UNAM Press engages critically with content and language, design and technology, to ensure that its publications are of high academic, editorial, and production quality.
When you submit your proposal to UNAM Press, you will be asked to provide us with information on the purpose of your book, its intended audience, how it compares with or relates to other books in the same area, and for more information about yourself and any co-authors. This will assist the Editorial Board in making a decision on whether or not to publish your book. If we decide to publish it, this information will also help us to effectively market and sell your book.
Your book proposal and sample chapters will first be assessed by our Publisher and members of the UNAM Press Editorial Board. An initial decision will be taken on whether it fits in with our publishing programme and we will inform you of our response.
If the Editorial Board is interested in your proposal, we will request the full manuscript or discuss with you when you expect the manuscript to be finalized and submitted.
If the manuscript meets our expectations, the Editorial Board will give the go-ahead to send it to two peer-reviewers for external assessment. This is a double-blind peer review process. You will be sent the reviews when they come in and asked for your response. The Editorial Board will then discuss the reviews, and decide whether or not to publish your work.
Peer reviews add significantly to the value of all manuscripts, both in terms of recommendations for improving them further, and in endorsing their academic standard. Most of our books undergo some revision after peer review.
If the Editorial Board decides to approve your manuscript for publication, a contract will be offered to you, outlining the author’s and publishers’ respective rights and responsibilities, and the royalties that will be due to you. Peer-reviewers’ comments must then be dealt with; your revisions finalized; a production schedule set out; and the final manuscript approved and sent for copy-editing.
Copy-editing
This is the final editorial preparation of the text before printing. It includes checks for structure and logical sequence of argument, repetition, ambiguity, heading levels, consistency, spelling, marking up illustrations, checking references and bibliographical citations, etc.
The main aim of copy-editing is to make the author’s meaning clear to the reader. The copy-editor is ‘the reader’s advocate and the author’s ambassador’.1
The copy-edited manuscript will be sent to you, for you to check and to answer any queries. It will then be sent to the designer and printer. You may be asked to write an index, in which case guidelines will be sent to you.
Design, production, and printing
You will be sent sample pages showing the design before the book is typeset and laid out, plus a print of the front cover design, the back cover text describing the book, and the text to be used about you as the author. Page proofs will be sent for you to go through once the book is typeset and laid out. This is the final check before printing.
Marketing and distribution
On publication, your book will be marketed and distributed in Namibia and the Southern African region, and internationally through the African Books Collective (ABC). ABC is owned by a collective of African publishers. It markets, distributes and sells books published in Africa to the rest of the world. Its representatives attend African Studies conferences in the UK, Europe, USA and Africa. ABC offers direct online sales and print-on-demand orders through Lightning Source printers in the USA, Europe, and now Australia. Through ABC, our books have a widespread online presence and reach individuals, institutions, and university libraries, particularly in North America.
