Submitting a Proposal

We accept book proposals and manuscript submissions only from January – April of each year. Submissions outside those months will not be read, acknowledged, or accepted.

Proposals to be considered must be sent through our online submissions page, not by mail, fax, or email. Include the following in one file with your manuscript or sample chapters:

1. A cover letter briefly outlining your project, the intended audience (including age ranges), and your relevant expertise.

2. A current résumé (including a description of your publishing history).

3. A detailed chapter-by-chapter outline.

4. At least two sample chapters (or the first 20 pages). (If a full manuscript is available, you may send it.)

Formatting the Manuscript:

1. Wordprocessor: We require all material and manuscripts be formatted with MS Word or with  Open Office. Open Office is a Microsoft clone that works in the same way as Microsoft Office, but Open Office is free. Open Office Writer is the clone of MS Word.

2. Multiple files: The manuscript should be in one file with all material (appendix, footnotes, etc.) where you want them to be.

3. Margins: Set all margins at 1″ (top, bottom, and sides).

4. Fonts: Writers House Press has a library of more than 250 fonts, including the most popular fonts used in publishing today. For your manuscript submission, however, please use 12 point Time New Roman. Bold and Italics will be retained in your text when it is formatted. Create headings in larger type. Final decisions on fonts will be determined when you speak to your book designer on your design conference call. You can download copy of the complete Writers House font list.

5. Formatting Hints: To help your manuscript format easily and with a minimum of problems, it is best if you eliminate certain typing conventions.

   •   Do not press the space bar twice between sentences. One space is sufficient.
   •   Do not use the tab key to indent the first line of paragraphs. Use the First Line Indent feature of your word processing program instead.
   •   Do not press the return key multiple times to move text to the next page or to create space between lines or paragraphs.

   These conventions create extra characters which must be manually removed during formatting. It may be helpful to work with Hidden Characters turned on so you can see your manuscript the way the computer sees it.

6. Hard returns: A “hard return” is also known as the “enter” or “return” command on your keyboard. It is most commonly used to separate paragraphs within a document. In Microsoft Word, and many other word processing programs, it will display as the “¶” character when hidden characters are displayed. To see this symbol, click on the “¶” button on the standard toolbar, which will also display other “hidden characters” such as tab markers and spaces.

7. A common misuse of the “hard return” is to place it at the end of a single line of text in order to break the text on to the next line, similar to the operation of a typewriter. This can cause “bad paragraph breaks” within a document, making it difficult to determine where your paragraphs begin and end. Manuscripts that incorrectly use “hard returns” at the end of every line will not render properly, and may not be usable by Writers House. To avoid this issue, begin a new paragraph and continue typing until the paragraph is complete, allowing your program to break the lines automatically. Unless you indent the first line of each paragraph (the standard way of doing it), you will need to press the “Enter” key twice at the end of a paragraph so that a blank line separates the paragraph.

8. Manual headers & page numbers: Some authors manually type their name, the name of the book, the page number, or any combination of these at the top or the bottom of each page. This usually happens when the author is unaware of the word processor’s header/footer function, which automatically places this information at the top or bottom of every page. Manual page numbers and headers create similar issues to using the enter key at the end of every line, and removing them can be difficult and time-consuming. To avoid this issue, use automatic page numbering and include other information in a header or footer, which we can easily remove from the document before formatting.

9. Graphics and Pictures: Any graphics or pictures should be embedded in the file in the exact place you want them to be. Both MS Word and Open Office Writer can format a graphic so that the text wraps around the graphic.

10. Supplementary Material: The supplemental material, such as cover letter, résumé, and chapter outline is to be inserted into your manuscript file at the beginning of the file, before the first page of your manuscript.