We would like to publish your book.

Please tell us about it by emailing us at editor@mellenpress.com.
Including your phone number will also be helpful.
We will get back to you in 7 business days or less.

Meanwhile, here are our standard contractual terms and some frequent questions with answers.

Standard Contract Terms

This offer is open for acceptance within 30 days. If accepted, it replaces all previous understandings or representations and constitutes the entire agreement between Mellen Press and the Authors or Editors. Moreover, nothing beyond what is explicitly stated here is either assumed or implied.
Modifications to this agreement may be made only by a document written on a separate page and signed by all three of the signatories below.
Authors/Editors grant to the Press, and its licensees and assigns, the exclusive right to license, reproduce and distribute their Work worldwide (including excerpts and revisions) in print, audio, and electronic formats, in any and all languages for as long as the Press keeps the work in print. They also grant to the Press the right to price, to market, and to sell their Work in any manner the Press chooses.
The Press may put the Work out of print at any time and revert publishing rights to the author.
After sales of the first 300 hardcover copies, the Press will pay to the author/editor 10% of its net income from hardcover sales in any year in which sales exceed 20 copies. An accounting of sales will be rendered only when royalties are due.
No royalties will be paid for softcover sales. But for prepaid softcover and textbook orders of 20 or more copies, the Press will pay to the author/editor 20% of its net sales income within 30 days of that prepaid sale.
The Press does not give away free copies of its books except in conjunction with textbook orders. However, Authors/Editors may purchase copies of their own book for a 20% discount on the list price.
The Edwin Mellen Press will commission and pay for peer reviews of the final manuscript. However, the Press retains the sole right to decide, for its own reasons alone, whether or not to publish the Work.
The Press will print the book not later than 6 months after receiving an acceptable final manuscript.
Authors/Editors agree to submit both a word file and also a hard copy of their final manuscript. Both the word file and the hardcopy must be formatted to Mellen’s specifications.
The Press will determine the title of the published book in accordance with the Mellen Titling Policy.
Photographs, illustrations, graphics must be individually approved by the Press.
Authors/Editors agree to arrange, at their sole expense, permission to use any writings, artwork, photographs, proprietary material of another, or any other material which they wish to have published in their book. The Authors/Editors will deliver such permissions in writing to the Press.
The Press requires no subsidies. But, Authors/Editors agree to pay $300 and to supply a replacement final manuscript if they wish to change anything in their previously submitted final manuscript.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to pay anything to publish my book?
No, you do not have to pay anything for us to publish your book if it makes a contribution to scholarship and if it is submitted to us in our required format. However, if your manuscript is of excessive length, requires color illustrations, or must be printed in an oversized format, then we may request a financial contribution towards our additional publishing costs.
What is your required format?
We ask our authors to set the margins of their computer so that the line length left to right is 4 ¼ inches and the type box from top to bottom is 7 ¼ inches, with 1 ½ spaces between lines. We request our authors to use Times New Roman font and 12 or 14-point type size. We prefer footnotes at the bottom of each page, but at end of the book is acceptable. Please check our style manual for the presentation of multi-line block quotations (p.18). [The Mellen Style Manual is available to you free, upon request.]
What if I cannot prepare my manuscript to your formatting specifications?
We can refer you to several independent type-setting services who will format your manuscript for a very modest cost. But you must deal with, and pay, these independent contractors yourself.
May I include illustrations in my book?
You may insert black and white illustrations and graphics in the pages of your manuscript. However, we print color illustrations on glossy paper and bind these pages together in one section in the middle of the book.
How long will it take for my book to be published?
After we receive the final manuscript from the author, the time usually needed to do a peer review, edit the text, register the title with the LOC, design the cover, create the front matter, and process the proof and final copies through the printer is 4–6 months
Will you peer review my book before I send you my final manuscript?
We do not ever read or evaluate manuscripts in parts. This means that we make a final decision to publish only after we have read the entire manuscript and received evaluations from two blind reviewers.

Over the years we have developed a corps of experienced peer reviewers who understand that their job is to make specific suggestions for improving a manuscript. So Mellen authors find our peer review process to be a genuine help to them rather than another obstacle.

We pay our peer reviewers, so they complete their task in four weeks. They usually propose improvements that an author can complete within another four weeks.
Who decides the title of my book?
The chief purpose of the title of a scholarly book is to facilitate its proper library classification so that other scholars can find it and know precisely what it is about. Therefore, The Edwin Mellen Press retains the right to title every book that it publishes in accordance with the following policy:
1. The main title must describe the topic that the book discusses.
2. The subtitle should describe the genre, method, and thesis of the book.
The Edwin Mellen Press does not allow catchy, jokey, or metaphorical titles since such titles are not precise and can be misunderstood.
Will my book earn some money for me?
After the first 300 hardcovers, The Edwin Mellen Press pays to the author 10% of its income from sales of hardcover copies in every year the total number of sales exceeds 20 or more copies. However, very few Mellen books ever sell enough copies to earn royalties for the author because our market is the 200 research libraries worldwide.

We do sell softcover editions of our books to individuals and for class use. But we do not pay royalties on these softcover copies because their purpose is to reduce the price maximally, and they cannot be resold because they are damaged when returned.

Therefore, if your goal is to make money from the sales of your book, then you should not publish your book with The Edwin Mellen Press. This is because we are not publishing books to make money, but solely to make a contribution to scholarship.

Further, we do not send reports of book sales to our more than 10,000 authors unless royalties are due because this would be a nonproductive and unnecessary expense. (You can check the library acquisitions of your book at Worldcat.org.)
Will I retain the copyright to my book?
An author always retains copyright to the text that they have created. This means that they own it. But an author can give permission to someone else to reproduce and to distribute the text or art that they have created. This is called “a publishing right.”

The contract that we have with our authors grants to us the right to publish, price, market, and distribute their work worldwide for as long as we keep that work in print. Over the past 50 years, we have published over 10,000 scholarly books and we still maintain all of them in print. You can see the quality of our publications at www.mellenpress.com.
If I have some other questions, where do I get the answers?
We are personally invested in every book we publish. So pick up your telephone and call us at 1-716-754-2266. Alternatively, send us your telephone number and we’ll call you. We prefer to deal with you by telephone because e-mail does not provide any sense of the total context or feeling. So we want to talk with you in person.
What is the reputation of the Edwin Mellen press?
All the major research libraries worldwide buy Mellen books for their permanent collections: Oxford, Harvard, Toronto, Berlin, Zurich, Tokyo, Paris, Princeton, and Stanford. You can check their collections online or by consulting Worldcat.org.

Moreover, Mellen books have won many prizes and we have created several new scholarly specializations. To learn about these matters, go to: Other Information About Mellen.