Proposal Guidelines

Proposal guidelines

Whether to Submit a Proposal

One of the first—and most important—decisions an author should make is where to submit his or her proposal. Every publishing house, large or small, has its own strengths. Before submitting your proposal, consider which press has published the books in your field that you admire most. Which publishers' lists include books that are related to yours?

Likewise, please consider the sorts of books a press does not publish. In the case of the University of Iowa Press, we do not publish novels, unrevised doctoral dissertations, conference proceedings or symposium volumes, Festschriften, plays, or manuscripts on topics outside of our acquisitions focus. (For advice on revising your dissertation, please see our guidelines.)

The University of Iowa Press seeks proposals in the following areas: literary studies, including Whitman studies; poetics; food studies; fan studies; literary nonfiction; the craft of writing; book arts; theatre studies; public humanities; the natural history of the Upper Midwest; and regional history, culture, and archaeology. We publish single-author short fiction and poetry through the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, and the Iowa Poetry Prize only.

Please refer to the series list on our website for information about submitting proposals in specific series. Some series have their own guidelines for proposals.

To submit a proposal for a book outside the series framework or to ask whether your project would be of interest, contact

James McCoy, Director, james-mccoy@uiowa.edu, for short fiction, poetry, and general trade.

Catherine Cocks, Acquisitions Editor, cath-campbell@uiowa.edu, for book arts, regional history and culture, food studies, fan studies, public humanities, theatre history, and related series: Humanities and Public Life, Impressions, Iowa and the Midwest Experience, Studies in Theatre History and Culture, and Writers in Their Own Time.

Elisabeth Chretien, Acquisitions Editor, elisabeth-chretien@uiowa.edu, for literary criticism, literary nonfiction, and related series: Muse Books, the New American Canon, and Sightline Books.

Holly Carver, Series Editor, holly-carver@uiowa.edu, for natural history and related series: Bur Oak Books and Bur Oak Guides.

Please note that the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and the John Simmons Short Fiction Award have their own submission procedures.

Some series have their own guidelines. Please check the series description before following the instructions below.

What to Include in a Proposal

Your proposal should give the editors and marketing staff a clear idea of what your book is about, how you came to write this book at this point in your career, and where the work fits within your field. It may be helpful to consider the following questions:

• What problems are you setting out to solve?
• What confusions do you wish to clarify?
• What previously unknown or neglected story are you planning to tell?
• Why is this book important?

Editors and marketing professionals are also interested in knowing what potential audiences you foresee. Is your book for specialists in your field, or will it appeal to a broader audience? Is this book intended for use by students? Is there potential for classroom adoption? Is this a trade book, intended for general readers?

Proposals should include the following:

• A brief narrative description of the book, including its themes, arguments, goals, and place in the literature.
• A description of the projected audience and competing titles.
• A brief statement on how the manuscript fits into a particular series or the areas that the press acquires in.
• An estimate of the probable length of the book (both a page count and a word count are helpful), numbers of illustrations and tables, and a note on potential permissions issues (reproduction of illustrations or excerpts of poetry or musical lyrics).
• A table of contents with brief descriptions of each chapter.
• The introduction and another sample chapter (about 50-60 pages altogether).
• A current vita for the author(s) or editor(s) summarizing professional experience, past publications, and relevant research.
• For multiauthored or edited works, please identify which authors have committed themselves to contributing to the book and which are still negotiating. Also note whether any of the material has been previously published, and where.
• If the manuscript is not complete, please provide a projected completion date.

Please email or mail your proposal to the appropriate acquisitions editor and series editor. Our typical response time for a preliminary inquiry is about 5 to 6 weeks.

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

 

 

 

Revising Humanities Dissertations for Publication

Charlotte M. Wright, Managing Editor

So you've finished your dissertation. Your committee has approved it. Now you can just box it up, send it to a publisher, and receive a book contract, right?

In reality, even the best dissertations must be revised before being accepted for publication. Because they receive so many unrevised dissertations a year, most editors can spot one soon after opening the package. To guard against an immediate rejection, you'll need to spend a lot of time rethinking and reworking your manuscript. The press's acquisitions editor, the expert readers to whom the press sends the manuscript for evaluation, and the editorial board will all be evaluating not only the validity of your argument and the depth of your research, but also the book's potential appeal to a substantial number of educated lay readers outside a narrow field of interest.

The first step for you is to take a look at your topic. Is it interesting to more than just a handful of scholars? Is it unique? Is it timely, but not faddish? Where does it fit with other books published lately in your discipline? Chances are you'll have to broaden it, or narrow it, or take a different angle on it than you did in the dissertation.

Some quick and easy revisions:

1. Cut the part where you thank your dissertation committee. You can still acknowledge them, but as individual scholars rather than as part of your committee.
2. Cut the review of literature or, if you feel you must keep some of it, work parts of it into the text at relevant points.
3. Cut the number of quotations, especially long ones. In general, your book needs more of your own voice and less of others' voices, so utilize paraphrasing and summarizing skills.
4. Comb through the manuscript and replace the jargon with more fluid and clear language. One easy way to find the clunky language is to read the chapters aloud. Another is to discuss your work with an educated person who is not in your field.
5. Cut a third to a half of the notes. If the information can't be seamlessly incorporated into the text, dump it!
6. If you have divided your chapters into sections and subsections, each with their own headings, take out this outline structure and instead work on transitions from one idea to the next. This will make your book more unified and more readable.
7. Pare down the bibliography. As a student, you wanted to show your committee the depth and breadth of your research. As a book author, to keep from overwhelming your readers, give them just the most pertinent sources. (If you have referred to a source directly, you will need to keep it in the bibliography.)
8. Chances are you'll need to update your research using the new articles and books that have appeared since you finished your dissertation. Work these ideas into your text and add them to your bibliography.

Selected Bibliography of Books and Articles on Changing a Dissertation into a Book

Derricourt, Robin M. An Author's Guide to Scholarly Publishing. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Germano, William P. From Dissertation to Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

_____. Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Harman, Eleanor, et al., eds. The Thesis and the Book: A Guide for First-Time Academic Authors. 2d ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Lanham, Richard A. Revising Prose. 5th ed. New York: Longman, 2006.

Luey, Beth, ed. Revising Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editors. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

McMillen, Liz. “A Doctoral Dissertation Is Not Yet a Book, Young Tenure-Seeking Scholars Are Told.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 February 1986.

Also, various university presses have author guidelines that will help you focus on matters most important to that particular press.

Author Checklist

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University of Iowa Press
119 West Park Road
100 Kuhl House
Iowa City IA 52242-1000

Charlotte M. Wright, Managing Editor
319-335-2011, 319-335-2055 (fax)
charlotte-wright@uiowa.edu
uiowapress.uiowa.edu

Before you send your final manuscript to us for copyediting, please check the following list. If you have any questions about a particular requirement, first check the University of Iowa Press website. If you still have questions, please contact me or your acquiring editor. Thank you!

Formatting Text

    ____All the elements in your manuscript should be easy to identify and in the order in which you want them to appear in the book.

    ____DO NOT embed artwork into your text file.

    ____Avoid the use of macros of any kind in your manuscript.

    ____Double-space all text, including table of contents, indented extracts, poetry, bibliography, captions, tables and charts, and endnotes.

    ____Use 12-point type.

    ____Do not substitute l (the letter “el”) for 1 (the number one).

    ____Either italic type or underlining is fine to indicate text that should be set in italics, but do not combine the two.

    ____To indicate paragraphs, use an indent rather than an additional hard return. Use the extra space only where you wish a space break in the book to indicate a major change of
    subject.

    ____Make your margins (top, bottom, left, and right) at least 1 inch.

    ____Type all titles and subheadings in caps and lowercase (Like This One) rather than in full caps (LIKE THIS ONE). Note that all prepositions and articles are lowercase except
    at the beginning of the title or subtitle (The Fine Art of Subheadings).

    ____If possible, group your notes at the back of the book, just before the bibliography. If your book is an edited collection, in which case the notes can stay with the chapter. In
    either case, number the notes starting over from 1 in each chapter. If your word processing program will not group the notes in the back of the book, just make a note in your
    cover letter to us and we will handle this here. USE YOUR SOFTWARE’S BUILT-IN ENDNOTES FEATURE so that notes can be easily moved, combined, or deleted without
    having to renumber them by hand.

    ____Number the pages consecutively throughout the manuscript. If your computer program automatically renumbers with each chapter, leave off automatic page numbering and
    instead hand-number the pages (preferably in the upper-right-hand corner).

    ____Do not right-justify your text. (Exception: In poetry books, individual poems may be formatted in this way.)

    ____Do not use headers or footers (other than page numbers).

    ____Use the same font (both type and size) throughout the manuscript. Do not assign “styles” to achieve different formats for subheads, block quotes, paragraph indents, etc.
    The default or “normal” style should be the only one in your manuscript.

    ____Include all parts of the manuscript that you wish to appear in the completed book: dedication, table of contents, acknowledgments, appendixes, etc. Do not add page
    numbers to the table of contents, as this will obviously change once the book is typeset.

    ____If a chapter has more than one level of subhead, differentiate them visually with centering, underlining, etc. or, preferably, by typing (using angle brackets) <A>, <B>, <C> at
    the beginning of each subhead.

    ____In a list of references, for successive works by the same author, use six hyphens (i.e., ------) in place of the author’s name after the first appearance, and alphabetize the
    entries by the title of the book or article.

    ____Do not include an index. This step will come later.

    ____Please use your computer’s spell check function. It won’t catch everything, but every little bit helps!

    ____Once you have correctly formatted your manuscript, save it to your hard drive and print out two copies to submit to us with your electronic files.

Electronic Files

We need only ONE copy of the disk or CD, or you can e-mail electronic copy to us as an attachment.

    ____Put everything in one document, from the title page to the last page of the text. Do not send us separate files for each chapter.

    ____Once you’ve put the book files on a disk or CD or e-mailed them to us, do not make any changes to the hard copy. Your final printed copy must match the electronic
    copy exactly.

    ____Label the disk or CD. Is it PC or Mac? Which software program have you used? Which version of that software? Include a printed directory of the contents for each disk
    or CD submitted.

Hard Copy

    ____Include TWO single-sided copies of the entire manuscript, printed from your FINAL computer files. IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO NOT MAKE CHANGES
    TO THE FILES ONCE YOU HAVE PRINTED OUT FINAL COPY. The electronic copy and hard copy must match exactly.

Illustrations

• ____We prefer to work with original images rather than laser prints or scans of images produced in other formats. If you must submit images originally created in other formats digitally, or if you would like to submit first-generation digital images, refer to the Association of American University Presses’ Digital Art Requirements for Submission. Please number all photos, drawings, maps, charts, tables, and other artwork. Callouts for each piece of art should be handwritten in the margin at the appropriate paragraph on the appropriate page (for example, “Figure X here”). Each piece of artwork should be numbered on the back, and that number should correspond with your list of captions included on the disk. We also need a 100% photocopy of each illustration. We must have all artwork in hand before we can begin copyediting. For information about what formats we need, please refer to our Art Guidelines. If you need more specific guidelines, please contact our design and production manager, Karen Copp, karen-copp@uiowa.edu, 319-335-2014.
• ____If you submit artwork electronically, make sure you label each piece in the order in which you want it to appear in the book. (1, 2, 3, etc.; or 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc.)
• ____Double-space the list of captions, with numbers corresponding to those on the artwork. Credits can be placed at the end of each caption or in your acknowledgments. The captions should be separate from the text.
• ____Tables should be double-spaced and included, each on a separate page, as part of your text. Table titles should appear on the tables themselves. Before formatting tables, please refer to chapter 13 in The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition.
• ____Please complete the checklist included with the Art Guidelines.

Permissions

• ____Provide copies of any permission letters you have received for artwork or quoted material. If any permissions are still pending but you expect them soon, we need copies of your permission requests. Obtaining complete permissions for artwork and quoted material remains the responsibility of the author.
• ____We need to know the source for all your illustrations, whether or not permissions are required.
• ____If you have artwork that you would like us to consider for your book’s jacket or cover, please include at least a good photocopy of it and let us know who holds the rights to it. A final decision will ultimately be made by the Press.
• ____Please refer to the Rights & Permissions guidelines for more information.

Guidelines for Editors of Anthologies

The University of Iowa Press has published dozens of anthologies of creative writing on topics ranging from death and dying to boomer babies to housework to patriotism to zeppelins. At some point early in discussions with a potential editor, the phrase "labor of love" comes up. The truth is that you're not going to make any money or advance your professional career and you will spend an enormous amount of time organizing and collating your material. But still there is something satisfying about creating a collection that adds up to more than the sum of its parts, about articulating an idea that is dear to you, about carrying this idea out until it becomes a solid book.

Editing an anthology involves balancing a series of contradictions. Your subject needs to be niche driven enough that you can reach your readers but not so specialized that your audience is too limited. The collection needs to be thematically unified so that we can describe it to potential buyers in one sentence but diverse enough to form a stimulating collection. We're looking for anthologists who can provide an optimistic, compassionate, and meaningful viewpoint to a well-defined audience, for anthologies that can go into high school classrooms, such as Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry about School, or into parenting groups, such as Birth: A Literary Companion, or into medical schools, such as Medical Readers' Theater: A Guide and Scripts, or into civic organizations or religious study groups or graduate Shakespeare courses or writing workshops.

Consider Your Audience

While gathering works, you should remember that the collection needs to connect in diverse ways to diverse readers. Do you have a balance of male and female authors that is appropriate to your subject? A balance of racial and ethnic perspectives? Of different schools of writing? Of both established and younger writers? You need to be in touch with lots of writers and lots of styles and lots of perspectives, but in the end you need to rely on your own good judgment about what constitutes fine writing and what fits your original vision. You must be willing to be ruthless when it comes to tossing out poems or stories or essays that don't really fit into your collection, even if these pieces are quite lovely individually.

As you gather your anthology's poems or stories, keep your introduction in mind. In one sentence, what is the primary theme? Does each piece clearly connect to that theme? Can it be referred to in the introduction in a way that supports the theme?

In general, we prefer a strictly alphabetical arrangement of works by author's last namerather than trying to force them into subject categories. Categories that are perfectly clear to your editorial vision can be less than clear to your readers. Allowing readers to make their own connections—guided by your introduction—works well.

Manufacturing costs are directly related to book prices; thus we urge editors to strive for a short, tightly edited collection. Less is really more when it comes to selecting only those pieces that truly reflect the editorial vision. An anthology more than 200 pages long—containing more than 100 poems or 15 stories—will be too expensive and cumbersome for readers.

Readers and teachers appreciate biographical information, so please prepare short paragraphs about each contributor's publications, awards, and teaching experience. Each note should contain approximately the same amount and type of information as all the rest. Please ask your contributors to review this information before you prepare your final manuscript.

Obtaining Permissions

You are responsible for obtaining and paying for all necessary permissions from authors and publishers to reprint the pieces in your collection. Gathering permissions can take several months and can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Generally, the more famous the author, the more money involved and the more red tape involved. It is often necessary to obtain permission from both the author and the original publisher of the work. Start the permissions process early, as soon as we send you a contract for publication, since all the poems or stories included in your final manuscript must have the necessary written permissions. E-mail permissions are acceptable. Please refer to our permissions guidelines for more information.

Beyond permissions, your most challenging task will involve scanning or rekeying or otherwise transforming the pieces you have selected into a consistently formatted manuscript.Unless each piece's dedication, epigraph, subheads, etc., are a significant part of the work itself, we prefer to treat all these items consistently so that your anthology can be appreciated as a unified book.For poetry, reproducing each poem's style—unusually long lines, justified lines, deep indents—can be challenging for you and for us; see the attached samples for our preferred format. Being able to refer to the original formatting is very helpful, so we require photocopies of the original works—as published or, in the case of new pieces, as they were originally sent to you. Please be aware, however, that is sometimes impossible to reproduce each poem's vagaries exactly.

Submitting Your Manuscript

Before you submit your final manuscript, please send any rekeyed pieces to their authors for review. This precludes having to ask them to review their works in proof and streamlines the publication of your book.

Depending upon how your book is organized, we will ask you to provide an author, title, and/or first line index at page proof stage.

For table of contents, poetry, contributors, permissions, and indexformats, see the attached samples.

Please keep track of the names, addresses, and e-mail addresses of your contributors. We will ask you to give us a list just before publication so that we can send them complimentary copies.

Submission Checklist

Your manuscript should include

• ____title page
• ____dedication and epigraph, if you want them
• ____table of contents, without page numbers
• ____foreword (if another person is writing one)
• ____acknowledgments (can be combined with your introduction)
• ____introduction
• ____the rekeyed pieces themselves, in alphabetical order
• ____contributors notes, organized by author's last name
• ____permissions information, organized by author's last name
• ____photocopies of the pieces as originally published or as sent to you

Please refer to our Author Checklist for more detailed information.

Sample Contents Page

Contents

• Foreword by Jane Smith
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Harvey Crandon, from Cape of Good Hope
• Ann Dickson, To a Friend Who Made Her Way
• Willa Everysong, [untitled]
• David Moolten, Ode for Orville and Wilbur Wright
• Simone K. Ortega, A New Orleans Poem: Song for the Jazz City
• Karen Carver Wright, Poetry Is for Everybody
• Contributors Notes
• Permissions
• Index to Titles

Sample Poem

[Note: The labels are for information only. Please do not label each part in your manuscript.]

Cries of the Newsboy [title]

News in the World [subtitle]

Edith M. Thomas [poet]

To poetry anthologists everywhere [dedication]

I hear thee, trumpeter—listening, alert, I catch thy notes.

—Walt Whitman [epigraph]

1. City Ways [section title]

Cruel the roar of the city ways,

            Where life on a myriad errands whirled;

But suddenly up from the jarring maze,

            Like a rocket thrown high, went a ringing cry:

“New-Sunny-World! New-Sunny-World!”

[When a poem runs onto another page, insert STANZA BREAK or NO STANZA BREAK for clarity]

There wasn’t a glimpse of the sun anywhere;

            Up through the streets the sea fog curled;

Grim was the light and leaden the air;

            The world looked old, yet that voice rang bold:

“New-Sunny-World! New-Sunny-World!”

The brisk little crier I could not see,

            But I treasured the rocket cry he hurled,

And thought, “This is wonderful news to me!

            Heigh-ho! Is it true? Is it so to you?

                        A New Sunny World?”

Sample Contributors Notes

Kim Addonizio's most recent book, Tell Me, was nominated for the National Book Award in 2000. She is also the author of The Philosopher's Club and the coauthor, with Dorianne Laux, of The Poet's Companion. Her many awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Julia Alvarez's novels include In the Time of the Butterflies, Yo! and In the Name of Salomé. Something to Declare, a book of essays, was published in 1998.

Dorothy Barresi is the author of Rouge Pulp and All of the Above, which won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. She lives in Los Angeles and is a professor of English at California State University, Northridge.

Sample Permissions

Hart Crane: Selection from “Cape Hatteras” from Complete Poems of Hart Crane, ed. Marc Simon. Copyright © 1933, 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Babette Deutsch: “The Flight” and “Going Far Away” copyright © 1927 by the author. Originally appeared in The Spirit of St. Louis, ed. Charles Vale, published by W. W. Norton in 1928. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Willa Everysong: Untitled poem copyright © 2004 by the author. Reprinted by permission of the author.

David Moolten: “Ode for Orville and Wilbur Wright” copyright © 2001 by the author. Originally appeared in the Southern Review (Winter 2001). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Sample Index

The Afterlife, 152 [poem starting with the word “The”]
Against the Madness of Crowds, 23
Anne, 162
Any Holy City, 46
Arsonist and Fireman, 47
An Asian Dying, 125 [poem starting with “A” or “An”]
at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 131 [poem with lowercased title]
The Ballad of Ravensbrück, 120
Baptism, 22
Blessing for Malcolm Lowry, 30
A Body of Water, 6
. . . . . . . . .
throwing out the flowers, 25
Tract, 134
The 29th Month, 79 [poem alphabetized by how the number would be spelled out]
[untitled], 90, 124 [untitled poems]
Upon My Word, 88

Rights & Permissions

Following these instructions helps us ensure that any previously copyrighted material is properly acknowledged in your book.

Basics

According to the contract you signed, you are responsible for getting permission to reprint any copyrighted work used in your book.

Complete photocopies of all grants of permission must accompany the final manuscript when you submit it to the press. The press will not begin copyediting the manuscript until you have submitted all of the permission forms.

Getting permission to use copyrighted works may take several months. Start early and be persistent.

 

When Do You Need to Ask Permission?

Permission is required for the use of two kinds of copyrighted materials: your own previously published work (when you no longer hold the copyright) and other authors' copyrighted materials that do not come under the principle of fair use or that are not in the public domain.

If your use qualifies fair use or if the material is in the public domain, you do not need to get the copyright holder’s permission.

 

Fair Use

The principle of fair use allows certain uses of copyrighted material without requiring the user to get the permission of the copyright holder. Quoting or reproducing small amounts of an author’s or artist’s work in order to review or criticize it or to illustrate the user’s own argument is fair use.

However, in many cases determining exactly what is covered by fair use depends on the circumstances of use. In law a “rule of reason” determines whether a particular use is fair or not.

Important factors in determining whether a particular use is fair include the following:

• The nature of the use of the copyrighted material;
• The nature of the copyrighted work from which the material is taken;
• The proportion of the copyrighted work being reproduced in the new work;
• The effect of the use on the commercial value of the work being quoted or reproduced.

The use is probably fair if:

• the unlicensed use transforms the copyrighted material;
• the reproduced part of the copyrighted work is used in an educational setting and no one earns money from its use;
• the copyrighted material was used in an appropriate way; that is, the original meaning was not distorted, the source was cited, and the material is necessary to the user’s argument;
• only a small part of the copyrighted work (relative to its length or size—a single sentence from a book or essay, a small detail of a painting, a screen shot or film still) was reproduced;
• the use was reasonable according to the standards of a particular field.

Public Domain

In the United States, copyright exists for a term set by law. After that term expires, everyone may freely use the material—it has entered the public domain.

However, the law changed in important ways in the twentieth century, so figuring out what is in the public domain and what remains protected by copyright can be confusing. Works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain. You do not need anyone’s permission to use them.

For more recent works, see the AAUP’s Permissions FAQs.

The AAUP also offers online resources for determining a work’s copyright status.

Some documents are in the public domain from the start, such as those created by the US federal government.

When You Must Get the Copyright Holder’s Permission

In general, you need to obtain written permission for the following items:

• Quotations from published materials that exceed fair use and are not in the public domain (see above). Stanzas of poetry, letters, song lyrics, diary entries, and other such items that constitute complete entities in themselves usually require permission if they are not being used for purposes of review or criticism. For letters, the writer rather than the recipient holds the copyright, but permission is also needed from the recipient before the letter can be published.
• Quotations from unpublished documents not your own, e.g., unpublished letters, speeches, or papers, that exceed fair use and are not in the public domain. You may need to get permission from both the archive in which the documents are held and the writer (and recipient, in the case of letters). “Fair use” is defined more narrowly in the case of unpublished documents.
• Illustrations such as photographs, tables, charts, maps, and graphs that were produced by someone else and are not in the public domain. You may need permission from both the owner of the physical object (a museum, archive, or individual) and the creator (the artist, photographer, cartographer, etc.). For photographs, if private individuals are pictured in private settings, you may need permission from them also.
• Quotations from interviews that include the interviewee’s name, exceed fair use, or are not in the public domain. Copyright is jointly held by interviewer and interviewee. If you have conducted the interview, you still need written permission from the interviewee, and that form must include permission to publish.
• Quotations from certain government documents and materials. Although US federal government documents cannot be copyrighted, government agencies may hold copyrighted materials (e.g., items donated to a government archive but still protected by copyright). The archive or other agency should be able to tell you if you will need special permission to use materials in their collections. If not, this information can often be found in the agencies' wording about restrictions on photocopying.
• Your own previously published materials, unless you retained copyright. If you hold the copyright, please send us a copy of the agreement or a statement from the publisher. Also specify the relevant chapters or portions of your book that were previously published and, for each one, the title under which it was published, the title of the journal or book, and full publishing information (volume number, season or month, year, and page numbers for periodicals; place of publication, publisher, year, and page numbers for books).
• Song lyrics. Songs often have considerable commercial value and so “fair use” is defined very narrowly.
• An epigraph or other quotation that is not analyzed in the text.

Preparing permission requests

Please use the sample letter as the basis for your requests. When you prepare your permission requests, be sure to ask for:

• nonexclusive world rights
• for all editions (including electronic distribution)
• for the life of the book

Also include in the letter:

• the working title of your manuscript;
• the statement that the publisher is the University of Iowa Press, a nonprofit scholarly publisher (many organizations set lower fees for nonprofits);
• exactly what you are requesting permission to reprint, including page number, archival locator information, negative number, and/or description, etc.;
• a photocopy or digital photograph of the quotation or image, if possible.

Have all letters of permission sent directly to you. You will need them to type up the permissions section of your book and put the required attribution information in any captions.

Sample Letter

Download PDF* (28 KB)

*This download is a PDF file. If you don't already have Adobe Reader (the application necessary to read PDF files), you can download it free by clicking the button below:

What to send to the University of Iowa Press

Please send us photocopies of both your request and the response. We need to see complete copies of the permissions forms—including front and back sides and lists of terms and conditions that may be attached—so we can be sure to follow all the conditions of use, including adding correct credit lines, following any cropping instructions, and sending appropriate gratis copies of your book.

Also be sure to send us a list of the names, addresses, and number of copies due to the various museums, libraries, publishers, and writers who have requested them.

Resources

Association of American University Presses

Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011)

Susan M. Bielstein, Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006)

Chicago Manual of Style, 16^th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry 

Copyright Term and Public Domain in the United States

National Association of College Stores 

William S. Strong, The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide, 5^th ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999)

United States Copyright Office

WATCH (Writers, Artists, and Their Copyright Holders) File

If you have further questions or concerns, please contact your acquiring editor.

 

Art Guidelines

If you would like to include photographs, line drawings, maps, charts, or other illustrations in your book, please let your acquiring editor know as early as possible. He or she will let you know the process for submitting illustrations and will ask you to send samples for our design and production manager to evaluate.

You must ensure that your images meet the following standards, or we will refuse to publish them.

Digital Art

What Not to Send

• Images from the Web: these are almost always too low a resolution for book reproduction.
• Images scanned from a book: while these may look fine on your screen or in a photocopy, they will often be distorted or jagged when printed.
• Laser prints made from digital images. We need to have the actual electronic file accompanied by a printout of that file.
• Images embedded in Word or PowerPoint files.
• Images in the following formats: GIF, PNG, BMP, and PSD.
• Opened or re-saved JPEG files: these files degrade each time they are opened and re-saved.
• Multiple versions of a single illustration. You must select one to submit to the Press.

Quality Standards

It is critical that the files be of a high enough resolution and an appropriate size for good reproduction. For best results, we recommend that you have scans of prints, slides, or transparencies made by a graphic arts service bureau or by a library or archive that routinely provides electronic files for print reproduction. Electronic files must meet the following requirements:

• Scans must be made in an image-appropriate mode, either continuous tone (grayscale/8-bit) or bitonal (line drawing/1-bit).
• Size should be approximately 5 x 7 inches (for a standard book with a trim size of approximately 6 x 9 inches).
• Scan resolution for grayscale images must be a minimum of 300 pixels per inch (ppi) at the image size of 5 x 7 inches.
• Scan resolution for bitonal images must be a minimum of 1200 pixels per inch (ppi) at the image size of 5 x 7 inches.
• Scans must be supplied as EPS or TIF format files. We cannot accept GIF, PNG, or BMP files.

For each image you supply, we must also have a printout of the electronic file.

Before submitting digital images, please

• Verify that they meet our specifications;
• Name the files with your last name and the figure number;
• Supply a printout of every image;
• Make sure that the printouts are clearly labeled with the figure number; and
• Verify that the figure numbers of the electronic files, the printouts, and the captions match.

Art Created for the Book

If you are planning to create art (such as maps or charts) in electronic form for reproduction in your book, it is essential that you or the person who will be creating the art contact our design and production manager before beginning. We must receive a sample file in order to identify any problems early in the process. Please contact Karen Copp, 319-335-2014, karen-copp@uiowa.edu, to discuss your illustrations.

Adobe Illustrator is our preferred software for charts and graphs. Using this program offers a much higher probability that we can reproduce your files in the book. If you are using another program, save your files as EPS to ensure that we will be able to use them, or provide an EPS version of the file in addition to the application version of the file. If your program does not give you the option to save as an Illustrator file or an EPS file, please indicate on the printout all save or export options available in the program you are using.

Before submitting created digital maps, charts, and other illustrations, please

• Have a sample tested by our design and production manager;
• Supply a printout for every piece;
• Include all fonts used with the art files;
• Include all linked graphic or data files;
• Include a printed directory of the disk contents.

For more detailed information about electronic art, refer to the Association of American University Presses' Digital Art Requirements for Submission.

Hard Copies

We always welcome photographic prints, slides, or transparencies. Label and package them carefully before sending them to us.

Where to Put Art when Submitting a Manuscript

No illustrations—whether photographs, maps, charts, graphs, or tables—should be embedded in the text. Each piece should be submitted as a separate file, named by your last name and figure number (including the chapter number where appropriate, e.g. 1.1, 2.1, and so on). Captions should likewise be listed in a separate document. Only figure callouts should appear in the text approximately where the figure should appear.

Publishing Overview

Charlotte M. Wright, Managing Editor

This memo will address the publishing process from the point of view of the editorial and production departments. The marketing department has its own schedule and forms. It is extremely important that you promptly fill out and return any marketing forms, share with them your ideas for people to provide blurbs for your book, and contact them when any marketing opportunities arise.

Copyediting

Soon after you have sent us your complete book project—inclusive of all illustrative material, permissions, appendixes, tables, charts, dedication, etc.—your manuscript will be assigned to a copyeditor, who will work under my direction. I will let you know who the copyeditor is, when you should expect to receive the edited manuscript for review, and when you'll need to send it back to the editor. During this time, you will be working directly with your copyeditor, but if you have any questions he or she can't answer, please don't hesitate to contact me.

In most cases, I will instruct the copyeditor to focus on correcting basic grammatical and mechanical errors, on reading for clarity, and on bringing the manuscript into conformity with Iowa's house style (we follow the Chicago Manual of Style unless you and your acquisitions editor have agreed upon another style manual).

Most manuscripts will be edited by hand: the copyeditor will make corrections directly on the final hard copy you submitted. While working on the project, the copyeditor may contact you with questions and suggestions as he or she irons out the difficulties inherent in shaping your manuscript according to University of Iowa Press guidelines. In order to maintain your book's schedule, please respond promptly to any queries. The copyeditor will send the fully edited manuscript to you, at which time you will be asked to review it carefully and to answer any remaining questions on the text, a critical step in the publication process because it is your last opportunity to make substantive changes. You will have approximately two weeks to make sure the text and references are complete, your quotations are accurate, your wording is final, your writing is clear. We cannot allow rewritings, major deletions or additions, or extensive global changes (such as capitalizing every appearance of a word) after this stage. We assume that once you return the manuscript to the copyeditor for final cleanup, the text is finalized.

After the final cleanup, the copyeditor will return the manuscript to us. As I go through it carefully to prepare it for the designer and typesetter, I may need to contact you if I have any questions or comments.

Design and Typesetting

The design and typesetting stage usually takes two to four months, depending on the complexity and length of the project and the designer's and typesetter's schedules. All copyediting changes will be transferred to the disk by the typesetter. As soon as the page proof date is scheduled, I will contact you with that information, so you'll know when to block out time to read proofs and index your book.

Jackets and Covers

Any ideas you have concerning jacket/cover art should be discussed with your acquisitions editor right away. Often, we need written permission to use artwork, and this process may take us some time. Please be aware that while we appreciate your help and input, the final design is ultimately the decision of the Press. The jacket/cover will utilize the appropriate blurbs from among those we receive for your book. Some blurbs may be edited because of space considerations.

Page Proofs

When I receive page proofs from the typesetter, I will FedEx a set to you for proofing and indexing. You will have approximately two weeks to complete that work and return the proofs to me. I will also be giving a set of proofs to a professional proofreader, along with the original copyedited manuscript. The proofreader will make sure that all the changes on the manuscript were set in type in the proofs. He or she will verify that all textual elements (table of contents, chapter titles, running heads, captions, etc.) have been typeset according to the designer's specifications and that illustrations have been placed appropriately, are consistent in form, and are accurate. Your responsibility will be to read through the text itself and correct any typos, punctuation errors, reversed photographs, switched captions, etc. Page proofs should be read carefully, but changes should be limited to those necessary to correct typographical errors, errors in fact, and editorial inconsistencies. Any nonessential revisions will require the approval of the Press and may be billed to you. No changes can be made that affect page layout. At this point our production schedule is usually tight. Delays in returning proofs and the index are likely to postpone the scheduled release date of your book, which in turn may adversely affect sales.

After I receive your corrected proofs, I will transfer the approved changes to the proofreader's master copy and send it back to the typesetter.

Indexing

If your contract calls for you to provide an index, I urge you to begin the process even before the page-proof stage by creating an alphabetized list of names, places, and subject terms from your manuscript. Then, when you receive the page proofs, you will only need to add the inclusive page numbers, rather than starting from scratch.

Our guide for indexing is the Chicago Manual of Style. In all cases, the index must be double-spaced, and we need both a digital file and a printout.

If you would prefer that a freelance editor work on the index for your book, please contact me or your acquisitions editor to discuss that option. You would be responsible for paying the freelancer.

You will not receive page proofs of the index.

After you complete your work on the index, relax! The rest is up to us.

Printing and Binding

Making and checking proof corrections, adding and proofreading the index, and coordinating all the other remaining elements of book production usually require several weeks and several trips back and forth between the Press and the typesetter. When everything has been done, your book is sent to the printer, who will in turn send the Press a set of proofs for a final review. These proofs are reviewed by the production and editorial departments to check for continuous pagination and formatting. When the proofs are approved, the books are printed, bound, and sent to the warehouse—which usually takes around two months.

The entire production process, from copyediting to book-in-hand, takes approximately eight to ten months. I look forward to working with you!