Quay Books, a division of MA Healthcare Ltd, has grown and developed into one of the leading nursing and medical publishers through its commitment to excellence.

We seek to publish books that are both thought-provoking and beneficial to all healthcare practitioners and that make a real contribution to academic research and teaching.

Whether you are a first time author/editor, or an experienced one, we hope that these pages will provide you with all the information and materials you will need to assist you in putting together both proposals and manuscripts. If at any stage you would like to speak to someone in person, please call us on 020 7738 5454 and ask for Quay Books.

Helena Raeside
Publishing Manager
Quay Books

New Book Proposals

Quay Books is always delighted to receive new proposals for books or to discuss ideas at any stage.

If you would like to submit a proposal, please fill in our New Book Proposal Form (link). The boxes will expand as you type, so please provide as much information as you possibly can as this will make it quicker and easier for us to evaluate your proposal.

Should you wish to speak to someone before submitting your proposal, please contact Helena Raeside, Publishing Manager, on 020 7501 6705.

What’s next?

After we have received a proposal, we will refer it either to an appropriate series editor or to an external reviewer for peer review.

Once we have received feedback on the proposal, we will contact you to confirm if your proposal has been successful. At this stage we may ask you to amend your proposal slightly based on the feedback we have received.

Once the proposal has been finally approved, a contract will be sent out. We will also provide you with information to aid in the preparation of your manuscript and also contributor’s contracts if your book is a multi-authored text.

Writing your manuscript

We will provide you with information on how to prepare your manuscript (link). This will give you instructions on how to format your document, how to supply figures, charts and tables, how to format your references and so on.

There will always be someone available to speak to at any stage if you need any further advice.

We will contact you at regular intervals to ensure that things are running smoothly and that you will meet your contracted delivery date. It is of the utmost importance that prearranged deadlines are met.

Delivering your manuscript

Once you have delivered your completed manuscript with illustrations, we will then send it out for peer review. This may be done by the appropriate series editor or by an independent referee.

This process ensures that the highest standards of quality and content are met. Reviewer’s comments and recommendations will then be fed back to you. If we feel that any changes need to be made in light of the review, it is at this stage that we will ask you to make them.

We will then estimate the length of a book and draw up a preliminary schedule and budget. Therefore, it is vital that all materials are provided at this stage including all figures, charts, photos etc. so that we can do this effectively.

The production process

Once the final manuscript has been accepted, it will then be passed over to a project editor who will now be your main contact. This could be either an in-house project editor, or a freelance editor.

Firstly, the manuscript will be copy-edited and typeset.

The first set of proofs will be returned to you with all Author Queries (AQs) marked up for you to answer.

Whilst you are checking through your proofs, we ask that you begin highlighting key words in the text that you would like included in the index. This will help us to compile an accurate and useful index.

Once the corrected proofs have been returned and all AQs have been answered, the changes will be incorporated and the index will be created.

Final page proofs will then be sent to you for a final reading.

On return of the final page proofs any minor corrections will be made and the book will be prepared for press.

Printing

The final files will then be sent to the printer. Three to four weeks later, the books themselves will arrive in our warehouse. Advance copies will be sent out to all authors and contributors.

Author Resources
Book proposal form If you have an idea for a book or have already written a book, download this form to send us the information on it	Download (.pdf)	Download (.doc)