The University of Hawaiʻi Press was founded in 1947, publishing research in all disciplines of the humanities and natural and social sciences in the regions of Asia and the Pacific.

In addition to scholarly monographs, the press publishes educational materials and reference works such as dictionaries, language texts, classroom readers, atlases, and encyclopedias.

Its first publications included a reprint of The Hawaiian Kingdom by Ralph Kuykendall and Insects of Hawaii, by Elwood C. Zimmerman, both of which have become classics.

Journals production struggled along, with some editorial offices assuming more of the burden, until Press subsidies were partially restored in 1998 and the department was restaffed.

During the 2007 fiscal year, the press considered approximately 1,300 manuscripts and proposals, of which 60 were accepted for publication by the editorial board.

Those that receive two positive peer reviews are presented to the press's academic editorial board, which makes the final determination about whether to publish.

Each year the press displays its recently published books and journals at a range of professional meetings and trade shows held throughout the world, reaching a combined total of about 700,000 attendees at those events.

For the 2007 fiscal year, the top five bestselling books by dollar revenue were the revised and enlarged edition of the Hawaiian Dictionary by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert; the Beginning 1 volume of the Integrated Korean textbook series by the Korean Language Education and Research Center (KLEAR); Broken Trust by Samuel P. King and Randall W. Roth; the 4th edition of Japanese Culture by Paul Varley, and the 3rd edition of the Atlas of Hawaiʻi by Sonia P. Juvik, James O. Juvik, and Thomas R. Paradise.