Guidelines for Book Proposal Submissions

Review Process and Procedures

Each proposal received by ACA goes through an internal and peer review process. The steps in this process are outlined below.

1. Proposals are received and evaluated by ACA. An acknowledgment of receipt of your proposal will be sent within 2–4 weeks. If ACA believes that your manuscript is not appropriate for the ACA publishing program, it will be rejected at this stage.
2. If the proposal is deemed of interest to our audience, it will be submitted to the ACA Editorial Advisory Board, or other selected reviewers, for further consideration. If the review is positive, the proposal will be brought before the ACA Publications Committee.
3. Pending positive feedback and support for publication, a contract is issued that specifies when the complete first draft and final draft will be submitted.
4. The first draft is reviewed concurrently by ACA and several peer reviewers. ACA assesses the manuscript’s organization, coherence, and other publishing elements. The peer reviewers, selected with author consultation, assess the manuscript’s content and accuracy.
5. The author uses these preliminary reviews to refine the manuscript and prepare the final draft.

Manuscript Writing and Style Guidelines

The guidelines below must be followed if your manuscript is accepted for publication by ACA.

1. The manuscript must be typed and double-spaced, including references.
2. All material must adhere to American Psychological Association (APA) style. This includes references, abbreviations, and guidelines for language bias. Refer to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (APA, 2020).
3. Check all references for completeness. All publications cited within the text must appear in the reference list and, conversely, all publications listed in the reference list must be cited in the text. Adequate information should be given to allow the reader to retrieve the referenced material from the source.
4. Lengthy quotations (400 cumulative words or more from one source) require written permission from the copyright holder (usually the publisher) for reproduction. Adaptation of tables and figures also requires reproduction approval from the copyrighted source. It is the author’s responsibility to secure such permission and pay any related fees. Written permission for all material must be provided to ACA with the final draft.
5. Authors bear responsibility for the accuracy of all content, including references, quotations, tables, and figures.

Artwork Preparation Checklist

• All figures should be submitted at the approximate size they will appear in the final publication. For example, for a standard 6 x 9 inch book final artwork should be approximately 5 x 7 inches. A final copy of any figure(s) should be submitted with your first draft.
• Consider the size and proportion of all elements within figures. Each element must be large enough and sharp enough to be legible. Use a simple typeface (e.g., Helvetica or Futura). Any text within the figure should be a minimum of 8 points (or no larger than 14 points) in size for legibility. Also consider line weight (thickness). Any lines should be a minimum of ½ point, up to 2 points in weight.
• Artwork should be black only because the internal text of your book will be in black and white. The use of color in your figure is not acceptable because it will not reproduce well. To distinguish different elements in your artwork, use alternate patterns or clearly distinguishable lines (e.g., alternate cross hatching within bar graphs or solid and dashed lines).
• Keep the use of any shading within the artwork to a minimum and do not place type over shaded areas because it will not be legible. Try to avoid multiple areas of shading that are close together in value as it will be difficult to distinguish differences.
• All abbreviations and symbols must be explained in a figure legend or caption (see APA Publication Manual, pp. 183–186 for listing of statistical symbols and abbreviations).
• ACA requires electronic artwork to be at a minimum resolution of 600 dots per inch (dpi) up to 1200 dpi. Halftone line screens should be a minimum of 300 dpi. JPEG or PDF files are preferred. Do not embed artwork within your manuscript, but rather insert a figure callout in the text discussion (e.g., see Table 1.1) and attach artwork as a separate file with the electronic submission of your first draft.
• Figure or table file(s) should be appropriately labeled with author name and/or brief article title for easy identification (e.g., Smith Counseling Teens Figure 1.1).