FHS Press Submissions

FHS PRESS SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The Florida Historical Society Press encourages new authors and already published authors to submit manuscripts for consideration for publication.  To submit a manuscript, please comply with the following instructions.

  1. To submit a new manuscript send it electronically, either by USB Flash Drive (preferable) or via a file sharing service such as Dropbox or Sharepoint. Any materials including storage devices like USB drives are not returnable. If using a file sharing service, please make sure your files allow sharing and editing. Manuscripts must be created in or converted to Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign. Manuscripts submitted in other formats may NOT be considered.
  2. Any manuscript seeking consideration must be complete and ready for editing.  Partially completed chapters, extraneous insertions, fragmentary passages and other submissions that are not part of a completed manuscript indicate that the author is not ready for consideration of his/her manuscript for publication.  Materials submitted in such a fashion will not be considered.  Sample chapters will NOT be considered unless specifically requested by the publisher.
  3. Formatting your manuscript.
    1. Please do not use fancy or unnecessary formatting in your manuscript. Use the “Styles” feature in MS Word (or Google Docs) to setup all formatting.  Format overrides should be avoided.  General settings to use in your style setup (Click File > Page Setup):
      1. Margins: 1-inch margins (this should already be default in both MS Word and Google Docs)
      2. Font: Times New Roman is preferred.
        • MS Word: Format → Paragraph → Spacing: Single. 
        • Google Docs: Format → Line & paragraph spacing: Single

         
        Spacing: Single spaced text.  No extra spaces after paragraphs

 

        • MS Word: Format → Paragraph → Indentation → Left: 0.5” → Special: First line.
        • Google Docs: Format → Align & indent → Indentation options → Special: First line → 0.5”. 

         
        New paragraph should start with an indentation.  Do not use “tab” for this.  Set this up in your default style:

 

 

 

 

  1. Please submit each chapter as a separate file. We will merge them where necessary.
  2. Be consistent with naming of paragraph and character styles and minimize 'overrides' of styles. Where text inside paragraphs change style, for example changes in the paragraphs like italics or bold, use character styling in addition to designating paragraph style.  Using style sheets and applying clean styles to the entire content without overrides will improve your productivity and will result in better digital publishing especially for rendering your manuscript to html, e-pub and pdf files.  More on styles:  Customize or create new styles - Microsoft Support
  3. Footnotes
    1. Notes should appear as footnotes, in Arabic numbers.  The preferred footnoting style is Turabian or the Chicago Manual of Style.  Do not use endnotes and do not underline.  Titles of journals, books and other clearly identifiable collection names should be italicized.  Insert the footnotes with the word processor so that markers are generated, don't just superscript a number and add text in content.
    2. Newspapers should appear this way.  The town or city is written as it would normally appear in the text, while the name of the paper is italicized.  Please do not use underlining.  Thus, the Miami Herald or the Orlando Sentinel.
    3. Do not use Latin abbreviations for footnotes, with the exception of Ibid. Ibid is to be used following a footnote with the same source.  If the footnote is exactly the same, use only Ibid. If a different date or page is used, the footnote should appear as Ibid, page 5. Only Ibid is italicized.  loc sit. or op sit. are not to be used. For more information on creating footnotes in Word:  Add footnotes and endnotes - Microsoft Support
    4. Footnotes should restart at the beginning of each chapter; however, it is most important that the footnotes were inserted with the word processor as footnotes not just text in the chapter with manual superscripts.

    5. 1. Homer Jones, Life in the Fast Lane (New York:  Cruddy Press, 1952), 2.

       2.  Jones, Fast Lane, 4.
      To save space, full footnote citations should be only once in a chapter.  Subsequent footnotes citing the same source should be abbreviated:

 

 

 

  1. Please do not send original photographs with your manuscript.
  2. Photographs sent should be scanned photographs, using a minimum of 600 dpi preferred in a .tiff format.  Pictures should be scanned as color (even if they are black and white, since this allows for the maximum manipulation by the editor). For color publications pictures should already be four color, CMYK. Pictures should have descriptive file names and consider numbering consecutively in the order you wish them to appear in the manuscript.  A document containing captions, including credit lines, should be numbered to match the photographs.  Suggested picture placement should be noted within the manuscript like this, [Photo 1.]  This will allow the editor to get an idea of how the text and the photographs relate to each other.  Please Note:  If you are submitting a manuscript for consideration, preliminary photographs may be submitted in a lesser format with only 96 dpi.  These photographs will provide the press with a good idea of the quality of available photographs and will facilitate their evaluation for use in the final manuscript.
  3. Please submit an author's biography, complete with a "head shot" photograph, with each manuscript. Please include contact information--telephone number, e-mail address and USPS address.  You may also submit a one or two-page description of the audience you want to appeal to, possible author appearance venues that you have direct communications with and your affiliation with any organization or group that might want to re-sale or purchase the published manuscript in bulk.
  4. We are a small press and receive numerous manuscripts for consideration.  The review process can take a minimum of several months. The total process up to a year.  Calling or e-mailing before the end of this period does not accelerate the review process.
  5. Authors are responsible for securing releases for privately owned photographs, oral interviews, previously printed or restricted materials, and other materials that may require the payment of fees or written permission for use. FHS Press, at its discretion, may require copies of such releases for our files.
  6. Authors are responsible for generating a usable Index, if required by the publisher. You should insert the index markers in MS Word or Google Docs. Consider doing more than just key word searches and indexing by content also using index ranges if appropriate.  Final page numbers should be assigned after the final "blue lines" are sent to the author for review.  Failure to complete an accurate Index will result in delays to the publication of the work, as well as possible cost to the author for index creation or editing.  If you do not know how to generate or update an index, please visit CREATING AND UPDATING AN INDEX..

MANUSCRIPTS SUBMITTED FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD BE SENT TO:

Dr. Ben Brotemarkle, Editor

Florida Historical Society Press

435 Brevard Avenue

Cocoa, FL 32922