There’s always lots of material to send to your publisher when you’re self publishing a book, especially non-fiction. But how much is too much? And what does a publisher need?

Here’s a handy guide to sending your documents and supplementary photos or illustrations.

Do:

• Send your book as one or several Word documents; if you are sending more than one then clearly label the files.
• Send good quality Jpeg files of photos or illustrations, clearly labelled with the page or chapter number for its insertion. Don’t worry about resizing them, but make sure if you want something cropped out, you do so yourself or let the publisher know. 
• Send a list of any captions you want, preferably typed up as a word document and clearly labelled.
• Send scanned documents (at min 300 dpi), making sure you can clearly read the writing if any of it is handwritten. 

Don’t:

• Send photocopies or prints of photos and illustrations. These will be of bad quality and impossible to re-scan. If you don’t have access to a reliable scanner (or even an unreliable scanner), you should send originals. At Honeybee Books we are happy to scan your documents on your behalf if needed.
• Send unlabelled images. 
• Send handwritten manuscripts without prior consultation with your publisher. At Honeybee Books we can easily arrange someone to type these up for you if you need this service.

So there you have it. It feels a lot like common sense but publishers are frequently sent documents that cannot be used, or are in the wrong format.

Extra admin work can increase the cost of your book and if you take a little time to make life easier for your publisher, it will benefit everyone in the end!

With thanks to Hannah Stevenson