For some readers, the answer to this might seem obvious, or irrelevant. At a certain point in your career you can have the confidence that whenever you’re ready to talk to a book publisher they’ll be ready to talk to you. For others, though, I know this can feel like a fraught question. Too early and you might not be taken seriously, or find yourself committed to something major before you’re ready. Too late and you might end up doing a lot more work if your publisher asks for changes, or worse still you might be stuck with a manuscript nobody wants but that you’ve invested years of your life in.
All of this comes with the caveat that I’m talking, broadly, about academic publishers here. Big trade publishers work quite differently and tend to expect you to reach them via a literary agent anyway, but that’s so far out of my wheelhouse that I have no business offering any advice.
As a general rule, earlier is usually better
I can’t speak for every commissioning editor, but for the most part we would prefer to know about your project and be planning for it for some time in advance of actually having a full manuscript.
This gives us time to get a proposal peer reviewed, which may involve suggesting changes that you can still incorporate without heavy rewriting. It also give us more time to plan ahead for the manuscript’s arrival, and draw up production and publication schedules accordingly.
In an extreme example, where an author comes to us with a manuscript that they believe is completely finished, we will be adding the whole of the peer review, copy editing, cover design, indexing, typesetting and promotion time to their “day zero”. That’s fine, if the material isn’t time sensitive and the author isn’t particularly in a hurry, but it will tend to result in the book being published later than it might have been if we’d been involved earlier.
More than two years out is probably too long to formally propose a book
The above having been said, we would usually not want to be making formal arrangements much more than about two years into the future. That is, the time between now and when a manuscript is planned to be complete.
In part this is just a question of priorities and time management. We would rather be spending time now on projects that are nearer on the horizon, and two years ahead is for most publishers the far extreme of where we’re considering.
The other, in some ways more fundamental, reason is that most manuscripts are late. Not only that but the extent to which they are late tends to be in proportion to the length of time they were originally projected to take. So when you say two years we’re probably expecting at least two and half.
Worse still, we want to know that once we’ve agreed a contract, you will be forging ahead with writing your manuscript. In most cases we would not expect this to take much over a year, perhaps a year and a half. So unless we have a very clear timetable mapped out for your two and half, three, or four years of work, our assumption will be that you don’t anticipate starting writing for some time to come. We’re not just worried that you won’t finish on time, we’re worried you might not even get around to really starting.
But it doesn’t hurt to talk to us about your ideas informally
This will vary a bit, but even when working at Routledge, on a book programme with quite a high throughput of proposals and manuscripts, I was usually keen to be talking to prospective authors about ideas that could be some way from fruition.
You shouldn’t expect a commitment from a publisher if you haven’t really written anything yet, but commissioning editors will often be happy to discuss your ideas at quite an initial stage. Certainly I always am. This is worth your while if you want to sound out whether a publisher would be likely to be interested in your project before you have taken it very far. It might also help you choose between alternative approaches to your project, or simply be reassured that a publisher is likely to be enthusiastic about the project. The editor may even have some helpful suggestions as you get started.
If you do this you will likely be on that commissioning editor’s radar, and this might involve them catching up with you every few months to see how you’re plans are coming along. Many people find this helpful, some find it annoying, I suspect for quite a few prospective authors it is both.
Preliminary discussions are without obligation
You are not committed to offer a publisher your book simply because you once had a conversation with their editor. Nor are they obliged to offer you a contract – or even necessarily to review your proposal – because of such a conversation.
As you might expect, it is considered poor practice to offer a project to a second publisher without informing the first – although unlike with journal articles, multiple submissions are tolerated provided they are disclosed. Similarly, if you’re asking an editor for preliminary advice, but anticipate proposing your project to another publisher first when it’s ready, you should be transparent about this. Most commissioning editors will still try to help you if they can. Publishing is a relatively small industry and people have long memories, so we’d usually prefer to have the reputation for being helpful, rather than worry about optimising our time in the short term.
Write the book first if that’s what you want
Some authors I’ve spoken to over the years, usually very experienced people who have written several books, have insisted they will shop their manuscript around once they have finished their first draft. This is certainly a risk. You will be relying entirely on your own judgement, or your own capacity to seek out other people’s opinions directly to direct your manuscript. You will also be relying on your own sense of purpose to get it written, without the support of an editor on the other end of the phone who will encourage you with deadlines, pleading, and/or threats. Finally, as mentioned above, there is a risk that having written your manuscript, you cannot find a publisher for it, or else your publisher might ask for lots of changes.
On the other hand, if you have a very clear vision for your book and are determined to do it your own way and without interference or nagging emails from publishers, this may be the way to go. I would recommend keeping an open mind going into the review process rather than stubbornly insisting that the publisher can take it as it is , or leave it. Nevertheless, some authors do find it easier to work this way.
The planning-related downsides of not giving a publisher very much notice of your project should not be completely overlooked, and this will sometimes lead to a book taking longer to publish than it would have if you’d proposed it earlier. That’s not a reason not to do it, but certainly something to keep in mind.
What do publishers want when you are ready to formally propose?
You can see specific information about submitting a proposal to Tithebarn Press here.
In general, most publishers will want a proposal and sample chapters.
You can go to the above link for our proposal guidelines, but at a minimum you’ll need an outline of the book, a table of contents and an analysis of the closest existing titles.
Publishers’ requirements vary regarding both the quantity of sample chapters and how polished they need to be. I’d always prefer to see a “meaty” chapter that really shows off a critical part of the book. If you can have one or two additional chapters, that’s even better. They don’t need to be highly polished, but if you’re adapting them from another source – a journal article for example – then at a bare minimum you should make the basic changes needed to make it feel like a chapter of a book. Sentences saying things like “in this article” are a red flag indicating you haven’t given this any thought! Some authors will submit a book chapter but also a journal article that they plan to adapt into another chapter, to give reviewers a fuller sense of where they are going, but without committing to the work too heavily. Editors and publishers will differ as to whether they will accept this.
Some of this update is perhaps rather basic, but in my experience working with authors from around the world, people have very different expectations and levels of understanding about how these processes work. At Tithebarn Press we want to be as welcoming as possible to authors of all experience levels. As always, please do feel to get in touch with any questions simon.bates@tbarnpress.com
