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Life of a Book

There are many stages a book goes through from initial idea to final manuscript to printed and published book. Below you will find an outline of the process. 

Proposal

As a potential author you will be asked to submit a proposal, giving details of the proposed book.  The publisher will send that proposal out for review, soliciting feedback from expert reviewers, to ensure that the planned book fulfils the needs of the market. You may be asked to revise the proposal in light of the reviewers' comments. 

When the resulting proposal is strong enough, the publisher will prepare a business case with supporting information and an estimate of costs and profitability to present to the publishing committee for approval to offer a contract. 

Contract

When the proposal has been approved, the publisher will send you a contract, detailing the delivery date for the complete manuscript, specifics about the book (length, number of illustrations, etc, and the royalty arrangements). If it is a contributed book, the contributor contracts will also be sent out. 

Your contract will state the date that you and the publisher have agreed for delivery of the complete and final manuscript. This date allows us the best chance of meeting the ideal publication date. We use this date to decide when and how to promote your book to maximize sales. It is vital that you adhere to your delivery date. 

Manuscript Development

As soon as the contract is signed and returned, you will be supplied with guidelines to help you prepare your manuscript, and deliver it to us in the best way for production.

We will keep in regular contact with you for updates on your progress, to remind you of the necessity of delivering your manuscript on the agreed date, of writing to the contracted length, and of following closely the guidelines on preparing the text and illustrations. We will provide guidance on clearing permissions if using material from copyrighted sources, and how best to present illustrations. 

Manuscript Delivery

Once your manuscript arrives with us, we may send it out again for review to ensure quality and content. That feedback may require you to make some final revisions to the text. If your book is in a series with a series editor, they will also be sent a copy.

We will check the number of words and estimate the number of pages in the final book, to provide a financial estimate to the publishing committee, so the print run and selling prices can be agreed. 

A cover design for your book will be started for marketing the book in advance of publication. 

Production

Your key contact will be a production editor, who will manage all the editorial processes from unedited manuscript to corrected proofs. This is done either by in-house staff or freelancers. 

The first stage is copy editing where your text is edited to our house style and checked for sense and inconsistencies. You may need to answer any queries raised by the copyeditor. It is then sent to the typesetter with a design specification for the text layout. Illustrations are checked and prepared and halftones sent for scanning. 

Page proofs arrive from the typesetter for checking, and we will also send a set to an indexer. This is the final stage at which corrections can be made to the text, and they should be kept to a minimum, changing only any factual errors. Your and the proof reader's corrections will be collated onto one set of proofs, which is returned to the typesetter for correction. The index is also sent for typesetting. We do a final check of the text to ensure that all corrections have been made accurately, and the book is ready for printing and binding.  

Printing, Delivery and Publication

When your book arrives from the printer it is quality checked and then our distributors are instructed to 'release' the book, allowing orders to be fulfilled. Advance copies of the book are dispatched to you, any contributors, and reviewers. 

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing teams will have been informed of the proposed publication date, and all the necessary information (content, author details, features, competitive strengths, etc) of your book to maximize the marketing impact of your book. If a textbook, we offer lecturers the opportunity to look at an inspection copy, with a view to recommending it to students, and solicit bookshop orders. 

Reprints

When a book is selling successfully, it may be necessary to reprint. You will be asked to check the printed book thoroughly and send your editor photocopied pages marked with any corrections. Please note that only minor factual errors can be corrected when a book is reprinted. 

New Editions

We monitor sales closely and, depending on the success of the title, a decision is made whether and when to publish a new edition. The interval between editions can vary, and each book will be considered on an individual basis. For a book to be called a new edition, more than 25% of the content must be revised, and we will commission reviews from both users and non-users of the book to help determine what needs to be revised.  A new business case is prepared for the new edition, for approval by the publishing committee, and a new contract issued, to specify delivery date, etc.