Punctum Books

Punctum Books, stylized as punctum books, is an open-access and print-on-demand independent, scholar-led publisher based in Santa Barbara, California, United States.

History

The imprint was co-founded in 2011 by Eileen A. Joy and Nicola Masciandaro, who left the project in 2012. The imprint was conceived partly as an offshoot of the BABEL Working Group, a "non-hierarchical scholarly collective" with an emphasis on medieval studies. Punctum Books was joined in 2016 by co-director Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei. Since its inception, Punctum Books has sought to bring scholarly works, often with a transdisciplinary or unconventional nature, to a broader public. It publishes print editions through Kindle Direct Publishing, but buyers can get a PDF version of the book for free through the publisher's website.
In the past, Punctum Books published issues of the journals Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Badiou Studies, Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory, Itineration: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Rhetoric, Media and Culture, Networks and Neighbours, O-Zone: A Journal of Object Oriented Studies, Radical Criminology, and Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism.
Punctum Books was a partner on the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs project which ran from 2019-2023, and is now a partner on the Open Book Futures project funded by the Arcadia Fund and Research England.