Editorial
The Candour Review Standard
The purpose of review is not consensus. It is to make the work harder to knock down.
Publishing is not the end of the author’s argument with the work. It is where the argument gets harder.
A manuscript the house is going to publish is challenged editorially before publication. We do not ask reviewers to make authors agree with us. We ask them to find what is weak, unsupported, unclear or missing.
Review is a set of instruments. Which ones a book needs depends on the book. A title page that lists a step is reporting that the step happened. A title page that is silent is not implying the rest.
Instruments
What review can include
- 01
Editorial review inside the house
The manuscript is read against the Candour test. Claims are separated from atmosphere. Unclear passages are named. The question is whether the argument holds, not whether it flatters the house.
- 02
Another writer or practitioner
Where it helps, someone who knows the work of making this kind of book — or the practice the book describes — reads for what a general editor would miss.
- 03
A specialist external reviewer
Where the subject needs knowledge the house does not have, an independent specialist is asked to test the argument. Their job is to find what is weak, unsupported, unclear or missing.
- 04
Evidence and source checking
Material factual claims are traced. A number, a date, a quotation or a causal assertion has to be able to show where it came from.
- 05
Author response and revision
The author answers the challenge and revises. The aim is a stronger book that is still recognisably theirs. What does not survive is cut, including passages the author loved.
A distinction
What we do not call peer review
Editorial review, a reading by another writer, and specialist external review are not academic peer review. Academic peer review is a particular process, with its own reviewers, criteria and record. We use those words only when a specific work went through a process that justifies them.
We do not describe the Candour Review Standard as peer review in the academic sense, and we do not apply that label to a book retrospectively to make the house sound more institutional than it is.
The same rule governs book pages. Review and evidence details appear only where the catalogue records them as fact. An empty record produces no review claim at all.
For writers
Challenged, not flattened
Writers should expect to be challenged, not flattened. Editing at the house is collaborative. The aim is to make the work stronger while preserving the author’s argument and voice.
The standard we ask a book to meet is also set out on Principles. Writers proposing a book should start at Submissions.