Recently I have been working on a novel where I will very often have to research things I have no expertise in. I will very often find papers written on the subject that relate very closely to what I am doing and in some cases it would be great to be able to talk to the author.
I would imagine they are hard to reach on purpose just to avoid people like me.
Is their some method or strategy I could use to increase my chances of getting responses from these folks? My response rate at present is dismal. I do have fairly good luck when I lower my level of expertise expectations and this is often sufficient.
It seems if these same people have no problem getting contacted for speaking engagements and such their must be some kind of more direct route I can take.
These people are not movie stars or celebrities but are considered experts in their respective fields.
One example, I have been looking for someone who has some expertise in neurochemistry that has written papers that closely relate to what I am working on.
Another would be someone with expertise in cultures, again with expertise in an area that relates to what I am doing.
Another would be possibly a general contractor who handles large building projects.
I have no problem finding the experts and I would think at least some of them Might find some low level advice from time to time might be tolerable.
If you have the resources, you could become a client of the Gerson Lehman Group (GLG). http://glg.it/
The have a vast network of council members with expertise across numerous fields.
How much money are you offering them for the consultation, or is it some kind of cut on the eventual royalties from the novel? If you’re not offering them money, is it really that surprising that people don’t want to spend time and energy providing you with professional services for free? I don’t see why a published neurochemist would want to spend hours or days explaining stuff to a layman who doesn’t want to do his own research for that layman to profit off of. I would expect him to either want to put his effort into actual interesting and/or paid research or into discussions with his peers, and to want to spend his off time on other pursuits.
There are a lot of people with expertise who are not big names. For example your neurochemistry expert–there are probably people who he has or is currently guiding to a PhD degree. These people will be quite familiar with his work. Think about grad students in general and faculty in lesser prestige departments.
And of course there is Straight Dope and a huge number of other internet forums.
You didn’t answer the question, but I’ll take the tone of your response as an indication that you want their expertise for free. The obvious method for getting more responses is to, like people seeking speaking engagements, offer them money for their expertise. Generally if you offer someone money to do work for you, you have much better luck than if you just want them to work for free. If you don’t want to pay for consultation, then figure out how to make what you’re doing something that they’re interested in helping with. If you were doing work for charity or a religion then you could look for experts interested in helping with that cause. If you had something to offer them in trade, like expertise they might want, you could work on that basis.
This more closely relates to my issue, I feel I have a worthwhile social cause I am trying to bring awareness to, in most cases it would be easy to show how their work could contribute to this. I can see where If properly presented it might put me more into the position of a peer. I would also like to assure them that any exchanges would usually be very brief e emails.
Also in the event that if something did actually become of the work I would be willing to compensate but obviously no guarantees could be made.
If you can find a phone number for them, then call. It’s amazingly simple. I assume these are people who are employed and their employer is known. Just call the main number during business hours and ask to speak to them. If you have to go through other people to get to them then your name will be Dr. HoneyBadgerDC. If they still ask what it’s about before putting you through tell them Dr. TriPolar referred you concerning the paper written by the guy. When you get through to him tell him how Dr. TriPolar spoke very highly of him and his paper and you want to briefly discuss this subject with him because you’ve been asked to find consultants for the big project you are researching. (Note: Once you get through to him you are no longer a Dr. if you expect to talk to him again)
Do you ask specific questions in your email or do you ask vaguely for help? I’ve had success contacting experts when researching books, but I try to make my emails very easy to answer with actual questions that have cut-and-dried answers.
For example I recently emailed the author of a book about paleolithic people. “You say in the book that they boiled the fat of the animal but since it’s before metal, what did they boil the fat IN? Asking because I’m writing a novel about paleolithic people. Thanks.”
“I should have mentioned that in the book. They were able to boil water in leather sacks.”
I thought about this, I have used it when I was in the construction field to contact big developers. I just don’t think I can come off proffessional enough in these fields to pull it off. Some version of this probably is my best strategy though. Once I can get a conversation going I usually can do ok but I feel a bit awkward in the initial approach.
What if you write to them and ask their usual fee for something like this, leaving out the “I’d prefer it for free” part. When they come back with a fee, be like “Oh, that is more than I was anticipating, I need this for very cheap or free because…”?
If you’re looking for a neuroscientist, some perspectives from the biology field -
make sure you don’t look like you have an agenda. Nothing says “do not reply” like “hi, I’m writing a book on why abortion is bad and I wanted to ask you how much pain the poor little babies feel when their mothers just discard them.”
many successful scientists are assholes. Look for someone who has won mentoring awards or mentions mentoring on their website - it’s no guarantee but it suggests who might respond.
SPECIFICALLY address the scope of your request in your intro email - “Hi, I’d like a 15-20 minute phone call” is easier to deal with than “I only have a few questions”, because “few” is relative. Then stick to that time commitment, even if it isn’t enough time, unless you are specifically invited BY THEM to continue the conversation.
find the famous people, then contact their grad students. Grad students will know almost as much and will often be happy to talk about their work for hours. However, in general grad students are not very experienced at presenting information to general audiences, so it may take a few tries before you get one who you can understand through the jargon. In biology, the first author on any paper is the grad student or postdoc who actually did the work, the last author is the famous person who’s running the overall lab.
Offer what you can (not necessarily money). Potential ideas: your lab would receive credit on ____ website and acknowledgement in the upcoming book. I will make every effort to mention your name in my upcoming interview by ____ about this work. I will buy your grad student lunch in return for his/her conversation. You/your student can list this on their CV as public outreach/education experience/collaboration (grad students need lines on their CV showing they’re good at communicating and teaching).
Remember that a short email question on your side may mean quite a lot of work on their side - it can be quite hard to condense a large body of knowledge into a response that a layperson can understand. Phone conversations can be much better - you get a better sense of how hard the question is for them to answer, and they can better gauge your knowledge level so they don’t have to explain things you already know.
Make sure that your intro email addresses why you are contacting this specific person. “I’m reaching out to you because of your expertise in (this specific matter) and I read (this specific paper) and I hoped you could explain more” is much better than “Hey, I’m contacting every neuroscientist whose email address I could google.”
Follow up, twice, in 2-3 week intervals. Many scientists will either forget your email or deliberately ignore it to see if you’re motivated enough to email again. Emailing twice a day gets you labeled as a stalker, but a couple of well-spaced followups shows that you’re interested in willing to work a little for the contact.
I don’t know about this. Pretending that you’re offering (presumably paid) work, or claiming that you have credentials you don’t (unless you actually do have a Ph.D. or an M.D.) is just going to annoy people.
Why not just call and say that you’re a novelist? I bet some of the experts you want to talk to would enjoy that. Some won’t, but some might.
Email might work, if you can get hold of an email address.
Also, if you’re just looking for people who know about a subject and not a specific author:
try going to interest group meetings. Check meetup.com for things like biobeers (a biology meetup, obviously) or equivalents in other topics. Various industries will often have networking events (check industry websites) - go, chat with members, see if anyone is game for a quick interview at a later date.
If it’s an academic subject, there’s probably a department for it at UCLA. Go to the next faculty seminar even if it’s not all that closely related. (Show up on time and look like you’re paying attention.) After the talk, approach the speaker, compliment his/her talk, and ask him/her if they can direct you to someone in the department in the particular specialty you’re looking for.
Check with your local libraries. See if they have authors scheduled to speak at some point in the year. If not, inquire and encourage your library staff to book such events from “meet the author” to writing workshops. When they do hold such events, come prepared with a question or two (for an author) to a list of questions for a writer’s workshop.
I sent out a coupl of more e emails this morning. I took a little more balsy approach this time possibly overstating the size of my organization and the stage of development we are presently at. Will wait and see what happens.