Start with the Shelf, Not the Synopsis

Before you adjust a single margin, be clear about where your book sits. Nature writing is a broad church: the coastal memoir, the woodland year, the urban foraging guide, the essay collection that braids ecology with grief. Publishers acquire books they can describe to a sales meeting in one confident sentence, so spend an afternoon writing that sentence for yourself. If your manuscript is two things at once — part family history, part river biography — decide which is the spine and which is the rib.

Once you can name your shelf, everything else becomes easier. Your word count, your structure, your cover letter and your choice of editor all flow from that single act of positioning. Do it first, and do it honestly.

Formatting: Invisible When It's Right

Editors read for voice and structure; they should never have to fight your layout. Keep the presentation plain and consistent so the prose does the talking.

• Use one font throughout — 12pt Times New Roman, Garamond or a similar readable serif. Do not mix.
• Double-space the body text. Single-space only block quotations and verse, and indent them.
• Set margins of around 2.5cm and leave the right edge ragged. Justified text on screen creates rivers of white space.
• Add page numbers and a running header with your surname and a short title, so loose pages can be reunited with their manuscript.
• Begin each chapter on a fresh page, dropping the heading about a third of the way down.
• Italicise book titles, Latin binomials and vessel names. Use proper apostrophes, en dashes for ranges, and be consistent about UK spelling: grey, colour, recognise.
• Submit as .docx unless the guidelines ask for a PDF, and name the file clearly — Surname_Title_FullManuscript.
• Leave out decorative templates, coloured text and embedded images in the main file. If you have maps or line drawings, supply them separately with a note in the text.

Word Count: The Numbers That Matter

Nature writing sits mostly within narrative non-fiction, where the commercial sweet spot is narrower than most first-time authors expect. As a rough guide, a narrative book of place or journey runs to 70,000–90,000 words; a linked essay collection to 60,000–80,000; a heavily illustrated or gift-format title to 40,000–60,000. Publishers of literary nature writing sometimes take a shorter book, but they will usually say so on their submissions page.

The guidelines always win. If a publisher asks for 80,000 words and you have written 120,000, do not send the lot and hope. Cut it, split it, or find a publisher whose list suits a longer book. Equally, do not pad a taut 55,000-word manuscript to hit a round number — padding is visible from the first page.

Permissions: The Quiet Deal-Breaker

Permission requests are the task that sinks otherwise finished manuscripts, usually because they are left until the week of submission. Start early, and keep a permissions log from the moment you begin drafting. A simple table with columns for source, page reference, rights holder, date requested and date granted will save you real anguish later.

• Poetry and song lyrics: assume you need written permission for any extract, however brief.
• Prose extracts: a short quotation for criticism or review may fall within fair dealing, but publishers generally want permission for anything longer — a few hundred words, or any complete scene.
• Maps and photographs: including your own, if they were previously licensed to someone else. Archive and mapping agency licences are often time-limited.
• Letters, diaries and interviews: the writer or speaker owns the words, even when the document belongs to an archive. Estates can take months to reply.
• Previously published essays: check the terms of your contract with the magazine or anthology before you assume you can reuse the piece.

When permission is granted, record the exact credit line the rights holder requires and reproduce it precisely in your acknowledgements.

The Cover Letter: One Page, Three Moves

Address your letter to a named editor. Generic greetings read as mass submission, and they usually are. Then make three moves in three short paragraphs.

First, the hook: what the book is, where it is set, and what it does, in two or three sentences. Second, the fit: name a title on their list and explain, in a sentence or two, how your book would sit alongside it. This is where your shelf-thinking pays off. Third, the facts: who you are, the word count, whether the manuscript is complete, and what you have enclosed.

Keep the tone warm and plain. Avoid opening with pleasantries about their inbox, and avoid claiming a guaranteed audience. If you have a relevant platform — a long-running column, a residency, a modest but engaged readership — mention it once, without apology or inflation.

Final Checks Before You Press Send

• Read the submissions page again on the day you send, and follow it exactly.
• Run a spell-check set to UK English, then search for the Americanisms you know you slip into.
• Read your opening page aloud. The ear catches what the eye forgives.
• Check that chapter titles in the contents match the chapters themselves.
• Open the file once more to confirm there are no tracked changes, comments or stray metadata.
• Log the date, the editor's name and the expected response time — then step away and start the next piece.