Tips for Prospective Authors

1. Write a Generous Outline
   Your book’s outline tells us about the depth in which you plan to treat your subject; more than any other element of your proposal, it helps us imagine the book you intend to write. If we like your proposal, we will send it for a mutually anonymous peer review by an expert in the field. Among the reviewer’s primary tasks will be to identify ideas that might be missing from your proposal; this assessment is usually based largely on a proposal’s outline. For those reasons, it is vital that you include a good amount of detail here.


2. Go Beyond Describing How You Did It
   Some prospective authors limit themselves to discussing ideas that worked at their libraries. That approach may make for a fine journal article, but a full-length book should have a broader, more generous appeal. Examples drawn from your own experience can provide wonderful illustrations for the more generally applicable content in your book…but they should not form the bulk of your manuscript.


3. Find an Appropriate Tone of Voice
   Neal-Schuman publishes serious tools for busy professionals, and the tone of your writing should reflect this. If you are naturally given to a light, casual style of writing, consider a cooler, more formal tone for your proposal: a less chatty tone will reassure readers. If you are accustomed to writing highly academic prose, consider relaxing a bit and adopting a more lively tone: a more ingratiating style is appropriate to Neal-Schuman's core audience of practicing information professionals.


4. Look at Existing Neal-Schuman Publications
   Our web site lists all current and forthcoming Neal-Schuman books, with complete front matter provided for recent titles. Reviewing the results of subject or keyword searches of our site will help you decide how your proposal fits in with the rest of our list, and reading prefaces and tables of contents from existing books will inform your understanding of the sorts of books we publish.


5. Have Fun!