Manuscript Submission
We welcome unsolicited manuscripts throughout the year. Before submitting your work through the submission upload form located at the bottom of this page, please review the submission requirements outlined below.
When will I hear back?
We appreciate your interest in submitting your manuscript to us for consideration. Due to the size of our publishing house, we can only accept a select number of books each year.
Our review process considers various factors, including writing quality, editorial expertise, and alignment with our interests.
Due to the sheer number of submissions we receive, we only contact authors when we are interested in acquiring a work. Should you not hear from us within 10 months of submission, it is reasonable to interpret the submission as declined.
Should you receive an offer from another publisher in the meantime, kindly inform us via email, and we will remove your submission from our review file.
Submission Preparation Checklist
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
- You must read and agree to our Author Guidelines and Copyright and Privacy Statement. By making a submission using this page, you agree that you have read and agree with both of these policies.
- The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another press for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor). You must advise us if the submission has been submitted to any other publishers for consideration.
- The submission file is in the Microsoft Word or OpenDocument file format.
- The text is single-spaced; uses 12-point Times New Roman font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
- Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
- A cover letter has been prepared and will be included with the submission in the “Cover Note to Editor” section of the digital submission form.
An Important Note Regarding Formatting
If your manuscript is selected for publication, we will typeset your book for you. There is no need to try to emulate the form of a book when formatting your manuscript. Publishers require a word processor document (ideally a Word document, but OpenDocument files are also accepted) that we will use to typeset your book. Below are some helpful tips to keep in mind when formatting your manuscript.
Do:
- Do prepare your manuscript in Microsoft Word (or OpenOffice, if you do not have access to Word).
- Do use normal margins.
- Do use the ‘enter’ key only once at the end of paragraphs.
- Do use page breaks instead of manually entering spaces.
- Do use your word processing software’s footnote and endnote features if your work includes footnotes or endnotes.
- Do use italics and bold where appropriate in the manuscript.
- Do use the word processing software’s indent, line spacing, and paragraph spacing features instead of manually hitting ‘tab’ or ‘enter’.
- Do submit your entire manuscript so that we can read and consider the work as a whole.
Do Not:
- Do not prepare your manuscript in LaTeX, HTML, InDesign, or anything other than a word processor (preferably Microsoft Word).
- Do not use unusual or inconsistent margins or tab settings.
- Do not use the ‘enter’ key multiple times at the end of paragraphs to simulate paragraph spacing.
- Do not manually create page breaks by hitting ‘enter’ multiple times.
- Do not use anything other than your word processing software’s footnote and endnote features if your work includes footnotes or endnotes.
- Do not use any formatting other than italics and bold where appropriate in the manuscript (underlining is acceptable in URLs).
- Do not use ‘tab’ or ‘enter’ keys to indent or create line and paragraph spacing.
You can still submit your manuscript even if you haven’t followed these guidelines, but we will ask you to fix your manuscript’s formatting if we select it for publication.
Submit Your Manuscript
Note: If you encounter an error and are unable to submit through this webpage, please email your cover letter and manuscript to submissions [at] downingfield.com.