I submitted my book proposal. Now what?

Just kidding. I know I have to finish writing the thing.

Here’s how it went down.

I submitted my first ever book proposal just over a year ago, in February 2022. I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was doing. I knew I had an idea for a project—several ideas, really—but I wasn’t sure if any of them were any good, and I wasn’t quite at a place yet where I could articulate them confidently or precisely enough to pass the reviewers’ muster. But I have this thing about seeking out rejection at least once every day. So I get rejected a lot, and occasionally it pays off (like asking the guy at Enterprise for a $50 discount on my rental car because the radio kept fritzing out).

This is the basic kernel of that book idea: I have come to believe that the modern university is rapidly losing traction (i.e., respect, faith, trust) with the public, for a whole host of economic, social, and epistemological reasons, and I am most interested in examining what it would take for the university to reclaim its historical mission as the place in society where knowledge is stored, reproduced, and legitimated. The answer, I believe, is for the university to double-down on the study of mis- and disinformation in what scholars call the postdigital age—including all the foundational knowledge and intellectual exploration that such an ambitious project would entail. As one initial reviewer of my initial proposal put it, “Media literacy is the new liberal arts now that digital has become completely part of everyday life.” Media literacy is the new liberal arts. Our lives are completely enmeshed with these digital devices, such that we no longer think of that not-so-old distinction of being online vs. being offline. As someone born in 1980, I am old enough to remember a world where the online/offline binary was still fairly rigid, but I am young enough to be at ease in a postdigital world—a world where that binary has become so permeable as to be essentially non-existent. We don’t call it “online banking” anymore, despite the fact that virtually 100% of it happens online.

As the last few years have shown us, mis- and disinformation are rampant, with devastating consequences for our health, how we govern, and the planet. Most media literacy in either K-12 or higher education exists in the form of one-off or para-curricular interventions in library sessions or a general education course like ENG-W 101. There are some terrific innovations out there in the closely related realms of media literacy, information literacy, news literacy, and digital literacy, but they are piecemeal and scattered throughout the higher ed curriculum in a disconnected and mostly haphazard way. As even more of our lives move online and generative AI continues to get better, the current pedagogical interventions into media literacy just aren’t going to get it done.

On top of all that, as I’ve already mentioned, the modern university has an image problem. People don’t trust institutions of higher education like they did at one time. (Heck, people these days don’t really trust anything it seems.) They’re expensive, seen as indulgent, and they no longer seem to honor the contract with the middle-class that they once did: do your time, get a four-year degree, and your golden ticket to economic and social mobility will be in the mail.

So, my thesis: in order for the university to reclaim its historical mission and to reclaim its relationship with society beyond just “this is where you go for four years if you want to not be poor for the rest of your life (and there’s still a pretty decent chance you will be poor even if you do go here for four years)”—a compelling sales pitch, to be sure, though not one we can count on to win hearts and minds—we need to rethink our basic curriculum, especially in the undergraduate education and general education space, with a meta-disciplinary approach to digital media and media literacy I propose to call “misinformation studies.”

Now, this being an academic monograph, I have to figure out a convincing way to stretch that basic idea out over 200+ pages. And that’s more or less where things stand now.

I’ve written the introduction and the first chapter. The first chapter is a revised version of a piece that I published a couple of years ago in a sociology journal that was running a special issue on “The University in Crisis.” It was actually an invited article.

I received one positive set of reviews and one rather negative (oh, Reviewer 2!). But the acquisitions editor seemed to like it. So I was asked to address the concerns and suggestions raised by both reviewers and resubmit the proposal. This was mid-March 2022. I just re-submitted the revised proposal last Friday.

I made an announcement about submitting my proposal on Twitter:

Paul Cook @paulgeecook

Just submitted my book proposal. And now we play the waiting game... Ah, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

In case you missed it, the tweet references a classic Simpsons gag:

So yes, it took me a full calendar year to make these revisions, but that’s not all I did in the meantime. I completely changed the focus of the project and wrote a 12,000 word introduction that more or less frames up the entire book. By the way, under normal circumstances, I would never advise writing the introduction first. I also sort of already knew that going in, but because this is one of those projects where I am actively shaping the arguments and interventions as I go, it made a bit more sense in this case.

The primary suggestion from the more helpful of my two reviewers was that the project would make an original contribution

If the focus on colleges and universities were detailed, more explicit, and methodologically stronger, this could be a fine book to use as a study group with faculty. The book proposal claims that it casts a wide net across the academic disciplines, but this focus is not clearly evident in either the proposal or the TOC.

And that’s more or less where things stand. However, I am more than willing to post an excerpt from the introduction to the book as it currently stands. Here’s that excerpt:

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The Perfect Storm

If there’s one metaphor from the last quarter century of cinema that has been overused nearly into oblivion, it’s the titular phrase from the 2000 film The Perfect Storm, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. Based on the creative nonfiction book of the same name, The Perfect Storm tells the tragic story of a group of Gloucester, Massachusetts fishermen who, spurred by economic necessity (and perhaps a dash of New England machismo), venture beyond their usual fishing grounds in a last-ditch effort to bring in a huge catch and salvage a lousy season. Despite earnest expressions of concern and dire predictions of impending doom from the people of their close-knit coastal community, the men are resolute. The concrete economic realities they face being clearer than the abstract dangers at sea, the crew of the Andrea Gail heads out to sea for one last hurrah before winter sets in.

Fortune smiles on them, briefly, but even as the crew hauls thousands of pounds of swordfish over the decks, dangerous storms are gathering strength nearby that will soon barricade them from the mainland. The remnants of a northbound tropical hurricane (in real life it was Hurricane Grace) collide with a developing nor’easter and a massive low-pressure system moving southward from Canada (NPS, 2019). Soon the skies grow ominously dark and forty-foot swells crash onto the Andrea Gail’s decks. Spoiler alert—they never make it home.

The Perfect Storm received mixed-to-negative critics’ reviews at the time and currently holds a composite score of only 46%, or “certified rotten,” on Rotten Tomatoes, which has in some circles become the ultimate judge of film quality. But it was a mild box office success and, in what may be the movie’s true marker of cultural cache, The Perfect Storm can usually be found playing somewhere on late night cable. What makes the film so compelling for audiences is not merely the maritime misfortune of the fishermen, played with gruff, blue-collar abandon by a cast of A-listers, or even the familiar, satisfying motifs of the disaster film genre.