The University of Arizona Press
June 28, 2023
Summer is a great time to meet the people at the University of Arizona Press who turn book dreams into reality. We are a small but mighty team.
Today, we feature our Editorial, Design, and Production Manager, Amanda Krause.
Hello Amanda, what do you do for the Press?
I oversee our Editorial, Design, and Production department, handle manuscript editorial tasks like maintaining our house style guide and hiring freelance copyeditors, manage the production schedules of all our new books and reprints, and host of other tasks to make sure our books are both timely and something we and the authors can be really proud of.
How long have you been at UAP?
I just hit my ten-year anniversary earlier this year, though I’ve been in university press publishing in some capacity or another for about fifteen. In a past life, I’ve also worked in other editorial and publishing jobs as a proofreader for a company that made marketing materials for colleges and universities, an assistant editor at a buildings and facilities trade magazine, and a beat reporter for covering school boards for two small-town newspapers in eastern Iowa.
What do you like most about working here?
The people! Both our authors and our staff here at the press are some of the smartest, most creative and passionate people you’ll ever meet. I constantly learn new things from the people I get to work with—both interesting facts and new ways of thinking. . . . And I’d be remiss in my duties as a bibliophile if I didn’t also say that I love that new-book smell.
What would people be surprised to learn about your work?
How collaborative a process making a book is. When a manuscript goes through copyediting, it isn’t just a “hey we’ve edited your book to conform to the press’s house style and we’re done”; there’s a lot of back-and-forth between the copyeditor and the author, and then oftentimes consultation with me on the best way to handle a particular style issue for a particular book. Grammar isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing where all the rules can or should apply uniformly to all text. The goal instead is to make sure the author’s ideas are communicated clearly and the style is consistent, and you have to take into consideration how to make sure the language is free of bias, which could undermine the author’s expertise. And language doesn’t stay static over time. Plus there’s all the internal communication on everything from schedules to cover design. It’s a lot of meetings and emails.
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
Morocco! I studied French from middle school up through college (I missed the last class needed for a minor in order to do an internship at Northwestern University Press), and I became fascinated with Francophone Africa. Morocco has such a unique blend of French, Arabic, and African cultures. And I recently read one of Karen Armstrong’s books about the prophet Muhammad and am very interested in learning more about the Islamic world as well. Unfortunately, I’d really need to brush up on my French before I go—my language skills are VERY rusty after years of disuse, though I used to be pretty conversational.
