From Manuscript to Market

The acquisitions editor for your area of specialization is your first point of contact if you have a proposal for a book. She or he will look at the proposal and make an initial decision as to whether your book fits in their publication program or that of another editor at Brill. We always endeavor to find the best place for your book, and if we believe that this is not for Brill or one of our imprints we will let you know immediately. If the acquisitions editor thinks it might be a good fit, your proposal will then usually be given to the assistant editor who will take care of it and will be your most important point of contact from this point onwards. They will send the proposal to the editorial board of one of our book series, who will give their opinion on the proposal and either decline it or suggest a possible reader for the manuscript.

When a complete and final manuscript is ready, it will be sent for peer review to one or two readers depending on the series.

Once you have finished the manuscript, acquired and received the appropriate permissions for all illustrative materials (if any), and have sent everything to the acquisitions editor, the production process will begin. Brill works with a large team of in-house production editors who will take your manuscript through the various stages of production. They will send it off for typesetting and composition, send you the proofs when they are ready, discuss with you a timeline for return of Proofs and Index, order CiP data from the Library of Congress, have a cover designed, check that corrections have been incorporated properly and send the work for printing and  binding. You will usually deal with only one production editor during the production process of your book.

In the meantime, marketing will have started promoting your book: on the basis of information provided by the author in the Author Questionnaire, such as the texts for the cover, the catalogues and the website, promotion will get underway months before  the book will be available in print. The first port of call is our book trade partners who will use the information supplied by us through data feeds and Forthcoming Publications, to inform their customers of the book. Information is automatically fed to Amazon, and of course our own website. We include the book in our catalogues, and closer to publication time, in our e-bulletins. Our marketing department will produce flyers that you as the author will be able to use to promote your work among your peers. Acquisitions Editors and marketing and sales staff will further promote your book at conferences and book fairs that they attend.