Frequently-Asked Questions
Check out some of our most frequently asked questions. Don’t see a question or answer you’re looking for? Contact Us
General Questions
How Does Play Story Press Work?
Play Story Press™ uses two kinds of technology to publish projects.
The first is layout and design applications that allow us to easily create books in multiple formats: print and interactive PDFs, and various eBook files. These applications work through templates that separate the content of the book from the design of the book, exactly like a content management system does when you post something to a website.
While this system reduces some of the traditional design elements you might want (for instance: we can’t do sidebars because digital books don’t really have sidebars), it enables us to quickly and easily get a book or journal into multiple formats with one design. And we can often turn around those projects in just a day or two.
The second is on-demand distribution services for both print and digital. We partner with Lulu, an on-demand publisher that gives us one-stop access to all the major online retailers and allows our book to be searchable by libraries and bookstores, and all our publications are in the Knowledge Commons Works repository, and our books are in Thoth Open Metadata. We also work with The Game Crafter to produce tabletop games. Our publications are collected in the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong National Museum of Play.
How Is That Different Than A Traditional Book Publisher?
Play Story Press can be much more flexible and has a much quicker turnaround time on the projects we publish because we aren’t tied to legacy printing systems. This means we can go from accepting your project, to review, content and design collaboration and iteration, to publishing in just a few months (depending on your progress with writing, of course).
And since we’re an open access publisher, this means that you retain ownership of your intellectual property, and we publish under a Creative Commons license. There will be a free version of your book available for download, along with the paid options of print and e-book. We probably aren’t right for your project if you’re interested in doing a hands-on design heavy, hardback book. Those books tend to be extremely expensive to create when done on-demand, and so they can often benefit from a more traditional publisher.
Play Story Press is more focused on print and digital on-demand sales, which means we don’t have a presence in any physical bookstores (although bookstores can order our books). Our model is designed for the work to be readily available to people interested in these topics. If you’re hoping to have a print run of books distributed in stores, you will want to look for a more traditional publisher.
Finally, Play Story Press doesn’t have an infrastructure designed to edit and promote your book, outside of the more traditional marketing and communication resources distributed across the consortium and all of our the networks. If you’re hoping for a big promotional push for your work, you should definitely work with a more traditional publisher.
How Do I Know if This Is The Right Place For My Project?
The answer to this question comes down to the goals you have for your project. Play Story Press is ideally suited to move projects from completion to distribution as fast as possible and to allow anyone who is interested in the project you’ve completed to get access to it.
This means you will have fewer hoops to jump through with your project, but it also means there will be some limitations on the design and outreach that a more traditional publisher might offer.
What Does Diamond Open Access Mean?
Diamond open access means we don’t want cost to prohibit anyone from using the work we publish. And so each of our projects has a free download component to go along with the paid versions of the print and e-books.
Are Books Peer Reviewed?
All titles go through a proposal process and are reviewed by our Editorial Advisory Board. The Editor-in-Chief works with authors/editors to develop proposals. Once a full proposal (along with portions of the text) is submitted, the Editor-in-Chief sends it to the Editorial Advisory for peer review. At this stage, authors/editors and the advisory are asked to declare any potential conflicts of interest, so the Advisory members can step aside as necessary. Review feedback is collected by the Editor-in-Chief. In the case of a decline, authors/editors are informed, and the Editor-in-Chief shares the review feedback, along with guidance on potential next steps with the press (or other potential forums). In case of an accept, authors/editors are informed, and the Editor-in-Chief shares the review feedback and next steps. As projects move forward, the Editor-in-Chief keeps in touch with the authors/editors as they work to complete the book. Proposals with more substantial feedback also have Editorial Advisory members share further input as the book progresses. The press is also open and supportive of requests from authors/editors to get reviews from professionals with specific expertise, and open reviews through the web as part of the writing process. When a final manuscript comes in, the Editor-in-Chief does another review referencing the initial feedback, and works with the authors/editors to finalize the book for publication. The academic journals and proceedings we publish each have their own additional peer review processes.
Process Questions
How Do I Submit a Proposal?
All submissions should be emailed to:
Who Owns The Intellectual Property Of My Work?
The short answer is that you retain ownership of your work. You are simply giving Play Story Press permissions to publish your work. Play Story Press publishes all its work under the Creative Commons license:
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This license allows for published works to remain intact, but versions can be created.
That said, if an author wants to use a copyrighted image in their text, they are responsible for trying to secure permission (and Play Story Press will clearly state (in the front matter of the publication) that all images are *not* in the Creative Commons and that the respective owners’ reserve all rights.
How Does Open Access Work with AI?
Open Access and AI
Play Story Press is an open access press because we believe ideas should be freely shared to best have impact and significance in our society, while respecting the intentions and creative rights of our authors. With recent AI development being driven by the use of large amounts of data from the web, we’re working to balance our foundational open access values and supporting the range of intentions our authors have with their work.
Our Approach
Our authors want their work to be open access and believe in this philosophy for sharing scholarship, and some of our authors want their work available for AI training, while others would prefer not. As such, we can’t institute a blanket policy for all publications, like technical blocking of AI crawling through services like Cloudflare. That said, there are emerging initiatives, such as Creative Commons Signals framework, that can support authors in declaring their intentions with their work, for more information: https://creativecommons.org/ai-and-the-commons/cc-signals/
CC Signals
With CC Signals you can declare your preferences with your work. The development of CC Signals is on-going, and here’s how they’re proposing implementation:
https://creativecommons.org/ai-and-the-commons/cc-signals/implementation/
https://github.com/creativecommons/cc-signals
Creative Commons is initially proposing four signal elements:
– Credit: You must give appropriate credit based on the method, means, and context of your use.
– Direct Contribution: You must provide monetary or in-kind support to the Declaring Party for their development and maintenance of the assets, based on a good faith valuation taking into account your use of the assets and your financial means.
– Ecosystem Contribution: You must provide monetary or in-kind support back to the ecosystem from which you are benefiting, based on a good faith valuation taking into account your use of the assets and your financial means.
– Open: The AI system used must be open. For example, AI systems must satisfy the Model Openness Framework (MOF) Class II, MOF Class I, or the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID).
Along with four proposed signal combinations:
– Credit (CC Credit 0.1)
– Credit + Direct Contribution (CC Credit Direct Contribution 0.1)
– Credit + Ecosystem Contribution (CC Credit Ecosystem 0.1)
– Credit + Open (CC Credit Open 0.1)
Your Options
CC Signals complement CC licenses, and authors who wish may select a CC Signal combination that reflects your intentions on the copyright page of your work. If you prefer not, no action is needed.
Along with the above, Play Story Press will never sell your work to AI companies. Our authors own their IP, and you are the ones who decide what is done with your work.
Will I See Galleys Or Proofs Before The Work Is Published?
Once the design process is finished, Play Story Press editors will export the final print and digital proofs and send those along to the author.
Here is where the process gets a bit tricky. In traditional publishing, authors would read the proof, make corrections on the PDF, and send those back. However, our design templates don’t include pages. For example: If you pull up a book on a phone, a tablet, and a computer, the “page” of the book will depend upon the size of your screen.
What that means is that it is tricky to make changes directly in the template, so we try to make most in the original Microsoft Word document that is submitted. This digital proof is really so that you can see what the inside of the book will look like.
Once we’ve made the final changes to the proof, we upload the book to our distributor, Lulu.com. From there, we will order a single galley of the book so that we can make sure everything looks okay. Generally speaking, it takes 5-10 business days to receive that copy.
How Does The Design Process Work?
Play Story Press has an author style guide, which explains how authors will turn in their manuscript. We do this to allow for an easy import from a Microsoft Word document into our design templates. (We separate content from design so we’re not using Adobe’s InDesign to design our books.)
We primarily use Vellum (https://vellum.pub/), which is free to download for macOS. We usually format our books in traditional trade (6”x9”). You can submit your manuscript as a .vellum or .docx file. You can find some general guidelines for preparing your manuscript to import into Vellum (https://help.vellum.pub/importing/), along with further detailed documentation (https://help.vellum.pub/downloads/VellumAdvancedImportDocuments.zip). If you have different goals for the formatting of your projects, please contact us and we can discuss how we might be able to support your more unique project needs.
Once we import the book’s content, we go through the project, add in the styles such as subheads or block quotes, and add the front and back matter (for example, the copyright page and About the Author).
When all the internal material has been updated, the editor will export a few different versions of the layout, which include small tweaks in style. The author will then get the opportunity to choose which layout they like. Then, the author and Play Story Press editor will have a phone call to talk about any specific tweaks and changes that need to be made (or that can’t be made because of the template constraints).
Do You Offer Editing Services?
Play Story Press doesn’t offer story or line editing services. In many cases, our authors have fully fleshed out ideas for their work when they approach us. However, we do provide feedback on the book proposal during our conversations with authors and read over the submitted texts during design and layout.
What About Copy Editing?
Play Story Press doesn’t offer copy editing services. We expect our authors to have that done before they submit the final project to us. However, we are friends with many copy editors, and we’re happy to recommend them to you.
How Are Covers Designed?
As with our interiors, Play Story Press primarily works with templated design tools, along with free imagery through Unsplash. We collaborate with contributors to develop their covers, doing a round of mockups, and then iterate on feedback for another round for final approval. If you have different goals for the formatting of your cover, please contact us and we can discuss how we might be able to support your more unique project needs. In general, we don’t use copyrighted material for cover art. If there is interest, we can discuss the issues involved and how contributors would be responsible for securing written approval and permission to use copyrighted material for cover art.
Why Do I Have To Submit A Proposal If You Aren’t A Traditional Publisher?
Play Story Press asks authors to submit a truncated version of book proposal for any new projects for two reasons.
The first is that our editorial advisory can better get a sense of your project so that we can best support you through the project together. The second is that it allows us to have a conversation with you not only about your project, but also the expectations we each have, so that we can make a more informed decision about whether to accept your project, and you can get the information you need to decide if we’re a good fit for your project.
We want to make sure your book finds the right home, and the proposal helps us all with those conversations.
Business Questions
How Can I Track Sales And Download Figures?
Since we’re a small staff, we don’t spend our time running reports and sending them out. We are working to put together an annual email, but the surest way to find out is to send us an email.
What Is A Realistic Royalty Expectation?
Most books at the Play Story Press don’t sell thousands of copies, which means you probably aren’t going to get rich. However, the editors will work with authors on a bootstrap plan for marketing the book and finding new avenues such as bundles to increase potential sales.
What Is The Print Run For My Book?
Since Play Story Press works with an on-demand publisher, there are no print runs. We don’t have the capacity to warehouse books.
Where Will My Project Be Available?
Lulu.com is a book distributor, which means it will make your book available through the websites of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple’s iBookstore. Each of those distributors takes a big cut of your revenue (roughly half). For books, ISBNs are obtained through Lulu, LCCNs can be granted by the Library of Congress, and DOIs are minted through the Knowledge Commons Works repository, and the free downloads are hosted there. Our books are in Thoth Open Metadata, .
Lulu has its own online marketplace where people can purchase your book. Play Story Press only links to Lulu because the revenues on those books are substantially higher for authors. (This is how many independent and small publisher operate.)
Lulu also lists the book in the bibliographic databases of Ingram, Nielsen, Bowker and Google Books, which enables any library or bookseller to order copies as well as people to find Play Story Press books through internet searches.
How Much Will My Book Retail For?
Play Story Press prices our titles as inexpensively as possible because we want people to have access to them. We’re most interested in the sharing and spreading of ideas. We base our prices off of Lulu production costs plus retail markup in order for a project to be sold through other book sellers. Lulu.com offers a revenue calculator that gives authors the ability to see how much the book costs to print and how much profit is made.
Do You Pay Advances?
Play Story Press isn’t able to give book advances. Instead, we have a revenue split on earned royalties that favors our book authors and editors as follows:
– 50% – if Play Story Press formats and designs, or provides the format and design for, the interior and the cover in preparation for publication
– 60% – if Play Story Press is provided with either a formatted interior or designed cover, and Play Story Press provides the other
– 70% – if Play Story Press is provided with both formatted interior and designed cover, ready for publication.
With our reduced pricing structure, royalties are not expected to be substantial in general and we aren’t able to provide royalties for contributors in edited books, and we price our journals and proceedings without any retail markup so there are not any royalties involved.
What Is The Budget For Marketing And Public Relations?
Play Story Press doesn’t have a budget for marketing or public relations. We will work with the author to develop promotional assets such as digital images for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to distribute a promotional release and work with the author to engage with Play Story Press audiences. And we share releases with our consortium members who will amplify announcments out to their communities and audiences.