID-19 pandemic?

We were able to go remote and fully digital really quickly, thanks in large part to my dedicated colleagues in our IT department. The two biggest changes have been in-person collaboration and academic meetings. I don’t think anyone has yet figured out how to digitally replicate the sort of spontaneous mentorship, collaboration, and idea generation that can happen naturally when people are in a room together. Similarly, though some academic meetings have gone digital, they haven’t really prioritized the exhibit hall experience, which is where we serendipitously meet authors, literary agents, etc. I never thought I’d be looking forward to setting up a book display in a windowless concrete exhibit hall, but I am!

Why is the peer review process so important to academic book publishing? Do you feel that the peer review process often slows down the acquisitions process, especially when an academic publisher is competing against a trade book publisher?

It’s not that it’s always slow, it’s that it’s a wild card—sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it’s not. I know that ambiguity is really frustrating to both authors and literary agents. But peer review is often a preview of how a book will be received once it’s published, and I think it’s really valuable for that reason. If two peer reviewers, plus an editor, are telling an author that they’re having trouble following an argument, or that they want to know more about X, or that the discussion of Y doesn’t seem to fit, well, those things are probably worth taking seriously. At the same time, peer reviewers can be idiosyncratic—I always tell my authors that they are free to disagree with a peer reviewer, but they need to explain why. Sometimes the explanation is just “it would take another entire book to do what the reviewer is asking.”

“…academic publishers are a little more willing to work with an author to build a platform…”

Is the author platform less important in the space of academic book publishing, when compared to a writer’s authority on a subject matter?

In my view, their particular authority and expertise is part of their platform—it’s part of why we should care about what they have to say. But for folks who want to write for the general public (and not just their peers in their specific discipline), it’s always good to see that they have some experience in translating their research for non-experts. That can be a blog, a mailing list, Twitter, op-eds, public talks/appearances, advocacy work, etc. I do think that academic publishers are a little more willing to work with an author to build a platform, which doesn’t happen overnight, takes a lot of deliberate effort, and might require more than one published book to really do.

In having acquired books mostly in the space of history/politics/current affairs, what do you find is working well in these categories?

In history, there are some perennial subjects that always tend to sell well: early America/founders, Civil War/Lincoln, WWII. I think there is a huge audience and appetite for African-American history right now, particularly African-American women’s history. Books about white supremacy in all its forms. Biographies of complicated, deeply flawed people are always interesting to me. In politics/current affairs, those are basically problem/solution books—I am looking for books for general readers that explain a problem (political, social, economic, etc.) and suggest what we might do about it. I think readers come to books like that, wanting to know that there is a solution out there, somewhere (even if it’s really difficult or elusive). Personally, I believe that the number of truly, absolutely unsolvable problems in the world is pretty small. Whether we have the will to solve problems is another question entirely.

You recently acquired for JHU TED speaker and UD professor Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, PhD's Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, an exploration of the information crisis. What has it been like in working with Danna on this important book?

Working with Danna has been great—she’s really committed to sharing her research and insights, and her work is really timely and important. I think her book will really help to shape the conversation around political polarization, information/disinformation, etc. I know she is still collecting survey data on this, and I’m really interested to see what she comes up with – not only as a reader and an editor, but also as a citizen. In addition to all this, Danna is also very funny, which is not a necessary condition for a good author/editor partnership, but it is certainly a nice bonus.

“…focus on the craft of writing and storytelling.”

Do you have any advice you could share for hopeful writers eager to become published authors?

For academics who want to reach popular audiences—or even just better reach specialist audiences—focus on the craft of writing and storytelling. This is rarely taught in graduate school, but it’s really important if you want to reach general readers, each one of whom has to choose your book not only over all the other books out there, but also Netflix, video games, and/or a good nap. Get to know editors early: introduce yourself at conferences or just drop an email saying, “Hey, I’m working on X, I don’t have a proposal yet but is that something you might be interested in when I do?” For true trade books, a literary agent can give you a birds-eye view of the marketplace—which presses tend to be successful with which kinds of books, which editors are particularly sharp, etc. But I will let you speak to the process of finding a literary agent—that one is outside my skill set.

Can you finish this sentence? I love reading because...

It’s the most cost-efficient way to travel. To me, the point of reading (and this goes for both fiction and nonfiction) is that it takes you places you can’t otherwise go—which includes the past.