Acceptance FAQs

What happens after you send us your submission?

• You will receive an email from us to confirm we have received it. (If you haven't heard from us within three weeks, please send us a follow up.)

• We will read your submission as quickly as we can, but we may need to let some time to run to allow other submissions for the same topic to arrive and be considered against yours, or to find a suitable opponent.

What happens if we want to accept your submission?

• If we want to proceed with your submission, we will let you know. We may also suggest changes to the structure you’ve proposed for your main argument. This will most likely be to promote clarity or completeness.

• Because we will need you to write your main argument (and later your first rebuttal) quickly, so we can finalise and publish our book on a timely basis, we will suggest a timetable to you. After discussion to take into account both your and your opponent’s other commitments, we will agree the timetable with you.

• We will need you to commit to the timetable so we can reliably set up all our pre-publication, marketing and distribution arrangements for the book. Any delays on your part can cost us dearly in terms of missed printing or distribution deadlines, disappointing booksellers and readers, and impacting on our brand.

• If you and we agree on the structure of your main argument and the timetable, we will then confirm we will proceed with you.

What happens if we do proceed with you?

Timely cooperation

Recognising that publishing these books, with two opposing authors each writing a main piece and a rebuttal in a short time-frame, is more complex and has more moving parts than many other book publishing projects, you will cooperate with us and our editor on a time-critical basis through the editing and pre-publication process with a view to helping us ensure that your contributions conform to our series’ desired structure, style and content.

Main argument

Consistent with the timetable, you will then write and submit your full 10,000-word main argument along the lines of the agreed structure and style and submit it to us together with (in a publishable form) all relevant source references and citations for the facts you refer to, as well as your assertions. You will provide these to us as endnotes, not footnotes. As mentioned earlier, we don’t intend to include your sources and citations in the book but will provide them to your opponent and also post them on our webpage for the book at the time it is published.

Editing

We are picky. If you don’t like picky, please don’t submit to us. We will edit your grammar, language, punctuation and structure. We will do this primarily to maximise clarity, rigour, civility, and plain jargon-free language, to eliminate sneer, ridicule or abuse, as well as to promote an easy-to-read style consistent with our series and our target readership. This is not a series for big words and long sentences that appeal to academics or elites but make most other people’s eyes glaze over. We will cut them, or ask you to explain them in simpler language. We may also edit your work for other reasons, such as accuracy or legal reasons (such as potential defamation). But we will not be responsible to you or to others if we fail to edit your work, edit it inadequately or if we miss anything. As you’d expect, we will normally consult with you prior to any major edits, although this may not always be possible, especially if we are pushing up against deadlines. If there’s a dispute over an edit, we will of course consider your view, but we have the right to prevail. In doing so, we won’t make any edits which, in our view, materially alter your underlying message or the substance of your argument, but you accept that the style we have chosen for the series takes precedence over yours.

We set out our specific Style Guide in the following page of this website, so you can clearly see what we expect. We recognise our style requirements will not suit every writer, but we’ve chosen them deliberately for this series and its target audience. So if you intend to quibble over them, please don’t waste your time and ours by submitting to us.

Argument swap

Once we have edited your main argument and your opponent's, we will provide you with your opponent's main argument (together with their endnotes containing their source references and citations) and vice-versa, so you can each write your 2,500 word rebuttals. We will edit these, too, with the same objectives mentioned above. If your opponent should find factual or other flaws in your main argument, you accept that they are free to point this out in their rebuttal, and that we are free to publish it, without you complaining or seeking other redress. You, too, will have the equivalent right for flaws in their main argument.

Confidentiality

When we provide you with your opponent’s main argument, sources and citations, we will be doing that strictly on the basis that you will keep them confidential and use them only to write your rebuttal for us to include in our book. In particular, you won’t disseminate, circulate, or publish any of your opponent’s main argument to anyone or by any means whether before we publish the book or afterwards (except by the book itself), as this may damage the market for and credibility of our book or our series.

Your payment

Shortly after we’ve finished editing your rebuttal for the book, we’ll send you your full payment of A$1,000. Our preference is to pay by electronic funds transfer to your bank account. Just before that time, we will ask for those details.

Your free copies

We’ll send you your 6 free copies of the book you have contributed to as soon as we can, which will normally be shortly before it’s publicly available.

Your discounted copies

Ideally, we will send you your discounted copies of the book (up to 10 copies) at the same time as your free copies to simplify our processes and paperwork and keep our shipping costs down. To assist that, we’ll ask you to request your discounted copies when we ask for your bank account details for our payment to you. That way we can also simplify our administration by deducting the payment for the discounted books from our A$1,000 payment to you.

Media and marketing

We hope the book will help broaden or refuel the debate on your topic and generate strong media interest, although we can’t guarantee that. We will also be publicising and marketing the book to sections of the media we think are on the lookout for commentators on your topic, and we will encourage them to contact you through our publicist or directly. You authorise us to use your name, likeness, biographical data or credentials in any edition of the book you contribute to or in any derivative work, as well as on our websites, in advertising, marketing, publicity or promotion and (unless you specifically ask us not to) to give the media your contact details (mobile phone number and email address) for this purpose. You will assist us actively in promoting the books to the media and the public by making yourself available, subject to your other commitments, to give media interviews on your topic and the books, and to attend other events where we are able to arrange them, for example discussions and debates in bookstores etc. We will meet reasonable pre-agreed travel costs where we ask you to attend events outside your home city.

Very shortly before sale, we’ll be sending out media kits including this information and free copies of the books or extracts. If you can suggest any specific media contacts to send our media kits to, please let us know at the time and we will happily consider them.

We’ll need a good quality, high-resolution headshot photo of you. Shortly before publication, we’ll ask you to let us have one so we can use it for marketing and possibly on our website. Also for our website and possibly digital versions of the book, we may want a video clip of you and, separately, your opponent talking to camera, for example, introducing yourselves and the topic. We’ll need your further cooperation and availability for this.

After-rebuttal rebuttal

You won’t normally get to see your opponent’s rebuttal to your own main argument, and vice-versa, until we give each of you your copies of the completed book, or just before. But if you then wish, we’d be happy for you to give us a short rebuttal to your opponent’s rebuttal, provided it’s no more than 500 words.

Obviously, this rebuttal to your opponent’s rebuttal won’t be included in the book itself but, to help generate momentum and conversation even beyond the book, we intend to include this once we’ve edited it (with the same objectives mentioned above) on our website for this series. We’ll make this web-posting option available to both writers even if only one of you chooses to take advantage of it, and will mention this on our website.

Change of plans

It’s possible that with a particular book or a particular writer, and for a variety of possible reasons, we may decide that we won’t publish that book at all or at that time, or we may decide to substitute a fresh writer or writers for one or both sides of that debate. These won’t be decisions we’ll take lightly, and we expect they will be rare. But if you do make a submission to us, you will be accepting that we remain free to take any of these actions as we see fit, without us having to explain why. If this happens to you, and you are a writer we have proceeded with, we will still pay you an appropriate proportion of the A$1,000 fee even though we won’t be publishing your work. For example: if it occurs after you’ve supplied your main argument, provided it is in our agreed form and structure, but not yet your rebuttal, we’ll pay you A$750; if it occurs after you’ve supplied both your main argument and your first rebuttal, we’ll pay you the full A$1,000. Our tendering the appropriate payment to you will be full settlement of all our obligations and liability to you. You also accept we may, from time to time, vary our terms in respect of another writer or writers and you agree we remain free to do so without affecting our agreement with you.

Revised or rewritten editions

Later, after we’ve published the book containing your contribution, it’s possible we may want to publish a revised or rewritten edition. If the changes are minor and don’t materially change the sense, we are not obliged to pass them by you, or pay any further fee. If they’re more significant, we may ask you to work with us again for that new edition and on the same terms and warranties as applied for your earlier contribution. However, we reserve the flexibility to choose substitute writers as we see fit and without having to give you any reasons. In such cases, we and our substitute writer will be free to use all or any of the “Why…” and “Because…” headings used in the earlier book if we wish without attribution to you.

Withdrawal

We also reserve the right to cease publication of the book containing your contribution at any time as we see fit, including removing it from sale or from our web sites, without having to give reasons.

Other important terms if we proceed with you

Moral rights and copyright

What you write and how we publish it are important both to you and to us. The integrity, contents and design of our series, and the work we’ve already and will continue to put into it, as well as our marketing, promotion and brand-building for it are also important to us.

Many of our writers will be passionate and public advocates for their side of their relevant debate and will want to continue writing on that topic elsewhere. We acknowledge and encourage that.

The only restrictions we impose are that you won’t allow your other writings to appear in a potentially competing 'for-and-against' debate-style publication, or in a format similar to our 'Why/Because' format as outlined above, or in a design, style or format substantially similar to our series’ or the relevant book’s (especially our design features, flip-sided format, layout, callouts and typography).

To further those imperatives, if you make a submission to us that we proceed with, you’ll be:

• asserting to us your moral right to be identified in the book and on our website for the series as the author of your contributions,

• assigning your ownership of its copyright to us (but retaining your freedom to write elsewhere subject to the qualifications above), and

• acknowledging that we own the copyright in our series’ and our book’s design, style, format, design features, flip-sided format, layout, callouts, typography, and in our 'Why/Because' format and our 'two-books-in-one' debate format, and that you have no claim over them.

This will facilitate us investing in, developing and promoting our series, as well as potentially distributing it via a variety of means, forms, devices and languages to a wide range of readers (for example, print, print-to-voice, audio, audio-visual, electronic and digital, including on our or others’ websites), to reproduce, disseminate, publish, transmit, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works from, distribute and display your contribution, or incorporate some or all of it in other works, to take advantage of new technologies as they arise to store, communicate or distribute authors’ work, as well as to help protect against copyright and moral rights violation.

If we need you to give us any other documents or do anything else so we can benefit from the warranties, indemnity and other agreements set out in this document, you will do so at our request and reasonable expense. We may withhold publication and fees until this is done.

Warranties and indemnity

If you make a submission to us that we proceed with, we’ll be doing so on your warranty that the work you provide to us:

• is your original work in its entirety (except for edits we make)

• expresses your original ideas (except where these are in the public domain or, if not, that you will give due attribution to the relevant person)

• contains nothing defamatory, false, misleading or deceptive (including all assertions or statements of fact, citations and references) and that our publication, distribution and sale of it is lawful.

By making your submission, you’ll also be warranting that, subject to this Agreement, you are the sole owner of copyright in and all other rights to your work, that your grant of rights to us and others in this Agreement will not infringe any other person’s rights or constitute a breach of any other agreement, that you have obtained copyright clearance and all other licences or permissions from any relevant rights holders for any material included in your work that does not constitute fair dealing permitted under applicable copyright laws, and that the biographical details and credentials you provide to us about yourself for publication by us are true, not misleading, and have not been challenged by others.

You’ll also be acknowledging that if you breach any of these warranties, Pantera Press and others may suffer loss, damage and expense. Accordingly, you indemnify Pantera Press Pty Limited and our directors, officers, employees, agents, distributors and booksellers against all loss, damage and expense incurred or suffered directly or indirectly by any of them as a result of us publishing, selling or distributing your work.

Limitation

If you make a submission to us that we proceed with, you’ll also be acknowledging that if you have any claim, including for negligence, against us, our directors, officers, employees, agents, distributors or booksellers, we can settle that and all other claims in full by tendering A$500 to you (in addition to any payment due for your contribution) to your address last known to us.

ABN/GST registration

If you are an Australian resident contributor and you carry on a business, you must have an Australian Business Number (ABN) to do business with us. If that business has a current or projected annual revenue of A$50,000 or more, you must also be registered for GST (Goods and Services Tax). Prior to payment to you, we will ask you to confirm your ABN/GST status and may also need to ask you to give us a tax invoice including your ABN. If we are required to pay GST, we will add it to the payment due to you.

Place of contract

Though our writers may be located anywhere, we are based in Sydney, Australia. To keep our costs down, our writers agree that their contract with us is to be treated as if made in Sydney, and that the law that applies there is the law that applies to this agreement.

 

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