The University of Michigan Press is a non-profit scholarly publisher founded in 1930 and based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since 2009 it has been part of Michigan Publishing, the publishing division of the University of Michigan Library - an arrangement that makes it one of the few major American university presses embedded in a research library rather than run as a stand-alone business unit. That structure shapes almost everything about how the Press works, and especially its open-access program.

Michigan is book-first. It publishes roughly 100 new scholarly books a year across the humanities and social sciences, alongside a long-running English Language Teaching (ELT) list and regional books about Michigan and the Great Lakes. If you are looking for a journal home, Michigan Publishing hosts around 25 University of Michigan journals - including Philosopher's Imprint and the Journal of Electronic Publishing - but the Press itself is where monographs and edited collections go.

• Scholarly monographs and edited volumes - approximately 100 new titles a year, concentrated in the humanities and social sciences. Strong lists in disability studies, theater and performance, classical studies, area studies (particularly Asian and Middle East studies), political science, and literary criticism.
• English Language Teaching (ELT) - textbooks and reference works for ESL/EFL instruction; the Press was the first US publisher of ESL student textbooks, starting in 1941.
• digitalculturebooks - an imprint for digital humanities and new-media scholarship.
• Regional titles - books on Michigan and the Great Lakes region.
• Backlist as ebooks - the UMP Ebook Collection (UMP EBC) carries more than 2,200 Press ebooks on Fulcrum, DRM-free, with perpetual access and unlimited multi-user licensing for libraries.

Michigan is one of the clearest cases in academic publishing of open access funded without author fees. Its Fund to Mission model spreads the cost of producing open-access monographs across libraries that buy the UMP Ebook Collection, plus grants and institutional support, instead of billing the author.

Because there is no APC and no BPC, the usual questions about fee waivers and transformative agreements largely do not apply here. The equivalent question for a Michigan author is simply whether the title lands in the OA cohort for its season.

Michigan follows the Association of University Presses Best Practices for Peer Review. A proposal goes first to an acquisitions editor for the relevant subject area; promising projects are sent for external peer review, usually by two specialist readers. Authors respond to the reports, and the revised project - with reader reports, the author response, and the editor's recommendation - goes to the Press's Executive Committee, a body of nine University of Michigan faculty members that must approve every book before a contract is finalised.

The Press states that decisions are never made on purely market-driven grounds or on whether subvention funding happens to be available. Expect the full cycle from proposal to committee approval to run several months; peer review of a complete manuscript is the longest single step.

1. Find the right editor. Check the Press's staff directory and match your subject area to an acquisitions editor. Proposals go directly to that editor by email, not through a central submission portal.
2. Write the proposal statement. Cover the purpose and argument of the book, competing and comparable works, intended audiences, why it fits the Michigan list, expected length, illustration needs, and when the manuscript will be finished.
3. Include a table of contents and chapter outline. One to two paragraphs per chapter.
4. Attach CVs. For edited volumes, add a full contributor list with affiliations.
5. Send sample material if you have it. A complete introduction plus one substantive chapter is the usual expectation for a first book.
6. Prepare for review. If the editor takes the project forward, plan around external reader reports and the Executive Committee cycle.

Michigan's humanities and social-science lists generally work in Chicago style, with APA appearing in some social-science and education titles; the Press's Author's Guide sets out final-manuscript preparation, indexing expectations, and the form bank for permissions and contributor agreements. Confirm the house style with your editor before you start copy-preparing, since series and imprint conventions vary.

Every project passes faculty Executive Committee review, which functions as the Press's editorial-integrity backstop. Rights and permissions are handled centrally, and authors are responsible for clearing third-party material - an issue that matters more than usual at Michigan, since unclearable image or text rights are one of the main reasons a title cannot be released open access. Print distribution runs through the Chicago Distribution Center in the United States and the Eurospan Group in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.