This page contains submission guidelines for academic writing only. We’re looking for books and proposals within the humanities and social sciences, with a special focus on history, art history, and war and conflict.
What goes in a pitch?
Guidelines for Author Submissions: Academic writing
The Book Proposal
Description of the book: Describe the work, rationale, approach, and pedagogy in about 350-500 words.
Outline: Please submit a detailed outline of the book, listing and elaborating upon chapter headings and sub-headings.
Other Literature: Please submit a list of books in the field with similar topics, their strengths and weaknesses, noting their publisher, author, and year of publication. You’re writing for your academically inclined peers, so be as objective as possible. In a separate paragraph, please enumerate the special features of your approach and book.
In your email pitching the book to us, please answer the following questions:
Do you have a complete manuscript? If not, when do you expect to complete it by?
How long do you plan your book to be? Please give us an approximate word count.
Approximately how many photographs do you plan to include?
Do you plan to include material requiring permission (text, music, lyrics, illustrations)? To what extent? Have you started the permissions request process?
Manuscript
Please submit two chapters of your manuscript to give us an idea of your scholarship and style of writing if you do not have the entire manuscript or are in the process of writing it. If you have a complete manuscript, please send that. Please cite using the MLA style guide for the Humanities and the Chicago style guide for the Social Sciences.
Author Background
Please submit an academic CV that reflects your writing experience and educational background. Why do you think you are the right person to write this book?
Formatting Your Submission
- Please type your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and manuscript word count in the upper right hand corner of the first page of your manuscript.
- Please include a page number in the center of each page’s footer.
- Manuscripts must be in A4, double spaced, justified, with size 12 Garamond or any other serif font.
- Please send us a PDF and a Word file (.docx/.doc).
The Peer Review Process
THE OPEN REVIEW
When authors submit their work for publication to our academic imprint, after the initial stage of review by the editor, they are asked to nominate a fellow academic who knows their work well. Bombaykala Books will then reach out to the nominated person, who will testify to the quality and validity of the work.
THE BLIND REVIEW
If the work in consideration passes the open review stage, we will then go ahead and reach out to an expert in the field who will read the piece after removing any mention of the author’s name to ensure that there is no bias and that any comments are as objective as possible.
Once the blind review is over, the author is informed of the status of their submission. Comments made by both the open reviewer and blind reviewer and private and confidential. The identity of the blind reviewer is unknown to the author, and vice versa.
WHERE DO YOU SEND YOUR SUBMISSIONS AND QUESTIONS?
Please send submissions to submissions@bombaykala.com, and questions to ishaan@bombaykala.com.
We distribute our books globally, both in print and digitally. Answers to some of the most frequently asked questions are available here.