ABSTRACT
A professional book is a work written by a practicing or teaching professional or scholar—for example, a research engineer, a psychotherapist, a professor of art history—and intended for the author's peers rather than for the general reader or for classroom use. The specialized content and the inelastic market for the books govern every aspect of professional/scholarly publishing. Aside from professional associations, many of which issue books as well as journals, professional/scholarly books are produced by three categories of publishers: university presses, short-run or monograph houses, and the professional divisions of large general publishers. The professional editor is on the lookout for information about sizable research grants, for many of them can lead to publishable books and sometimes to the big, high-ticket reference works that professional publishers love. The editor assembles a dossier on each book being proposed, similar in essence to the information other editors must provide to their decision makers.
