Publish With Us
At University Press of Colorado, our mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge globally by publishing significant scholarly works and making them accessible.
We welcome scholars to submit manuscripts after submitting a prospectus to the acquisitions department at the University Press of Colorado.
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Scholars proposing manuscripts for publication should submit a prospectus to the acquisitions department at the University Press of Colorado before submitting a complete manuscript. Submissions to our Utah State University Press, University of Wyoming Press, or University of Alaska Press imprints will be routed to the correct personnel. We do accept simultaneous submissions.
Until further notice, only electronic submissions will be accepted.
Select the imprint below for more information about specific areas of interest.
The University Press of Colorado is currently accepting manuscript proposals in anthropology, archaeology, ethnohistory, environmental justice, history of the American West, indigenous studies, and the natural sciences as well as projects about the state of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region. We are also accepting submissions for the following series:
- The George and Sakaye Aratani Nikkei in the Americas Series
- Global Colonialism
- Intersections in Environmental Justice
- Mining the American West
- Timberline Books
The University Press of Colorado is not currently accepting proposals in fiction, memoir, or poetry. We distribute poetry titles published by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University. For their submission guidelines, please visit: Colorado Prize for Poetry or the Mountain West Poetry Series.
Utah State University Press is currently accepting manuscript proposals in composition (writing studies), environmental justice, folklore, history of the American West, and the natural sciences as well as projects about the state of Utah and the Rocky Mountain region. We are also accepting submissions for the following series:
- Computers and Composition Digital Press
- Contemporary Legend Casebook Series
- Intersections in Environmental Justice
- Ritual, Festival, and Celebration Series
- Society and Natural Resources Book Series
Utah State University Press is not currently accepting proposals in fiction, memoir, or poetry.
The University of Wyoming Press publishes peer-reviewed works of scholarly, cultural, and social importance that are relevant to our state, region, nation, and world. As an imprint of the University Press of Colorado, we aim to advance and disseminate knowledge globally by publishing significant scholarly works and making them accessible.
University of Wyoming Press titles are anchored in interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities and social sciences, including books that enhance, explore, extend, critique, and interrogate Wyoming’s cultural, political, economic, and historical narratives. Our goal for these books is to facilitate communication among scholars and to engage the peoples of Wyoming and the Mountain West in conversations about our histories, cultures, and resources.
Democracy and the United States
We seek manuscripts that deepen our understanding of the quality of democracy in the United States, as well as the colonial legacy and influence of the United States internationally. This work is like a laboratory of democracy: we publish books that consider problems of democracy and how the history of race, class, and gender have shaped systems, political movements, and institutions. We are particularly interested in publishing books rooted in intersectional, interdisciplinary approaches to humanities and social sciences scholarship that ask enduring questions about democracy, ethics, justice, and the public good.
Public Humanities
We are interested in projects that describe, theorize, or critique the ways in which humanities scholars and practitioners interact with the public in the form of cultural institutions such as museums and libraries, cultural agencies that create programming for communities, nonprofit organizations that promote humanities engagement, as well as public events in local communities.
Environmental Humanities
Recognizing that the acute challenges of local and global environmental crises are fundamentally entangled with human culture, we seek manuscripts that take interdisciplinary approaches to explore the relationship between human values and belief systems and environmental change. We invite submissions from scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including but not limited to literary studies, history, philosophy, religious studies, American studies, and ethnic studies. Publications will contribute to growing conversations about the critical, complementary role of the arts, humanities, and social sciences in addressing environmental crises and supporting efforts to build just, sustainable futures. Environmental humanities manuscripts that also deal fundamentally with issues of environmental justice will be considered for our Intersections in Environmental Justice series, published in cooperation with University Press of Colorado and Utah State University Press.
The University of Alaska Press welcomes the submission of book proposals in the areas in which we publish. Launched in 1967, the University of Alaska Press is a nonprofit scholarly publisher and distributor of books about Alaska and the circumpolar regions. Although physically located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, the Press represents the entire University of Alaska and by extension the entire state of Alaska.
UA Press publications cover an expanding range of subject areas, including politics and history, Native languages and cultures, science and natural history, biography and memoir, poetry, fiction and anthologies, and original translations. The Press publishes books in print and electronically for both the scholarly community and the general public.
In 2010, UA Press launched the Alaska Literary Series with Peggy Shumaker as the Series Editor. The Press publishes approximately one to three works of fiction in this series each year. Submissions may include fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry- with an emphasis on works that make the northern experience available to the world.
Please send any questions you might have to Nate Bauer, Associate Director.
Please browse our web site to get a better sense of how your project might fit within our established publication lists.
General Guidelines
Ideally, proposed manuscripts will be 90,000 words or less, and no submission should be more than 120,000 words.
A book prospectus should include the following:
- a clear and concise description of your book and its notable features
- a table of contents, including a brief précis for each chapter
- an estimated word count of the project
- an estimate of the number of illustrations, tables, appendices, etc.
- an analysis of the expected audience for the book
- a round-up of competing books (if any exist), and a brief explanation of the uniqueness of the proposed book
- an approximate date when the manuscript would be completed
- a current resume or curriculum vita
How many images can or should I include?
There is no single answer here, as each book has its own needs based on content and scholarly discipline. As a general rule, we encourage you to keep the image count as low as possible. For most books, this limit should be kept at 25 or fewer. What’s most important to us is the specific vision of each book we publish, and we understand that some books are significantly more visual in nature and require a more extensive collection of illustrations. We encourage you to consider the questions below and talk with your editor about how you might use images in your manuscript, what these images can contribute to the book’s overall goals, and how many would be appropriate for your particular project.
When should I use images?
In a typical scholarly book, we encourage our authors to think of images as primary sources or evidence. You could ask whether the inclusion of an image significantly strengthens the argument(s) in a particular passage, or the book as a whole. Does the image offer context that would be difficult to explain only with words? Does the text engage with the image (e.g., close reading)? Or is the image simply something “extra” that could be accessed elsewhere and/or doesn’t advance the discussion? If the image isn’t serving the argument of your book, the solution might be to amend or expand the text, rather than remove the image. You can talk with your editor about what makes the most sense given your particular field(s) and methodology. Regardless of the conventions of your discipline, it’s always a best practice to be intentional about every image you include, for the reasons listed above.
We do our best to respond to submissions within six weeks of receipt. Due to our small staff size and the large number of submissions that we receive, our review time may take longer. Please be patient while we give your proposal or manuscript our full consideration.
Manuscript Review
Occasionally, the University Press of Colorado issues a book contract on the basis of the prospectus, but more generally the practice is to write a contract based on the finished manuscript. Once submitted, manuscripts are reviewed by the press editor or by an appropriate series editor. Manuscripts recommended by the press editor or series editor are then considered for publication. The press requires two professional evaluations of manuscripts and the approval of our editorial board prior to moving forward with publication.
For authors submitting manuscripts for peer review or final publication, visit Author Materials.
Solicited Manuscripts for Peer Review
For authors submitting a manuscript solicited by an editor for peer review:
The press discourages the unsolicited submission of complete manuscripts. Scholars should submit a prospectus to the acquisitions department before submitting a complete manuscript.
If an editor at the press has solicited your book project, please submit your entire manuscript in a single, fully paginated Microsoft Word document that contains a table of contents, all chapters, bibliography, and low-resolution embedded images approximately where you would wish them to appear in the book. If you have any questions, please contact your acquiring editor.
For the purposes of peer review, there is no need to submit written permissions, high-resolution images, manuscript checklists, or marketing questionnaires. These materials will be required only once the manuscript successfully passes peer review and editorial committee approval.
Final and Contracted Manuscripts
If you are an author submitting a final, contracted manuscript, the materials below should provide style and formatting parameters for both text and illustrations.
Please note that the materials below are only required of authors already under contract working on their final manuscripts.
Project Documents
Figures and Art
Permissions
For archaeologists with datasets directly related to their book manuscript—but not easily incorporated due to the amount or the form of the data—we strongly encourage either publishing your data with Open Context or depositing your data files in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), maintained by the Center for Digital Antiquity. Open Context offers cross-linking with book publications as part of their model, and they also offer editorial and peer review services for dataset publication. Datasets, images, documents, and other digital files deposited in tDAR can be linked to UPC publications through permanent URLs created for tDAR records and files in the repository. We are happy to link your book project with your dataset in cooperation with either Open Context or tDAR, and we encourage you to start thinking about depositing and/or publishing your data now!
University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press, University of Wyoming Press, and University of Alaska Press are committed to transparent and equitable peer review and publication processes. In both processes, we require the usage of inclusive language, meaning our house style precludes the use of ableist language in our books; we capitalize Black, Indigenous, and related terms and use self-identified descriptors for multiply marginalized and/or underrepresented (MMU) scholars and groups of people; we respect and will preserve language diversity; we encourage a broad range of writing styles; we require the usage of alt-text and transcriptions of any multimodal projects; and we require respectful engagement and inclusive citational usage in our reviews and publications. Reviews that engage in hostile language or reinforce stereotypes in citations or identities will be redacted or rejected and will not be used in the evaluation of a work for publication.
We explicitly welcome works from scholars without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, ability, or age. We also commit to mentoring MMU scholars through the publishing process and invite antiracist, queer, decolonial, and anti-ableist research and reviewers of our publications. If you are interested in serving as a peer reviewer, please contact the appropriate editor of that list for more information.
Successful path to publication (timelines are all estimates and may be extended beyond what is here, in part because the work is collaborative and depends on labor both within and beyond UPC | USUP | UWP | UAP):
Our internal review of a proposal submission can take up to six weeks, after which an editor will indicate if the project is a good fit for peer review.
Because we value the labor of both our authors and editors and the scholars who review our work, our timelines are often flexible. While we strive to move projects forward as quickly as possible, we recognize that the labor involved in reading and evaluating work can be in conflict with institutional labor, caretaking responsibilities, and unforeseen complications and, as such, acknowledge that timelines can extend. If there are external pressures, such as job market needs and tenure and promotion deadlines that we should be aware of, please communicate this to your editor and we’ll do our best to assist with the timing in whatever ways we can.
We view peer review as a generative and constructive process, not a means of gatekeeping or enforcing canonical ideas or ideals of disciplines. We invite scholars and scholarship to move and grow and become more inclusive. Your editor will share your peer reviews with you but may censor or redact parts that could be harmful or are not constructive. We also ask our peer reviewers to read manuscripts inclusively, meaning that we as a Press respect language diversity, require equitable citational practices and accessible texts, and reject the idea that manuscripts must always adhere to long-standing expectations of what disciplinary bounds or practices should be. We ask our peer reviewers to join us in setting new expectations for this work.
- UPC | USUP | UWP | UAP peer reviews full manuscripts and enlists a minimum of two anonymous readers for each project (with a suggested 6-8-week review period).
- Authors/editors are welcome to suggest possible appropriate reviewers for their projects (please don’t include mentors, mentees, colleagues within your department, or scholars with whom you have closely collaborated on previous publishing projects) although we are under no obligation to query those scholars. We also encourage authors/editors to share scholars with whom they would not want their work shared and we will not query those scholars.
- Your editor will share an anticipated timeline with you and will make every effort to contact you proactively if the timeline changes substantially (more than one week beyond).
- Each reviewer is provided a letter, a set of guidelines, and a checklist, along with a set of expectations for inclusive approaches to reviewing. Our editors commit to ensuring that these expectations are followed and, in the event of bias, will redact harmful comments and/or reject the review.
- When reviews are split, i.e. one reviewer supports publication and another does not or suggests a revision and resubmission, editors will likely seek a third review to provide clarity on revision needs, either before or after manuscript revisions.
Our faculty editorial committee is composed of scholars from many disciplines at our member institution presses. They receive training from the Press in how to evaluate materials for publication and, like reviewers, are encouraged to be inclusive and equitable in their responses. Their role is primarily to evaluate that the peer review process was undertaken ethically by the acquiring editor (who found appropriate scholars for review), the reviewers (who engaged fully and ethically with the manuscript), and the author/editor/contributors (who engaged with the peer reviews and made necessary revisions).
- The committee can request a full manuscript but typically review a package that consists of:
- Editorial memo that outlines the project, summarizes peer reviews, and shares author/editor revision plans
- Peer reviews
- Revision memos
- Manuscript table of contents
- Author(s)/editor(s) CVs
- This process typically takes 2-3 weeks. The editor will spend at least one week preparing the materials and five members of the committee will vote on projects by email on a rolling basis. Approvals must be unanimous and, in the event that one or more committee members does not support publication, the acquiring editor can either present the project at the next quarterly Board of Trustees meeting and seek approval there; request additional revisions by the author/editor; or reject the project.
- Once the faculty editorial committee approves a project for publication, projects are typically contracted.
- Authors/editors can, among other details, negotiate timelines, copyright, titles and subtitles, and number of gratis copies. Draft contracts are shared prior to signing and one can be requested at any stage if the author/editor would like to see the document further in advance.
- Authors/editors are typically responsible for their own index (which can be sent to freelancers at the author’s (or their institution’s) cost dependent on the manuscript’s specifications) and proofreading (which is separate from the professional copyediting that UPC | USUP | UWP will undertake).
- We are receptive to open access publishing, if funds to support the attendant costs are available.
- Production typically takes 12-14 months for most manuscripts. Authors are asked to provide these materials prior to the manuscript entering the editorial, design, and production stage. This process entails many efforts, including:
- The development of a production schedule
- Assigning a design template
- Assigning ISBNs
- Requesting CIP data from the Library of Congress
- Tagging text files for the copyeditor and typesetters
- Creating the proof sheet
- Assigning a copyeditor and copyediting the manuscript
- Typesetting and designing the manuscript
- Designing a cover (the author receives drafts throughout the process and is invited to participate)
- Drafting marketing copy (the author receives drafts throughout the process and is invited to participate)
- Finalizing book data for vendors and retailers
- Printing and shipping the book to our warehouse
- Creating an ebook (EPUB) file for distribution to ebook vendors
- We are mindful of accessibility and ensure that all our books meet current standards. We also prioritize price points and formats that ensure scholarship is available for course use and to graduate students, contingent faculty, and independent scholars.
- Authors/editors and contributors receive gratis copies of their books
- Marketing plans begin
Inclusive efforts will change over time, so please return to this document as we revisit and revise our own processes. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on this and pledge to work at continually bettering our own systems, scholarly publishing, and the disciplines in which we publish. We would like to thank the scholarly team that authored “Participatory Coalition Building: Creating an Anti-Racist Scholarly Reviewing Practices Heuristic.” This document provided us invaluable guidance in seeking more equitable practices and we are grateful to them for their efforts.
Today we seek transparency in our work and thank you for being part of our scholarly community. We invite critiques on ways in which these processes, timelines, and efforts could be improved and acknowledge that, as a publisher, we have long participated in systems and structures that have not always welcomed MMU scholars or made publication accessible to them. Please find an anonymous survey here where you’re welcome to share your feedback and critiques with us. We look forward to working with you!
*updated 6/10/22
Related Pages:
Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
A Statement on Indigenous Land and Colonial Spaces
