The University of California Press publishes a blog that is used for the promotion of our books and journals and general public relations. We urge authors to submit content for our blog, and encourage you to send us something either before or around the time of the publication of your book.

General Guidelines:

Blogs are informal communication tools and a way for you to reach out directly to customers who are interested in your title or topic. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind while writing your post:

Word Limit:
Limit your post to 500 words or less. Most people will not read more than 500 words on a blog regardless of how compelling the post is.

Post Content:
Make your post current or personal and relate it to your UC Press book. Even if your book is about ancient history, you may be able to tie it to a relevant current event or post a new research finding that relates to your book. You might also use a personal experience to frame your post—your current research or even a link to another online source that you enjoyed reading and found relevant.

Blog Audience:
Our blog readers are a general audience. A few of our readers will be experts in your field, but most are not. Keep this in mind while writing your post.

Editing:
We will proofread your post for any typos or link errors. We will also edit the content if it is determined to be too controversial or inappropriate for our UC Press blog. We will consult with you before publishing any edited article.

Formatting:
If you are savvy with HTML, please supply an HTML doc. Our second preference is a text file. To create a text file, write your post in Word and then use "Save As" and select "Text Only" or .txt.

You may also just send an email or Word document of any sort—content is more important than formatting.

If you would like to include a link in your post and you are not supplying HTML, please put square brackets around your link in the text. Here's an example: "As you can learn from my website [http://www.jamespowell.org], I am a geologist, former professor, and nonprofit executive who took up writing . . ."

Text Submission Information:
Please send your blog submission to askpublicity@ucpress.edu.

Audio/Video Submission Information:
We can host video or audio files on our website and/or posts on our blog or embed files you've hosted on YouTube. For files you would like us to host, we can take files in the following formats:

Video
H.264 QuickTime, must be in mp4 format (mov won't work with our player)
FLV Flash format

Ideally, we'd like to have the video formatted at 480 x 360, but can also handle 320 x 240 and 720 x 540.

Audio
mp3
wav

We can also embed media files you're hosting on YouTube. Just let us know where to find them.

For more information and details on how to send the files to us, please contact Mark Anderson at manderson at ucpress.edu. If you are considering a new video project, please contact Deb Nasitka at dnasitka at ucpress.edu.

More Information or Questions:
We thank you for taking the time to read this and look forward to your blog submission and to marketing your book. If you have any more questions, you may contact your publicist or askpublicity@ucpress.edu.