Play Story Press™ is an open community publishing consortium of/by/for the field and our community. We’re a diamond open-access academic publishing initiative in which contributors retain all their intellectual property, and neither contributors nor readers are charged fees. We work with our contributors in as timely a manner as possible so that we can share ideas that have impact and significance in our society.
Play Story Press is a culmination of 20 years of open-access publishing and collaborating with the community and field. Our Consortium works together to shape and support Play Story Press for the field and community, our Editorial Advisory works with the Editors to inform publishing decisions and provide input on how the press grows and evolves, and we collaborate with our Partners to publish their projects.
What does all that mean in terms of publishing work?
Publishing with Play Story Press is a friendly, supportive and constructive process focused on encouraging the growth of quality scholarship in this field. Play Story Press is committed to publishing peer reviewed work for a general audience, ranging from books, textbooks, singles, academic journals, conference proceedings, research reports and white papers. The common tie for all these is a focus on issues related to stories and play as they are applied across various fields. The concepts of story and play are broad and diverse—from entertainment and narrative to media studies and social studies, games and technology to health and enjoyment, education and learning to design and development, and more. Our authors come from a range of backgrounds. Some are traditional academics. Some are practitioners. And some work in between. Their ability to write about the impact of play and story and their significance in society is what ties them all together.
To distinguish our books, Play Story Press has five imprints:
- Play Story Press: our traditional academic and research publications;
- Play Story Single: our short “Why it matters” books that are roughly 8,000-25,000 words;
- Play Story Signature: our special projects, trade books, and other curated works that exemplify the best work being done;
- Play Story Report: our white papers and reports are produced by practitioners or academic researchers working in conjunction with partners; and
- Play Story Student: our work with undergraduate and graduate students
- Play Story Edition: along with our imprints, new publications of previously released work related to stories and play.
In keeping with our mission, the Play Story Press uses emerging technologies to design all of our books and Lulu, an on-demand publisher, to distribute our e-books and print books through all the major retail chains, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple. We work with The Game Crafter to produce tabletop games. We don’t carry an inventory ourselves. Instead, each print book is created when somebody buys a copy. Since the Play Story Press is an open-access publisher, every book, journal, and proceeding is available as a free download, and we partner with Knowledge Commons Works for our repository, and our books use Thoth Open Metadata. Our publications are collected in the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong National Museum of Play. We’re most interested in the sharing and spreading of ideas. Authors retain ownership of their intellectual property. We release all of our books, journals, and proceedings under a Creative Commons license:
Play Story Press™ is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Pennsylvania, USA, with Drew Davidson serving as President. We’re an independent organization powered by input and involvement from the consortium, our contributors, and the community at large. We’re an open access, scholar-led, mission-driven, and peer review press, innovating through publishing, and we invite people to participate. Together, we can explore and create the future of open academic publishing, sharing and spreading ideas and knowledge that can help change the world for the better.