While there are many social worlds of sociology, publishing “internationally” in sociology has become synonymous with publishing in American journals. American sociological journals such as the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) and the American Sociology Review (ASR) garner disproportionate citations, visibility and prestige. In this landscape, researchers writing from outside the United States, and especially those writing about non-US sites, face considerable challenges if they want to take part in an international conversation. This talk attempts to tackle both the practical and the structural challenges of publication in such journals. First, based on my current editorial work and my past as board-member at AJS and other journals, I present an overview of the journal publication structure in the United States, and the kinds of challenges to publication that I have seen non-US authors struggling with; Second, I will outline a key structural dilemma of non-US research: the requirement to both prove that the work is relevant to US-research, while simultaneously asked to provide more “context” for imagined US-readers.