2Leaf Press’s mission is to publish books of passion and purpose that also celebrate the authentic voices of multicultural writers, because we recognize the need for writers to breathe on their own without suffocating the premise of multicultural literature to death. Oh, by the way, we consider all writers multicultural.

So what are we looking for? We’re interested in publishing literary works, specifically poetry, memoir, narratives, and non-fiction; anthologies and collections of essays and short stories; and novels and historical works as they pertain to literature. We’re looking for strong writing with an original approach and intelligence in concept and execution.

We believe in a sense of place and person, in writing that reveals an essential human story through its directness. We are especially interested in writers who are capable of extraordinary honesty, dignity, and insight, and can displace the myths and stereotypes that pervade our culture. We want writers to dig to the marrow: the pain, sorrow, and joy of their existence in a way that connects with the audience differently from what they could previously imagine. We want to provide our readers with some new aspect of our own humanity.

We realize that we are entering a field that is crowded with a formidable group of established publishers and small presses from both the for-profit and nonprofit arenas. What makes us unique is that 2Leaf Press reads unsolicited manuscripts and tries to publish work on its merit, both literary and commercial, by emerging and established writers.

Since we’re living in a digital world, we’re taking full advantage of the technology at hand. We publish print-on-demand, Kindle, and iPad; and we accept submissions by email only. Our goal is to create well-designed, award-winning books that are supported with significant marketing efforts as well as aggressive distribution online as well as brick and mortar, and promote our writers as much as possible through public readings, forums, panels, lectures, workshops, festivals, competitions, and awards. This is what makes us unique.

2Leaf Press is strongly attached to its home in New York City, its native language and landscape, and its vast richness of cultures, so we consider ourselves “local internationalists,” committed to bringing readers an eclectic mixture of multicultural writers. As a small press, we’re only committed to a limited number of original titles, so we’re looking for high-quality writing. If you believe your work makes the grade and it has style, readability, and saleability, please check out our submission guidelines and submit your work.

And so it begins: the birth of 2Leaf Press!

Meléndez is set to publish a bilingual omnibus of his first three volumes of poetry, Casting Long Shadows (1970), Have You Seen Liberation (1971), and Street Poetry & Other Poems (1972), that are as relevant today as when they were first published. “Although I haven’t published a volume of poetry since 1993 (Concertos On Market Street), I’ve always been working on new poetry and stories,” says Meléndez, “publishing in journals, and participating in readings. But before I begin publishing some of these new collections, I felt, especially at this point in my life, it was important to revisit the past.” The publication of this bilingual omnibus, which will also include some new works, also celebrates the 40th anniversary of Street Poetry & Other Poems.

“I’ve known Papo for many years and he has been a key supporter of phati’tude Literary Magazine since its inception. Papo is remarkable for many reasons, one of which is that his poetry is timeless. We’ve talked about doing this project on and off for the past ten years, so it’s fitting that he is the first poet signed with 2Leaf Press,” said Gabrielle David, executive director of the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc., and publisher of the 2Leaf imprint. “We’re very proud to have him the first on our roster, hopefully for years to come.”

With the publication of his poem, “Message To Urban Sightseers” in Talkin’ About Us (NY, 1969), his poetry collections, and his play, “The Junkies Stole The Clock” (first produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre’s Nuyorican Playwright’s Unit in April, 1974), firmly established Meléndez as a poet, playwright, and one of the founders of the Nuyorican movement. Meléndez has worked as a poetry facilitator in public schools in New York and California for over 30 years, during which time he has coordinated many successful “Poetry/Creative Writing” workshops that have affected the lives of thousands of young people. He has performed at hundreds of poetry readings, appeared in film, television, and radio; his work has appeared in numerous magazines, journals, anthologies; and his work has been taught in schools across the country. For more information on Meléndez, check out his interview on the phati’tude website and his radio interview. You can also find out more information about Meléndez at his website, www.papoleto.com

First, imagine the changing of the leaves.

In autumn, as native trees and shrubs finish out the growing season, nature puts on its most brilliant display of fall colors. Most people believe that when leaves turn colors they are on the brink of death, but that is not entirely true. The changing of the leaves is an active process, not just a fading away. Only when the leaves are deprived of all sunlight do they actually die.

It’s the change we see that trees undergo in autumn –- a natural occurrence that is both complex and inherently more interesting than it seems at first glance – that captivates people. As the fiery colors of yellow, orange, red, and purple gently float to the ground, the changing of leaves is both striking and soothing, and when it is over, we know that every year we have the opportunity to witness this truly dynamic process. In one sense, it is an unending process and part of our life cycle.

Now let’s “turn over a new leaf” and imagine the “leaves” we turn in a book.

It’s true. The pages of a book are called leaves, and small sheets with writing are called “leaflets” because more than a millennium ago, documents were written on leaves. The leaves were then strung and bound together to form a book. “Turning over a new leaf” is one of many evocative metaphors for the human psyche and its workings that show how deeply books have shaped our sense of who we are.

That coupled with the colors of autumn, just like the colors that represent the human race (or is it the human race that represents the colors?), appropriately fits with, “turning over a new leaf.”

So why did we name our imprint 2Leaf Press? And what is the true meaning behind the name?

Let’s just leave that to our imaginations.

Back in the day, when people were just beginning to use word processing programs, and there was an abundance of them on the market, each with a different aesthetic (does WordPerfect, AmiPro, Wordstar, DisplayWrite, MultiMate ring a bell?), it was difficult to provide instructions on how to manage each software. Nowadays, with just about everyone using Microsoft Word, it’s easier to learn how to implement proper formatting techniques.

For example, instead of typing headers manually throughout the document, you can create headers that automatically appear on each page. You can use “styles” that automatically indent each paragraph five spaces, as opposed to manually tabbing each paragraph.  And our all time favorite: you can use page breaks using the command CTRL+ENTER, instead of inserting tons of paragraph returns to begin a new page, making it far easier for us to use your manuscript to typeset your book.

Yeah, we know, you’re a writer, not a word processor, but it behooves you to submit a clean manuscript, both grammatically as well as format-wise, so to help jump start your way to a cleanly formatted document, we’re providing a Word template, plus information on how to format in Word 2003 and Word 2007, as per our format requirements  as listed below:

Document Setup

Margins: Left and right: 1.0 inch; Bottom: 0.75 inch

Font: What font? Well, there has been an ongoing battle between the Times New Roman camp and the Courier camp for years. While we do not have a preference, you should not choose anything other than one of these two fonts in 12 point size. Seriously. No matter how much Gill Sans Ultra Bold Condensed is calling your name, please resist or your manuscript may not be read.

Header: Flush Left, as follows:

First name, Last Name
Address
City, State, Zip
Telephone Number
Email Address

Footer: Page number, centered

Table of contents: Table of contents should be set up on the first page with the Name of the Manuscript appearing at the beginning of the page. Those of you who are technically savvy can generate an automatic table of contents using styles.

Title: On the first page of the manuscript, the title should appear as the first line, centered, followed by the word count appearing directly underneath the title, also centered.

Paragraphs: Modify your BODY TEXT style to indent five spaces at the beginning of each paragraph, and adjust line spacing at one and a half (as opposed to double-spaced). Paragraphs should be left-justified only, with the right margin appearing “ragged.” Create additional styles for different formatted  paragraphs such as indented paragraphs (five spaces on the left and right margins), that you can use throughout your document.

Don’t insert extra lines between your paragraphs. If you want to indicate a blank line, place a blank line, centered with three # characters in the middle of it. If you want to indicate a section break, place a blank line, centered with thee * (asterisk) characters in the middle of it.

Please don’t “underline” emphasized text, it’s not used when typesetting books.  In fact, text was initially underlined in typed manuscripts to signal the use of italics.  Since we’re living in a digital age, just use italics as they would appear in print (names of books, internal dialogue, foreign words etc.).  Bold should be reserved for captions and titles, so don’t use bold  within your text, as there really isn’t a need to do so.

Use page breaks (not the ENTER key) to start a chapter on a new page. (CTRL+ENTER creates a page break in Word.) Allow lines to wrap normally in paragraphs, DO NOT use tabs and spacing to create a paragraph, use styles instead.  We cannot emphasize this enough!

Also, put the word “End” at the end of your manuscript, centered on its own line.  It let’s us know definitively that nothing else follows.

Poetry Manuscripts:
The only difference in submitting poetry manuscripts is that the poems must be submitted single-spaced and appear as they would in their final form. You should use the NORMAL style in Word and use tabs and spaces to help with positioning lines in your poems. Each poem should appear on a separate page (page break here is mandatory, CTRL+ENTER, in Word). Everything else as mentioned above applies.

A Final Word on Formatting
Here’s a bit of advice, a big 2Leaf Press tip: No fiddling with anything else — no messing with spacing between paragraphs, no fiddling with the width of the type, no full justification. And most importantly — don’t try and make your manuscript look like the layout of a book. That’s what we do, and we do it well, using a professional typesetting program. By providing us with a properly formatted manuscript, it helps us typeset your book quickly and effectively.

Content
The content of your manuscript, of  course, is key to getting your work accepted. What’s remarkable is the well-meaning manuscripts editors receive with typos and poorly thought-out sentence structure, that has sealed the fate of many writers. In fact, there’s really no excuse to send anyone a manuscript riddled with typos and grammatical errors, what with spelling and grammar checkers available in today’s word processing programs. And although you have this wonderful technology available at your fingertips, you should always have your final manuscript proofread by a professional or a colleague to double-check your work — even spell check can mess up your manuscript!

NOTE: 2Leaf Press follows The Chicago Manual of Style, because it provides two basic documentation systems, the humanities style (notes and bibliography) and the author-date system. The humanities style is preferred by many in literature, history, and the arts. This style presents bibliographic information in notes and, often, a bibliography. It accommodates a variety of sources, including esoteric ones less appropriate to the author-date system.

Having said that, your manuscript is subject to proofreading and editing. Besides double-checking for consistency, format, style, punctuation, and basic grammar, if we do edit (not all manuscripts require editing) our intention is to clarify meaning and improve style without distorting the author’s meaning in any way.

If there is artwork contained in your manuscript (e.g., artwork, photographs, graphs, tables, or cover artwork), please submit them in a separate PDF file, indicating where they will appear in the manuscript.  You should keep in mind that if your manuscript is accepted for publication, you’re responsible for getting copyright clearance for works that do not belong to you,and providing high resolution material for inclusion in your book.

Once you’ve prepared your manuscript, check out our submission guidelines on how to send your work. Good luck on your submission and happy writing!

In simple terms, a publishing agreement is a legal arrangement between an author and publisher. The author agrees to transfer to the publisher certain rights in the bundle of rights associated with their copyrighted manuscript, and the publisher agrees, in turn, to pay for the costs to publish the manuscript. Basically, the publisher is an investor in the author’s manuscript and agrees to pay for all costs of publishing. In return, the publisher is entitled to recoup the initial investment and take a sizeable percentage of the income generated by sales and licensing of the work, while the author receives a percentage of royalties and subsidiary rights income.

In fact, it’s often a challenge for publishers to make a profit, since the majority of publishing agreements do not “earn out,” meaning most publishers (small and big alike) do not earn back their initial investment, which includes production, marketing, promotion, publicity, distribution and, in some cases, an author’s advance. So, despite your core values as a creative spirit who values words over profits, if you intend to be successful in this business, you must understand and embrace the bottom line, too, which is why it’s critical for the author and publisher to have an agreement in writing — it’s the road-map to all aspects of producing your book, including finances, production, and promotions.

The terms and conditions in the agreement will determine what rights are transferred, what compensation the author and publisher receives, when the rights revert back to the author, and what state law governs the contract (in our case, New York), and address other issues that clearly state what each party agrees to do and what each will receive in return.

Of course, we advise all authors to retain legal counsel and to review our publishing agreement carefully so that they fully understand what they are agreeing to. In the end, we want all of our authors to be happy with both our legal and post-production arrangements so we can all concentrate on developing, publishing, and promoting a high-quality book we can all be proud of.

First, it’s important that we get permission from the artist, which is the author’s responsibility.

Secondly, we only accept digital artwork of the highest quality. What you see on your computer screen can be misleading and, in many cases, digital files obtained by authors have proven to be unusable in making a book. For example, images from the web are almost always too low a resolution for book reproduction, and images scanned from a book—while they may look fine on your screen or in a photocopy—will often be distorted or jagged when printed.

When you send us electronic files, it’s critical that the files be of a high enough resolution and an appropriate size for good reproduction. For example, images that are smaller than 5 x 7 should be 600 dpi, while images 5 x 7 and higher must be 300 dpi preferably in a Photoshop PSD format. Although photos and artwork that run inside the book will more than likely be in black and white, we require the original color image so that we can convert them into black and white using standard profiles, so as to minimize the loss in tonality.

Hi-resolution files make for superb reproduction, and should be your first priority when you obtain permission to use the work because in turn it allows us to publish a high quality book.

The genesis of 2Leaf Press is for one very selfish reason: our editors work on phati’tude Literary Magazine, so they already have a real love for poetry.

Why poetry? We love the way the words feel in our mouths, roll off our tongues, and how they reverberate in our ears. We enjoy the sheer physical pleasure of the sound and shape of a poem; the sight of lines and white space and faces lost in thought by sharing a moment of truth with an unseen and unknown person.

We want poetry that challenges. We want poetry that conveys many flavors, spoken in numerous cadences. We want to introduce the complexity and multicultural makeup of the city in a positive way. We want poems that display wit and whimsy. We want poetry that is dangerous and exciting. We want poetry that is ethereal but not airy, wise but not preachy. We want poetry that can take you by surprise and slip into a spot in your heart. We want poetry that is musical and represents the tempos and tones of life. We want poetry that moves and dances. We want poetry that is immense yet imaginative. We want poetry that is pictures painted with words. We want poetry that validates and eradicates. We want to introduce poetry into the lives of ordinary people, including the very young and the very old. We want to break with tradition, yet become the standard for excellence. We want poetry that explodes.

If you believe your poetry captures all of the above, please check out our submission guidelines and our 2Leaf Tip: Preparing Your Manuscript before submitting your work.

Once you make a commitment (in your mind) that you want certain works for inclusion in your book, you should go ahead and do the research and find out who the copyright holder is and if you can obtain permission. You should never wait until the last minute, or assume that you will receive permission to reproduce their work. For one thing, you may be required to pay a fee, which may not fit in your budget. Also, the copyright holder may not want to give you permission. Worst case scenario: you may have to do additional research and find alternative work; or you may not be able to find an alternative and have to rewrite or edit passages in your manuscript to compensate for the loss.

Either way, if you have pending permissions upon acceptance of your manuscript, it will certainly delay publication of your book. Therefore, you should know up front that once we’ve informed you of acceptance, you will be required to supply us with licenses and documentation for all works requiring permission.

For additional discussion of Copyright and Permissions as they pertain to publishing, please refer to the The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, Chapter 4, or to the Chicago Manual of Style Online. Also, check out Literary Law Guide for Authors: Copyrights, Trademarks and Contracts in Plain Language by Tonya Marie Evans and Susan Borden Evans; and The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know by Stephen Fishman J.D.