"It would seem axiomatic that a great university press is a
goal worth striving for. It stimulates a university's faculty. It
calibrates distinctions of rank and prestige. It firmly establishes the
name of its institution, out in the open, for everyone to see. ... A
great press is part of what gives an 'elite' institution a good name."
~ Willis G. Regier
"A university press is usually a very important signal on the
part of the university that it is interested in things like
publication, research and academic performance." ~ Thomas O'Conner
"A University Press exists to publish as many good scholarly
books as possible short of bankruptcy." ~ Thomas J. Wilson
"We publish the smallest editions at the greatest cost, and on these we place the highest prices and then we try to market them to people who can least afford them. This is madness." ~ Yale University Press Director Chester Kerr:
Kate Torrey, Director, UNC Press: "Scholarly publishing is deficit publishing. There are a variety of ways that university presses compensate for that fact, but it is a fact."
"If the university press finds too few salable books it can go
broke; if it finds too many it can lose its soul."
"As libraries buy fewer books, the university presses --
already hurting from a shifting publishing landscape -- see their
balance sheets getting redder and redder. A decade ago, 'you could sell
800 to 900 copies of anything.... [Beatrice Rehl]" ~ Scott Smallwood
"The record for the world's slowest selling book probably belongs to David Wilkin's translation of the New Testament from Coptic into Latin published by Oxford University Press in 1716 in an edition of 500 copies. Selling an average of one each 139 days, the volume was in print for 191 years."
"Without publication and diffusion, research is of little value."
"The press is necessary to any major university as an intellectual presence comparable to a great academic department."
"A university can make a greater contribution to knowledge by subsidizing a book than by hiring a professor."
"The university press is a bulwark against the boom and bust cycles of the cultural Dow Jones."
"Many faculty fail to understand that a press will be unable to publish a monograph likely to be read by only 450 people in the whole world."
"University presses have been living on short rations for their entire history. They're good at being adaptable and finding ways to survive. How far do you go to be lucrative and how far do you dilute programs of scholarly publishing? I don't think there is any clear answer." ~ Peter Givler
"More than a publisher, the university press is an integral part of the academic reward system. Without it, the careers of many junior scholars would come to a sticky and premature end." ~ Blaise Cronin
"...The presses reside squarely within the 'gift economy' of
the academic world, where thousands of hours of scholarly labor are
often rewarded with little more than a modest print run, some reviews,
and perhaps a short line at tenure." ~ Niko Pfund
"The bottom line is that scholarly publishing isn't
financially feasible as a business model -- never was, never was
intended to be, and should not be. If scholarship paid, we wouldn't
need university presses. Without a subsidy of one kind or another,
scholarly publishing cannot exist." ~ Cathy N. Davidson
"When you have a brilliant piece of scholarship that has an
audience of maybe 200 people, you can't afford to publish that book." ~
Wendy Lochner
"But in a world where many universities have positioned themselves as economic-development engines -- to please state legislators, businesses, or donors -- technology and vocationalism have eclipsed and, in some cases, cheapened intellectual life." ~ Scott Smallwood
"The entire system right now of academic publishing, especially in the humanities, is broken. ... The process of communicating one's research through a book or through an article has become more about markers of individual success -- lines on a CV -- than it is about convincing other scholars of ideas or arguments." ~ Kathleen Fitzpatrick
"...Academic publishers can survive today only if they become something other than academic publishers -- that is, only if they are able and willing to move beyond the field of academic publishing per se and publish different kinds of books for different kinds of markets." ~ John Thompson
"In the new model, nothing is either 'in' or 'out' of print, there is no press, warehouse, or backlog, whle the highest quality of peer reviewed content is replicated in a digital object." ~ Charles Henry
"Publishing is the network that links all academic institutions
together, and a university press is a particular institution's
representative on and contribution to that network." ~Joseph J. Esposito
The first function is cognitive which involves soliciting, selecting, and refining knowledge. This is the essence of the academic press.
The second function is sharing the results of quality scholarship. The press serves an important quality control function (a gatekeeper) for scholarship. It's important to note the importance of branding. Harvard University Press is just as much a brand as its parent. Ideally, the university press should have the same status and ambitions as a major academic department.
About half of the members of the AAUP publish scholarly periodicals as well as books. However, most of these periodicals are published by a few major university presses: MIT, Chicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and California.
Ideally, each university press [UP] should specialize in a particular area, one that matches the parent university's historical academic strengths, so that it could develop notable skills in that area and achieve a distinctive reputation that would attract the best scholarly manuscripts. Having a reputation for publishing good work in a particular area strengthens marketing and sales initiatives. It is easier to market a series or batch of related titles than "orphans" that stand alone. Ideally, the reputation would be such that a scholar would automatically think of a particular press when considering publication in a specific area.
The list is the key to success. Ideally, it should reflect the strength and reputation of the parent university, and it should reflect the tradition and heritage of the press. Editors should have a background and an interest in these subject areas. History, political science, American [U.S.] studies, and literary criticism are the leading specializations.
The dissemination function is also the commercial one of selling books and making enough money to stay in business. As universities reduce subsidies for the academic press, commercial considerations become crucial. The backlist is especially important since many academic press books are slow, steady sellers.
Most university presses did well in the 1980s and the 1990s, but have encountered a variety of difficult problems in the 21st Century. The monograph, the hallmark of the academic press, has experienced a dramatic decline [at least 25 percent] in the past few years, particularly with reduced collection development budgets in academic libraries and competition from digital periodical collections. A new scholarly monograph might now slowly sell a few hundred copies rather than a few thousand.
Few campus faculty members, even more so the senior administrators, understand the value of the university press and its problems. Press directors need to do a much better job of building and maintaining relationships.
Typically, about ten percent of all titles published in the
U.S. come from academic presses. About two-thirds of these books are in
the humanities. There are 95 university presses in the U.S. and they
issue about 11, 000 books per year. Many of these books have been
purchased by academic libraries, but budget cuts and the need to spend
more on serials has dramatically reduced library orders for university
press books.
Oxford University Press, which has an extensive U.S.
publishing operation, was established in 1478 and is the oldest
academic press. It opened an office in New York in 1896 and soon
developed an independent list for the U.S. market. Cambridge
University Press, also with a notable U.S. presence, was established in
1521. Harvard University established the Cambridge [Mass.] press in
1640. Johns Hopkins, the oldest continuously operating academic press
in the U.S., was established in 1878. The University of Chicago is the
largest academic press with about 45 periodical titles, and more than
3000 titles in print. The University of North Carolina Press,
established in 1922, is the oldest university press in the South. Its
focus on regional publishing has been imitated by many others.
University press books go through a referee process somewhat
like that for publication in scholarly periodicals. Reader reports by
subject specialist scholars are used to validate scholarship and
original contribution. If the editor has a positive preliminary
reaction, the mss is sent out for review. If the review [or reviews] is
positive, request for publication approval goes to a faculty
publications committee or board. However, the book must have reasonable
sales potential. Without that, a high quality MSS may be rejected.
University press books often exhibit excellence in design and manufacture and this is seen when they place highly in competitions for best books of the year. University presses were among the first to adopt acid-free materials for all of their cloth books. The university press insures that the intellectual content is placed in a durable and pleasing container. This may change with reduced funding and the move to POD.
University presses have almost always engaged in "deep" backlisting. They keep their books in print and available far longer than most trade publishers. Backlist sales have visibly increased with the proliferation of Internet bookstores which make it easy to find and purchase these books. However, difficult economic times may force publishers to move some slow sellers into a remainder category.
Academic presses typically publish few textbooks.. The normal press output is the scholarly monograph. While these may be adopted as a text in a graduate course, they are typically too specialized to serve the normal text book role.
Although there are some exceptions, the academic press does not normally do the printing for the University. This may have been true in the beginning when the academic press was the only campus unit to have composing and printing facilities. Today, most academic presses have their books printed and manufactured elsewhere. The cost of equipment and specialized staff do not justify an in-house printing/manufacturing operation.
It seems intuitive, but it is not true today. In the beginning, the press did publish doctoral dissertations and the work of local faculty, often in long general series.
The academic press does not usually publish work created by local faculty. Acceptance standards for monographs are high. Publishing too many local works may create the impression that the press is not independent and publishing the very best work. Too, with an emphasis on specialization, many subject experts will be located elsewhere.
While true historically, financial pressures on the university
have created a situation in which academic presses are now publishing
"trade" books or books for a non-scholarly audience. Often, these more
popular titles are based upon scholarship and remain accurate and
authentic. In particular, there is interest in books about state and
regional culture, traditions, and settings.
As sales decline and budget troubles continue, presses are
eliminating academic areas [linguistics, history of science, and Slavic
literature at Stanford] where sales are low. As one editor said about
reductions and his list, "...that's maybe 20 assistant professors who
won't have a book [and perhaps no tenure]."
As larger trade publishers become more bottom line oriented, more mid-list titles are brought to academic publishers. The University of Tennessee has had considerable success with a popular guide to wild flowers in the Smoky Mountains. While trade books may be intended for the educated general reader, most UP trade books reach a much smaller audience of scholars, students, and thoughtful educated readers with a special interest.
The AAUP is the national association for university presses in the U.S. It was formally established in 1946. The AAUP website will lead you to a directory of all the members and to the AAUP Online Catalog which lists the books of most members. The University of Tennessee Press is a member of the AAUP.
The AAUP was established in 1937 by 17 university presses. It now has more than 100 members with some in Canada and overseas.. There is considerable variation in size. The smallest presses issue 5 or fewer titles per year. Oxford and Cambridge, the largest, each issue between 1500 and 2000 titles per year.
The AAUP has created a twenty-four point statement on the value of the University Press.
In 1878, Johns Hopkins University created the first academic
press to advance and diffuse knowledge. This was part of the movement
to establish research universities in the U.S. based upon the German
model. Many university presses began by publishing doctoral
dissertations and Columbia University continued to do this through
1947. It was and is a condition of the Ph.D. degree that the
dissertation be "published." While this is usually now done via
University Microfilms [now ProQuest Information and Learning],
originally dissertations were published as cloth books, usually in a
series done in a house style. Proquest receives about 55,000 theses
and dissertations each year. Imagine what it would be like if these
were all published by a university press!
There was little growth during the 1940s and 1950s, but there was considerable expansion in the 1960s and then later in the 1980s. Some called this decade the "golden age" of academic publishing. The Federal government, alarmed by the Soviet Union's rapid scientific and technological progress and with visions of new frontiers and great societies, made substantial amounts of money available for scholarly publishing.
At a time when academic promotion and tenure requirements have
substantially increased the number of manuscripts submitted, academic
presses face a declining market. The monograph market is primarily an
institutional one and academic libraries have faced reduced budgets for
several years. Dramatic increases in the cost of serial publications
[includes digital databases]
have further reduced the money available for monograph
purchase. For example, some university libraries now spend less than
twenty percent of their collection budget on books. A few years ago, a
press could probably count on academic libraries for 800 copies of a
new monograph. Today, the figure is likely less than 400 copies. One
press director tells of a book on Islam in Central Asia that received
"ecstatic" reviews, won four awards, and sold 215 cloth copies. One
example of change in buying habits is the fact that the University of
California system, in many cases, will purchase one copy of a title for
all the system institutions.
While more popular UP titles may be sold to the trade,
returns can be substantial. For example, in one recent year, Barnes
& Noble returned 49 percent of the university press books that
it had ordered.
Most sales are institutional. Although the evidence is murky, it appears that few scholars purchase university press books but rely on the library for them.
In the past, some university presses have had success with course adoptions so that their books served as texts for upper division and graduate courses. However, the used book has substantially reduced this market. It should also be noted that the dramatic growth in easy availability of used books on the web creates competition for new UP books.
E-reserves is another problem and a source of tension between the presses and academic libraries. Many in academic publishing believe that digitized reserves violate copyright laws and substantially reduce the market for their books.
Another problem with the monograph is that they those purchased by academic research libraries tend to be infrequently used -- in contrast to the periodical databases.
A typical university press monograph of 250 pages without
illustrations has a production cost of about $30,000. Most of these
costs would still exist if the book was not printed or warehoused.
Manufacturing often represents about 20 percent of the total publishing
cost. Sales to libraries represent about 20 percent of all sales.
Presses have attempted to reduce costs by reducing the number of pages in a typical book. There has been some interest in "slim books on big topics." Many presses will no longer publish a work of more than 100,000 words or about 288 print pages. Most contracts contain word limits. Some scholars are angry about this trend. Word processing makes it easier to create longer manuscripts.
The university press will rarely break even. Some require
substantial subsidies. Typically, AAUP university members receive about
10 percent of their revenus as subsidies from the parent institution
and about 85 percent from sales. For some, the institutional
committment is much greater. For example, at Northeastern University,
about
40 percent of the budget was in subsidy from the university
administration.
Many universities lack adequate funding and the academic press may be
seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. In general, the subsidies
given to academic presses have been reduced during the last few years.
More pressure is placed upon the
press to "break even" or even earn a small amount. The last few years
have been difficult and many presses have failed to meet their budgets.
Even a small shortfall in sales can be traumatic for the smaller
presses living on the edge. At the same time, foundation funding for
scholarly publishing has declined except for innovative digital
projects.
Except in unusual cases, the university press cannot recover its costs through the sales of books and periodicals. To some
administrators unfamiliar with scholarly publishing, low-cost digital
publication would seem to make the publication of hard copy monographs
for small audiences obsolete.
Because of decreased funding from the university, several
presses have had to cut their staffs. As Peter Givler, AAUP, says "not
enough people on campus really understand what they {the UP} do, or
their value." The press is an easy target when budgets are tight.
The difference between the large, well funded presses such as
Oxford, Cambridge, and Princeton and the smaller ones is growing.
Presses with better funding are more likely to be able to take
advantage of technological opportunities. Too, smaller presses are more
likely to have staff that is "underpaid, understaffed, and overworked
[Cathy N. Davidson]."
Although the original purpose of the UP was to publish dissertations and make them available to the scholarly community, that is no longer the case. Dissertations typically require substantial effort to be transformed into a book and the topics are so narrow that they appeal to a small audience. Many recent dissertations of considerable quality have failed to find publishers. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has funded initiatives to publish dissertations as monographs on the Internet. Funds to the American Historical Association allow publication of prize winning history dissertations on the web after they are edited by the Columbia.
As more colleges and universities require theses and dissertations to be published digitally via an institutional repository website, the possibility of having a dissertation published as a monograph is further reduced since web availability may constitute primarly disclosure.
Some press directors argue that they cannot afford to issue monographs unless they sell at least 1000 copies. If that is the case, few scholarly monographs will be published. It seems clear that university presses have virtually ceased publishing in fields where there is little library interest. Scholars in these fields lack an adequate outlet for their more substantial research.
Presses may wait longer to issue the trade paper edition to encourage purchase of the hard copy one. Editors will take a harder line on page length. "We're going to enforce more than ever our long-held belief that books can be shorter. We're telling authors a 500 page manuscript can be a 350 page manuscript. ( Willis Regier)"
Tenure and promotion requirements in many humanities departments are still centered on the book when book publication is increasingly unlikely. Until these requirements are changed to allow for more article based or web based publication, many faculty will be in a difficult position. The Modern Language Association task force examining this issue has recommended a focus on articles rather than monographs.
University presses have emphasized topic series, especially in the social sciences and the humanities. A strong series is likely to be automatically selected by academic libraries. Too, such a series gives the press visibility and attracts authors. Less visible authors benefit from their association with the editors and more well known scholars. The rapid growth in the number of series has caused some problems. For example, Indiana University went from six series in 1980 to 42 in 1998. Not all series have been successful and it can be difficult to find volumes of genuine quality and uniqueness to fill out the series. There are likely to be fewer and more limited series in the future. An example of series would be "Commerce and Mass Culture" by the University of Minnesota press.
As mentioned above, the academic press publishes more trade books in order to increase revenues. Some publishers, such as the University of Michigan, hope to have fifty percent of their sales from the trade. Sometimes, these are called "crossover" books since they began with books that have scholarly merit but are written so that they also appeal to the interested layperson. Scholarly books on food and wine are popular candidates.
Oxford University Press has been the leader in this area. The University of Georgia Press has half of its list aimed at the general trade. At the same time, more "serious" trade books are available to the press because major trade publishers are more likely to focus on brand name authors and "hot" subjects. While a scholarly monograph might sell 300 to 600 copies to libraries world-wide, a good trade title might sell 20,000 books. Staying Dry: A Practical Guide to Bladder Control has more than 100,000 copies in print. Mama Dip's Kitchen, a North Carolina cookbook sold more than 10,000 hard copies and more than 70,000 paper ones.
Popular treatment of regional topics such as state history,
flora and fauna, or geography can "extend" scholarship and "summarize"
it for a larger audience. Minnesota, which is fairly typical, devotes
about 55 percent of its list to scholarly books, with regional titles
at 20 percent, and trade titles slightly more at 25 percent.
As commercial publishers become more rational, the midlist (5,000 to 15,000 copies per title) book, especially thoughtful nonfiction, becomes available to the university press because sales are too small for the trade publisher. However, most university presses would find sales in this range most appealing. The UP can offer: reach into the academic market, more and continuing editiorial attention, and keeping books in print for a longer time.
There is some question if publishing trade books steals time and effort away from the scholarly book. The critic would also ask if trade book publication conflicts with the primary mission of the press. The not for profit status of the university press might be jeopardized if a large proportion of the list consisted of books not related to the mission of the press. It is also unclear if the attempt to appeal to the "general educated reader" has really been successful.
Selling UP titles to the trade can be a very real challenge.
The national big box retailers are quick to return titles that don't
sell well. Too, UPs don't have much money for publicity, promotion, and
stocking fees.
Distribution is the major problem here. Academic press titles rarely appear in most book stores. They have a low discount schedule which makes them unattractive to most chain and independent book stores. If the press increases the discount, they will earn less on each book sold. Returns have also been a major problem with books shipped to the chains. Selling direct is much easier via the WWW or amazon.com, but it does create conflicts with the retail trade. On line book stores can make a dramatic difference. One bookseller promoted a $70.00 Yale art book which then sold almost 500 copies in a month. It is not at all clear that the typical academic press has the knowledge and ability to successfully market trade books.
Regional books do especially well. They have potential for substantial K12 sales and they may also be sold at parks, museums, and college stores.
Some book clubs, especially special interest ones like the History Book Club, will select UP books for their members.
Many scholarly and professional organizations have a publication program which competes with the academic press for quality manuscripts. Membership fees support these publishers and given them opportunities not available to the academic press. The American Management Association with its AMACOM book division is a good example as is ALA.
There has been substantial growth in a number of specialized professional [aimed at professional audiences] publishing houses in the social sciences. Some of these issue works that might have gone to the academic press.
How should an academic press measure its success? How much is the university reputation enhanced by having the press? Traditionally, the comment of reviewers, awards, and the stature of the authors were more important than the number of copies sold or the money earned. It is not at all clear that academic presses can be self-supporting and remain true to their mission. Important scholarship is not always widely popular. Academic libraries, their faculty, and graduate students have limited financial resources.
A key issue with university administrators is what steps the press might take to reduce costs and improve revenue. More careful selection of works to be published might help, but the mission of the press is to advance scholarship regardless of the market. Combinations or groups of presses should be able to get better quotes for book manufacturing. Similarly, groups of presses should be able to improve marketing and sales, especially abroad. Harvard, MIT, and Yale have had some success with this.
However, it should be clear that the mission of the university
press is at odds with the notion of breaking even or making a small
profit. The marketplace of scholarly ideas is a small one. Notable
ideas and research findings may have little immediate interest for all but a
handful of specialists. To limit scholarship and publication to that
which might be popular in the marketplace is to substantially diminish
the notion of "university."
One problem facing some presses is that there has been
inadequate attention paid to management. The director of the press
normally comes from the editorial ranks so there is considerable skill
and experience in publishing, but not in management. Issues here include a
more specific mission, targetted goals, strategy, systems and
infrastructure, and organization and governance. Presses with a close,
realistic relationship with campus and university administration based
on strong management and shared expections are much more likely to survive.
More presses will seek external funding for publication from authors, the author's department/college/university, foundations and other organizations. Government funding for publication, especially from the Federal government, has been reduced in recent years. Most foundations are not as interested in funding book publication as they were. Funding should not affect the initial decision to accept or reject the manuscript. It may affect the decision to actually publish the work.
Reducing the List
Many presses have already begun to be more cautious about their list by reducing the number of monographs they publish, both on an individual title and a series basis. This has already created problems of faculty members whose tenure decision depends on book publication.
A few academic presses have closed, and it seems likely that a few more will close in the future. Rice, in 1996, was the last notable UP to be closed. Presses that are most vulnerable are those with less than 90 percent of break even income and those that lack popular material to subsidize scholarly work. Although not a closure, Iowa State University sold its press to Blackwell Science, a British publisher. Since it is no longer a not-for-profit publisher it is no longer a member of AAUP. The ISUP received no subsidies from the University.
If the present lean year of funding for publicly funded higher education continues, another press or two is likely to close.
The number of titles
has increased dramatically, but the sales per title has not, despite
the fact that the number of university faculty members has more than
doubled. This phenomenon is due largely to the specialization which is
endemic in academe, the fact that
scholars tend to be experts on more and more narrow topics and that
scholarly books are increasingly written for more limited audiences.
Publishing technology has substantially reduced the number of copies needed for a viable print run. Visibility on the web and ease of purchase from Amazon and others create some potential for increased sales. WWW distribution is promising. Still, the small number of sales per title is a continuing concern.
The fact that the academic press publishes few works by local faculty can cause problems, especially if some faculty feel that the local press has an obligation to publish their work.
Normally, the press will have a board consisting of local
faculty members who review manuscripts and vote on what should be
published. The notion that a quality publishing program can
be assured by the oversight and insight of a committee composed of a
social historian who specializes in the history of board games, a
political scientist who has studied the voting record of the statehouse
in Harrisburg, a dermatologist, an art historian obsessed by Caravaggio
and a psychologist interested in cat neuroses is a curious one.
The fact that monographic publication is often a condition for
tenure, especially in humanities disciplines, creates increasing
tension as presses reduce the number of such monographs that they
publish. It seems clear that university libraries and university
presses "have a shared stake in the future of scholarly publication."
Instititutional repositories of faculty research and instructional
materials would allow for the traditional dissemination role at
dramatically reduced cost. However, this is unlikely unless there are
changes in tenure requirements. At Penn State, the two
institutions collaborate with books and companion websites [library] as
well as the possibility of using print on demand technology for
backlist titles. The library also contributes competence in
preservation. Future collaboration will include library leading in the
use of digital technology, collection development of the intellectual
content, and digital archiving.
Since the university press emphasizes back list sales and normally does not remainder titles, the print run is usually larger than needed for immediate sales. Storing these books and selling them a few copies at a time is relatively expensive. Cooperative fulfillment operations may reduce these costs. Publishing on demand [POD] is the most likely remedy, but university presses were slow to adopt it. However, they are changing so that many more presses begin with small initial press runs and then use POD when there is need for additional copies. Typically, these books are printed used advanced photo-duplication technology. The technology works best with books that have few illustrations or images.
Many scholars do not write well. Substantial editorial work may be required if the final book is to be as good as it should be. Good editorial work is costly in time and effort. Good editors are not always available, especially since the university press may not pay as well as the commercial ones. Most presses have staff that are too few to do all that is needed. Books may receive less editorial work than they need.
Acquisition editors are in a difficult position. They need to recruit authors with appropriate and quality manuscripts while saying no to many faculty members whose tenure decision depends upon publication.
Neither professors who are desperate to have their
works published nor other scholars who need to read them are pressuring
publishers for anything other than the traditional codex, carefully
edited, nicely produced and energetically marketed.
Faculty
tenure and promotion committees, at least now, seem unprepared to give
the same weight to an online publication as to a printed book. There
are also serious questions about the preservation of digital books. A
hard copy UP monograph will last for more than a hundred years with
minimal attention.
Rice closed its press several years ago, but has reopened it to publish only digitally with an emphasis on scholarship that relies heavily upon images such as art, architecture, and archaeology. These digital books may include a variety of media. This UP is a joint venture of Rice's Fondren Library and Connexions. There is also a partnership with QOOP -- an on-demand publishing company to provide hard copy editions. Books may be read on a website and POD copies may be ordered. Titles will not go OP, content may be updated, links may be made to multimedia files. It will be interesting to see how successful this is and if this begins a trend for other universities.
Most university presses have little money available for research and development. Those university presses with scholarly periodicals are most likely to have the needed experience with information technology. Since they cannot move to publishing only in the digital format, they find that they must continue with hard copy publication while beginning digital copy publication. Start-up costs in hardware, software, and training can be substantial.
Foundation monies can make a difference. The Andrew Mellon Foundation has funded the Chicago Digital Distribution Center which includes a short run print shop and the "BiblioVault" depository for digital books.
The California Digital Library provides free access to more that 60 University of California titles. More recently, the University of California Press and the CDL partnered to create eScholarship editions with XML editions of more than 1000 press titles.
Publishing digital books may reduce manufacturing and
distribution costs and thus lower costs which may enable a larger
audience to use these works. Collections of primary source material and
supplementary material such as maps, illustrations, and the like may be
included in a digital publication. On
demand publishing has been discussed for years and it is
certainly easier with a digital master on a server. Some presses have
made arrangements with on demand print vendors for those who want hard
copies. On demand print technology has made dramatic improvements in
recent years. Cornell University with its Internet-First University
Press has begun to offer a print on demand service that is less
expensive than downloading and printing a book.
Although not an university press, the National Academy Press is an AAUP member. The Press has put more than 1700 of its books online and found that full, free online text has substantially increased sales. "The plain fact is that no one is going to sit there and read a whole book online." The ability to preview a work and easily order it works well.
An increasing number of presses create PDF and XML files for
new imprints so digital editions can easily be produced. In fact
publishing on demand is more widely adopted by academic than trade
publishers.
Oxford University Press has created a subscription-based or purchased collections of reference titles that provide access to a variety of scholarly books in different disciplines. Each book is searchable. This is likely to appeal to scholars who need particular chunks from a work rather than the whole. With selective downloading, this could be a persuasive model and one that might eliminate the need for hard copy publication. Cambridge University Press has created the Cambridge Companions Online.
Cooperation between university libraries and university publishers is increasing. Michigan's digitalculturebooks is a good example.
The University of Virginia Press has created the digital Dolley Madison Collection of primary documents which is available for different prices for different types of institutions. UVP hopes to follow with a collection of primary source content on six founding fathers. The University Press's new Rotunda imprint focuses on digital editions.
Digital collections, particularly librarian's experience in
the digitization, preservation, and intellectual access aspects, provides an
opportunity for librarians and the press to partner in creating both
institutional repositories and a digital university press.
Both MIT and Columbia have had some success in developing a gateway on the WWW for scholarly communication and interaction. MIT's initiative, CogNet has developed a "micro-community" which includes an active back list of more than 350 titles available to subscribers for browsing and purchase. They hope to be able to sell book chapters. Columbia's New Media Center for Electronic Publishing will assemble books, data, periodicals, lectures, working papers, and the like on a website devoted to a particular topic and make it available via subscription. Their first site was the Columbia International Affairs On line (CIAONET) which was established in 1997 and grows at about 2000 pages per month. Another is Columbia Earthscape for earth systems science. The HistoryEBook Project sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies involves nine UPs in publishing history monographs in a digital format. Other publishers are considering individual websites for a titles which might contain supplementary material as well as an opportunity for readers to interact.
A Different Sort of Book
Although still somewhat unusual, one of the advantages of digital book publishing would be to allow interaction between readers and the author and relatively quick revisions as needed. The digital book can also more easily incorporate audio, video, and still images as well as easy linkage to references and other source content.
For some time, scholars in the sciences have circulated on the web early drafts of papers and invited suggestions for improvement. While Wiki books, the result of collaboration by a variety of participants is slowly growing, it is new to scholarly or academic publishing. Most academics and scholarly presses are not enthusiastic. But there are proponents, it it promises a dynamic rather than a fixed scholarly work with appropriate changes made as appropriate. The author would still control the text, but the result would incorporate suggestions by others. An early example is GAM#R 7H30RY.
netLibrary is a for-profit organization which provides digital copies of books to libraries for a fee. There are others as well. Several UPs have licensed titles to these vendors for a fee. Time will tell if this is a profitable way to provide access to scholarly work.
While progress is slow, several universities are beginning to develop institutional repositories to house instructional and research content created by local faculty. While more likely to impact periodical than book publishing, book length content freely available via the web could certainly impact the university press.
If scholarly monographs are less likely to be published by the university press, what solutions are available? To what degree should the press continue to issue these works even if they do lose money?
Some critics argue that it is irresponsible for university presses to issue trade and regional books that are not aimed at the scholarly audience. What do you think? Why?
If you were a university press director charged with becoming a profit center. What would you do? Why?
As a librarian, discuss the assets and liabilities of digital only editions of scholarly monographs.
Is it reasonable for the academic library to "publish" and preserve digital monographs for local faculty?
