Submit your book proposal to Brepols

The first step in submitting a proposal to Brepols is to fill in our proposal form. This asks for basic information about a project, and it forms our starting point for consideration of a proposal.

If you are unsure where to start, or would like advice on preparing your proposal, we warmly invite you to get in touch with one of our Publishing Managers, who will be able to help. You can find out more about our Publishing Managers and their areas of interest here. Please note that as a matter of policy, we do not consider proposals that are currently under review from another publishing house.

New book proposals will typically be discussed by Brepols’ internal publishing committee or sent for assessment to the Editorial Board of the most relevant series. If the book is of interest, the internal publishing committee or Editorial Board will invite you to submit material for peer review by one or more experts in your field. Please do not submit a full manuscript until it has been requested by the Editorial Board. Book contracts will not typically be offered until after the Editorial Board has received the results of peer review.

It is important that your book is written in clear, idiomatic language that is to native or near-native standard. If you are not a native speaker of the language in which you are writing, we advise that you get your manuscript checked and corrected before you submit it to us, as a poorly written text could lead to a negative peer review.

If you are interested in pursuing Open Access options for your publication, please let us know this when you submit your proposal to us. Brepols supports the possibility for storing and sharing your research data as supplementary content, in an Open Access format. The supplementary content must provide extra information for Brepols’ publications and consists of open data collections, primary sources, tables, colour graphs, etc. available via the Figshare platform.

Preparing your book manuscript

Once your volume has been successfully peer reviewed, Brepols will issue a volume contract. Once you have implemented the corrections suggested by the peer reviewer, your manuscript should typically be returned to the Editorial Board of your series so that your final text can be approved before it goes into production.

Text

The final manuscript that you submit to Brepols should be definitive and complete. You can find a detailed checklist of points to consider here. Please note that in most cases, books will require a complete bibliography listing all works cited, and not simply a select bibliography.

Brepols has its own in-house style guides, for both English and French manuscripts. In order for us to produce your manuscript as efficiently as possible, we ask that you follow these guidelines when completing your manuscript. Please note that some series have their own specific style guides; your publishing manager will be able to advise you if this is the case.

Download Guidelines
Guidelines for Authors (Short Reference System)
Guidelines for Authors (Full Reference System)
Guidelines for Authors (Author Date)
Directives pour les auteurs des publications en langue française

We recommend that you prepare the index for your volume using the automatic index in Microsoft Word while you are still working on your manuscript. This can then be generated and updated when the text is typeset. Alternatively, you are welcome to prepare an index using the typeset proofs of your text once layout and pagination are fixed. Please ask your Publishing Manager if you want further advice.

Images

Images should be supplied separately to your manuscript. You can find full details of image requirements in our image guidelines. Please note that we expect you to be responsible for checking that basic image quality is in line with our guidelines, and for ensuring that you have the appropriate permission to reproduce images and figures in your text; where necessary we ask you to please apply for and obtain this permission. Most books with the Brepols imprint will automatically be made available in both print and as e-books, and so we ask that you please secure the appropriate rights for your images. For further guidance, please contact your Publishing Manager.

Producing your book

Clear, well-edited, and beautifully laid out texts are a hallmark of Brepols volumes. Once you have submitted your completed text and the Editorial Board has confirmed that it is ready for publication, we will put the volume into production. We usually try and complete this process within six to twelve months, although this time frame can vary according to the length and complexity of your volume. Please be aware that the production process can differ slightly from series to series.

Copyediting

We begin the process with basic checks on the manuscript to make sure that everything is complete and that both text and images are ready to be worked on. If everything is in good shape, we can then move on to cleaning and copyediting the manuscript. This includes applying a template for later typesetting, as well as standardisation of punctuation, capitalisation, numbers, and bibliography, and checks against the style guide. Please note, however, that unless otherwise agreed, this does not involve revising the style, rewriting, or ‘polishing’ unidiomatic texts. If the volume contains publications written in more than one language, this may influence the way in which we edit the text.

After your text has been copyedited, you will receive the pre-typeset proofs to read through and comment on. This will be the last stage at which you can make significant changes to the text, so it is very important that you check and revise everything carefully, and that you are happy with the text that you return to us.

Typesetting

Once we have your finalised text, it is ready to go on for typesetting. Our typesetter will organise and finalise layout, including images, headings, fonts, and tables. You will receive a copy of the typeset proofs so that you can comment on layout, as well as checking cross references, images, special characters, and other formatting checks. We will ask you to add any comments directly to the PDF of the proofs, as explained in our guidelines.

If you did not prepare your index using the automatic index function in Microsoft Word, it is time to think about preparing an index once the pagination of the typeset proofs is fixed. This can be done directly from the typeset proofs, and the typesetter can add and finalise your index at the same time as they add any other corrections to the proofs.

Once you have checked and signed off on the final typeset proofs, we will create the e-book and send your volume to the printer!