Submit a Proposal

What to send, how to send it, and what happens after you do.

What to Send

We ask for the following.

1. The Proposal Itself (Four to Eight Pages)

• The argument. What the book claims, and why it matters. Write this for an intelligent scholar outside your subfield.
• The rationale. What gap the book fills and what it does that existing work does not.
• Sources and method. The research the book rests on: archives, fieldwork, data, corpora, cases.
• Readership. Who will read it, in which fields, and at what level.
• Comparable books. Three to six recent titles, with a sentence on how yours differs.
• The case for open access. Why open publication matters for this book in particular: the readers it reaches, the sources it opens up, the practitioners or communities who need it.
• Extent and schedule. Expected word count including notes and bibliography; number and type of illustrations, tables and figures; the date you can deliver a complete manuscript.
• Funding. Whether the work is funded and by whom, including grant numbers, and whether you have access to an open-access book fund. This does not affect the editorial decision (the Advisory Board does not see it), but it lets us tell you early how publication would be paid for.

2. A Table of Contents with Chapter Summaries

One paragraph per chapter, showing how the argument develops from one to the next. Reviewers use this more than any other part of the proposal.

3. One or Two Sample Chapters

Preferably including the introduction, or whatever chapter best shows how you write and argue at length.

4. A Short CV for Each Author or Editor

Two pages, including relevant publications and ORCID iD.

5. For Edited Volumes, Additionally

• A full contributor list with affiliations, and confirmation of who has agreed.
• An abstract for each chapter.
• A statement of the argument the volume makes as a whole, beyond the theme it shares.
• Your plan for keeping contributors to a schedule, which is the thing edited volumes fail on.

How to Send It

Use the Proposal Form →

Complete the proposal form, and email it as a single PDF, with sample chapters attached separately, to proposals@bassi.foundation, with the working title in the subject line. Every submission is acknowledged within one week.

Please do not submit the same proposal to us and to another press without telling us. Simultaneous submission is acceptable. Reviewers spend days on a report and are entitled to know the position.

What Happens Next

From submission to contract is typically four to six months; from delivery of the complete manuscript to publication, typically eight to ten months, including the second review, production and indexing. The stages are set out in full under peer review and editorial policy below.

If We Decline

A decline is a judgement on the proposal as it stands. Authors are welcome to return with a substantially revised proposal.

Peer Review and Editorial Policy

Independent expert review, a formal author response, and a recommendation from an Advisory Board that reads the reports. No title is published without the Board’s recommendation.

Peer review and a scholarly board are separate stages, and both must be cleared. This follows the model used by established university presses.

The Stages

1. Editorial assessmentAn editor reads the proposal and sample material for scholarly seriousness, fit with our list, and the case for open publication. Proposals that will not survive review are declined at this stage rather than sent out for review.
2. External peer reviewWe commission a minimum of two independent expert reviews for a straightforward monograph proposal, and more where a project is interdisciplinary, methodologically unusual, or contested. Reviewers are established scholars in the relevant field with no working relationship to the author. Review is single-anonymised by default. Reviewers know who you are and you do not know who they are. Authors may request a fully double-anonymised process instead, which we will accommodate wherever the material allows it. Reviewers are asked to assess the significance and originality of the argument; the command of sources, evidence and method; the structure and whether the book coheres; the quality of the writing; the accuracy of the account of existing scholarship; the realism of the stated readership; and whether they would recommend publication, revision, or neither.
3. Author responseYou receive the full reports, edited only to protect reviewer identity, and reply formally: what you accept, what you will change, and where you disagree and why. A reasoned disagreement is a perfectly good response and carries weight with the Board.
4. Further review where neededWhere the revisions proposed are substantial, we run one or more further rounds of review and feedback, returning to the original reviewers or commissioning new ones as the case requires. How many rounds a proposal needs varies title by title; we do not force a project through a fixed number of stages.
5. Advisory Board recommendationOnce review is satisfactorily complete, the proposal goes to the Advisory Board with the full reports and your response. Board members, representing a range of disciplines, further review the proposed title to assess its quality and its suitability for publication, and recommend it or decline it. The Board meets quarterly. Members declare and recuse themselves from any interest.
6. ContractOn a recommendation to publish, we offer a contract setting out the delivery date, extent, licence, formats and the book processing charge.
7. Review of the complete manuscriptThe finished manuscript is reviewed again on delivery, normally by at least one of the original reviewers, against the proposal that was approved and the revisions that were promised. Acceptance is formal and it happens here, not at contract. Where the manuscript has not delivered what was approved, we ask for further work.
8. Final approval and productionThe Editorial Director confirms acceptance and the book enters production.

How We Choose Reviewers

Reviewers are selected by the editor for subject expertise and independence, drawing on the Advisory Board's suggestions, the field's published record and, where authors propose names, those suggestions, which we consider but are not bound by. We do not use reviewers who have co-authored or collaborated with an author in the previous five years, who are at the same institution, who supervised or examined the author, or who have any personal or financial interest in the outcome.

We make a deliberate effort to commission reviewers beyond the small circle of the usual names, including scholars outside Europe and North America and outside the most senior ranks. Narrow reviewer pools produce narrow lists.

Authors may ask us to exclude named individuals, with brief reasons. We honour reasonable exclusion requests without argument.

Confidentiality

Proposals and manuscripts are confidential. Reviewers are instructed that the material is unpublished work, that it may not be shared, cited, circulated, or used in their own research, and that it may not be entered into any generative AI system or other third-party service. Reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, before or after publication, unless a reviewer asks to be named.

Reviewers and Generative AI

Reviewers may not upload any part of a proposal or manuscript to a generative AI tool, and may not use one to produce their report. Uploading unpublished work to a third-party service is a breach of confidentiality regardless of what the tool then does with it. Our expectations of authors are set out in our ethics policy.

Recognition

Reviewing a book proposal takes several days. We pay an honorarium for every commissioned report, and a further honorarium for full manuscript review. Reviewers who wish to be acknowledged may be named in the book; the default is anonymity.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions rest with the Editorial Director and the Advisory Board. Our trustees have no role in them. Funders of individual titles, whether research councils, charities or institutions, have no role in review, no sight of reports, and no influence on whether a book is published or what it says. An author's ability to pay the book processing charge is not known to the Advisory Board and plays no part in any decision.

Post-Publication

Review does not end at publication. Substantive errors are corrected and the correction recorded; serious problems lead to an expression of concern or retraction. Our procedures follow COPE guidance and are set out in full in our publishing ethics policy.

Author Guidelines and Production

How to prepare a manuscript, what happens to it once you deliver, and what you can expect from us at each stage.

A specimen volume showing the page design of our typeset editions and of the printed book is available to download.

Download the Specimen (PDF) →

Three cover treatments for the specimen volume are set out in a second file: a plate centred on the Press’s parchment, a flat crimson field, and a full-bleed plate under a type panel. They are examples rather than a house template, and the set is not exhaustive. Every book is given its own cover.

The cover treatments (PDF) →

Preparing Your Manuscript

Extent

Monographs are normally 70,000–120,000 words including notes and bibliography; long-form essays 30,000–60,000. Your contract will specify an agreed extent. Tell us early if you are going to exceed it substantially; it affects the schedule. The charge does not change.

Format

• Word (.docx) or LaTeX. Please do not send a PDF as the working file.
• Use Word's built-in heading styles rather than manual formatting. The headings become the navigation structure in the EPUB and HTML editions, which screen readers depend on.
• One file for the whole book, or one file per chapter, consistently.
• Double-spaced, numbered pages, notes as footnotes or endnotes generated by the software rather than typed by hand.

References

Chicago (notes and bibliography) is our default; author–date, MHRA, OSCOLA and discipline-standard styles are all acceptable if applied consistently. Use reference-management software. Include DOIs for all cited works that have them.

Illustrations, Tables and Figures

• Supply images as separate files: TIFF or PNG at 300 dpi minimum for photographs; vector formats for line art and diagrams.
• Number them, and mark their approximate position in the text.
• Supply a caption list and a credit line for each item.
• Write alternative text for every image: a description of what a reader who cannot see it needs to know. You are better placed to write this than anyone else. We will help, but we cannot invent what the image is doing in your argument.
• Tables as editable text, never as pictures of tables.

Permissions: Start Early

Data and Code

Where your argument rests on data or code, deposit it in an appropriate repository under an open licence and cite it by DOI in the text. Where no subject repository is suitable, we will host it alongside the book.

Generative AI

Disclose any use of generative AI in the preparation of the manuscript, as set out in our ethics policy. AI systems cannot be authors. You are responsible for everything in your book, including anything a tool produced.

Production

Production takes eight to ten months from acceptance of the complete manuscript, including the second review. You will have a named production editor throughout.

1. Manuscript review and acceptanceThe complete manuscript is reviewed against the approved proposal. Formal acceptance follows.
2. Substantive copy-editingA professional copy-editor works on the text for sense, consistency, accuracy of references and clarity. All changes are subject to authorial approval.
3. Typesetting and proofsYou receive first proofs for correction. Please confine changes at proof to genuine errors. Rewriting at proof stage delays publication.
4. IndexingA professional indexer prepares the index at our cost, working from the proofs and in consultation with you. You may prepare your own index if you prefer.
5. Cover and metadataWe commission the cover and agree it with you. Final metadata (keywords, subject classifications, abstracts at book and chapter level, ORCID iDs, funder identifiers) is assembled and registered.
6. PublicationThe book appears in PDF, EPUB and HTML with DOIs registered at book and chapter level, is deposited with DOAB, OAPEN and our preservation archives, is supplied to library discovery services, and goes on sale as a paperback.

Formats

What We Ask of You

• Deliver on the agreed date, or tell us well before it that you cannot.
• Deliver a complete manuscript, including notes, bibliography, captions, alt text, permissions correspondence and any front matter.
• Turn proofs around within three weeks.
• Tell us about anything that has changed: a new post, a new funder, a co-author, a competing book announced since your proposal.

Author Copies and Royalties

Authors receive complimentary copies and a permanent discount on further copies. Because the book is free to read and print is sold at cost, royalties are not paid on open-access titles.