Manuscript Submissions

Governor William Berkeley surrendering Virginia to the commissioners of Parliament (1652)
by Howard Pyle (1900). Courtesy, Delaware Art Museum

Commonwealth Book Publishers of Virginia connects today’s readers with events and ideas that have shaped their world. We do this by bringing History together with Philosophy and Art. If you have a manuscript you feel fits this theme, we would like to review it for possible publication.

About Our Promotions, Marketing & Distribution

CBPOV’s tagline is “where History, Philosophy, and Art meet.” The books we publish in this domain are issued in four series: Histories of Ideas, Illustrated Histories, Memoirs and Biographies, and Histories in Art.

To reach national audiences for these series/books, CBPOV promotes them in dozens of “key” markets around the country—unless readers know about interesting books, they cannot buy copies of them. Books also need to be delivered into the appropriate channels so they are available to buyers in these dispersed markets.

CBPOV's promotional program publicizes its titles in target markets across the country. Overseas marketing opportunities are currently being developed. CBPOV is also part of a national distribution system that delivers its books to places where readers can peruse and buy them.

Our books are available through online vendors, who now sell the great majority of the books sold. They are also available through all other channels of the book trade, which include national retail chains, independent book sellers, public libraries, schools and universities, book clubs, book fairs, and selected catalogues.

Ecommerce

Our www.commonwealthbooks.org website provides an information base that can be accessed by everyone in the book trade. This includes authors, wholesalers, and individual book buyers. The site is maintained by ecommerce professionals who regularly upgrade its identifiers to maximize traffic from individuals and organizations interested in CBPOVs’ products and services.

In addition to managing the website to maximize discovery and exploration, we produce a weekly blog with information about books we are publishing, events that highlight our books and their authors, and miscellaneous items of interest.

We also maintain a growing database of friends who want to know when we are onto something new.

Public Relations

Commonwealth Book Publishers of Virginia's publicists enhance the visibility and buyer awareness of its books by

• creating targeted media lists for CBPOV generating regional and national media coverage in magazines, newspapers, radio, and on television.
• providing readers, reviewers, writers, and agents with press releases and other pertinent information about books CBPOV is publishing.
• reaching out to literary organizations, book festivals and key author speaking venues.
• submitting titles for literary award consideration.
• working closely with editorial, web marketing, and sales to create a productive publishing timeline for future books.

Distribution

Commonwealth Book Publishers of Virginia is a member of the distribution network managed by Small Press United, a subsidiary of the Independent Publishing Group of Chicago. SPU presents CBPOVs’ titles to all channels of the American book trade, including national book chains and online resellers, independent bookstores and gift shops, public libraries, schools and universities, national and regional book fairs, book clubs, and other book-related entities.

SPU forwards industry-standard Sell Sheets in a weekly data feed to over 90 book retailers and wholesalers. These sales documents are also periodically published in catalogues sent to 36 commissioned sales reps who call on the independent booksellers across the US and Canada and to 100 reps who cover the American gift market.

Another team of SPU representatives attends national and regional exhibitions where they display advance copies of SPU titles and collect orders for books.

In addition to its own marketing activities, SPU submits its publishers’ titles to specialty catalogs that target readers with particular subject interests such as biography, history, or politics.

This comprehensive, coordinated approach gives authors the best chance to build their audience and profit from their writing.