If you would like us to insert a handwritten card with your order, please place your order here, and then send us an email at ndsuDOTpressATndsuDOTedu with your message.
Thank you!
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How Our Books Go from Us to You
Note from NDSU Press Publisher, Suzzanne Kelley
Here is Emma Borah, Graduate Research Assistant in Publishing, taking care of sales and communications during the 2024 Western History Association conference in Kansas City. Hosting an exhibit table at conferences and book festivals is one way we are able to get our books into the hands of readers.
Almost every time we sign on a new author, they ask about our methods for distribution. This is a good and important question to ask. Authors (and their presses!) want to make sure that their books are getting into the hands of readers everywhere. Our authors are much relieved when I share the following information about our distribution practices.
- All of our books (since 2015) are available at Amazon, which works with us as a wholesaler. When Amazon receives orders for our books, they will then send us a list of the books we are to ship to one of their multiple distribution hubs. We receive that list every Monday at 3:00 a.m. We can only send Amazon the books that they request.
- Ingram Content Group also works with us a wholesaler, meaning they place orders with us when they receive orders from third parties, usually from bookstores.
- Follett School Solutions and Higher Education Follett work with us as wholesalers, too, filling orders for public schools and university or college bookstores.
- Baker & Taylor places orders with us for libraries across the United States.
- We sell direct to public libraries and bookstores (at discounts to each). For the past couple of years, we’ve opened subscription accounts to public libraries that want to receive a copy of every book we publish. As soon as we have those books in hand, we ship them off to the subscribing libraries. We also gift a copy of every book to the eleven higher education institutions in North Dakota. We send those gift copies to the North Dakota State Library, and they take care of placing the copies with the universities.
- We sell direct to individuals at our online store, at various conferences and book festivals, and at our own events, such as the POPP Poetry reading event that will take place this coming Saturday, December 12, and at our annual NDSU Press Party. Our 10th Annual NDSU Press Party is scheduled for May 3, 2025.
- We even give some copies away! If a book editor from a journal requests a copy, we send it, no charge. Likewise, if a faculty member at any college or university is thinking about using one of our titles as required reading for their classes, we’ll send a desk copy to that faculty member.
With the various vendors that are involved, we spend a lot of time on fulfillment: accepting purchase orders; picking, packing, and carting orders to delivery points; and then invoicing the companies in a variety of ways that meet their requirements for record keeping. We try to send out all orders within two business days of receiving them.
So, that’s the distribution scoop for NDSU Press!
Giving Day Lasts 1,890 Minutes This Year!
Every minute counts. Gifts received between 8 a.m. Dec. 3, 2024, and 3:30 p.m. Dec. 4, 2024, count toward the NDSU Giving Day totals. Fun fact: NDSU Giving Day 2024 will last 1,890 minutes to commemorate the year NDSU was founded!
Your contribution to NDSU Press supports the publication of award-winning scholarly and literary books. We hope you’ll consider our cause today…or sometime within the remaining number of minutes. 🙂
Follow this Donate Now link, scroll down to Arts and Sciences, and find NDSU Press General Fund.
On behalf of our authors, staff, and students, I THANK YOU.
Suzzanne Kelley
Publisher, NDSU Press
Associate Professor of Practice
Wish Us Luck!
Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley
Will we take Gold or Silver? Or maybe one of each or two of one–since one of our titles is a finalist in TWO categories: History and Multicultural! Whatever way, we’re fine with the outcome! This Friday, April 26, 2024, the Independent Book Publishers (IBPA) Award winners will be announced during the dinner and ceremony being held in Denver, 6:00 to 9:00 P.M. CDT. This celebration of “the best in independent book publishing” is an exciting gala to attend for publishers and authors alike, but alas we cannot be there in person. Instead, you’ll find us tuning in at 8:15 P.M. CDT, as that is when the hosts will livestream the announcements via their Facebook page.
And who is our charmed finalist author? Historian John M. Shaw, whose debut book is garnering great attention! NDSU Press published In Order That Justice May Be Done: The Legal Struggles of the Turtle Mountain Band of Pembina Chippewa, 1795-1905 in July 2023. We hope you’ll tune in to the award announcements, too, and maybe even cheer us on!
In Order That Justice May Be Done is available from our NDSU Press online store, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and your favorite independent bookseller.
Keeping a Close Eye on Fonts
Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley
Breanna (at right) and Megan scrutinize each font’s every twist and turn in their mystery collection.
Our 2023 Introduction to Publishing class has just returned from its Braddock Expedition. While at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum, located on the grounds of the South Central Threshing Association, NDSU students were tasked with a number of activities under the tutelage of Leah Burke and Allan Burke. The museum collection of fonts is magnificent, replete with multiple cases full of alphabet and punctuation pieces. The fonts are mostly formed of metal, but some are wooden and large. A few of the font styles are italic; some are bold. Each case contains lowercase and uppercase fonts of a single type. Previous classes and volunteers have sorted the type so that there is only one style per case, a detail-oriented task that has taken place over time in order to organize the collection. Now, students and volunteers are tasked with the detective work of identifying the measurement and name of each type style.
Type Gauge Tool
There are tools–physical, printed, and digital–to help the students determine the size and style of the type case they are assigned. Beginning with the Type Gauge Multi-Tool, students insert a sample piece of type to determine the height of each font. Font heights are measured as “points,” there being approximately 72 points to an inch. A size 36 font is about one-half inch, and a size 12 (typically used for Word documents) measures at 12/72 of an inch, or, about 1/6 of an inch. (OK, that is enough math.)
Sara, shown here using digital means to narrow down her font identity search.
A digital resource our font detectives enjoy using is Identifont, one of many free options available for finding font families. Identifont asks questions such as, “Do the characters have serifs?” If the answer is yes, then the next question might be, “What style is the upper-case ‘Q’ tail?”
Each question the students answer leads them to the next narrowing-down clue, much like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure kind of book. Students can also make use of type-face identification books held in the museum library.
Ella and Mike study a printed font-style resource.
Once the students identify the font style in their type case, they have the great fun of setting type, using their fonts to name the type in their case, and thus building pages for a museum catalog in progress.
Some mistakes were made. It is not easy to set type to “read wrong” and “print right.” (Yes, these are the technical terms.) Here, we see that a first try at typesetting and printing the font identity and size needs a little work.
Fortunately, our mistakes are easily corrected. (Maybe not completely in the first try. Can you see the extant error?)
Check out this brief video, where you’ll see that Anish (in the blue jacket and yellow tee) and Abby keep at the task until everything reads right.
Mission accomplished!
Among other assignments on site this past weekend at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum, all students had their try at identifying fonts, typesetting, and printing. Our hands-on learning experience illustrated how typesetting and printing were done at the turn of the twentieth century and provided a plethora of new-to-the-students terms for the art and process of letterpress publishing. (They also learned about the magic of Gojo.)
We so appreciate our community-university partnership, teaching students (new and) old ways of publishing, while providing aid to the collection management at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum. Special thanks go to Tracy and Paula Moch–who kept us fed and hydrated (and to Johanna for her delicious homemade brownies)–and to Allan and Leah Burke, who kept the training and tasks a’coming! Leah, in all those years of running the newspaper business, you may have missed your calling as a teacher!
NDSU Press Author Signings at the Twin Cities Book Festival
SUMSALE50%
Take advantage of our brief but significant summer sale! All titles are discounted 50 percent. Enter the code SUMSALE50% when you check out at our online store, and watch the dollars fall fall fall away! Our sale runs through Wednesday, June 28, 2023.
Shop now at our online store: Welcome to North Dakota State University!. NDSU Press (nbsstore.net)
NDSU Press is Hiring! Come work for us and NDSU’s Department of History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Modern Languages.
Announcing a full-time job opening with NDSU Press + the Department of History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Modern Languages!
25 percent of the position is for rendering aide to NDSU Press…and we could use your help!
This position provides shared services between the History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Modern Languages department and NDSU Press. The primary duties and responsibilities include budget management, payroll processes; NDSU Press inventory and invoice management and administrative support. Other key duties include managing department projects, scheduling department events, assisting students and academic activities.
Responsibilities:
NDSU Press; 25%:
+Calendar management, scheduling meetings, inventory and invoice management using Dashbook (will train)
+Processing reports such as weekly book orders, weekly credit card report, and monthly purchasing card report
History, Philosophy, Religious Studies and Modern Languages department; 75%:
+Answer phones, schedule meeting rooms, and photocopying.
+Schedule departments’ events.
+Maintain inventory, office supplies, and office equipment.
+Serve as phone, key, and records management coordinator for the departments.
+Maintain departments’ websites (Typo 3, will train)
+Assist with scholarship processing.
+Coordinate travel for faculty, guests and class field trips.
+Supervise student employees.
+Monitor expenditures and track spending in all appropriated, local, grant and development foundation funds.
+Approve funding on all payables to ensure appropriate spending and accuracy.
+Process all position changes, rate changes, funding changes, payroll forms and corrections, and budget changes as needed.
Other duties as assigned
Work Schedule:
Monday-Friday; 40 hours per week.
NDSU Press Receives Grant
The NDSU Press has received a $15,000 grant from the Literary Arts Emergency Fund, which is administered by the Academy of American Poets, the Community of Literary Magazine and Presses and the National Book Foundation. In total, the fund has granted $4.3 million to 313 nonprofit literary arts organizations and publishers across the U.S. that have experienced continued financial losses due to COVID-19.
“Of the 313 presses receiving support, we are one of only seven university presses, including the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison, Letras Latinas at University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies and the University of Arizona Poetry Center,” said Suzzanne Kelley, NDSU Press editor in chief. “With paper shortages, higher costs and delays in printing and shipping, and multiple disruptions in the supply chain, we at NDSU Press are tasked daily to overcome industry challenges and expenses. This important one-time grant provides sure footing for our future.”
Check out the complete announcement at NDSU News: NDSU Press receives grant | NDSU News | NDSU
The Folk School on Willow Creek
Publisher note from Suzzanne Kelley
Welcome to the Folk School on Willow Creek, featuring University Distinguished Professor Tom Isern, singing and telling stories from the Salon on Willow Creek. Every Friday evening, 8:00 p.m. Central Time, Isern belts out ballads and tells the backstories of the lyrics, the authors, and the people of the plains who sang the songs. This Friday, July 25, he’ll feature “The Letter Edged in Black.” Do you know the significance of the edging? Tune in . . . you’ll find out. The Folk School lasts about 30 minutes, but you’ll wish it lasted longer. This week’s program is the 14th in the series.
Here is a link to Prairie Public’s Main Street, where host Doug Hamilton interviewed Isern just this week about the Folk School.
And here is a link to the Folk School page on Facebook.
