Massey University Press welcomes proposals from both Massey researchers and authors outside the university that fit our publishing programme, which focuses on the following subject areas: agricultural science, food research, veterinary science and practice, public health, creative arts, architecture, education, psychology, history, Māori studies, military and international studies, aviation, and business. This list is not exhaustive; other topics will be considered.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be emailed to editor@masseypress.ac.nz.
Your cover letter should include:
- a brief synopsis
- proposed word count
- a detailed chapter breakdown
- details of previous publications
- relevant experience (such as media experience and contacts)
- an assessment of the intended readership
- a list of similar/competing titles
Please include a sample chapter or the first twenty pages of your manuscript, and low-resolution examples (not originals) of images/illustrations, if relevant.
Please do not submit your submission as a hard copy, or send it via post, as it will not be returned or acknowledged.
Please allow up to three months for us to consider your proposal, and note that due to the volume of submissions we receive we cannot offer feedback on manuscripts.
Please note that we currently do not accept fiction or poetry submissions.
manuscript Guidelines for authors
If your manuscript is accepted for publication, please follow these instructions for preparing it for the publisher:
- please submit your manuscript as a MS Word document
- do not embed images in the file – these should be provided separately. Image placement can be marked in the text using square brackets: e.g. [image 5 here]
- keep the formatting as simple as possible: e.g. Times New Roman, 12 point
- use single quotation marks
- use single spaces after full stops
- styling the document with Word styles is helpful if you know how
- include a contents page and ‘About the author’ text
Referencing:
Some notes on theses
We don’t publish theses, but we are interested in hearing from authors who have a thesis that could be reshaped into a book. If you are considering submitting your thesis to us, please first refer to the following guidelines.
- Adapting your thesis for publication as a book is about more than simply revising the existing text. You’re going to need to rewrite, using your thesis as the foundation for a completely new work: a book that will appeal to a general, intelligent readership who will seek to be provoked, challenged and intrigued by what you have to say.
- Identify your central themes or points, and focus on these. A general reader wants to know what you have to say and what you think about it, but they don’t need to know the intricacies of your research.
- Remove all academic framework (things like the abstract, introduction, chapter introductions and conclusions) and any extraneous material (such as discussions of earlier and current theories, arguments and methodology) that doesn’t relate directly to your central themes and points. Anything that begins, ‘In this section I will suggest that . . .’ or similarly should go. Remove all endmatter (extensive footnotes and bibliographies) and retain only what will be useful to a general reader.
- Rewrite! Put your most interesting or intriguing points first, then use your research to expand upon them. Imagine you’re writing for a clever and curious friend who doesn’t have any prior knowledge of your topic area. Be friendly and personal, and explain things in plain English, but don’t be patronising. Keep an eye out for long sentences and paragraphs, as well as instances of the passive voice (i.e. use ‘Johnson suggests . . .’ rather than ‘It is suggested by Johnson . . .’) and get rid of them.
