About Our Book Production Process
Everything you may want to know about our book production process, from contract to promotion. Different aspects are covered on the different pages, the FAQ collects questions we often receive and is constantly updated.
Contract
Your book has been reviewed positively by the punctum books co-directors and you received an email letting you know that we accepted your manuscript for publication, contingent upon the forthcoming review by our Editorial Advisory Board, and after that, receipt of final, revised manuscript. Congratulations!
Once you acknowledge that you want to continue the publication process with us, we will send you a contract. Our contract is compact because we try to avoid as much as possible the legalese that clutters the book contracts of many academic publishers who are intent on securing your copyright for themselves. Also, because we are an Open Access press, some things in our contract may be unfamiliar or surprising. So here we provide an overview of FAQs about our contract.
Preamble
As you can see, the contract is contingent upon two conditions: "future receipt of completed manuscript" and (when applicable) "favorable review by our Editorial Advisory Board."
With "favorable review by our Editorial Advisory Board," we mean that a member of our EAB (or other reader) also reviews your manuscript. punctum books is a scholar-led press: both co-directors have multiple graduate degrees in the fields of the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. We therefore consider Eileen and Vincent's review of manuscripts to be the first level of peer review. Once we have accepted a manuscript and sent you a contract, we design the peer review via the Editorial Advisory Board, and/or external reviewer(s), to be constructive as opposed to a simple publish/don't publish decision, helping you to improve your book. In rare cases this may mean you still have a lot of revision work to do, but only rarely are we brought to reject a manuscript at the advice of the secondary reviewer. In other words, you can consider signing a contract with as a "solid yes," but there may still be work ahead! We should also add that our peer review process is not a "one size fits all" process. We will discuss with you what is the most productive way of review, considering the genre and nature of your manuscript.
This work ahead is captured in the other condition, "future receipt of completed manuscript." We expect our authors to take the peer reviewers' comments to heart (keeping in mind that you also have the right to disagree with a peer reviewer and you can always discuss that with us), and prepare a completed manuscript according to our guidelines (detailed here for monographs and edited collections).
1. Grants and Copyright
You will see the phrase "non-exclusive license." The Creative Commons license is "non-exclusive" because you are welcome to license your original manuscript in other ways to other venues (such as by republishing an excerpt of your book in an anthology or posting your entire book online, etc.). You always retain the copyright in your own work.
When it comes to derivative works such as translations, Creative Commons licenses are not particularly clear. That's why we will always discuss with you the best way to treat a particular translation request when it comes to us, and if you receive requests directly to translate your work, or to republish it in some other form, just let us know and we can hammer out that agreement together.
2. Distribution and Archiving
Your book and its metadata will live in different formats in both digital and meat space. We are continuously expanding the repositories in which your publication is deposited.
At present our entire catalog is available via OAPEN, the primary global repository for open access books, and also at The Internet Archive. Part of our catalog is available through Project MUSE, and we are currently in the process of importing our entire catalog to JSTOR and Google Books. For UK educational institutions, our catalog is also available through RNIB Bookshare.
The metadata of our catalog live primarily on Thoth. This is also the place where you can download your own metadata record, for example when you want to import your book into bibliography managers such as Zotero or BibDesk. All of our metadata are also stored on DOAB and some on CNKI. OCLC ingests our metadata from Thoth and when you find your book there you can also check how many libraries around the world hold your book. The number of platforms on which your book is available is continuously growing, which means it will continue to become ever more accessible around the world.
Our books are printed via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which used to be an independent print-on-demand printer (called CreateSpace) but was acquired and renamed a few years by Amazon. Many of our authors ask us whether there are alternatives and the unfortunate reality is that there are none for global, online distribution. The only competitor coming close to KDP's quality and worldwide reach is Lightning Source, which is also owned by a multinational megacorporation (Ingram). We have tried to find local alternatives to KDP, but these are simply not scalable, are less reliable, and require much more hands-on management from our side, for which we simply do not have the hands. So for the moment, we are stuck with KDP. On the flipside, your book will be available worldwide in almost any digital bookstore plugged into Amazon's distribution network.
We are also steadily expanding the presence of our books in meatspace stores. There are multiple independent bookstores around the world who regularly stock our books (which you can see here), and thanks to our distribution partnership with Asterism Books, our books are now also increasingly available in even more bookstores around the US. You can check with your favorite local bookstore if they want to stock our (your!) book: they get a 40% discount on the list price and (mostly) free shipping.
3. Representations & Warranties
This is basically some legal verbiage to make sure that you actually wrote the work that you sent to us. It also protects us from any lawsuits should it turn out this was not the case.
4. Indemnity
More legal verbiage about conflict resolution. We have never gone to court over a contract and hope we never will. We are committed to solving any and all conflicts amiably and without recourse to the juridical system.
5. Inheritance
This makes sure we can continue to keeping a book in circulation after the demise of its author.
6. Alteration
This makes sure neither party in the contract can change is unilaterally.
After reviewing the contract please fill in your address in the first paragraph and sign/date at the bottom. Please return the contract as a PDF.
Software
There is a number of software platforms you will encounter during your work with punctum books. Most of them are open source. We list them below. All of these instances (except PubPub) are kindly managed by our friends over at Cloud68.co.
Bookstack
Bookstack is the platform that we use for the internal and public-facing documentation of punctum's work processes, guidelines, and FAQs. Our server is https://docs.punctumbooks.com/.
InvoiceNinja
We use InvoiceNinja for invoicing. Our server is https://billing.punctumbooks.com/.
Mattermost
Mattermost is a chat program that we use for our internal communication (we have phased out most of internal emails). Anyone can create an account and chat with us there. You can download desktop and mobile clients here. Our server is https://chat.punctumbooks.com/.
Metabase
We use Metabase for the data visualization of usage statistics. This is still under development as we try to incorporate a variety of stats on sales and downloads. Our server is https://data.punctumbooks.com/.
NextCloud
NextCloud is used as the cloud platform on which all our files live. This is also where the version of record of your publication is hosted. You can download desktop and mobile clients here. Our server is https://cloud.punctumbooks.com/.
PubPub
PubPub, developed by the Knowledge Futures Group, is our blogging environment. Our account is https://punctumbooks.pubpub.org.
Thoth
We use Thoth for our metadata management. This is also the place you can download the metadata of your own publication, for example if you want to import them into a reference manager like Zotero or BibDesk. punctum books is one of the founders of Thoth.
Trello
We use Trello as our kanban board for production management. You can download desktop and mobile clients here.
Proof Correction
You have received the draft PDF of the interior of your book, we're getting close to publication now! You will have received a link to the PDF in our Nextcloud. When you open it, it will look like this:
Click to download the file in the upper right corner.
We prefer that the PDF is annotated using Adobe Acrobat Reader, which has a highlighting and comment tool that allows us to implement your final corrections without (hopefully) too much confusion.
Somewhere in the toolbar (depending on the operating system you're using) there should be a highlighting function, whose icon looks like a marker. Please use this highlighter to mark the phrase you are commenting on. Once you highlight some phrase, a comment window will be opened in which you can insert your correction, observation, etc.
When proofing, pay specific attention to italicization (since we insert that manually), paragraph breaks, white space, etc. Also check those running headers! Poetry often needs a special treatment too. Make sure that your acknowledgments contain everyone you want to mention (please think also of the publishing workers that labored on bringing your manuscript into the world!).
Once you have completely annnotated the proof, save the file under a new name (add your initials, change the date), and upload it back into our file drop, and let Vincent know you did.
If you are proofing an edited collection, have all authors proof there individual chapters separately. Collect the corrected PDFs and send them all together, zipped to our file drop. Please do not send us individually corrected chapters one by one.
Ordering Author Copies
How do I order author copies?
When we dispatch your books, you'll receive an invoice from us. Read more here on how to deal with them.
Order your author copies at least 3 weeks before an event. Our the December holiday period, at least 4 weeks.
Can I pre-order author copies?
Since our books are print-on-demand, they only become available once the book is released. We therefore can only take orders once the book has been published.
Can other readers pre-order copies?
At the moment, other readers cannot pre-order copies directly from us.
Book Promotion
At punctum we are committed to ensuring that our books have the widest possible audience. We submit our ebooks to a wide range of online repositories, including OAPEN, JSTOR, the Internet Archive, Google Books, and RNIB Bookshare. They are also indexed in DOAB and EBSCO, large databases used by libraries. Our print books are available from all large online bookstores such as Amazon and the Book Depository, and are also available via a growing network of independent bookstores.
Social Media
punctum books has an active presence on social media (Twitter and Instagram), where we promote our publications and any author-related news and events. Be sure to tag us @punctum_books.
Reviews
We frequently send out our publications for reviews. We don't do this blindly. We work together with the author to provide a targeted list of appropriate venues at which the author ideally has personal contact with a specific reviewer. We send out review copies for free.
Awards
We frequently submit our books to a variety of awards. Each year these include the Lambda LGBTQ Book Awards and the Firecracker Awards. We encourage our authors to seek out awards to which their book specifically might be eligible. These may be awards given out by scholarly organizations or non-profit organizations interested in the promotion of research on specific topics. Authors belonging to minority groups may also find that there are awards specifically related toward the advancement of their cause or visibility. We are happy to handle the submission process and any fees (within reason) on your behalf.
Encounters at the End of the Book
As we are expanding our post-publication support for authors, we launched a Vimeo channel called "Encounters at the End of the Book." This channel features interviews and conversations with authors and is one of the ways in which we highlight our publications and the authors behind them.
Book Tours
We currently do not have the organizational capacity to organize book or lecture tours. However, we do our best to support authors interested in organizing post-publication events and we can take, for example, of shipping out books to presentation locations (give us at least 2 months heads-up!), promoting the event on social media and through our mailing list.
FAQ
Contract, Rights, and Permissions
Will I receive any royalties?
The baseline is that very few scholarly publications ever sell enough copies to compensate for, let alone exceed, their production costs. punctum books is a non-profit, public benefit corporation and all the money we make from selling print copies is reinvested into publishing more books. We are kept afloat thanks to the generous contributions of academic libraries. As a result, we do not have a royalties clause in our contract.
However, if you feel strongly that your book might become a bestseller, for various reasons, we are amenable, in specific instances, to adding a royalties clause that will specifically state that any profits above our production costs will be be split 65% (punctum) + 35% (author). You will not see anything like this split in any publishing contract from any trade or academic publisher, where 2% to 15% of net profits are the average shared with authors. At the same time, once a book is published, our costs are not over, but continue, because there are many things we are always doing to keep your title visible across the world and integrated into as many global knowledge systems as possible, which systems are always being created, developed, and updated (such as library databases, open book repositories, open metadata management systems, digital preservation platforms, and so on).
May my book be translated?
Yes, the Creative Commons license that we usually use (BY-NC-SA 4.0) allows for translation of your book as long as the publisher is also a non-profit and publishes your book under a similar license. Sometimes it happens that the publisher is commercial and/or they use a different type of license. In both cases, there is usually a back and forth between the publisher, us, and the author about the conditions and terms under which a book is translated. These conditions are then formulated in a contract. Although theoretically possible, we have never encountered "wild" translations of punctum books, that we didn't know of prior to their publication. But they may be out there!
Two translations that were produced recently are the German translations of Michael Betancourt's The Critique of Digital Capitalism and Julietta Singh's No Archive Will Restore You.
Some of the work included in my manuscript has been published elsewhere. Can I include it?
In developing a book authors and editors often include materials that have already been published elsewhere in an earlier form. Authors are usually free to incorporate their own work into a new publication without fees as long as the original publication is properly credited, but you should check your individual publishing contracts to check whether this is allowed or whether you need to ask for (pro forma) permission.
I want to include some of my (upcoming) work in a separately published article or chapter. Is that possible?
You always retain copyright on your work, so feel free to include parts of it in other publications. Please make sure to include proper bibliographical reference to the (upcoming) punctum publication. We can also help you amplify these publications through our social media and newsletter, so keep us posted on their publication.
Some of the images I want to include are not my own or in the public domain, will you help with licensing?
We do not have a budget to cover image licenses. If you want to include copyrighted images in your publication you will have to secure the proper permissions.
I just got my countersigned contact, can I announce this to friends, family, and social media?
For sure, go ahead and don't forget to tag us on Twitter @punctum_books!
Peer Review
My manuscript has been accepted by punctum after an initial expert review by punctums' co-directors. What happens in the second round of peer review, when my manuscript is sent to one of your Editorial Advisory Board members, or to an expert external to your Board?
The second round of review is intended to help you strengthen your book via friendly and sympathetic suggestions for improvements to your manuscript. We have already decided we want to publish your book, so we do not ask reviewers at this point for a "yes," "no," or "revise and resubmit." Again, this round of review is to secure for you beneficial advice for strengthening what we have already deemed is a smart, well written, highly creative, and worthy manuscript. In some very rare cases, a reviewer may ask for more substantial revisions, after which, they want to take another look.
How long will the second round of peer review take?
This is very difficult to predict. It often requires a lot of labor to secure a suitable reviewer, whether a member of our Editorial Advisory Board or an external expert, and since these persons are most likely working in totally overstretched, adjunctified, and austerized educational institutions, they may not have the time to immediately attend to reviewing an entire book manuscript. We know this can be frustrating, but it is the reality of the present system in which we produce our knowledge. We desperately try to keep this process to a few months. The second round of review happens from November to January and only rarely do reviewers need longer, but it does occasionally happen.
Production and Design
Can my book be printed in full color?
Our books are printed by means of print-on-demand, which is a relatively new printing technique that is currently used by nearly all academic publishers. This technique allows us to print books as they are ordered, rather than being forced to print large editions that then have to be warehoused. This allows us to keep the production costs down. Print-on-demand has excellent and well-princed black-and-white printing, but color printing is still costly. Therefore, we usually print our paperbacks in black-and-white, while the PDFs are of course in full color.
How many copies will you print?
Because we print-on-demand, there is no set print edition. Your book will remain in print indefinitely.
What is your production time?
In general we strive to publish a book within 10–12 months from the moment we receive the manuscript, delivered according to our guidelines. In the first few months we will work on your cover and book page on our website, as well as behind the scenes feeding your metadata into different systems. In the last 3–4 months you will see an uptick in activity as we start copyediting and typesetting your book. A lot of this process depends on the size and nature of your manuscript and the collective workload we're shouldering as a small independent press. Sometimes we'll be faster, sometimes slower, but we always try to keep you abreast.
Sometimes things may take longer, for which there may be many different reasons: workload, health-related matters, holiday periods, the sudden arrival of several manuscript at once, or simply complex projects such as art catalogs. Whatever may be the case, we will under no condition rush your book to completion. Not only does rushing lead to unforced errors and a less than ideal final product, it also often simply pushes error corrections to the final production stages, when they are more cumbersome to implement. In other words, rushing is never faster and always a bad idea. Please remember that a deadline is a temporary thing, but the book will remain – potentially – forever. We are committed to your work, but not at the cost of itself.
Is there a set deadline for me to deliver my final manuscript?
We do not have any preset deadline for you to turn in your fimal manuscript. We are aware that everyone's writing habits and the availability of the right time and space for writing, are different. We are happy to discuss a timeline with you that works for you.
Can I be involved in the design of my book?
We always involve authors in the design of their book, but as a press we also have a strong sense of a graphical identity. We always try to navigate in between.
I have a friend who is a designer. May they design the cover of my book?
At punctum books we have a distinctive cover style that we try to maintain, so we design our covers in-house. You are of course welcome to send us ideas, suggestions, and pieces of inspiration.
I have a friend who is an artist. May I suggest one of their works for on my cover?
We encourage the usage of original works of art on our covers. Of course the artists will have to give their permission to have their art reproduced on the cover, and some may also ask for a monetary compensation. Usually we can find a solution for this, so just ask.
Recent covers that feature original artworks are for example those of Solarities (Krista Leigh Steinke), Rituals for Climate Change (Naomi Ortiz), Taunting the Useful (Natali Leduc), and Widening the Scripts (Angela Henderson).
My book includes a lot of images, is that a problem?
Images, in any number, are no problem for us as long as they are functional. Including images significantly increases production costs, so we ask authors to be considerate of that fact.
Outreach and Distribution
Do you send out review copies?
Yes, we send out review copies free of charge to reviewers who have shown prior, explicit interest in reviewing your work. We do not send out blind review copies.
When are review copies ready?
Since we print our books via print-on-demand, review copies can only be sent out at (or slightly before) the release date of your book. We can send out a PDF for review a few weeks before that if necessary, though we like to avoid the circulation of too many "unofficial" PDFs for obvious reasons. If formatting is not an issue and time of the essence, the author may also choose to send out a PDF of the copyedited manuscript to a (potential) reviewer.
Can I send my manuscript myself in advance to potential reviewers and blurbers?
We advise you to wait with sending out your ms. to potential reviewers and blurbers until after copyediting has been finished. But yes, you are totally free to do so. If you choose to send out the digital PDF galleys before publication, please make sure to emphasize these are not for public distribution.
How many copies can I expect my book to sell?
On our usage statistics page you can see the sales and downloads of all our books. As you can see, most of our publications sell fewer than 500 copies, with a number between 500 and 1,000 and a few "best-sellers" above 1,000 copies sold. It is difficult to predict which books sell well, but success both in terms of downloads and sales so far has been correlated relatively strongly with author's own outreach activities, organizing presentations, and giving lectures around their work.
Can my book be ordered worldwide?
Yes, your book can be ordered worldwide through online bookstores. The only country currently with shipping problems (that we know of) is Switzerland, due to a dispute between Amazon and its government.
Will my book be available in bookstores?
The distribution network that bookstores are plugged in to is very different from online stores, as they are not really tailored to on-demand production pipelines. However, an increasing number of bookstores offers books by punctum. You can check the map here. On the US West Coast, we are represented to bookstores by Faherty & Associates. If you want you can ask your favorite local bookstore to stock our books. Stores get a 40% wholesale discount.