Types of Submissions We Accept
Before contacting us with your submission, please carefully review our submission guidelines. New Society Publishers receives many hundreds of submissions a year, of which only a tiny percentage are ultimately selected for publication.
A large majority of the books we publish we either initiate ourselves or acquire through previous contact with the author, or with an organization with which the author works. However, we sometimes publish manuscripts that are wholly unsolicited, and we welcome queries from authors, potential authors, agents, or organizations seeking a publisher or co-publisher.
Please note that while we do accept unsolicited submissions, we will only accept submissions that meet all of the requirements below. Submissions that do not include all of the requested elements will not be reviewed or returned.
Please understand that decisions to publish are complex and require much more time than refusals. Please do not call us once you have sent us your proposal; we’ll contact you as appropriate. — Thanks very much indeed for thinking of us!
Editorial Objectives
New Society Publishers is a progressive publishing company that specializes in books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society. We sell our books to a North America-wide market, using trade distributors in both Canada and the United States, as well as through direct mail and the Internet. We also have distribution channels overseas.
New Society Publishers also sees itself as a solutions publisher, providing “good news” most of the time as well as clear analysis of the major issues we face in the struggle to create a more just and equitable world. Our emphasis is always inspirational, motivational, and skill-oriented. We don’t publish books that merely catalog what is wrong in the world; we do publish books that show that we can take control over our lives and change the way things are — and which suggest how we can accomplish this. Although we believe that fiction, poetry, and children’s books can play an important role in social change, they require different expertise and different marketing, neither of which we can provide; please do not submit such works.
Before submitting a proposal, please carefully review our website, in particular our Mission & Vision and our Statement of Ethics, to ensure that we are a good fit. Also review the Key Subjects listed on the Our Books page to ensure that your proposed topic meshes with our publishing program. You may also want to download a PDF of our most recent catalog.
Targets
The number of manuscripts we are actually able to read is finite. In order to increase the chance that your proposal will receive good attention and hence increase the chance that we’ll publish it, we ask that you do not submit the entire manuscript until we ask for it, but rather send us the following:
- An annotated table of contents
- A sample chapter
- A proposal which answers the following questions:
- In 300-500 words, what is the book about?
- Please provide a brief bio. Tell us what qualifies you, or gives you authority, to write such a book. (We are interested as much in experience as in formal degrees.) Have you published any previous books? If so please tell us a bit about them – title, subject, previous publisher (if applicable), and approximate sales.
- What other books in the field exist, when were they published, and how is yours similar or different?
- What aspects of your book are completely original? Describe how.
- Out of over 4,000 trade book publishers in the United States and Canada, why are you sending your proposal to New Society Publishers? How did you learn of us?
- Whom do you imagine to be the audience for the book? What do you think are the best ways to reach them? If you could have the book reviewed or excerpted, what are the 5 or 10 most important publications in which it could appear?
- What help can you be in the promotion of the book? Organizational connections? Mailing lists? Workshops? Tours? Conferences which you are likely to attend? (We are primarily interested in publishing authors who are prepared to help substantially with the promotion of their own books.)
- We sell books back to authors at a deep discount. How many of your own books do you think you might need initially, if any?
- What is the length of your manuscript? Provide an approximate word count. Will your book be illustrated? If so, how many images will it include?
- When do you expect your book to be completed? How much do you currently have written?
How To Submit
Electronically
Please send all e-mail submissions to: [email protected]
We are happy to receive submissions electronically, but they will only be reviewed if they meet all of our submission requirements above. In addition, if you are submitting electronically, please only submit files as a single attachment in Word or PDF format.
By Mail
Please send all mail submissions to:
New Society Publishers
Attn: Submissions
PO Box 189,
Gabriola Island, BC
V0R 1X0
Canada