SUBMISSION GUIDE

Authors choose Outskirts for a variety of reasons, and one of the main ones is because we handle all the formatting duties. If you have a manuscript in Word or Word Perfect, just submit it. Yes, it's that easy!

Well... almost. There are some things you should know about your manuscript before you submit it to us.

1. Unless specified by you in advance, your manuscript will be formatted according to our professional standards so that your interior matches your cover (in terms of font, for example). If you have already formatted your book as you want it, you must let us know in writing at the time of submission and you must follow the guidelines in our Print Ready File Creation Guide, available by clicking here.
2. If we are formatting your book for you, this document will provide you with the specifications of our formatting.It may still need to be changed slightly to account for necessary margin requirements, as mandated by your trim (book size) selection.
3. When you choose your cover, you are also essentially picking your interior design, because those elements should aesthetically match. Each of our customizeable covers has its own interior design, and custom covers receive a matching interior, as well.
4. The provided interior designs include default fonts so that they match your cover for aesthetic reasons. If you want to provide your own fonts for the interior, you may. However, we will need the licensed, True-Type, PC version of any font you request that we do not already have.
5. You should not include page numbers in your document, either of the manual or automatic variety. If you have manual page numbers in your document, remove them before submission.
6. You should not include headers in your document, either of the manual or automatic variety. If you have manual headers, remove them before submission.
7. Hard returns are invisible to see in manuscript documents and yet pose a large problem when formatting. A "hard return" is a return that you inserted manually. Hard returns at the end of paragraphs are usually fine, however if your manuscript has hard returns at the end of lines, you must remove them before submitting your manuscript. You can see hard returns within your manuscript by showing "invisible characters" from the options menus. For example, in Word for Windows, hit control-shift-8 all at the same time. It is your responsibility to remove any unwanted hard returns from your document before submission. Hard returns left in your document will result in a formatted document that looks "broken up" where it shouldn't be.
8. Manuscripts should be submitted as one single file. We can combine files for you if necessary, at a billable rate of $50/hour, billed in 15 minute increments.
9. The most common file types are MS Word and Corel Word Perfect. We also accept Rich Text Format, Microsoft Works, and inDesign Files. If you have a formatted PDF file, you may submit it, although recognize that we cannot make any changes to it (like edits or resizing, for example). If you have another file type, there's no downside in submitting it. We'll see what we can do for you.
10. File types we do NOT accept are any type of compressed, zipped, or executable file through email. This presents a security risk and therefore we will not open them.

Get started on the publishing path today.