< click here! GUIDELINES FOR THE SUBMISSION
OF MANUSCRIPTS
IMPORTANT NOTE: WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING ANY NEW SUBMISSIONS UNTIL AT LEAST 2008. OUR SCHEDULE IS FULL WITH BOOKS BY ESTABLISHED KE/PP AUTHORS, BACKLIST REPRINTS AND NEW PROJECTS WE HAVE ALREADY COMMISSIONED. PLEASE DO NOT SEND US ANYTHING!
Because so many people have asked us about this, we have decided to post these guidelines on our web site, so that anyone who needs to know can read them here, at their leisure.
(A) SUBJECT MATTER
We only publish books in the following areas:
* Reprints of Arthur Mee's King's England series
* Other monographs on British national and regional history, archaeology, etc.
* Folklore of the British Isles
* Children's poetry books
The first of these categories is irrelevant unless your name happens to be Arthur Mee [if you're reading this, Arthur, all the best!].
Taking each of the others in turn:
British National and Regional History
The main issue here is marketability: since the sad and ill-advised demise of the net book agreement,
shelf-space for local books, whose market was in any case limited by definition, has declined in all the major bookselling 'chains'.
There is more chance of being able to market and sell a 'national' title, e.g. Traces of the Templars.
This is not to say we are completely against local titles, if they come with a guaranteed market attached
(i.e. in the form of a certain number of pledged advance orders).
Folklore of the British Isles
This is fairly self-explanatory. There is perhaps slightly more scope here for 'locality' as the market for 'ghost' books overlaps with, and in many cases extends beyond, that for local history.
For both the above categories, a house style guide is available which will eventually be downloadable as a PDF file from here.
Children's Poetry Books
We only do the Potty Poets series (see www.pottypoets.com) and these are A5 64-page books illustrated by black and white line drawings. The subject matter treads a fine line. Too 'twee' and children will not read them; too gross and parents will not buy them. They are often used to get reluctant readers interested in the reading habit. Indeed, this was the impetus behind the very first book in the series.
Currently, at the time of writing, we have enough material on hand, if we were to publish it all, to keep us going to 2010. Therefore, although we wouldn't want to discourage anyone from sending in a manuscript, please be realistic about what you send. We do not do illustrated children's picture books (e.g. Dog is in the garden, Dog sniffs a flower, Dog rolls in something disgusting, etc.)
(B) FORMATS
Tedious as it is for authors and would-be authors, we ask people to send in their submissions initially in hard copy form. If it is a project we decide to go ahead with, it will of course speed things up, and count in that project's favour, if it has already been typeset onto a computer; but with regard to the initial contact, we prefer this to be hard copy. The reason is simply to keep the volume of email traffic within reasonable bounds. It already takes a major part of our day to deal with emails, and ultimately either everything would grind to a halt or we'd have to employ somebody just to sit and trawl through emails all day, deleting the spam and saving the submissions - which would mean the price of our books would have to go up.
Every manuscript sent to us is read by a real live human being. So if you don't hear from us immediately, that's why. If you would like an acknowledgement, a pre-stamped postcard can be included with your manuscript. We also appreciate it if people send return postage for unsuitable material, but we don't insist. Anything unsuitable which doesn't have return postage will, however, be shredded, after we have written to you.
You can send either complete manuscripts or synopses and sample chapters, but don't, whatever you do, send your original and only copy! Likewise with artwork - do not, repeat not, send us the originals in the first instance. We take great care of everything which is sent to us, but we cannot be responsible for its continued well-being, particularly if we've posted it back to you, or we weren't expecting its coming.
Also, when sending artwork, or even when drawing and commissioning artwork, please remember that from our point of view oversize artwork is difficult to send, store, handle, use, and/or return. So please ask yourself: does it really have to be Rolf Harris wobbleboard-size or will A4 do?
The address for submissions is:
The Editorial Department, The King's England Press Ltd, Cambertown House, Commercial Road, Goldthorpe, ROTHERHAM S63 9BL (United Kingdom)
Please bear in mind, as a final thought, that we don't wish to discourage anyone sending us a manuscript but we are still only a small company with limited resources for taking on new work and we can only ever publish a fraction of the material sent to us. Good luck!
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