What is 'academic writing'?

I have been looking at a book proposal for the Pagan Studies series that I fear would not be an "academic" book. (Of course, the proposers might revise it yet.)

Too often, people think that the definition of "academic" writing is (1) writing by people with advanced degrees that (2) no one else would care about.

Try this instead.

Some of the writer's subtitles:

• Scholarship does more than evoke feelings
• Scholarship goes beyond self-justification
• Scholarship transcends group advocacy
• Scholarship makes appeals beyond personal experience
• Scholarship utilizes theory in non-cosmetic ways
• Scholarship admits to reasoned criticism

Read the whole thing.