As Daniel Coit Gilman clearly stated in 1878, if a university’s mission is to advance knowledge, then that of a university press as its extension is to disseminate this knowledge – without the pressure of making profits – not only to scholars but also to those outside of the academic realm.
The Scholarly Publishing Model
University press production means publishing to small markets and most of the scholarly, highly specialized research will not sell enough copies to even cover publication costs. Though scholarly publishing is therefore subsidized publishing, scholarly publishers are still required to function and operate independently.
University presses exist in two worlds: that of the university and higher education in general and that of book publishing. As part of the former, library budget cuts and education reforms affect them; as part of the latter, they have to bear increasing printing and operating costs and their publishing program has to compete with other university presses and commercial publishers.
Financing Scholarly Publishing
Though university press publishing is non-profit publishing, most university presses are required to break even and cover their expenses. There has hardly been a university that has not experienced a cash crunch at some point and most presses combine two strategies to stay afloat: They seek support from grants or gifts and seek out new and/or lucrative markets.
Below are a few common types of financial aid that university presses avail of:
- operating subsidies from the parent university – on average only 8% of the university press’s budget
- title subsidies for specific titles
- grants from foundations and government agencies
- outside gifts from private donors
Apart from these fundraising strategies, there are certain types of publications that help reduce costs or generate revenue such as publishing
- general interest and trade books that reach a wider audience to balance more specialized ones
- local and regional interest books
- scholarly works used as assigned reading in undergraduate college courses
- scholarly journals
- dissertations in abbreviated form in scholarly journals
- more books in electronic format to counter increasing printing costs
University Presses Diversify and Cooperate
The first university presses started out publishing mainly works of the university faculty. Today, this model is no longer feasible, financially and otherwise. Apart from prominent writing by university faculty and the interest areas of its scholarly community, university presses have to be much more diverse in program and approach if they want to survive.
They reach out to scholars nationwide and internationally but also supply local and regional interest groups and general interest readers with high-quality publications. Another important aspect of university press publishing is cooperation with other presses, for example through joint distribution arrangements, warehouses, consortia and order fulfillment services.
The Association of American University Presses is a prominent one of the various organizations worldwide that have formalized this need to cooperate. As seen, publishing scholarly content is a high quality, low margin operation that requires creative survival strategies.
Sources:
- Givler, Peter. “University Press Publishing in the United States.” In: Scholarly Publishing: Books, Journals, Publishers and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Richard E. Abel and Lyman W. Newman. Wiley, 2002.
- Meyer, Sheldon & Phillabaum, L.E. “What Is a University Press?” In: Scholarly Publishing, Vol. 11, 218 (April 1980, revised 1994).
Readers of this article might also be interested in related material: The University Press as a Publishing Model and University Press Publishing Facts.
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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