FAQ

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.

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 you will see an uptick in activity as 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 a small independent press. Sometimes we'll be faster, sometimes slower, but we also try to keep you abreast.

How long will peer review take?

This is very difficult to predict. It often requires a lot of labor to find a suitable reviewer, and since these 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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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, but you should check your individual publishing contracts to check whether this is allowed or whether you need to ask for (pro forma) permission. Usually this is possible, as long as the original publication is properly credited.

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.