Of course, there’s bad news to go along with that. These requests for hard copies closed out my first printing (which was discounted).

I have arranged print-on-demand services with Amazon and other online retailers, but there is some glitch that has delayed availability. Paperbacks were supposed to be ready on Amazon on April 1; unfortunately, it is still in “not yet available” mode.

The other bad news is that the price of the paperback has to go up. When these e-tailers get their acts together, the book will sell for $8.99.

What if you need copies before Amazon gets its act together? Contact me via this site and I will see what price I can offer via a new printing through the usual sources at BookBaby.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but as an author this is really nice news!

If you want to more formally guide your efforts, I have a template for commenting during a CV review, ready for download.

So head on over and read the full piece at Tenure She Wrote. Then plan your event and download that PDF for use.

By the way, you can still win a copy of The Promotion Game. Sign up for our newsletter in the upper left corner and follow us on Twitter. Either way gives you a 20% chance of scoring a free book!

Are you interested in attaining this lofty status for yourself? Then it wouldn’t hurt you to learn more about how to play the game. Register for email newsletters using the sign-up in the upper left column or the pop-up box, and you could win a free copy of The Promotion Game. While I wrote it for those in academic medicine, especially faculty with clinical backgrounds, I’ve been told by a number of PhD types that it has useful advice for them as well.

So sign up and possibly win a copy. If you don’t feel lucky, you can always buy the book in electronic or dead tree formats.

Some day I want you to give thanks for your career success!

Will you bet your career without knowing the rules?

Imagine you have walked into a casino for the first time. The bright lights and bells and whistles overwhelm you a bit, but you soon get the idea that people are gambling. Do you walk up to the first venue you see and plunk down your bankroll?

Probably not.

You will likely wander around a bit until you see a game with which you are familiar. You may find a new game that looks good, so you watch for a bit. You probably start with small wagers, getting a feel for the play and the stakes.

What stakes could be higher than your career? Yet many new faculty members fail to learn the rules of success in academia, betting their bankroll on a game they do not fully understand.

Criteria for promotion and tenure (henceforth P&T) should be considered during the job search. After all, if you do not know what they expect you to accomplish to succeed, you cannot really know if you fit the position.

Yeah, I did not think about it that much either. I was much more worried about finding a position in the same city as my spouse.

Once you can find the bathroom and the cafeteria at your new place of employment, but sometime before you have memorized your office phone number, you will likely receive “orientation materials.” If anything produces more disorientation than this packet, I am not certain what it may be. Somewhere in those materials will be directions to a Faculty Handbook (most often a web site these days) that includes the guidelines for P&T.

I once tried to read through my printed Faculty Handbooks (I have been at 3 institutions now). The language most resembles a mash-up of academic prose and Ikea furniture instructions, but with less clarity and no useful figures. The P&T guidelines usually have useful but incomplete information; to serve an entire college, they must be kept somewhat vague since requirements may vary with department.

If you are lucky, your academic unit will have someone to mentor or coach you through this situation, someone who can tell you the actual number of papers or grants you need and those other specifics. What counts for the education mission? Is public outreach a component for success? How many of those manuscripts have to be first or senior author?

If no such person exists, it will be up to you to find the answers. You will need to talk with a variety of other faculty to get a feel for what you need to do. You can often confirm your impressions during discussion with your supervisor, especially during annual review processes.

Just like any game, P&T involves rules. Your first job is knowing those rules. If you do not, the odds of winning are never in your favor.

Click for meeting info

The annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges (#AAMC14) starts in Chicago on Friday, November 7. I will be in attendance, along with copies of The Promotion Game. If you see me (a recent photo is on the author page) say hello! I will have information about the book, and I am planning to distribute some free hard copies at the meeting.

If you cannot attend the big meeting, you can still score a free book. How? Just sign up for the email newsletter using the form available to the upper left. Five of the first 50 people to sign up will get a copy! Then you will also know when new P&T tools become available here. And I pinky-swear that I will never, ever do anything evil with your email address, cross my heart and hope to die.

Prefer an eBook? Links to the Kindle and Nook stores are in the left column, and the book is available in the iBooks store via your Apple device. The eBook is in a number of other venues I have never used, so check your favorite site.

I look forward to meeting a lot of you at #AAMC14 ! Don’t be shy; introduce yourself to me. You may score a free book.

Check it out and read a sample! If you need another venue for your reader, don’t worry; it should be there as well soon.

The bad news: before you are hired.

The good news: unless your tenure clock expires in the next couple of years, you still have time to make things work.

The first step in planning involves knowing yourself and what you want. Yes, some intensive navel gazing will have to happen so you can identify your skills and passions. You probably have many skills, but not all of them are equal. What can you do best? Even more importantly, what do you love to do? What tasks at work fly by quickly in full color? Which parts of the job are chores that drag on in black and white? Academic medicine involves a lot of work and effort; you do not want to spend 60 hours or so each week miserable and unfulfilled!

It is always best if your institution has hired you to do what you want to do. In an ideal world, you will have some idea of your skills and passions before you job hunt. After all, taking a tenure-track position with the expectation of building a laboratory research program will leave to tragedy if you hate being in the lab! Trying to change the position to fit you better is never as easy as making a good match in the first place.

So what if you are a couple of years into a position and you have just now figured it out? It is time to talk with your supervisors. You need to know if what you want to accomplish will get you ahead in your current job. Most institutions have some flexibility with faculty, especially in clinical departments. You may end up deciding a job search is in order.

Once you know what you want to accomplish, it’s time to make sure you can make it happen. 

They sign on with academic medical centers with the best intentions. They want to inspire the next generation of providers. They want to solve healthcare problems. They hope to make the world a better place.

Between patients and students and the rest of life, many assistant professors find themselves a few years into the job and unprepared to make their careers work. Sure, the information is there in the faculty handbook (have you ever tried to read one of those things?), but many details are left out to make it applicable to an entire institution. You have to be mentored, and you have to know the specific questions to ask. Then you have to do stuff and document it correctly.

As someone who has been at multiple academic centers, and someone with a serious faculty development habit, I want to help fill this gap. The Promotion Game is short (68 pages) and written in conversational English (not highly-referenced academic prose). Yes, it’s still vague, but at least new faculty  will have a better idea what they need to know.

The ebook should be available at Amazon and other vendors in the next week or so for $4.99; hard-copy sales will be handled through this site for now at $6.99 each plus shipping.