You want to write a book. How do you get started, and what do you need to do so that we can publish it?

First, we need to know:

• What you want to write about.
• For what audience.
• At what level of expertise.
• And who is likely to buy the book?

We also want to be confident that you can write. You don't have to be a professional writer, and you don't have to have written a book before. You just have to be able to express technical information clearly. (And we will give you a lot of guidance if you need it; by the time you finish your book, you'll almost certainly be a better and more proficient writer.)

A good way to tell us about your idea for a book is to send us six things:

1. A paragraph or two (about 50 to 250 words total) describing your idea for your book, and why you want to write it.

   This should be in plain ASCII text (preferred), or as a PDF.

2. A detailed outline. This should look like a table of contents, showing the chapters that you will include in your book, and a list of sections in each chapter.

   This should be in plain ASCII text. You can also send a word-processed version as a PDF if you like.

3. A sample chapter or two. Don't choose a very easy chapter (because then we can't really judge how you write) and don't choose a very hard chapter (because you're putting yourself at a disadvantage).

   The sample chapter should probably be word processed, and sent to us in both source format and PDF, but if you prefer to send it as plain ASCII text, that's OK.

4. Information about yourself: a brief biography, what else you have written, and your qualifications for writing the book you're proposing.
5. Who is the typical reader, and who is likely to buy the book? (These are not necessarily the same: many books are read by students but primarily bought by university libraries; books written for young children are bought for them by adults.) Why would they buy it, or why would they prefer your book to other ones on the same subject? Would people read it out of personal interest, or for professional reasons? Could it be used as a text book, and if so at what level: school, college, postgrad?
6. Why you would like UIT, specifically, to publish your book. Which other publishers have you contacted or proposed your book to? What has their reaction been?

Send these six items to us, by e-mail to proposals (at) uit.co.uk
Do not send hardcopies -- we accept proposals electronically only. If you have a magnificent book and can send it only as a hardcopy, e-mail us explaining why. If, for whatever reason, you do send hardcopy to us, we will not return it, so you should never send anything precious -- send copies instead.

Important: you don't have to do all the steps above in isolation. We're very happy to get involved right from the beginning, and help you define the scope of your book and develop your outline. You're not on your own!

Writing the outline for your book

It's very tempting to jump in and start writing the detailed text of part of your book. However, it's much better to spend some time mapping out the contents in detail before you start writing. This way, you will save time, and have a better chance of ensuring that you include everything that's necessary. In contrast, if you start writing the detailed text right at the beginning, you can easily get bogged down in details, make false starts, and run into writers block before you've got anywhere.

Ideally, produce a very detailed table of contents, that shows what you're going to cover, and in what depth. This should be understandable to an outsider too -- to us, and to our techncial reviewers -- so it needs to be quite comprehensive. It's even better if you go a bit further than a table of contents, and create a summary that has a sentence or two showing what each section will contain.

From the detailed outline you should be able to derive a rough estimate of the "extent" (that's publisher-speak for "number of pages") of your book. (But be warned -- books always expand, never contract!)

The more work you do on the outline, planning and "architecture" of your book, the easier it will be later: you'll have the structure of the book more or less correct from the beginning, so the writing will be almost mechanical.