Mentoring via books and email

Kevin Cyron wrote Tom:

Dr. Barnett,
How are you? I just wanted to let you know that I successfully defended my thesis, “The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism” in St. Petersburg. I also wanted to thank you for the inspiration that came out of the Pentagons New Map, a book which truly knocked my on my ass and showed me a better way to look at the world. It helped me put together a lot of ideas and showed a new direction for this work.

Attached is a copy of the paper. Should you ever get time or interest I would love to hear your thoughts on this work that in anyway could make it better. It has been criticized for not being scientific enough and being too broad. The paper is designed to be a certain way. It's divided into two main parts. Problem and Solution. Each Part has three sections that correlate with each other. Definitions of Democracy is offset by historical democratic developments in Russian History, Media Bias is offset by the failure to report the success through the Maslow theory, and the social construction is offset by the influence of globalization. Topped off by an introduction and conclusion on both ends. I start off with a great quote, I end with a great quote. Its almost like a big poem, there are repeated themes through out and each part matches. I will go back to it after sometime and rewrites and attempt to publish. Any advice you could give on this road would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to your new book.
Again thank you for your time,
All the best
Kevin

Tom replied:

That's a criticism I've received my entire career. If it's what you do well, then it's all about getting somebody to appreciate that skill set rather than trying to tame it. It a networked world, horizontal thinking can be huge and rare enough.

As for publishing, there are low-end academic publishers that do it for nil. You have to type-set yourself, but that's gotta be one helluva easier than when I did it in the early 90s on my little Mac tower! So don't be fussy and publish largely as is. It's a good experience and looks good on the CV.

Serious attempts to sell books can come later.

I did mine with Praeger. You propose, attach a sample chapter, and see who's interested. You have a good topic.

If you take the plunge and read Kevin's paper, feel free to email him directly.

Comments

[Andy]

Almost no reason not to publish if you want. For example CreateSpace. They will take your PDF files, give you an ISBN, list it on Amazon. Books are then produced as Print On Demand. No inventory, very, very low up front costs. You retain the rights for later publishing at a larger venue. I am in process on a book right now and POD is a very attractive option for small run items, though I am not sure how impressive it would look on a CV/resume.

[dan Hare]

Sean,Imagine an cyber environment where the emerging horizontal thinkers gather and collaborate on the global issues of the day in the mil/biz/govt/tech/environmental/ sectors all adding solutions. That's that is part of the idea behind GlobalStudentsConnect.