Holding a Book Manuscript Workshop: Lessons from Duke University – May 6, 2025
Session Description
May 6 2025 @ 10:30 am - 11:30 am
Holding a book manuscript workshop offers a critical opportunity to welcome feedback and input on your near-final book manuscript, strengthening and improving it before submission to your scholarly press of choice. However, while the benefits of having a book manuscript workshop are clear, what a book manuscript workshop is or can be is less clear. Should you invite an external reader? How long should the workshop be? When should it be held based on your tenure timeline?
In this conversation, Sylvia Miller (Director, Scholarly Publishing and Research Development, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University) and Alison Keith (Director, Jackman Humanities Institute) provide answers to these questions. Key takeaways from the session will include how and when to organize a book manuscript workshop, what to budget for, and how to include your editor for maximum impact on your manuscript. Participants are encouraged to submit questions ahead of time and there will be ample time set aside for Q&A during the session via the chat.
This session is part of the Book Publishing Series. Prior sessions’ recordings are available through the CRIS video library (with UTORid).
Learning Objectives
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify the key steps required to organize and hold a book manuscript workshop
- Develop strategies to integrate collaborative feedback at critical junctures of the book manuscript journey
- Establish key milestones in a revision plan for submission to a scholarly press
