First and Best in Education runs a range of publishing imprints.  We are always looking for new books and software to publish that fit our formats.

Most of our books are published for teachers or parents, but we are sometimes interested in looking into other publishing areas including business books.

We publish in the following ways:

•  As photocopiable books.  These are highly used in schools and include school improvement reports, worksheets, GCSE and A level texts as well as notes for parents which the schools copy and then pass on.  These are normally 60 to 120 pages of A4 in length.

• On disk. Again for schools, this format allows teachers to change the text if they so wish before using the book with pupils.

• Paperback books.

• As downloads from our website - not usually for new books as the price of downloads is much reduced.

Formats

Because of our specialist approach all work must be submitted on disk in either Adobe Acrobat or in Word for Windows.  We cannot accept Apple Mac disks nor can we accept any format other than those listed here.

But please note, that if the book has illustrations, crosswords, designs or mathematical formulae it must be provided in Adobe Acrobat.  If providing us with printed copy remember we will be printing the book directly from your material – we will not be resetting the book and thus the quality must be sufficiently high.

Adobe Acrobat is available from Adobe on 0131 458 6842, fax 0131 451 6999 or at www.adobeshop.com

Email adobeuksales@adobe.com

Before sending in your work, please be aware of the following points:

• We cannot accept work that includes colour.  For our photocopiable publications there would be little point in producing colour pages, because as soon as the pages are photocopied, all colour would be lost.

• We do not publish fictional material. 

•   After we have read your manuscript, you will be asked to proof and edit the book yourself.   You must supply the final version of your book ready for print – we do not use proof readers and editors to change your work.  If we spot any spelling mistakes or other errors we will return the whole book to you for you to review it – we will point out the errors we have seen, but will not check the whole book for you.

What we have published

A list of our top 10 bestsellers is below and a copy of the current First and Best catalogue is available on the Internet.  We have published over 1000 photocopiable books and over 500 books on disk.

Illustrations

Do remember that while a bound volume may require pictures simply to break up the page, this is not necessary on a disk or a photocopiable page where the individual will be using just a couple of pages at a time. Our authors provide their own illustrations.

Lay out of books 

For printed submissions please make margins no less than 1 inch for left/right margins, no less than 0.5 inch for Header/Footer.  Any page numbers should be at the bottom of the page and centred.  Please do not include page numbers on the contents page.   

If you include any questions or crosswords within your book please include an answer sheet with your work. Check that puzzles work by asking someone to complete them for you. 

Opening submissions

Authors are asked to submit the following in the first instance as printed material or on disk/email).  We do not accept handwritten submissions.

• Information on your proposed book following the guidelines set out here

• A note on how you would present the book if accepted. This will be either as printed pages, or in Adobe Acrobat or in Word.

If your submission is accepted you will be able to decide how long you wish to take to complete your work.  Authors normally opt for anything from a few weeks to nine months.  The time will be a guide only - we appreciate that there is no way that you can guarantee what other events might occur in the following months.  

Please do not phone.  We cannot accept phone calls to enquire about books and the possibility of publication.  If you have any queries please email the editor, fax 01536 399 012 or write to the address above. 

Contract

You will be required to sign our standard contract - a copy of which can be seen here. The contract will grant us the sole and exclusive right to publish your material.  In practice if you wish to re-publish the material we would consider your request provided we could be assured that sales of our book would not be affected in any way - i.e. you would be targeting a different market.

Copyright and payment  

Authors must assert that they are the copyright owners of the text, illustrations and data supplied.  Authors are paid by royalty twice a year.  Royalties are calculated as 7½% of the pre-VAT retail price of the book or disk and for bound books sold in book shops.  Authors make no payment towards publication costs. 

All royalties are paid in Sterling. How many copies of your book will sell is hard to judge, and the fact that we want to commission a title does not mean that we are certain how popular it will be.  A best selling book/disk of around 60 pages might earn its author around £5000 a year, but some books achieve much lower sales. Many of our authors have written a number of books with us and so can increase their income.

Know your publisher!

It is our belief that all authors should always know something about the format and style that is used by their publisher.  Therefore we strongly advise all prospective writers to take a look at one or two recent First and Best books.

Our titles have a standardised cover and style, which teachers have come to expect over the last five years.  Although we have the facility to vary this and to produce titles in paperback and other formats we will not do this unless a very strong case is made for this.  If in approaching us you are proposing a book which is outside our normal format it is important that you make this clear from the very start and explain why you feel the format should be varied.

Many of our authors come to us because as teachers they are using First and Best books.  However if you have not seen one of our titles recently we strongly recommend that you select one of the books from the list of bestsellers below and order it from us.  Unfortunately because of the high number of author submissions that we receive each week we are not able to supply copies of our books for free, but we are able to offer one of the titles on this list at a 40% discount to prospective authors.

Please indicate the book/s you require and complete the credit card details.

Print out the form to send it via post or fax ( 01536 399012)

New Books Editor, First and Best in Education, Earlstrees Court, Earlstrees Road, Corby, Northants, NN17 4HH.

Book required______________________________________________________________

Your name ________________________________________________________________

Address __________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

Email address__________________________________________________________________ 

Credit card number______/______/______/_____   

Start date___________  Expiry date_________ 3 Digit Security number______

Best selling Books 2007

A list of our best selling books for the year is given below.  It is interesting to see that the two best sellers are older books which have sold well for over 5 years – their strength lies in the fact that they are not subject specific and have a relevance to teachers in general rather than to one narrow group of teachers.   Our series of dyscalculia books continues to be well received primarily because there is not a great deal of such material written specifically for teachers on the market.  The only new book on the list is “Managing your Money” which covers a new area in PSHE. Details of these books can be found in the alphabetical list.

As a general point it is clear to us that a book which offers the solution to a perceived problem will sell better than a book which simply offers yet another way of doing the same thing.  If we can persuade the potential customer that there is a solution to a problem, that our book contains this secret solution, and that knowing the solution will make a teacher's life easier or help him/her to deliver their subject more effectively  - then that book will sell.  The top selling books on the list above all have in common the fact that they offer a low-cost solution to a problem; they provide something which cannot be obtained elsewhere.

Our best selling book in the last 5 years has been Raising Grades Through Study Skills