About us

Origin Story

About 15 years ago, Sidestone Press was born out of an archaeology student’s frustration with the lack of options available for publishing his thesis as a proper book. This student, Karsten Wentink, banded together with co-student Corné van Woerdekom and Sidestone Press was founded. While we have since become a household name in academic publishing in archaeology and anthropology, and are continuously expanding into other markets, our very name reflects our origins as archaeologists. At the time of our founding, Karsten & Corné were both busy studying various elements of the Dutch Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture. Famous for its megalithic funerary structures known as ‘Hunebedden’, this brand-new publishing house was named after a structural element of these prehistoric monuments: the sidestone.

Open Science is central to our publishing philosophy: we believe that scientific information should be freely available to all. Through our own digital e-book library we guarantee that scientific information published through Sidestone Press is immediately freely available around the world. Our authors always retain the copyright of their research and are free to share PDFs of their work.

At Sidestone we pride ourselves on continuously innovating our production process so that we can offer good-looking, full-colour books at affordable prices. Because with books, appearance does matter. We furthermore strive to keep the turn-around time from submission-to-publication as short as possible, and our prices as low as possible – both for the author and the person purchasing our books. In short, when you publish with us – your work stays yours, but is shared freely – and beautifully – with the world.

Meet the Makers

Corné van Woerdekom (BA, MA)

Corné is one of the founding members of Sidestone Press. Originally trained as an archaeologist (MA European Prehistory, Leiden University), within Sidestone Corné takes care of the day-to-day business and finances. He is responsible for the main parts of the publication trajectory: author quotations, advising authors, lay-out and project management. Outside of Sidestone, Corné is a newly minted Dad to twin boys. As a classically trained violinist and percussionist, he spends many an evening rocking out with his bands around the country and abroad.

Dr. Karsten Wentink

As you can read above, Sidestone was born from the desire to publish Karsten’s thesis as a proper book. After graduating in Archeology (M.Phil with honors in Northwest European Prehistory, Leiden University), he banded together with Corné and Sidestone Press was born. At Sidestone, Karsten is in charge of acquisition, sales marketing and design. He is constantly on the road and meeting with clients to discuss new book projects and setting up international sales. As well as doing layout work – as we all do at Sidestone – Karsten is a whiz with graphic design, and is solely responsible for the beautiful book covers that Sidestone has become well known for. He also runs our website. In addition to being one of Sidestone’s founding members, Karsten simultaneously did his PhD research into Late Neolithic funerary practices, which he defended in 2020. Of course his dissertation is published through Sidestone :)

Frequent collaborators

At Sidestone we frequently collaborate with freelancers to design, layout and market our books, and we’d like to introduce you to some of the people you might expect to see around our office.

Marta Klement

For specialty projects – such as our exhibition books for museums – we frequently collaborate with Marta to create special edition books with a custom layout. She is an enthusiastic millennial with a passion for branding and visual communication. Marta’s specialty is to translate marketing and sales strategies into innovative and impressive campaigns that appeal to targeted audiences and drive revenue. As such, she was our first call when we wanted to update our logo and visual identity!

www.buromillennial.nl
FB: @Buromillennial
IG: @Buromillennial

Kayleigh Rebecca Hines (BA)

Kayleigh is a freelance design consultant who has been working with us on numerous projects since August 2019. Having originally trained in the UK in fashion design and garment construction at the University of Lincoln, she is also a published fashion illustrator. Her various design, buying and merchandising roles have enabled her to work in various locations across the UK including London and ore recently Amsterdam alongside brands such as National Geographic, Mattell and Hot Wheels.
She regularly designs books for Sidestone as well as making marketing material. In her spare time, she enjoys live music, garment creation and creating textile art under the brand name Spinning Skin.

www.spinningskin.com

TGV teksten & presentatie

TGV Teksten & Presentatie is a small Dutch archaeological firm specializing in presenting archaeological data and results to a general audience by means of exhibitions, multimedia applications and popular-scientific publications.

In 2009 the plan emerged to start Quadrant, a new series of archaeological books aimed at the general public. Sidestone Press will be the publisher of these books whereas TGV will take care of their contents. One of the people behind TGV is Evert van Ginkel, a well-known author of various Dutch archaeology books.

www.tgvpresentaties.com
FB: @tgv.tekstenenpresentatie

Eric van den Bandt (BSc, MSc)

While trained as a biomedical scientist, Eric has been collaborating with us since 2014. At Sidestone he frequently works both as a project manager and is one of our talented layout guys. He is responsible for our latest book templates, which now can easily incorporate even hieroglyphs and Arabic.

Outside of Sidestone, he is also a professional photographer, and we frequently hire him to go on location to museums to create custom artwork for our publications. He is also available for hire for social functions, and as a longtime sailor himself, specializes in watersports photography.

https://www.ericvandenbandt.nl/
IG: @ericvandenbandt
T: @ericvandenbandt

Dr. Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof

Sasja is a freelance consultant, researcher and editor known as the Overdressed Archeologist & Editor who frequently collaborates with us. As a native English and Dutch speaker, she does all our in-house copy-editing, as well as lay-out work and managing our social media channels. Like our founders, she is a trained archeologist and has published several books through Sidestone. In 2012 she was awarded an NWO research grant for her PhD project on Early Iron Age elite burials in the Low Countries, which she completed at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University in 2017. Her two-volume dissertation Fragmenting the Chieftain was published in our PALMA series and went on to win the Joseph Déchelette European Archaeology Prize (2018) as well as placing second for the W.A. van Es Prize for Dutch Archaeology (2018). As the Overdressed Archeologist & Editor she continues her research into Early Iron Age elite burials and is an active member of the program committee for the annual meeting of archaeologists in the Netherlands the ‘Reuvensdagen’. You can follow her archaeology, editing and pinup adventures on various social media channels:

www.vandervaart-verschoof.com
FB: @theoverdressedarcheologist
IG: @theoverdressedarcheologist
T: @overdressedarch