L&R Hartley, Publishers

Why we require a complete manuscript.

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Some anxious writes have asked why we require a complete manuscript and not just an excerpt.

Firstly let us assure you that your manuscript is treated with respect for your Intellectual Property Rights and will not be used for any purpose other than assessment for publishing. Once assessed if approved we will then use it for publishing, but you will still continue to hold copyright! If the manuscript is not approved it will be deleted (if on our computer system) or if in a printed form it will be returned if return postage is prepaid, else it will be shredded.

Let us explain our assessment process. We have on contract a number of professional assessors who are all published authors in their own right and who are thoroughly familiar with both Our Style Sheet and Our Style Guide.

When we receive your manuscript and query letter, if these are complete, we pass these on to one of our assessors. Our assessors, in a very professional manner and at our expense, will read your entire manuscript and provide us (and you) with a full written report, covering areas such as human interest, creativity, factual/biblical/statistical integrity, logic, colour, brevity, originality, purpose, reference/acknowledgements and format. They will also make recommendations to us in regard to marketability, suggested changes (if any), publishing format/s and whether or not we should accept the manuscript for publishing.

For this process they will need a complete manuscript and not just an excerpt. Naturally a realistic report cannot be compiled if we only receive a selected chapter or two. Considering the large number of manuscripts we receive, the cost to us for assessment fees, and the fact that you receive a full written report at our expense, we know of no other publisher this generous!

If your manuscript is accepted we will advise you immediately and still hold your manuscript in our vault for a further five days after you receive our report before we commence the publishing process. This cooling-off period is also for your benefit, because we reserve the right to choose appropriate formats for individual publications (E.g. bound book, CD-ROM, multimedia, etc.).

A note about non-accepted manuscripts: Unless a non-accepted manuscript is re-written and re-submitted for assessment, we regard our assessor's report as final. We hope that you will appreciate that, because our assessors work on contract, we are unable to provide further feedback other than the comprehensive written report that they provide.

Submissions must in accordance with both Our Style Sheet and Our Style Guide. (See also information on [Text Format] and [Illustrations])

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©1999, Revised ©2003, 2005 Lionel Hartley, PhD, for L&R Hartley.

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