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, [email protected], 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.

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