◆ Include a specimen chapter. Send your best chapter for the
purposes of getting the book accepted. This may not
necessarily be a very detailed core chapter, nor just a
literature review. It should be a well-written chapter which
shows your work in a good light but which is relatively easy
for a referee to get into and appreciate. Sometimes it makes
sense to provide a few extra pages of lead-in or scene-setting
material for the chapter, and a summary of what comes next
at the end. You will need to provide a purpose-edited
chapter bibliography if you are using Harvard referencing,
but not if you are using endnotes. The point of the
specimen chapter is to show that your work is well written,
of a good professional standard, on an interesting topic, and
likely to generate the sales you have promised. It should be
fully ‘book-ified’ with no unnecessary thesis apparatus. It
obviously might carry more weight with publishers if you
could promise to send a fully ready manuscript immediately
by return if they would like to see the whole thing. But this
is rarely practicable, because you cannot invest all the effort
involved in converting your entire thesis into book form
without knowing how likely it is that any publisher will
accept it. And it may not be crucial anyway. If a publisher is
at all interested in adopting your book they will have to
commission one or more academics to review your
materials. It is normally much easier (and cheaper) for them
to get a book outline plus specimen chapter refereed than a
complete book manuscript, especially with a research
monograph which demands that the readers pay close
attention to detail. If you think a single sample chapter will
not be enough to show what your book will be like, then
send two chapters.
Assembling this package of materials is a time-consuming
business, and waiting for a response also takes more time.
However, unlike journals you can legitimately send your book
proposal and materials to more than one publisher at once. It is
not a good idea to broadcast it to a large number of publishers,
however, because their commissioning editors also meet regu-
larly at conferences and other venues and swap notes. Finding
out that you have adopted a shotgun approach to seeking
260 ◆AUTHORING A PHD