Osprey Publishing is a company that focuses on a niche market and has good distribution. I have seen and purchased a number of their books in brick and mortar bookstores.

Osprey publishes non-fiction books, focusing on military history. They also produce historical themed military adventure games.

They are currently only accepting unsolicited proposals for manuscripts that fit into one of their already established series of books. Thankfully, their existing series of books cover a wide variety of topics. Also, many of the series are very broad and unfocused. For example one of the series is called General Military.  Others are much more specific, such as Aircraft of the Aces.

All the series names can be seen on a drop down menu on the left hand side of the homepage. You can then click on the title of the series in order see what books they have already published within that series.

Like many non-fiction publishers, they offer contracts based on proposals, not on completed manuscripts. You do not need to write a book in order to submit it to them. If they are interested in your proposal they will request additional information before proceeding to a contract.

They accept proposal submissions via post and email. To submit please write a short synopsis of not more than 2,000 words. They request that your synopsis include “a brief overview of the nature of your proposal and outline of chapter headings and content; a list of available source material on which the research will be based; sample copies of illustrations that will accompany the title or article, together with details of where others will be obtained from.”

To learn more about submissions visit their contact page here. Then make sure to click on the subheading Proposals/Writing for Osprey. To learn more about what they have previously published, visit their main page here.