Duke Sanford School Associate Professor and DGHI affiliate Donald H. Taylor Jr. faced a problem when he wrote a book about the federal budget crisis: He wanted his text to influence the current debate, but publishing an academic text might take months at best. By the time he could get a book printed, many key budget decisions might have already been made.
“I started to talk with a few publishers who had some interest,” he said. “You talk about late spring or summer for the book but, well, it seemed like these ideas are timely and hot and ready to go…”
Instead, Taylor took an unusual route for an academic: self-publishing the manuscript as an e-book. “Balancing the Budget is a Progressive Priority” stems from Taylor’s work with health care reform (the book is available for download for $4.50 from Amazon.com). Taylor teaches classes on health policy at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, has written 29 columns on health reform for the News & Observer, and has contributed to The New York Times’ Room for Debate forum on health reform.
“I started thinking about the book 14 or 15 months ago,” he said. “The affordable care act passed, and that was a good step, but not enough to create an affordable health care system, and (health care is) the biggest driver of the long-term budget deficit, especially 20 to 50 years in the future.”
In the book, Taylor argues progressives should place more importance on the long-term goal of a balanced budget, and he makes specific suggestions for Social Security reform, tax reform and spending cuts.
As recently as six weeks ago Taylor was still considering taking a conventional publishing route. But after dropping his son off at a summer camp, he “holed up in a hotel room and I did nothing but write for a week. And this book had been sort of stewing but it just came blazing out.” Then, a conversation with an economics editor from a major press persuaded him to self-publish. “He said, ‘You know, I’m interested in this. We’ll get it reviewed. But this kind of book could sort of go out from underneath you depending on what might happen politically.’”
Taylor said the format also made sense for the book’s short length. “The manuscript is 45,000 words… If it were in normal book form, it would probably be a 100-page book.” Taylor found the formatting details of self-publishing tricky, and after releasing the book on Aug. 12, had had to make revisions. “It’s giving me new appreciation of the soft opening of a restaurant,” he said.
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