Once you have submitted your proposal
Once you have submitted your proposal, the series editors will, in the first instance, offer their own preliminary assessment and/or pass it on to one of the members of the Lancaster advisory board for specialist advice.
The proposal will then be discussed at one of the series meetings and a decision will be made on whether or not to forward it to the commissioning editor at Routledge for consideration. Alternatively, you might be asked for some improvements to the proposals before it can be sent to Routledge. (This might ultimately help to speed up the process.)
The commissioning editor at Routledge will then assess the market potential of the volume and decide whether or not it is a suitable title for their list. If the response is favourable, the proposal will be sent to specialist readers. These readers might be chosen from the international advisory board for the series (see below), but their selection is entirely at the discretion of the publisher.
Once Routledge has received readers' reports, the commissioning editor will pass them to us, as Series Editors, and we will let you know if Routledge wishes to proceed with a contract or not, or whether they require a further re-write and re-assessment of the proposal. Without wishing to dishearten authors before they start, it should be pointed out that re-writes are now very much the 'norm' and a large number of our (successful) proposals have been through several re-writes.
Once Routledge is happy with the details of your proposal, a contract will be drawn up for you to sign. All contracts are negotiated individually between the author and publisher; the series editors are not involved in this part of the process.
Production and delivery
When you are writing and revising your volume, you are invited to get in touch with the Series Editors whenever you require advice or feedback. On signing your contract, Routledge should provide you with a 'style sheet' which you must follow.
When your volume is complete, please submit two copies to the commissioning editor at Routledge. She will then arrange for these to be sent out to Readers and to us as Series Editors. Routledge will then send the external Readers' reports to us, and we will get back to you with any changes we feel need to be made. This is the moment we will seek to secure a date for the final submission of the revised typescript.
Two copies of the revised typescript should be returned to Routledge, one of which will be sent to us as Series Editors. If we approve the changes that have been made, the book will then be put into production and you will be appointed a 'production editor' who will guide you through copy-editing, proofing, production of the index etc. We would normally expect a book to be published within 9-12 months of the submission of the final typescript, but please note that this depends upon the completeness of the 'copy'. If there are substantial numbers of missing references and/or unsought 'permissions' (for illustrations etc.), publication may be seriously delayed.
A few months prior to publication we, as Series Editors, will also be required to compose a brief 'Preface' to your volume, situating it within the series and relating it to relevant contemporary debates. We will endeavour to consult with you about the content of this Preface and will also be happy to help in the negotiations with Routledge about the cover design and other matters.
| Current Students | News & Events | Contact Us |