To understand the benefit of an organization like the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), one has to understand the nature of university press or scholarly publishing: a university press is a non-profit publishing house affiliated with a university that is dedicated to publishing scholarly works.
University Press Publishing Versus Commercial Publishing
According to a distinction on AAUP’s website, “While commercial publishers focus on making money by publishing for popular audiences, the university press's mission is to publish work of scholarly, intellectual, or creative merit, often for a small audience of specialists.”
University presses realized early on that they could achieve their goals more easily by formalizing this cooperation and thus, the Association of American University Presses was born in 1937. Since 1959, AAUP has maintained a central office in New York City from where it operates. Today, the organization has 125 members consisting of nonprofit scholarly press, mainly but not necessarily located in North America.
University Press Publications
Not only are target audiences small, scholarly texts are often time-, labor- and cost intensive to produce, therefore not at all viable from a commercial standpoint. How do university presses still manage to keep up the high quality while publishing low volumes? This is where cooperation and creativity comes in: Two or more university presses might share a printing press, for example, a warehouse or establish their own distribution network.
This is not to say that university presses do not publish books for a wider audience. In fact, they fill a crucial gap even in general interest literature that is more specialized. Because university presses are located all over the country, they have access to many regional interests and publish trade books in the following areas:
- regional history,
- culture,
- flora and fauna,
- cuisine and
- books by prominent local authors.
AAUP Initiatives
Some of the initiatives AAUP engages in to help its members publish works of scholarly interest are providing information resources, highlighting professional development opportunities, supporting industry research and analysis and promoting university presses. Here is each area in a bit more detail:
- Information Resources: AAUP furthers the exchange of information about members’ activities and provides resources like industry statistics, handbooks, newsletters and guidelines for scholarly publishing, copyright protection and others.
- Professional Development: The AAUP Annual Meeting, professional development workshops and related industry events and seminars are important in this area. AAUP also promotes week-long staff exchanges and regional and special group meetings of its members.
- Marketing and Cooperative Service Programs: AAUP supports members with cooperative advertising, member discounts, cooperative booths at industry meetings and book fairs and advises in cases of copyright infringement.
- Promoting the Work of Member Presses: AAUP promotes awareness about university press publishing and individual members through awards, shows, prizes and publications.
The American Association of University Presses fulfills an important function in bringing scholarly, nonprofit publishers together as well as promoting their work. The organization is headed by a president who is assisted by executive officers and a board of directors, all recruited from member presses. Day-to-day operations are taken care of by AAUP’s executive director and central office staff.
Sources:
- American Association of University Presses. “About University Presses.” Retrieved from aaupnet.org/news/about.html.
- Meyer, Sheldon & Phillabaum, L.E. “What Is a University Press?” In: Scholarly Publishing, Vol. 11, 218 (April 1980, revised 1994).
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Simone Preuss - Simone is a freelance writer, editor and translator who decided to go solo after a successful career in publishing. That was more than ...
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