Oxford University Press Southern Africa | business

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Information for Authors

What we publish

At Oxford University Press Southern Africa, we publish educational books for learners and students of all ages. Our books can be divided into four categories: Schools, Higher Education - including prescription titles, General Interest, and Reference - including dictionaries.

We publish primarily for southern African readers. If the main audience for your book is in another part of the world, please send your proposal directly to the relevant Oxford office, which you can find by going to www.oup.com.

In order for us to evaluate a book or proposal effectively, it is helpful for us to receive additional information about the book and about you! This information enables us to reach a decision on whether to publish.

When you are planning your book proposal, there are several things you should consider.

First and most importantly, who is your audience? Be as specific as possible.
Why will these people choose to buy your book? What is the unique selling proposition?
What's your competition? In other words, what other books are there on this subject, and particularly, in the South African market?
What things make your book better than any of these competing books?
Think about how many people will buy your book. As far as possible, you should know how large your market is.
Where will they go to buy your book?
Finally, will people continue to buy your book for several years? The most successful books don't go out of date quickly.

How to submit a proposal

Once you're ready to send your proposal to us, please send it to the appropriate commissioning editor listed below. At Oxford, our Commissioning Editors consider all the proposals that we receive.

In order to provide information about yourself, please use one of the following Manuscript Submission Forms:

Education and Higher Education books (word doc)
Novels or dictionaries (word doc)

Your proposal should contain:

the first chapter plus synopsis of the book
the Manuscript Submission Form
a covering letter outlining the proposed market for the book (see above)

Do not send your entire manuscript or any originals unless we ask you to do so. At this stage we only need a sample of your writing. Please do not send us any submissions by e-mail.

Publishing your research
Although we are not able to publish monographs or academic research articles locally, such proposals are of interest to Oxford University Press in the United Kingdom; and we will be pleased to refer proposals to that office for possible publication. To submit monograph proposals, or research articles for publication in our international journals, please refer to the Academic research publishing section.

For Higher Education proposals, please send your proposal to:

The Commissioning Editor
Higher Education Division
Oxford University Press Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd.
P. O. Box 12119
N1 City 7463
Cape Town

Whether you are planning to become an Oxford author or are already writing for us, read our Guide to authors of tertiary books to find out about how we work and how to write your book.
(This is an Adobe Acrobat .pdf document. Please click here to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software to view this file.)

For school-book proposals, please send your proposal to:

The Commissioning Editor
Educational Books
Oxford University Press Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd.
P. O. Box 12119
N1 City 7463
Cape Town

For novels, general-interest books, and reference books, please send your proposal to:

The Commissioning Editor
General Interest and Reference Books
Oxford University Press Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd.
P. O. Box 12119
N1 City 7463
Cape Town