Academic Book and Book Chapter Publication Support

Academic book publication support is for researchers who want to publish a monograph, an edited volume, a textbook or a chapter in someone else’s volume. We help you shape the proposal, check publishers, develop and edit your own manuscript, and prepare the files and permissions a publisher asks for. Publish With Scopus is a UK-registered consultancy in London. We are not a publisher, we do not sell publication slots, and we do not guarantee that any publisher will offer a contract. This page is about books; for articles, see our research paper publication consultancy page.

How a book differs from an article

An article is judged when the whole manuscript is submitted. A book is usually judged in stages. A commissioning editor reads a proposal first, often sends it to outside readers, and may ask for a sample chapter. A contract follows, then the manuscript, then a second round of review. The commissioning editor is also asking a commercial question: is there an audience for this book, and does it fit the publisher’s list? Many sound projects fail at the proposal stage because the proposal answers neither question.

What a proposal contains

• A short overview of the book’s argument and what is new in it
• The audience: who will read or assign it, and in what courses or fields
• Competing and comparable titles, with a fair statement of how yours differs
• A chapter outline with a paragraph on each chapter
• Length, number of figures, and a realistic delivery date
• Your credentials for the topic, with any earlier publications
• One or two sample chapters, often the introduction and a core chapter

An invented example: from thesis to monograph

Imagine a doctoral thesis in history with a literature review, a methods chapter and four case chapters arranged in the order the archives were visited. A publisher’s readers will not want a thesis with a new cover. A realistic plan could be:

1. Write the argument in two sentences, then reorder the cases to build that argument instead of following the research chronology.
2. Reduce the literature review to the debate the book joins, and move methods into a short note.
3. Rewrite the introduction for scholars outside the narrow subfield.
4. Write a new final chapter that draws the cases together, since theses often end by summarising.
5. Check the thesis’s repository terms and the publisher’s policy on prior availability, since both affect what you can reuse.

Compare this with a journal article drawn from the same thesis, which our thesis-to-paper guide covers.

Choosing a publisher with care

• Read the publisher’s list. Does it publish your subject, and have you seen similar books from it in the last few years?
• Find the commissioning editor for your subject and read what the publisher says about its review process.
• Ask how the proposal and the manuscript are reviewed, and by whom.
• Check fees. Some respected publishers ask for a book processing charge for an open access edition, and this is separate from paying to be published. Anyone who asks you to pay to have a book accepted is not offering a scholarly route.
• Ask about distribution, library sales, and whether the book will be available in the formats your readers use.

Unsolicited emails offering to publish your book or chapter within weeks deserve the same suspicion as journal offers. See predatory journal warning signs for the checks, which apply to book publishers too.

Chapters in edited volumes, and indexing

A call for chapters should name the volume editors, the publisher, the review process and the deadline. Contact the publisher directly to confirm that the project exists. Scopus includes some books and book series, but its coverage is selective, and a chapter in a book from a well-known publisher is not automatically in Scopus. Check the exact title or series in Scopus Sources, and read the entry again close to the date you need it. If your institution requires indexing, ask the research office what the rule says about books and chapters.

Contracts and permissions

Read the contract before you sign it. Look at the rights you assign, the royalty or fee terms, who pays for permissions and for an index, the open access terms, when rights revert if the book goes out of print, and what happens if you miss the delivery date. We are not lawyers and cannot advise on a contract. A professional author’s organisation, your research office or a solicitor can. Start a permissions log early, listing every figure, table and long quotation that came from another source, with the rights holder and the status of your request.

What our support includes, and what it does not

We review a proposal, help you tighten the argument and the chapter outline, build a shortlist of suitable publishers with checks on each, give developmental feedback on structure, edit the language, set up a style sheet and reference format, and prepare the manuscript to the publisher’s guidelines. After peer review, we can help you plan the response to readers’ reports.

We do not write a book for you to publish under your name, we do not offer self-publishing as an academic route, and we do not promise a contract, a review outcome, indexing or sales. The content, the argument and the permissions remain your responsibility. If we do not think a project is ready, we say so.

What to send us

Send the topic and working title, any draft chapters or outline, the thesis if the book comes from one, the publishers you have in mind, any call for chapters, and your deadline. We confirm the scope and the price before work begins.

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