Submitting a Manuscript
We invite authors to submit manuscripts on (greater) China, Japan, and Korea, in the humanities and social sciences. Single-author original manuscripts are preferred, but translations of literature and edited multiple-contributor volumes are also considered. To determine whether IEAS would be an appropriate publisher for your work, please browse titles in our series, listed in our current catalog.
Call for submissions: The managing editor is currently seeking manuscripts for the Transnational Korea and Japan Research Monograph series.
We welcome complete manuscripts for review; we do not review proposals only. To submit a manuscript, please follow the instructions and style guide available here.
The Manuscript Review Process
Upon receipt of a manuscript, we send it for review by a Berkeley professor familiar with both the topic and our series. If the manuscript passes the on-campus review, we request one or two external reviews by experts in the field. At this point, if the manuscript has been submitted elsewhere for review, we ask for right of first refusal. We will also ask the author or editor for a list of possible reviewers (and those who should not be contacted) to guide our search. The peer-review process usually takes at least three months. Based on the reviews, a publications committee will recommend accepting or rejecting the manuscript, with the final decision made by the IEAS director. Sometimes manuscripts are accepted conditionally, with revision required.
The Publication Process
Once a manuscript is accepted, and revised if necessary, it is copyedited in consultation with the author/s or editor/s. Manuscripts are copyedited by the in-house editor or by a freelance copyeditor; either way, the copyediting is done using MS Word’s track changes function. Authors and editors are asked to review the copyedited files carefully, as this is the last stage before corrections become time-consuming and costly. Your reviewed files will go back to the copyeditor for clean up before they are sent on to composition and design. At this point, we may ask the authors or editors for ideas, artwork, and/or images for the cover design.
From composition, the authors or editors will receive a PDF of the proof pages. You will be asked to review the proofs before the project goes to printing and binding; you are also responsible for creating or commissioning an index at this stage. The time frame from our receipt of your final manuscript to books ready for sale is about a year.
Marketing
Upon publication of a monograph, we list it for sale in our online catalog. Each book has its own url; on that page, along with basic information, we provide a short and long description, author bio(s), table of contents, and journal reviews (as available). In addition to the cover we also have sample pages available for preview. We then feature the book as a top news item on the institute’s website.
We announce the book’s availability to customers through our opt-in e-mail lists. We also send a notice to book review editors, offering a complimentary copy for review. Our books are available to individuals directly through the IEAS online catalog, as well as Amazon.com, and can be ordered by bookstores worldwide. We also fill standing orders for our series at leading libraries and other institutions.
Our major marketing event is the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting, where we host a booth every year. The ad we place in the program highlighting new and upcoming titles reaches thousands of attendees prior to the event, and we offer attendees a discount on book orders.
To help us with promotion, we ask authors to spread their book’s url far and wide — through e-mail signature, individual or university webpage, e-mail listservs such as H-Asia, and online networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn and Facebook). We encourage authors to arrange book talks, and we send books to support such events. Authors may also want to contact their university’s media office and alumni associations to ask that their book’s publication be featured as a news item. If you are interested in publishing a translation of your work, please let us know; we can negotiate such subsidiary rights. Finally, please contact us if you find that your book’s information online needs editing. Your suggestions for further marketing efforts are welcome. Authors are their book’s best promoters!