Who are Tithebarn Press?
Tithebarn Press is an independent academic publisher of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences books, founded and run by Simon Bates – a former Commissioning Editor for Routledge/Taylor and Francis.
Simon has previously started two Asia Pacific-centred booklists for Taylor and Francis, most recently a Social Science and Humanities programme under the Routledge imprint, and prior to that an Engineering list under the CRC Press imprint. In-between he also worked on the outlines of what became Inspire Maths, a collaboration between Marshall Cavendish Singapore and Oxford University Press, adapting Singapore’s primary school maths textbooks for an English audience.
What makes Tithebarn Press different?
After many years working for larger publishers, Simon found himself frustrated by the constraints of trying to work within a big machine. He felt there was room for a smaller, nimbler, more responsive publisher, which could work closely with authors to offer a more bespoke service. He also saw that certain kinds of books tended not to be as well-served as they might be when published with big commercial academic presses, typically the kinds of books that had some potential for crossover into a personal purchase market, but which were neither course textbooks nor truly mass market.
He also wanted to try out a more thematic approach than the subject area divisions that are common among most presses. Tithebarn Press instead opts for a distinctive Theme-centred approach. All books published by Tithebarn Press relate to one of our core Themes, each of which have the broad scope to include books from a range of academic disciplines, and which can be interdisciplinary in nature.
We talk in more detail about our personalised approach in this update.
So what are these Themes?
Our core Themes are Power, Laughter, Migration and Seafaring. We hope to incorporate further Themes as we grow, and we’re open to suggestions as to what these could be.
What kind of books are Tithebarn Press looking for?
Within the scope of our Themes, our focus is broadly across the disciplines of Politics, International Relations, Public Policy, Sociology, History, Geography, and the Arts. We’re particularly looking for books that try to examine the mechanics of how and why things work the way they do. Our aim is to publish books that are academically rigorous, but nevertheless accessible to a non-specialist readership. So they will, for example, keep technical terminology to the minimum necessary. We want our publishing always to be driven by curiosity.
Our watchwords are Rigorous and Readable, we talk a little more about what we mean by this here.
What is your editorial process?
Our process is based on Simon’s experience working for major commercial academic publishers, and adjusted to suit a more flexible and personalised model enabled by working at a smaller scale.
We provide feedback on all proposals during initial discussions, before proceeding to an external peer review. This is the same process that Simon managed while working for Routledge, where materials are sent out to anonymous expert reviewers, who provide feedback on your proposal and sample material. Depending on this feedback, a proposal might be accepted, rejected, or we might ask for changes to be made.
Throughout the writing process we will be available to discuss the content of your manuscript, and to help obtain more expert feedback if this is necessary.
While this may change in future, we currently handle copy-editing of manuscripts in house, and so as well as checking for the usual typographical errors and providing suggestions on paragraph/sentence structure and language use as appropriate, we are also able to provide feedback on book structure and content as necessary.
How long does it take to publish with Tithebarn Press?
We’re committed to working as efficiently and quickly as possible, while maintaining high standards of content and copy-editing. There are a few steps in the process to think about when considering timelines:
- Proposal – Once we have a proposal in, with suitable supporting sample materials and we judge it ready to go out, we aim to be able to get reviews in within two months, ideally much less.
- Review Feedback – If our reviews are straight-forwardly supportive, this step may take a matter of days, while we discuss manuscript delivery and other details with you and agree on contractual terms. If our reviews are more complex or critical, this might require a longer discussion, and perhaps additional review time, in which case this might take another month or two.
- Writing your manuscript – for most authors who are not proposing with a complete manuscript already, this is the longest part of the process by far. We are on hand throughout to provide feedback and encouragement as you write, but ultimately this stage takes you as long as it takes you.
- Copy-editing – currently we handles this in house, and aims to come back to you with any proposed edits within two weeks of receiving a complete manuscript. If for whatever reason this timeline won’t be possible, we’ll let you know as early as we can. We’re also open to authors submitting chapters in advance for early editing, with the caveat that this will constrain our ability to comment on the manuscript as a whole effectively.
- Typesetting and proofs – this will vary a bit with the complexity of manuscripts. Manuscripts with lots of images in, for example, can be much more time-consuming. Our aim is to supply you with final proofs for approval within three weeks of receiving your sign-off on the copy-edit.
- Printing – Once we have received your sign-off on the final proofs, print copies should be available within two weeks.
We’ve tried to include a reasonable amount of leeway in these times, so more often than not we will actually be faster. A couple of factors can slow things down though. If there are a lot of calls on our time at once then inevitably some things will take longer than normal. We are also dependent on our supplier, Ingram, whose turnaround times for proofs and final copies are stated as 3-5 days, but can sometimes be faster or slower than this.
How do you distribute your books?
We use Ingram Spark, which means our books are printed by Lightning Source and distributed using Ingram’s extensive international network. They also make our books available as ebooks. Ingram is the world’s largest distributor of books and so our books are widely available.
What will you be doing to promote your books?
Every book will be announced on all of our social media channels, and we’ll produce a flyer for you to share, with a special discount code. We will also be preparing a catalogue of our books, which will enable us to promote our full range together to prospective readers. Over time these may develop into separate catalogues for each pillar, but not until our backlist is large enough to make a single catalogue unwieldy. We aim to keep making your book visible in this way well into the future.
We are able to supply small numbers of books for book launches and other events, we expect to be able to do more of this sort of thing as the press develops. We very much understand the importance of in-person events in promoting books, and once we have sufficient titles to justify the high overhead costs we hope to be able to have display space at select conference events.
It’s worth emphasising that at this early stage, each title will necessarily get a lot of our attention and promoting each and all of them will be a high priority. We obviously lack the scale of a large commercial press, but as a consequence of that, each title matters to us that much more.
What is your pricing policy?
We expect to produce all books as ebooks, paperbacks and hardbacks. Ebooks and paperbacks will be priced between GBP25 and 35, except if they are unusually long or short (and, of course, these will be adjusted along with inflation over time), hardbacks will be around three times that amount.
How many titles are you expecting to publish?
Our ambition is to escalate to publishing 20-25 titles per year over our first few years. If that goes well then we may look to expand our capacity by taking on staff or freelancers.
Are you able to produce Open Access books?
Yes, please get in touch with us if you would like to discuss our various Open Access options. As with so many other aspects of publishing with Tithebarn Press, we’re able to discuss bespoke packages depending on your needs.
