Submitting your proposal
Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited is always delighted to hear from new and established authors and editors. We will assess your ideas for a book in a thorough, timely and constructive manner.
We publish high quality books for the academic and professional markets, and therefore produce both research monographs and more pragmatic books. The former tend to be relatively long works, at around 50,000 words or so, and the latter generally comprise 80,000+ words.
The books can either be a single author work or an edited, multi-authored collection. We do not publish first year undergraduate textbooks.
We will consider the publication of conference/seminar proceedings (however, given the relatively restricted market for conference proceedings, we would normally require a bulk sale of the proceedings to the organiser of the event).
How to submit a book proposal
In order to submit a book proposal, we ask that a potential author completes one of our New Book Proposal forms.
The New Book Proposal forms are available in a Microsoft Word file: simply click on the link below to open the file.
Click here to download the Microsoft Word document (61KB). 
Please send us the completed New Book Proposal form in Microsoft Word (rather than PDF) format and email it to: g.jones@biohealthcarepublishing.com
If you have any sample chapters and a copy of your resume/curriculum vitae, please also send this material to us with your completed New Book Proposal form.
Naturally, if you would like to discuss your ideas for a book before submitting your New Book Proposal form, please do not hesitate to contact us:
| Dr Glyn Jones Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited Hexagon House Avenue 4 Station Lane Witney Oxford OX28 4BN England |
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| Email: | g.jones@biohealthcarepublishing.com |
| Tel: | +44 (0) 1865 598888 |
| Fax: | +44 (0) 1865 884448 |
If you have an idea for a book, it is a good idea to contact us as early us as possible so that we can give you our feedback.
Key issues
When completing the New Book Proposal form, there are several important points to bear in mind:
- Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited publishes books for the international market. It is therefore very important to ensure that your book appeals to as wide an international market as possible, and not just the country in which you are based.
- For a publisher, the objective is to publish books that appeal to as large a market as possible. An author should have a similar objective – there is, after all, no point in spending time and effort in writing a book that few people will want to read. Therefore, when you are preparing the New Book Proposal form, please always ensure that the content of the book is as market-led as possible.
- The proposed list of contents for a book is an important point that we take in to account when assessing new proposals. Therefore, please be as detailed as possible in the information you provide on the form for the list of contents. We realise, of course, that if your book proposal is accepted and you start work on the manuscript, the contents of the book are likely to change (this is particularly so for multi-authored works).
- On the New Book Proposal form we ask you to provide the names and addresses for three potential reviewers of your proposal. We may use one or more of these reviewers, in addition to our own independent panel of reviewers. All feedback will be fed back to you (in an anonymous format.)
- Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited is sometimes asked if we accept proposals where some of the material has been published elsewhere: such as in an academic journal, an institutional repository or on an author’s website. Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited endeavours to be flexible in taking this into consideration but we do, of course, need to take commercial issues in to consideration.
- We are also asked if we accept book proposals based on an author’s DPhil/PhD thesis. The short answer to this is: yes, we do, but an author needs to bear in mind that it does take some work to convert an academic thesis in to a work which appeals to a broad international market. We would like to see a copy of any reports on the thesis by your internal/external examiner.
After submission of your New Book Proposal form
We normally send all new book proposals out for peer review to two or sometimes three independent reviewers. It is important to note that this process can sometimes be a little slow as we are entirely dependent upon the reviewers considering the proposal in a timely manner. We will, of course, endeavour to ensure that this process proceeds as rapidly as possible.
Our reviewers are asked to consider, amongst other issues, the organisation and content of the book, the competition and the market.
We try to complete this stage of the process within four to six weeks, depending upon the speed of response of the reviewers.
Once all of the reviews have been sent back to Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited, anonymous summaries are sent to the author for consideration.
After an author has responded to the reviewers’ comments, we would consider the book proposal at our next Publications Committee meeting, which are held every two weeks. The book proposal is considered in terms of (1) the reviewers' comments, (2) Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited’s perceived view of the potential market for the book and (3) how the book fits in to our list of titles.
If the book proposal is accepted, we will inform you of this in writing and send you a copy of our standard publishing agreement, which will need to be exchanged between the author/editor and Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited.
Our reviewers are asked to consider, amongst other issues, the organisation and content of the book, the competition and the market.
We try to complete this stage of the process within four to six weeks, depending upon the speed of response of the reviewers.
Once all of the reviews have been sent back to Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited, anonymous summaries are sent to the author for consideration.
After an author has responded to the reviewers’ comments, we would consider the book proposal at our next Publications Committee meeting, which are held every two weeks. The book proposal is considered in terms of (1) the reviewers' comments, (2) Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited’s perceived view of the potential market for the book and (3) how the book fits in to our list of titles.
If the book proposal is accepted, we will inform you of this in writing and send you a copy of our standard publishing agreement, which will need to be exchanged between the author/editor and Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited.
Why publish with Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited?
- Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited is committed to producing books of the highest possible standard that appeal to academics and professionals worldwide. This is the core philosophy of our publishing programme. We do not - and will not - compromise on this key issue.
We pride ourselves on producing our books within four and six months of receiving a manuscript and providing an efficient and personal service to our authors. This is an important issue for authors to consider – we are an independent publishing company dedicated to producing books of the highest quality. We are not part of a huge, faceless multinational publishing conglomerate. We believe in working closely with authors and maintain an open-minded attitude towards our current and future publishing projects. - An integral part of this philosophy is to provide friendly and professional advice, support and feedback to our authors – whether you are a first time or a highly experienced author. The commissioning editor remains in close contact with the author during the writing and production process. We aim to be respond to any queries from an author quickly and constructively.
- The management team at Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited have over 20 years of senior level publishing experience and can always provide useful feedback and support for an author, in terms of editorial, marketing and production issues.
- When an author submits his/her manuscript, we assign one of our copy-editors to work on production of the book. Our copy-editors are highly dedicated and experienced and have worked with members of the management team at Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited for over 20 years. It is their job to see the book through all stages of production: copy-editing the book and working with our typesetters and book designers. An author has one, dedicated contact point throughout the entire production process.
- Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited uses some of the best known printers to ensure that an author’s book is printed to the most rigorous international standard. Our objective is to ensure that after all of an author’s hard work in writing the book, they can feel justifiably proud of the end result.
- There is, of course, no point in writing and publishing a book if no one reads it. Marketing and sales therefore form a key element of what Biohealthcare Publishing (Oxford) Limited does. We have highly experienced staff dedicated to selling an author’s book internationally. The international element to our marketing is vital – we work with a range of overseas agents, representatives and distributors, and undertake large, dedicated mailings to potential customer of our catalogues.
- Books will be published in both print and electronic media to provide maximum accessibility and availability.