|
|
| Home | Books | Articles | Calendar | Authors | Ordering | Links | Contact us |
Perspectives Press’ Writer’s Guidelines
Perspectives Press, Inc. is a small publisher focusing narrowly on infertility issues and alternatives, and on adoption and closely related child welfare issues such as interim (foster) care or psychological services. Our purpose is to promote understanding of these issues and to educate and sensitize those personally experiencing these life situations, professionals who work with such clients, and the public at large. We invite authors whose philosophy concerning these issues agrees with ours to follow our process for submitting manuscripts for consideration, beginning with a careful examination of the many pages on our web site, reading a few of our books, and then by writing a query letter. All communications should contain a stamped, self addressed envelope (if materials are to be returned) or a viable, frequently checked email address. Please refrain from querying by telephone! OUR POINT OF VIEW Regarding infertility and its alternatives, Perspectives Press, Inc. takes the position that we live in the best and worst of times to be infertile. Though research daily provides new treatment options, it has become increasingly difficult for couples to know when to stop treatment, and alternatives are becoming more and more complex: infant adoption is a shrinking alternative, surrogate parenting is in legal limbo , donor insemination’s traditional secrecy is now seriously questioned, some technical alternatives provide for as many as five "parents" for a single child, and rising costs of testing and treatment and family building alternatives stifle the dreams of many families. Additionally, the most rapidly growing cause of infertility is the natural effects of aging on a population of women who appear to have waited too long to try to become pregnant. We strongly believe that future generations need more realistic information about balancing professional and personal goals, preserving and using their fertility, and making decisions in a milieu of understanding and accepting the future consequences of all of our life decisions. We believe in and actively promote adoption as a positive option for family planning and family building. We do not accept the philosophy that adoption should be eliminated, nor are we accepting of the absolutist idea that any one form of adoption is the only appropriate approach for all who live it. We believe that adoption is a service designed first to benefit children, not adults, and that every adoption should be child-centered. To that end we believe that it is incumbent upon professionals working in this arena to treat expectant parents, birthfamilies and prospective adoptors with respect and sensitivity and with objective regard for their needs, which will vary widely, as each set of birthparents and each set of adoptors is unique. We believe that children deserve the permanency of family as quickly as possible if birthfamily cannot be preserved. We believe that any societal institution, including adoption, must meet the needs of a current society, and to that end we are open to discussion and debate of a variety of approaches to and issues in adoption. Perspectives works actively to promote understanding among adoptees, adoptive parents, and birthparents. We feel that it is important that manuscripts respect the variety of feelings of and the decisions made by those who are members of the adoption triad and that they be written using realistic and neutral adoption language. OUR EDITORIAL POLICIES After twenty-five years in business, we know our own subject matter and its audience very well, but we also know our limitations! We are not a general publisher. Please do not ask us to consider stretching our focus beyond infertility- or adoption/fostering-related issues or to change our stated decisions about what topics and genres we will consider as they are described below! We are not an academic publisher and are disinclined toward research-oriented materials, though we are favorable toward research-based perspectives presented in consumer style. Our audiences are primarily consumers and clinical professionals. We insist that the books we publish be written in an open, engaging, and user-friendly style, free of jargon. Perspectives Press titles are never duplicative. We seek out and publish materials that are currently unavailable through other sources. We will not consider manuscripts that seriously overlap or compete with titles already on our list. SUBMISSIONS We encourage authors to follow our submission process carefully for best results. That process begins with a query letter as described below. When we respond to a query letter about a manuscript in which we are interested, we schedule a reading for a specific month. This allows us to reply to the author in a timely manner–usually within a month to six weeks. Manuscripts which arrive here unexpectedly will be returned if they are outside our genre, and, if in our genre, may sit unresponded to for many weeks or months until a hole appears in the reading schedule. Please do NOT query by telephone! We also request that you NOT use registered, certified or other signature-required mail to send a manuscript to our post office box address. This necessitates a long and irritating wait in a post office line during "rush hour" or a trip back later in the day! If you would like notification of the arrival of your packet, we are indeed happy to accommodate. Simply supply an email address or enclose a stamped, self addressed postcard, which will be filled out and returned to you the day we open your scheduled package. Manuscripts outside our specific field are returned unread if SASE is supplied; without SASE, they are discarded. Manuscripts in our field which arrive unannounced and unscheduled may languish for weeks or months until a hole appears in our reading schedule. OUR AUTHORS While we do consider manuscripts from writers who are not personally or professionally involved in our field, we are more inclined to accept a manuscript submitted by an infertile person, an adoptee, a birthparent, an adoptive parent, or a professional working with these clients. Authors are oriented before a contract is signed so that they have realistic expectations about the realities and complexities of marketing in our niche. We expect our authors to be closely involved in an ongoing way in their own title’s promotion and in the full line of books from Perspectives Press, seeking opportunities to speak and write on the issue, distributing our catalog broadly, etc. as long as their book is in print! BOOKS FOR ADULTS Manuscripts for adults must be book length–a minimum of 40,000 words. We will not consider pamphlets or singly submitted essays, short stories, or poems. We do not publish novels or other adult fiction. We are a secular publisher and do not publish books rooted in a specific religious view. Because in general personal narrative, autobiographical, and journal-style books in this field have not sold well (no matter what size the publisher) we are not accepting "our infertility experience" or "how we got our child" or "the story of my search" manuscripts–whether packaged as one person’s story or anthologized. At the same time books in which brief personal stories are included o to provide anecdotal color in a manuscript whose larger purpose is to offer decision-making materials or advice on developing coping skills is very much to our liking, as you will see from having read nearly any Perspectives title for adults! What we do want to see is non-fiction in the form of decision-making materials, books dealing with issue-related parenting concerns, special programming or training manuals. Currently, among the gaps in the adult literature in our field which we would like to see filled are books on navigating birthparenthood over a lifetime, managing open adoption relationships, embryo adoption for both genetic and adoptive parents. There remain almost no materials by or for men touched by infertility or adoption. Querying: After first carefully exploring our web site in order to get a sense of the kinds of books that have appealed to us for publication, and reading parts of several of them, writers of adult materials should, when they have a manuscript complete and ready for review, schedule a reading by querying first (via snail-mail) with a proposal packet. Your proposal should fully describe your topic and should include an outline and/or a table of contents. Tell us about your own writing history and your qualifications for writing this particular book. We will need to know the approximate number of words in your manuscript as well as the number of typed, double-spaced pagest. We expect those who write in this field to be familiar with the literature already being marketed.Your query should mention similarly-themed books both in and recently of print and discuss how your book would differ from and be superior to them. Also include a careful description of your book’s potential audience, including a researched estimate of the realistic size of that audience and a marketing proposal discussing how you think your audience could best be located and reached out to. If we are interested in your concept we will give you a date for sending the full manuscript (typed, double spaced, on standard size paper, with margins at least one inch all around, SASE for return) for a scheduled reading. We will respond within two months of the scheduled reading date. BOOKS FOR CHILDREN Our children’s book program is smaller than our publishing program for adults because children’s books, proportionate to cover pricing which is acceptable in the marketplace, are much more expensive to produce than are books for adults. Currently we see few glaring gaps in the children’s market in our field. and we will not be accepting general queries or scheduling readings of children’s manuscripts in future unless those manuscripts come accompanied by grant money to assist in their development costs. For books accompanied by grant support, the following guidelines will apply: Our children’s books are primarily fiction and non-fiction manuscripts appropriate as picture books for preschoolers and early elementary aged youngsters. We will read non-fiction, but not fiction, for middle schoolers and young adults. We publish no early readers, or chapter books (middle grade and young adult [YA]) fiction at all. Unless you are an author/illustrator submitting your own art work, we would prefer that you NOT find your own illustrator before submitting your manuscript. For manufacturing reasons, picture books are standardly 32 pages long, of which the first two to four pages and the last two pages are reserved for publisher’s copy. Keep page count in mind as you visualize your story in printed, illustrated pages. We encourage writers to carefully examine materials that are already available for children about the issues which we address and to avoid developing materials which compete with or overlap well regarded books already in print from any publisher. Authors should familiarize themselves with Piagetan theories about children’s cognitive development before trying to write for a particular audience. We see far too many manuscripts which really deal with parents’ issues rather than childrens’ issues. We ask you to recall that because this market is narrow, it is important to make such materials as inclusive as possible. We are not likely to accept, for example, international adoption stories which are single-country-specific; instead consider regionalizing your book. Make stories racially and ethnically inclusive, remember that some adoptees join their families as infants and some at an older age, keep in mind that not all adoptive parents adopt for reasons of infertility and that many are single parents, and speak respectfully of birthparents. Writers of children’s picture books, too, should query first before submitting.Your snail-mailed (not emailed) submission packet should include your writing resume and pertinent information about your personal or professional connections to the field about which you are writing. It should include information which indicates that you have familiarized yourself thoroughly enough with available materials in the field to understand how and why your book fills a heretofore empty niche and that you understand our new grant policy for children’s books. Include SASE or an email address for the reply. We will respond within one month. I look forward to hearing from thoughtful, respectful, well-informed authors! Patricia Irwin Johnston, publisher |