The Editorial Board for AASLH’s book series with Rowman & Littlefield Press is actively seeking new book proposals.
If you’re a good writer and have something to share with your professional colleagues, we’d like to hear from you!
What does writing a book for our series entail?
Most of our books are around 75,000 words (250 double-spaced pages). Most of our authors take about 12-15 months after contract issuance to submit a manuscript.
We are particularly interested in books on:
- Technology— for management, for enhancing visitor experiences, for website/virtual collections — in museums and historic houses
- Public History— especially books that can be used as texts
- Fundraising
- Easily replicated programming ideas and strategies
- Assessment and evaluationmeasures and techniques of all kinds
- Management of history organizations in the 21st century including sustainability, mergers, and institutional life cycles
- Collections/Archives preservation and conservation, techniques, collecting (and deaccession) strategies
In addition, we are always seeking proposals for our Interpreting History series.
Thus far we published books on interpreting African American history, Prohibition, LGBT history, slavery, American Indians, naval history, maritime history, agriculture, food, anniversaries, difficult history, military history, the Civil War, with more in the pipeline.
Books in this series are for local history organizations to turn to when thinking of ways to better use their own collections/local stories while relating to larger themes in history. Here are some topics we are seeking proposals for but please don’t feel limited by them:
- Medicine/Medical History
- Reconstruction
- The Vietnam Era
- Music
- World War I
- World War II
- Toys and Games
- Automobiles or Transportation
We are also seeking proposals for our NEW series Exploring the Stories of America’s Historic Treasures. This series is aimed at paid and unpaid public history professionals as well as history lovers, particularly those who wish they could visit certain museums and sites but either cannot or are remote. In addition to those individual buyers, two major markets for these books are public and high school libraries (since all books in the series would be part of the history curriculum). As currently envisioned, each book will be approximately 150-225 full-color pages with about 20-30 color photographs of a geographically diverse set of images that represents the broad spectrum of the topic in America.
Exploring Women’s Suffrage Through 50 Historic Treasures is already under contract and we are in discussion for a book on American Jewish history as well.
The list of topics/possibilities is endless. Here are some other titles we are seeking:
- Exploring African American History Through 50 Historic Treasures
- Exploring LGBT History Through 50 Historic Treasures
- Exploring American Military History Through 50 Historic Treasures
- Exploring Medical History Through 50 Historic Treasures
- and more!
Read and download our Book Proposal Outline.
If you have an idea, please contact Charles Harmon at Rowman & Littlefield or Bob Beatty of AASLH.
You don’t have to send in a full proposal to start! Just let us know what you’re interested in and we’ll help you develop your idea further.
