Fall 2026 Newsletter from UPF and UF Press

Welcome to the Fall 2026 issue of the University Press of Florida and UF Press newsletter. In this issue we are pleased to announce our Fall 2026 Publishing Symposium, which anyone interested in learning about book publishing is welcome to attend. We are also presenting highlights from our 2025–2026 publishing year. Read on for updates about our authors, staff, and partners and to see some of the recognition our books have received recently. As always, we greatly appreciate your support for the work we do.

New Books

Fall 2026 Publishing Symposium

University Press of Florida invites you to attend its Fall 2026 Publishing Symposium on October 29, 2026. This free virtual event is open to anyone interested in learning about book publishing. This year’s sessions will especially appeal to prospective authors or current authors who are publishing with a university press. To register for one or more of the three sessions, click the registration links below.

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The Making of Your Book

October 29 | 1:00pm–2:00pm EST

This panel explores the production side of publishing, from physical books to electronic versions. Designers will discuss the cover design process, how interiors are related to covers, and how ebooks impact design decisions. We’ll also discuss production decisions related to printing and the various electronic formats, making books accessible, and how authors are involved along the way.

Panelists:

• Marthe Walters (moderator) is a project editor and manager of the Editorial, Design, and Production Department at the University Press of Florida.
• Kelly Gray is senior designer at the University of Tennessee Press.
• Mindy Hill is a book designer at the University Press of Florida.
• Alex Ramos is managing editor and head of the Editorial, Design, and Production Department at Penn State University Press.

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Marketing Your Book

October 29 | 2:30pm–3:30pm EST

Are you a prospective or published author who is curious about what happens behind the scenes in a publisher’s marketing department? Are you a student who wants to learn what a career in book marketing might look like? This panel brings together publishing professionals who will discuss different areas of marketing—publicity and social media, metadata and digital marketing, and sales and distribution—from a university press perspective. Panelists will also highlight how authors can be involved in each of these areas.

Panelists:

• Rachel Doll (moderator) is marketing and sales manager at the University Press of Florida.
• Sam Anselmo is digital information and data services manager at Louisiana State University Press.
• Danielle Coty-Fattal is publicity manager at the University of Michigan Press.
• Rachel Watkins is marketing and sales director at the University of Georgia Press. She spent over thirteen years managing an independent bookstore with a concentration on marketing and author events.

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Meet the Press

October 29 | 4:00pm–4:30pm EST

All Publishing Symposium attendees are invited to participate in this informal networking and Q&A session. University press staff members representing acquisitions, editorial, design, production, marketing, and journals will be available to chat with attendees about their areas of publishing, the day-to-day activities of their roles, and advice for authors related to the stages of the book life cycle that they represent. Please join us and bring your questions!

2025–2026 Year in Review

A Letter from the Director

Dear Reader,

Our Fall 2026 newsletter provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on our 2025–2026 publishing year. This year, we worked hard on projects that transform how the Press presents itself to the world and connects with readers.

Launched in November 2025, our new website was built from the ground up to meet readers where they are, with a design that carries our visual identity across everything we produce, from seasonal catalogs to social media. For the first time, readers can purchase ebooks directly from the Press, in accessible formats, alongside our print editions. Open access editions are easier to find, browsing by subject is more intuitive, author events appear right on book pages, and our blog now lives at the heart of our site. The results speak for themselves: in just eight months, the new site drew more pageviews than the old site did in the entire previous fiscal year, welcoming nearly a quarter of a million active users.

The website is the most visible expression of a commitment that runs through everything we did this year: making our books genuinely accessible to all readers. The new site conforms to current web accessibility standards, and behind the scenes our editorial, design, and production team reengineered workflows—from language tagging for screen readers to alt text for images and equations—so that our ebooks work for readers who use assistive technology. This year we created and released 85 fully accessible ePubs while steadily remediating our backlist. Accessibility is not a compliance checkbox for us; it is part of what it means to publish for the public good.

We pursue this work amid a sea change in our industry. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how research is written, reviewed, discovered, and read. We face urgent questions about copyright, licensing, and the value of the human expertise at the core of scholarly publishing. When readers increasingly encounter scholarship through AI-generated summaries rather than the works themselves, publishers must think anew about discoverability, attribution, and sustainability. The Press is meeting this moment with clear eyes: we are watching the evolving legal and licensing landscape closely, safeguarding our authors’ rights and interests, and establishing guidelines for the responsible use of AI in our own work. Where these tools genuinely serve our mission, we use them thoughtfully—AI now helps us craft alt text for complex equations and enrich the metadata that makes our books discoverable. The technology will keep changing; our commitment to rigorous, human-centered scholarly publishing will not.

Amid all this change, the fundamentals flourished. Our books earned national attention in the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, and on NPR, and our authors appeared at 161 events—our highest total ever. Sales exceeded our projection. We launched Warrington Press, a new imprint in partnership with UF’s Warrington College of Business; debuted our creative nonfiction list; and introduced the Florida Editions series, which will return classic works of Florida literature to readers with fresh introductions from today’s leading writers. Our journals program grew to twelve titles with two new acquisitions, and Bioarchaeology International more than doubled its impact factor.

Every one of these accomplishments represents the dedication of our staff, the trust of our authors, the guidance of our faculty advisory boards, and the support of the institutions we represent. And every one of them exists, finally, for you, Reader. Thank you for picking up our books, attending our events, visiting our new website, and believing, as we do, in the lasting power of ideas.

Sincerely,

Romi Gutierrez
Director, University Press of Florida and UF Press

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You can make a gift to support our not-for-profit publishing program at any time. If you would like to make a contribution, you can give now or visit our Support the Press page for information about targeted opportunities that align your gift with the work you value most.