University Presses

Overview

University presses have historically been known for their involvement in the publication of the academic monograph. They have also published some bestsellers. University presses range in size from the highly successful British-based Oxford University Press, which was founded in 1586 and which has expanded to more than fifty offices around the world, to the smallest presses that are struggling to survive in the twenty-first century. The first American university-affiliated press was established in 1869 by Andrew D. White, the president of Cornell University. Journalism students ran the small printing press. The modern Cornell University Press traces its roots to 1930. Despite steady growth throughout much of the twentieth century, university presses have been faced with a host of problems in the twenty-first century, ranging from the digital revolution and fierce competition from trade publishing houses to slashed budgets and threats of closure. Funding from host institutions ranges from $150,000 to $500,000 annually. The American Association of University Presses is known for taking an incremental approach to solving problems faced by university presses.

Established in 1878 by Daniel Coit Gilman, Johns Hopkins University Press is the oldest ongoing American university press. Gilman's stated mission of advancing and diffusing knowledge has been adopted by virtually all university presses established after that time. Johns Hopkins became the norm for university presses, and it has continued to play a major role in the field. In the late nineteenth century, both Stanford University and the University of Minnesota failed at early efforts to run university presses. In 1919, there were thirteen university presses in the United States and Canada. By 1939, there were sixty-one.

In the years after World War II, university presses, which were considered "cozy" places to work, flourished. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, precipitating the "space race." Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, earmarking appropriations to university presses and creating a "golden age" for these presses as government and educational officials placed increasing emphasis on studies in science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM) and on improving the overall quality of American education. In the 1960s, nineteen new university presses were established. Since 1970, however, only sixteen have been founded, and the number of monographs sold to academic libraries declined significantly, plummeting from an average of 1,000 copies to 400. As prices on academic journals rose and budgets were cut, academic libraries began purchasing fewer journals from university presses.

In 1936, eight university press directors formally established the American Association of University Presses. Membership in the organization was based on university or college affiliation, enactment of an academic mission, mandated faculty input on selected publications, and having at least three employees. Prospective members were required to have published at least five books in the previous two years, and the submission of a mission statement was mandatory.

Instead of being independent, a number of university presses, including Purdue University Press and Indiana University Press, are overseen by university libraries rather than by administrators. A number of directors are part-time, also serving as teachers or administrators. Partnerships are seen as a way to expand the scope of university presses. With a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Minnesota forged a partnership with CD Digital Scholarship of the University of New York's Graduate Center and Cast Iron Coding to establish Manifold. Working with local communities, Manifold provides access to research materials, photographs, maps, recordings, and interviews, and unpublished academic material.

In 2008, there were ninety-five university presses and thirty academic publishers providing academic material for consumption. With the turn of the century, university presses were forced to deal with an avalanche of innovations that included new publishing technologies; e-books and non-print reading media; and a rapidly expanding online book and journal market. Rising overhead, a decline in endowments, and resistance from libraries, academics, and researchers to sky-high subscription rates for peer-reviewed print journals also contributed to the presses' struggle for survival.

Even among the top university presses, success is not guaranteed because of increased competition with trade houses that publish academic materials. Penguin Random House, Amazon, Elsevier Kluwer, Springer, Wiley, and Informa, drain profits away from university presses. Trade houses began publishing high-profile science journals, and academic libraries cut university press purchases in the humanities and social sciences to fund purchases of STEM material, for which there was rising demand.

Between 2008 and 2015, university presses were required to deal with a major shift in publishing formats. During that period, revenue from print publishing declined from $451,000,000 to $298,000,000 while revenue from digital publishing rose from $8,000,000 to $141,000,000. In the five years between 2008 and 2013, the sale of e-books increased by 837.50 percent. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic brought additional challenges for university presses. However, most reported that, while library sales continued to decline, the sale of ebooks significantly increased from 2020 to 2021, sometimes as much as 50 percent. Furthermore, in 2021, a consortium of sixteen university presses partnered with De Gruyter, a scholarly publisher based in Berlin, to push ebook sales between university libraries and presses. Called the University Press Library Initiative, the goal of the consortium was to provide a steady revenue for university presses because most libraries will buy their products.

Unlike university presses, which generally sell to intermediaries, trade houses often sell directly to consumers. The five largest textbook publishers, McGraw-Hill, Pearson PLC, Scholastic, Cengage, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, reduce university press profits by renting textbooks. Online bookstores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, which offer e-book versions of texts, which reduced costs for students, have been disastrous for university press bookstores.

Further Insights

Historically, university presses have been involved in publishing scholarly books by well- respected scholars. University presses have survived because of the special skills they provide. Decisions on what books to publish have been made through peer reviews and editorial boards. Success is considered an offshoot of editorial engagement, which has provided objectivity to scholarly works. Another element in the success of university presses has been the ability to deliver presentational expertise, making decisions about fonts, layouts, and covers in order to present books to their best advantage. University presses have responded to the changing atmosphere of marketplaces, allowing them to respond to new publishing trends. Furthermore, they believe that university presses have also learned to handle metadata with authority and enhancement; have dealt successfully with legal aspects such as rights, authorities, and licensing; have become experts at dealing with non-digital distribution; have learned to deal with various digital formats, such as MOBI for Kindle and EPUB for the iPad); have retained their academic independence as they work with scholars from various institutions; and have dealt with issues of imprimatur, tenure, promotion, and prestige that are integral to the academic environment.

Discourse

University presses have long provided an outlet for books about little-known, arcane, or even obscure subjects that might not otherwise reach interested readers. Occasionally, however, university presses have been associated with authors who have achieved commercial success. Such was the case with Robert Caro and his Pulitzer-prize winning The Years of Lyndon Johnson series (1982–). Caro began publishing with a university press. University presses may also publish successful books, as with the 2014 publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Harvard University Press. The book made a number of bestseller lists, including those compiled by TheNew York Timesand the Wall Street Journal.Other successes include John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces,a Louisiana State University Press publication that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981. The University of California published the commercially successful Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades, by Oakley M. Hall in 1998.

University presses are looking for innovative ways to survive in a world altered by the digital revolution, less stable financial environments, and evolving relationships with stakeholders. Some have responded by decentralizing digital systems, providing widespread digital access, and providing avenues for mobile access to digital materials. Others are charging fees, offering subscriptions, selling related products or marketing services.

Some presses and their host institutions are combining open digital access with paid print-on-demand publishing and opening up their backlists to online and print publishing. The University of Michigan, for example, has begun providing free access to material and offering digital publications of some materials for sale. Through the California Digital Lab, the University of California has placed more than two thousand titles online. Open access has been provided for five hundred of those titles. Open access has become more common, but presses such as those at Rice University in Texas, Athabascay in Canada, and the Australian National University E-Press have placed material online while continuing to sell print editions of the same material. Some university presses are experimenting with new book and journal formats. While most experts contend that in the near future university presses will continue to sell ebooks, which in the 2020s have increased in sales, in the long-term the industry will evolve into university-based publishing, meaning that universities will publish their own scholarly materials based on their needs.

Bibliography

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Tivnan, T. (2021 Nov. 26). University presses report robust year despite challenges of the pandemic. The Bookseller, https://www.thebookseller.com/news/university-presses-report-robust-year-despite-challenges-pandemic-1290926

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