About / Submissions

Contact:

Progressive Press, P.O. Box 12834, Palm Desert, Calif. 92255-2834
Email is preferred mode of contact: mail@progpress.com. Tel. (760) 340-3618.

See also: Books We'd Like to Publish below

Submissions:

If you have a non-fiction manuscript with a unique topic or slant on politics, history, or biography, please send:
A brief description, the table of contents, expected word count, brief author bio, eventually a subject area code keyword list, and web address if any for more detailed info on your MS (such as a book proposal).

We are interested in broadening our offerings beyond the current niche, and will also consider other genres and subject matter.

Also important are the following questions as to your market:

- What is your target market?
- What other books have been published on the same or closely related topics?
- What sort of a market was there for them?
- How does your book stack up against the competition?

This should be part of your Book Proposal. You can search the internet for Book Proposal Guidelines or Submission Guidelines and pick a format that works for you.
For instance, http://www.twliterary.com/bookproposal.html covers the bases well.
This will not only help me evaluate the prospects for publication, but will help you think clearly about what you are trying to achieve with your work.

Send to: info@progressivepress.com. E-mail is the preferred means of communication.

Caveats
New manuscripts should normally be in digital format. (We may scan existing books or manuscripts for reprinting.)
Be realistic and keep in mind the supply and demand situation in the book market, especially since the invention of the personal computer and on-demand printing:
- A quarter of a million new book titles are published each year in the USA alone, while the average bookstore carries only 10,000 to 50,000 titles.
- Millions of unpublished manuscripts are seeking a publisher, while hundreds of millions of people rely more and more on the Internet for information.
- To compete in this situation it is better to put forth a quality work with timely promotion, rather than to rush into print "to try to save the world" without preparing the ground for it.
- As my capacity is so limited, I encourage authors to also investigate the possibilities of self-publishing.

About the publisher

Progressive Press publisher John-Paul Leonard did his BA in Languages and Political Science at UCLA, and a Masters in Finance at UC Berkeley. After a business career that took him for 18 years to Europe, East and West, he returned to the USA and took over the family business, Tree of Life Publications, between two moments which reawakened him to politics: Al-Aqsa Intifada and 9/11. He was a frequent contributor to Media Monitors Network until publishing War on Freedom in 2002.

Books We'd Like to Publish

To round out the research on conspiracies in history, we're particularly interested in manuscripts on the following events, among others:

- a study of the French Revolution which will investigate whether state-sponsored terrorism was involved. Author should have a good command of French. Among other sources, the work should take into account Olivier Blanc's Les Hommes de Londres, which has not been translated into English.

Alternatively, the French Revolution as one major event in a series of significant historical examples, analyzed under the lens of the hypothesis that revolutions are anything but what they seem. In reality they have generally been instigated by foreign powers to destabilize a rival nation, usually introducing a countergang to usurp the legitimate government. Thus no surprise that revolutions tend not to improve the lot of the common people, au contraire... en bref, a debunking of revolutionary ideology. See also "Manipulation in the Middle East" below.

- an investigation of the background to Japanese history from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. To what extent was Japan manipulated by financiers? What to make of the circumstances of the death of the Komei emperor, who stoutly resisted foreign influence? Were later Japanese emperors puppets of the City of London? Why did Japan commit the suicidal attack on Pearl Harbor?

- Was the Symbionese Liberation Army a countergang? The founder has been accused of being a police agent. Apparently, no book on the subject has yet given justice to the hypothesis of state-sponsored terror behind the SLA.

- Manipulation in the Middle East. To what extent were events like the rise of the Ayatollahs and the Arab Spring of 2011 secretly staged by the US or other foreign  powers?

- How many famous suicides were really assassinations? Frank Olson and Gary Webb for example. Marilyn Monroe too? Defense Secretary Forrestal? It could be a long list. What evidence is left out of the accepted view of their demise?