KEY TO BOOK PUBLISHER LISTINGS

The information in this section of the Guidebook was gathered during March through June 1986, from questionnaires sent to book publishers' philosophy editors, from information contained in publishers' guidelines and from independent reviews prepared by the Guidebook's contributing editors. Reviewers examined each publisher's catalog of philosophy books and a sample of the actual books. Each publisher that returned a questionnaire is listed, but several editors returned only partially completed questionnaires. To facilitate comparison, publishers are listed in alphabetical order in a standard format. Below are some comments and clarifications of terms used.

• Address: In a few cases, a publisher has more than one location; the address listed is one to which philosophy manuscripts may be sent.
• Editor: name of the editor handling philosophy books. Always submit a manuscript to a specific editor.
• Kinds of books: following the name of the editor, a list of kinds of philosophy books the publisher has already published, as checked off on the questionnaire. Unless the listing contains information to the contrary, you can presume that the publisher is not receptive to any category not listed.
• In print: how many clothbound and paperback philosophy books publisher presently has in print.
• Publishes x per year: i.e., x philosophy books.
• Representative books: sample titles and authors listed by the philosophy editor. If more than five books were listed on the questionnaire, we list only the first five. We apologize for any misspellings of authors' names or for inexact book titles; many questionnaires were handwritten and hard to decipher.
• Most wants: Sometimes the answer to this question was an unhelpful generalization, like "good books," but sometimes editors revealed the direction in which they would like to expand their offerings.
• Don't send: don't!
• Preferred method of contact: of initial contact. Sometimes editors listed several alternatives.
• Submit: what publisher requires, in addition to material listed in "preferred method of contact," in order to give full consideration to a submission.
• Guidelines available: If this phrase appears in the listing, you can request a publisher's specific guidelines for manuscript preparation. Sending for and following the guidelines before submitting a manuscript gives you a slight edge; you come across as more of a professional. Few publishers will knowingly take on an uncooperative author.
• Simultaneous, dot-matrix, electronic submissions: whether or not the publisher accepts these sorts of submissions. Even if a publisher says dot-matrix printouts are acceptable, a letter-quality printout will always make a better impression. For electronic submissions, you will want to check to see what sort of system (disk, tape, etc.) the publisher uses; most houses need "hard copy" (a printout) along with the disk or tape. If you plan to write or have written your book on computer, you should say so in your cover letter; more and more, publishers are using money-saving, mistake-reducing programs that convert the author's final draft on disk directly to typeset copy.
• Receives x philosophy submissions a month: obviously, an estimate.
• Reply time: how long it typically takes for the editor to respond to a submission.
• Advance contracts: whether or not a publisher can offer a contract based on preliminary material, i.e., less than the completed manuscript. Although advance contracts generally contain a clause that the final version of the manuscript must be deemed acceptable, or the contract is void, they still represent an advantage over having to finish your book without knowing that any publisher will definitely publish it.
• Advances: whether or not a publisher ever offers the author a sum of money for a book before the book begins to sell; "advance" is short for "advance against royalties." These sums are deducted from the money that the book eventually earns. Few university presses can offer advances, and if they can, the advances are usually on the small side. But usually it's up to the author to ask for an advance; your case will be stronger if you're already a famous author or already have a good sales record, if you will incur heavy expenses in preparing a book that will probably eventually earn money or if a competing publisher is also interested in your book.
• Royalty rate: the standard royalty rate or range of rates. Many publishers indicated that this varies. Don't assume that if a standard royalty rate is printed in a firm's standard contract, that this is inflexible. If you are in a good bargaining position, most standard clauses can be xxx'd out of a contract or changed.
• Book price: the range in price of the firm's philosophy books.
• Time to publication: after receipt of the final manuscript.
• Advertising: where or how a publisher typically advertises new books.
• Complimentary copies: how many free copies of their book authors usually receive.
• Review copies: how many complimentary copies of a book a publisher typically sends out to journals, magazines or instructors for review.
• Books set in type: Our intention was to find out whether publishers typeset all their books or whether they ever use other methods to print books, such as printing from camera-ready copy supplied by the author (as in the case of this Guidebook). However, many answers were ambiguous or confusing; for instance, some editors replied that all their books were set in type and that they also sometimes print from camera-ready copy supplied by the author. They may have meant that they print diagrams and such from the author's camera-ready copy, but in the absence of such clarifications, we've omitted seemingly inconsistent replies to this question.
• Acid-free paper: Librarians and many book lovers prefer books printed on paper of a quality to last at least 50 years.
• Cloth/paper editions: whether or not the publisher ever releases cloth (hardback) and paper (paperback) editions simultaneously, and in the case of books originally released only in cloth, the circumstances under which the publisher will release a paper edition.
• Subsidies: We asked if publishers ever sought subsidies to cover the anticipated gap between the cost of publishing some books and expected revenues from the book, and if so, under what circumstances. If this item is omitted, either the answer was "no" or the question was left blank.
• Important factors in evaluating a book proposal: Editors rated various factors from 1 to 5 on our questionnaire.
• Review process: as described by the philosophy editor.
• Reviewer's comments: followed by initials of the reviewer.

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