Tamesis Books Author Guidelines

This downloadable guide aims to help you to prepare your text for the press and to describe the various stages in the publication process.

Our house style-sheetinformation on indexing, and additional notes on preparing an edited collection are available as separate guides on our website.

Preparing Your Text For Press

The presentation of the material is the critical first stage in the successful production of the book, and your assistance in following this guide will enable us to deal with your book as quickly and efficiently as possible. Many production problems and delays are caused by badly prepared text, incomplete notes and references, artwork which is poorly presented or of an insufficiently high quality for reproduction, and missing permissions. An inadequately prepared typescript may be returned to you for attention, as may those which are over the contracted length. Conversely, material that is well-prepared avoids problems at a later stage.

We are aware that each title presents its own particular demands, and if you have any detailed queries which are not covered in this guide, please contact us.

Please ensure that you are available after submission of the final manuscript to deal with any queries: you will need to respond quickly so as not to delay the production process.

We expect that the text as presented to us is the final version. All corrections and improvements to style and construction must be made before the manuscript is submitted, as once your book is set, it is not possible to correct anything beyond typesetters’ errors or actual mistakes; if corrections at page-proof stage are excessive and the additional typesetting costs incurred are more than 10% of the original bill, we may have to pass this charge on.

Production Process

We normally allow a period of ten or eleven months from receipt of final manuscript to finished book; we can occasionally rework the production schedule to fit in with a particular deadline, but ONLY IF PRIOR NOTIFICATION IS GIVEN, and we cannot in any case guarantee to bring any book out by a particular date.

When the material for the book is delivered, we make a preliminary check to see that everything is complete, including any illustrations. We copy electronic files, determine the level of copy-editing required, and finalise a detailed costing and budget. The details of the book are also entered on our website.

The material then goes to a freelance copy-editor; we usually receive the copy-edited manuscript back in house within three months after its first arrival. Major copy-editorial queries will be referred back to you at this stage; minor queries will be left to page-proof stage.

The book is now ready for typesetting. This process can take anything between three weeks and two months, depending upon the level of complexity of the text. Once the book has been set, we will send a PDF copy of the proofs to you for checking and dealing with any queries raised by the copy-editor and for use in compiling the index; you will normally be allowed three to four weeks for this work. Copy-editorial queries which have not yet been resolved will appear as a separate list. They must be dealt with before the proofs are returned and should be marked on the proofs as corrections

Corrections should be entered on the proofs legibly and in such a way that they relate clearly to the text which is being amended. It is important that the typesetter can see exactly what is required; otherwise new errors may be introduced.

Proof corrections must be limited to mistakes and typos, and resolving the outstanding copy- editing queries. Rewriting, however minor, cannot be accommodated at this stage, and, as stated before, we may have to impose a charge if the level of proof correction is too heavy.

Contributors to edited collections will be asked to return their corrected proofs to the collection’s editor for collation. The editor will liaise with our Production department over any queries.

On receipt of corrected proofs and index, we will make the amendments and set the index, which we will then send to you for checking. We may also need to send you revised versions of pages where text may have moved significantly, as this may have an impact on pagination and therefore on indexing.

Once the index has been corrected and returned, we prepare the final version of the book.

When the final version is ready, a PDF or camera-ready copy will be sent to the printer and binder. Your copies of the book will be dispatched to you as a priority as soon as our warehouse receives bulk stock.

Contact Details

Please note that your in-house contact will change as the book goes through the production process. Before the book goes to copy-editing, your contact should be with the commissioning editor; or you may contact the editorial department here at [email protected].

Once the book goes to copy-editing and subsequently to proofs, your contact will be [email protected]

For royalty enquiries, please contact [email protected].

For despatch of free copies and invoicing of extra copies, please contact [email protected].

For promotion and publicity questions, please contact the Marketing department.