Submissions
Please note: Submissions are now closed.
Here at Matthew James, and through all our imprints, we do things slightly differently. As we have always been a small family business we have always accepted unsolicited manuscripts and we are always happy to hear from new and aspiring authors. We like working closely with our authors and prefer to work on a more personal level with each individual that publishes with us. Unfortunately, because we are a small team, we can only publish a limited number of titles per year and so we need to be quite picky.
To increase the likelihood of us publishing your work there are a few points to consider:
Although we will look at all submissions carefully, no matter the genre, we specialise in certain areas.
Exciting fiction from unique perspectives
Local and specialist interest non-fiction
Religious Education and theology (through Rejoice Publications)
Children’s picture books (through Tiny Tree Children’s Books)
Does your work have a well-developed concept that will connect with readers?
How does your book fit in with the type of material we publish?
Why would a reader be interested in your book?
Why would someone choose your book over other titles published on the same material or in the same are?
Although we do have our marketing department we rely heavily on you, the author, to help us in any marketing. Any author we publish needs to know their market well and be willing and able to assist us in marketing their work.
When submitting your work please let us know how you feel a reader would become aware of your book and provide us with any ideas you have on how the work could be promoted.
Please send all proposals to:
submissions@matthewjamespublishing.com
What do I need to include?
A covering letter.
A synopsis summarising the book and a chapter breakdown.
An author biography, why you have chosen to write this book, and any relevant experience, qualification etc., as well as any details about your online and social media profile (if you have one). We want to know as much as we can about you.
A sample of the work digitally, enough for us to make an initial judgement (e.g. 3 Chapters), via email, file transfer or on CD.
Only send us one proposal at a time please, the process breaks down when we need to focus on too many ideas at once.
Please note: It will usually take us between 4 and 6 weeks to respond officially to a submission, but can sometimes take much less. We will always let you know when we receive your submission.
REJECTIONS
Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that we will take on your book. This is not usually a reflection on the quality of the writing or the proposal. As we can only publish a small number of titles per year we need to ensure that there is a place within the market for the title. If we do reject your work then we will try and give you as much of an explanation as possible and hopefully help you to develop the work for resubmitting, with us or elsewhere.
PERMISSIONS
We do not gather permissions for third party materials. It is the author’s responsibility to gather all necessary permission for material that falls outside the remit of ‘fair dealing’ or ‘fair use’. For information on the interpretation of fair dealing in UK law, please consult the Society of Authors website. Quotations of any length from poems, letters, lyrics and recipes, artwork and images [including photographs] maps and line drawings all require written permission. Copies of permissions granted must be submitted to us before we will consider publication.
If you have any ideas, or specific images in mind for the cover of your book, or any internal pages then please note that a high proportion of images found on internet searches are unlicensed and cannot be used.
We require high-resolution images, licensed for commercial use (as opposed to editorial use), with model releases where appropriate. Your best bet is to gather material from stock photo websites such as iStock, Shutterstock, Corbis and Getty images. There is no need for you to purchase an image for your book before submitting it to us, simply download a ‘comping image’ for illustration purposes or send us a link to the file you think will be appropriate.