Submission Guidelines
We encourage you to browse our website, looking closely at our titles to see what books we offer, and reviewing the submission criteria that follow. Although we accept unsolicited submissions, we usually receive more than 800 submissions annually and publish about 30 titles a year. If you think that your work is a good fit for Chelsea Green, then consider sending in a query letter or proposal.
Organic gardening and market farming
Local agricultural movements and healthy food supplies
Environmentally friendly building techniques
Renewable energy sources and energy conservation
Lifestyles that are simpler and require less consumption
Economic systems that account for environmental and social needs
Political analysis or activism that promotes sustainable economy, environment, and government
Commentary that promotes sustainable living
Natural science with a cross-disciplinary and ecological perspective
Cutting-edge science interpreted for lay readers, for our Sciencewriters imprint
We seldom publish books that are:
Regionally focused
Academic or educationally based
General cookbooks, though we publish many books on food and cultural aspects of food
Agricultural/gardening based but do not promote organic methods
New-Age or spiritual
Popular topics covered by many other books (e.g., a summary of why George W. Bush was a bad president)
Offering top-down political policy prescriptions
Fiction
Children's books
To submit for consideration
A query letter should be one or two pages long and give an overview of your book’s topic, along with information about you as an author (who you are, why you are the right person to write this book, evidence that you will be able to complete a high-quality manuscript in a timely fashion). If we think that there is a reasonable chance that we might pursue your book, we will request a full proposal.
A full proposal should include most or all of the following items (all in a single Word document):
- A cover letter summarizing the book
- A preliminary table of contents
- An expanded table of contents with one- or two-paragraph summaries of each chapter
- Marketing research such as:
a) Descriptions of other books on the same or similar topic and an explanation of why your book is different
b) Any special sales potential (organizations that might want to buy large numbers of your book; specialty catalogs or stores that don’t usually sell books but might be interested in yours; events where attendees will be interested in your book)
- Your target audience (who they are, why they will be interested in your book. Be specific.)
- Biographical material about you (expanded from that in the query letter)
- Two sample chapters
Via Email
Please put the word “query,” your last name, and the book title in the subject line. (For example: "Query - Jones - Nature vs. Nurture.”)
If you do not have access to email and must send your query or proposal through the mail, please send regular U.S. mail. Feel free to print your materials single-spaced and double sided, to save paper.
Submitted materials will only be returned if accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Because of the volume of submissions, response time can take several weeks. Thank you for your interest in Chelsea Green Publishing.
