manifold_press

Having stated very firmly in several places that we don't read unsolicited manuscripts - and having, regardless, still received them - this might be a good opportunity to explain the reasons for this policy.

First and foremost, we are not a staff of millions; there are very few of us, and most write as well as editing, publishing etc. If we spent our entire time reading, we would not get anything else done. Therefore we must be selective about what we choose to read - and the selection process includes getting to know the author a little before we make any attempt to look at their work.

Second, and important to us in a different way, we are mindful of the possible abuses of the system. Let's say that author John Smudge sends us (unsolicited) a book which centres on a bank robbery. We may, by coincidence, have a book about a bank robbery already in development. If we read the unsolicited manuscript, reject it, and then go ahead and publish the book we were already working on, John Smudge might accuse us of stealing his idea. If, on the other hand, John plays by the rules and sends us an enquiry and a synopsis, it gives us the opportunity to tell him that we have a book in hand with a very similar theme and suggest that he might prefer to submit his work elsewhere.

And third, being also authors ourselves, we do not want to run even the minimal risk of unconscious plagiarism - of using a phrase or a situation that we think we have invented but which we are actually remembering from somewhere else. This can happen very easily, and it is rarely deliberate. It is, however, the reason why we have manuscripts read in the first instance by someone who does not actually write for us. We want to make the relationship between author and publisher as transparent and open-handed as possible and to give our authors good reason to trust us. In a business like this, where so much is done at arms' length between people who may never meet, we feel it is important to be as clear and straightforward as we can about absolutely everything - and the relationship with the author is, of course, the foundation upon which every other part of the business is based.

We apologise for going on about this at length, but perhaps we hadn't been clear enough about it in the past and wanted to set the record straight now. NO UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, I'm afraid, means exactly that; we'll 'solicit' only when both we and the author have a clear idea exactly who we're dealing with - and not before.