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. It is particularly important that you let your editor know if you plan to submit any artwork in electronic form.

If you do intend to submit digital artwork with your manuscript, it is crucial that you follow our guidelines. The quality of the images you see on your computer screen can be misleading; in many cases, digital files obtained by authors have proven to be unusable in making a book. For example, images from the Web are almost always too low a resolution for book reproduction, and images scanned from a book—while they may look fine on your screen or in a photocopy—will often be distorted or jagged when printed.

For more detailed information about electronic art, refer to the Association of American University Presses’ Digital Art Requirements for Submission.

Before submitting your final manuscript, please refer to our Author Checklist.

Photographs and Line Drawings

We prefer to have a photographic print, slide, or transparency so that we can coordinate the scan size and resolution that will create the best reproduction in your printed book. Each manufacturer we work with has unique requirements for illustrations, based on the kind of press, ink, and paper being used to print your book.

If you are able to provide only electronic files, it is critical that the files be of a high enough resolution and an appropriate size for good reproduction. We cannot accept laser prints made from scans as our primary art file. We need to have the actual electronic file accompanied by a printout of that file.

For best results, we recommend that you have the scans made by a graphic arts service bureau or by a library or archive that routinely provides electronic files for print reproduction. Scans 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. If an EPS file is provided, please be sure it includes a TIF preview.

For each image you supply, we must also have a printout, at 100%, of the scan accompanied by the following verified information, preferably recorded on the front of the printout:

• Printout ratio to scanned image (should be 100%; if not, please note this)
• Mode (should be grayscale or bitonal)
• Size of scan in inches (should be at least 5 x 7 inches)
• Resolution (for grayscale, should be at least 300 ppi at 5 x 7 inches; bitonal resolution should be at least 1200 ppi at 5 x 7 inches)

If your book is likely to be larger than the standard 6 x 9 inches, it is important that the images be scanned at a larger size (approximately 8 x 10 inches at 300 ppi for continuous tone; note that resampling to create this larger size is not effective). If you have questions about your book’s size, please contact our managing editor.

We cannot enlarge scans made at a lower than appropriate ppi because the resolution decreases as the size increases.

Color images that will be reproduced in black and white must be scanned in RGB mode and converted to grayscale. If you are scanning from 35-mm slides, it is especially important to have the size and resolution set high enough to meet our requirements. All other standards are the same as described above.

Unless they have been cleared with our design and production manager, we cannot accept scans for photos that will be reproduced in color. We prefer color slides, transparencies, or prints so that our printers can reproduce them from their own scans. Please contact Karen Copp, 319-335-2014, karen-copp@uiowa.edu, to discuss your color images.

BEFORE SUBMITTING PHOTOGRAPHS, please verify that your images are scanned to our specifications, supply a printout with every image, make sure that the printouts have the required verified information, put all images on a CD or zip disk separate from your text, and include a directory of the disk with file names correlated to the numbers of the photographs in your list of captions.

Maps and Charts

If you are planning to create art 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, karen-copp@uiowa.edu, to discuss your illustrations.

Macromedia Freehand 8.0 or later or Adobe Illustrator 8.0 or later are our preferred programs. Programs such as CorelDraw (7.0 or later) or Adobe Photoshop (5.0 or later) may also work, but sample files must be submitted before we can confirm that we can use them.

Using one of the preferred programs offers a much higher probability that your files can be used. If possible, provide an EPS version of the file in addition to the application version of the file. Often, you can save or export from another program into either an Illustrator or EPS format. If these options are not available, please indicate all save or export options available in the program you are using.

Our in-house platform is Macintosh.

BEFORE SUBMITTING CREATED DIGITAL MAPS, CHARTS, AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS, please have a sample tested by our design and production manager, supply a printout (actual size, not enlarged or reduced) for every file, use only Postscript (no True Type) fonts and include all fonts used with the art files, include all linked graphic or data files, provide a separate text file (on disk and hard copy) for all text used in art files, and include a printed directory of the disk contents.

Please complete the following checklist before sending us your illustrations. Thank you!

Art Checklist

If you have e-mailed any art to us, please provide dates and details.

Quantity and type of disk(s) enclosed:

____ 100 mb zip disk(s)
 Format: (check one) ____ Macintosh  ___ PC

____ CD(s)
 Format: (check one) ____ Macintosh  ___ PC

____ Total number of files supplied on disk (include printed directory of disk contents for each disk submitted)

____ Total number of black-and-white photos

____ Total number of color photos

____ Total number of line drawings

____ Total number of maps

____ Total number of grayscale or color scans (300 ppi)

____ Number from previously printed sources (illustrations from books)

____ Number from black-and-white glossy photographs

____ Number from color slides or transparencies

____ Total number of line drawing scans (1200 ppi)