Ends on
Submit to Humans & Nature Press Books: 2024 Call for Proposals, Single-Author Book Manuscripts

Before submitting, please review the following:

Mission and Values: Are We a Fit for Your Work?

We are entering an exciting publishing expansion at Humans & Nature Press. In addition to continuing our digital publications and our internally curated edited book volumes, we are now moving toward supporting creative and visionary single-author works by disciplinary boundary crossers, creative storytellers, and innovative ecological thinkers.

The Center’s publication platforms amplify the work of those who are illuminating how principles of reciprocity, care, and justice apply to the whole community of life. We share stories and ideas from philosophers, poets, authors, academics, artists, and activists who are committed to multidisciplinary and multicultural approaches to knowing the world. The Center exists to provide a hub for these approaches to benefit collectively those working toward a socially just and an ecologically flourishing future.

Types of Manuscripts We Are Currently Seeking
We are looking for manuscripts that are socially relevant, emotionally compelling, creatively written, and critically discerning, which feature vivid storytelling and engage the empathic imaginations of readers. Manuscript proposals that receive consideration would typically be categorized as creative nonfiction. 

We offer a unique space as a publisher, supporting work that holistically engages social and natural systems—land as a community to which we belong—while honoring and attending to more-than-human lifeworlds. We embrace the experimental and the experiential, and we seek manuscripts that integrate creativity and intellectual rigor through storytelling that invites readers into thinking that is also doing.

The books branch of Humans & Nature Press is not currently accepting fiction or poetry—though, as the press develops, we may do so in our next call for manuscript submissions. For submissions to the digital branch of Humans & Nature Press, which accepts essays, poetry, and artwork, stay tuned for next year’s open call. For other common questions regarding manuscript submissions, see our FAQs.

Is Your Manuscript Proposal Ready?
Humans & Nature Press will consider both an overall book proposal accompanied by two to four sample chapters; or a proposal accompanied by a completed manuscript. Editorial review will be done in both cases by members of our editorial staff and board, and by particular outside experts, if the nature of the manuscript requires that. As we invite a broad range of subject matter and writing styles, in keeping with the Center’s mission and goals, so too we will provide a review process that gives authors every opportunity to tell us the story of why this book needs to be written and should be published. 

Selection Process
The Editorial Advisory Board, along with our Executive and Developmental Editors, will be responsible for reviewing proposals and making final recommendations. We will seek to notify submitters of the status of their proposal within four months after the close of the submission window. At the present time, we project that we will accept no more than two book manuscripts for publication in 2025-2026.

Submitting
Please upload your author information, proposal, and sample chapters through this Submittable portal during the submissions window: September 30, 2024 at 9am Pacific through November 25, 2024 at 11:59pm Pacific. We are unable to review unsolicited manuscripts that come to us outside of this window. Agents are also welcome to submit to the publisher at this time.

We strongly prefer you submit your proposal as a Word file, with one-inch margins, double-spaced text, and 12-point Times New Roman font.  Number the pages of your proposal and chapters in the upper right-hand corner of the header. We prefer that all materials are included in one document.  The proposal should include all of the following elements:

Proposal Submission Guidelines

1. Pitch / Synopsis / Why this book? Why now?
Start with a brief description of your book (1 page or less), including its proposed title. This is your overview of the work and its main argument. Show us what makes your work distinctive, groundbreaking, revelatory, necessary, or field-changing. The style of your prose should match the style you envision for the manuscript itself.

2. Annotated Table of Contents
Include an annotated table of contents with brief descriptions of each chapter. In an introductory statement, mention the reason for the sequence of the chapters you have chosen and how they interact with and flow together with each other. Show us how the argument builds and what the manuscript does overall. It’s been said that a great table of contents reads like poetry, which we think is a nice way of thinking about a table of contents.

3. Sample Chapters
This is your chance to demonstrate that you can successfully execute what you are proposing. Include two to four complete, well-written and well-researched chapters that will leave us hungry to read more. As noted above, if you have a completed draft of the whole book, you can submit that with your proposal. 

4. Author Biosketch (Qualifications)
Provide a brief (1 page or less) biographical sketch. Where does this story and your interest in the general topic of your book come from? What makes you the best person to write this story, and what can you bring to it that other authors might not? Are you engaged in public speaking, writing, or other public-facing projects, and are these local, national, or global in scope? Please enclose a resumé or a CV when you submit your proposal.

5. Competitive and Complimentary Analysis
We’d like to know which books you hope your book will travel with, either in a complementary or competitive manner. This will include a discussion of what existing books you see as comparable, especially those published within the last few years. If you’re writing something that is more scholarly in content, discuss other scholarly books; if you are writing for a general audience, focus on trade books.

6. Audience/Marketing Plan
Give us your sense of which audiences will be most excited by your work and why. We encourage you to be realistic. Some books can indeed attract a broad range of readers, but most work is targeted toward particular fields and practitioners. Your marketing plan is one of the most essential components of your proposal. Make it concrete and realistic, and include as many numbers as you can.

7. Projected Length
Please include the expected length (in words, not pages) of the text, notes, and bibliography, if you plan to include one; the projected number of illustrations; and—if you don’t already have a complete manuscript—a sense of when you will have a full draft.

There is no required length for a proposal, but they typically fall in the range of 10–30 double-spaced pages. For more specific guidance on crafting a proposal, we recommend:

Center for Humans and Nature