W. Green Guide for Authors

This is a series of extracts from Green's Guide for Authors. Copies of the full guide are available free on request.

Getting published

Greens have been publishing legal texts in Scotland for over 250 years and we have considerable expertise in evaluating proposals. All proposals, whether for books, looseleafs, journals or digital products are considered first by members of the commissioning department and then passed for approval to our management committee.

As well as evaluating proposals, projects and manuscripts submitted to Greens, the commissioning department also creates their own projects and will often seek an author team for an idea which is in development and which will then be submitted to the management committee as a complete proposal once an author team is in place.

Before you start

It is vital that before you start writing or researching you should be clear about the details of the project. In your discussions with your commissioning contact you will have covered a number of basic points. These should have included:

• Length
• Delivery Date
• Market for the work
• Standard of content expected
• Rough outline of the content itself
• Format of work and series

If you are unsure about any of these please get back in touch with us. Getting these details agreed at the start will not only ensure that everyone is clear about what has been contracted for but this information is essential when deciding how to approach the writing itself. It can be good idea to have a brief outline of this information in a separate file to refer to every now and again.

Digital format

We now ask our authors to produce all text in a digital format. This makes the text easier to use and manipulate and has significantly reduced the time it takes from manuscript delivery to publication.

Look and feel of the text

Greens are responsible for all typesetting and formatting issues and for editing the text into our house style. Please note that style has two distinct meanings. When we refer to house style we mean a standard way of producing citations, using italics and upper and lower case. A house style guide which gives the main standards we use at Greens can be found in the appendices. Style is also used to refer to less mechanical issues and in this section is used to cover matters such as structure and level of content.

In order that we can typeset the text appropriately, we do ask you to ensure that the structure of your book is clear to us in terms of the headings that you use to accord varying weight to your subject matter. We assume that:

• headings in capitals are superior to those in upper and lower case;
• bold headings are superior to those in italic; and
• headings with spaces above and below them are superior to those which run into text.

In practice this looks like:

We publish most of our books in a number of common series and some of these use standardised structures of headings. More detailed information on this can be found below.

Books are making more and more use of innovative typesetting techniques so please feel free to discuss any specific ideas you may have about the look of the text. It is best, however, not to put in your own highlighting as this can affect the typesetting.

If you are writing a chapter of a book you may find that these issues will be discussed early on at an authors' meeting or that you receive a style guide specific to that text to ensure that there is a standard format across the book.

The handover meeting

Once the commissioning editor is satisfied that the manuscript is ready for the production phase a handover meeting will be arranged. The manuscript will be passed to one of our legal editors in the editorial department who will manage the title through the production process. The member of the marketing department responsible for the book will also be present. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure that all of those involved with the book have had a chance to talk to the commissioning department and ensure that all relevant information is passed on. From this point on your primary point of contact will be your legal editor.

The editorial department

Our editorial department is highly experienced and our legal editors are trained to deal with the particular needs of legal texts. All our editors have either legal or publishing qualifications and our training programme is tailored to ensure they have the necessary mix of skills to produce publications of the highest possible standard. The editor responsible for your book will not only edit the manuscript but project manage the production process and co-ordinate indexers, tablers, typesetting and printing.

Shortly after the handover meeting your editor will write to you with a schedule for publication. Your editor will also give you the opportunity to arrange a meeting to discuss the production process in detail or deal with any queries/problems you may have. Your editor will also send you an index questionnaire to check whether there are specific topics you wish highlighted in the index.

The most important dates for an author in the publication schedule are the dates when you will receive the proofs and the date we would like them to be returned. Please let your editor know if you will not be available to check proofs in line with this schedule as we pre-book typesetting, indexing and printing slots to prevent delay.

First proofs

Once the edit is complete the manuscript will be typeset and you will receive the first proofs. This will include a list of any minor queries which may have arisen during the copy edit.

When you receive the proofs we ask that you read through them to ensure their accuracy and mark any corrections you require. Please note that you should only mark page proofs for the purpose of correction or updating.

Camera ready copy

After we have the marked proofs in house they are then typeset again with the corrections and additions and your editor will then receive the camera ready copy. These are the finished proofs which are checked in house to ensure all corrections have been included and all pages are present. No new corrections can be made at this stage.

Printing

Once we are happy with the CRC the typeset pages are sent to the printers. The time printing takes depends on the size of the publication, the form of binding and whether we have managed to keep to schedule and the CRC has arrived in time for its pre-booked slot.

Bound copies

At this stage we have a finished book. We receive a box of books from our printers and the number of free copies agreed in your contract will be sent on to you. Please remember that under your contract you can receive extra copies at a special discount as long as they are not for resale. At the same time more copies will be sent to our warehouse where any pre-publication orders will be completed and the book will be available for general sale.

FAQs

Please click here to see some FAQs.