A reader asked a reasonable question. You claim, he said, that your new book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, is a non-polemical, scholarly look at the modern history of racial classification in the United States. If so, why didn't you publish the book with an academic press, which would be the logical place for an academic to publish a non-polemical, scholarly book? Why instead publish with a conservative publisher that, whatever its other virtues, publishes some "right-wing" polemics, making it more likely that people will dismiss your book as such without even picking it up?
I have had a great experience with my publisher (Bombardier Books), but the short answer is that I wrote the book intending for it to be published by an academic press, and I fully expected to get several offers from major presses. After all, I have published two other successful academic books, I could provide advanced praise from academics across the political spectrum, and the topic is both inherently interesting and also "hot," virtually guaranteeing much better sales than the average university press book. Moreover, unlike my last two academic books, I had a respected book agent representing me, which is helpful in persuading editors to take a book proposal seriously.
So what happened? My agent submitted a lengthy book proposal plus a sample chapter to eight university presses. Eight editors turned it down flat, without even sending it out for peer review. By contrast, I submitted my Lochner book to six presses, four of them sent it out for peer review, and three of them offered to publish it.
