Why Publish with ACM Books?
ACM’s promise to our book authors
Your experience as an ACM author is just as important to us as your book is. We at ACM Books are committed to publishing the highest-quality content for the computer science community, and are eager to work with you towards this objective. We share your desire to disseminate your book as widely as possible to the researchers, practitioners, and students who form the global readership for the books we publish. From editorial to production to marketing, you will find a personal approach in everything we do. We all know that writing a book is hard, and we are here to help.
Author support
As a specialized book publisher focusing exclusively on books in and related to computer science, we work on only a small number of titles at any one time. This enables us to remain flexible and offer high levels of personal attention to our authors.
- ACM editorial staff provide strong, proactive, and consistent editorial support, guiding the author through the publishing process from proposal to finished book.
- ACM’s permissions team assists authors with procuring necessary permissions for reuse of copyrighted material.
- Each book is assigned an Area Editor from the ACM Books Editorial Board, who offers academic and technical guidance and can provide substantive feedback to the author during the writing process.
- The ACM Books Editors in Chief are also available to offer advice, both general and specific, on individual projects.
Quality standards
As a professional society dedicated to advancing the art, science, engineering, and applications of computing, ACM requires that its publications maintain a high level of technical quality and relevance to their intended readerships. All new book projects are subjected to rigorous peer review at the proposal stage; completed manuscripts also undergo formal review, with detailed feedback and suggestions for improvement shared with authors.
Production
ACM offers a fast and efficient production workflow, with books typically published in three to four months from receipt of final manuscript. Because our list is small, there is little danger of books being held up in production backlogs. This enables us to move quickly when, for example, a book needs to be published in time for a key conference. Copyediting is carried out to a high standard by editors with technical knowledge in computer science.
Marketing
ACM’s book marketing team makes early contact with authors, supporting a range of promotional efforts to ensure broad visibility for published titles. This includes, for example, social media promotions, targeted marketing through Amazon and other online vendors, and tailored adoption campaigns for textbooks.
Accessibility
ACM is committed to making its publications accessible for all. Accessibility components such as alternative text descriptions for all figures are added to help readers utilize assistive technology to read the text in the correct order, and to have visual elements that they may not be able to see explained in detail.
Availability
Electronic versions of all ACM books are published in the ACM Digital Library (DL), one of the world’s foremost repositories of computer science literature. The high visibility and powerful search engine optimization of the DL ensures that books are readily discovered by researchers, professionals, and students worldwide.
The DL also allows for the inclusion of supplementary materials such as extended appendices or tarballs of example code.
We are flexible in allowing authors to post pre-publication versions of their books (or book chapters) on their personal academic website and, where appropriate, preprint servers such as arXiv.
Books may also be purchased through standard retail channels worldwide, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as a wide range of third-party aggregators and distributors.