Where the Readers Are: University Presses Explore Online Advertising
Reports from the 2009 Week-in-Residence Grantees
E-Catalogs: From Wish List to Reality
AAUP at MLA 2009
Digital Publishing in the AAUP Community
Public Access and Scholarly Publishing
Miscellany:
2010 Book, Jacket, & Journal Show Selected Entries Announced
Google Settlement Update
Books for Understanding: In the News
PROSE Awards
Submission Policy
Calendar: See the events calendar at www.aaupnet.org
Subscribe to the Exchange!
Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
University press marketing and advertising staff are expanding their ventures into the realm of online advertising. With an ever-expanding variety of options, from Facebook ads for dollars a day to leaderboards on the websites of renowned print publications, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. AAUP spoke with staff at three member presses to get an idea of how member presses of various sizes are evaluating and investing in these new opportunities.
While presses are experimenting with different approaches, one common theme was their initial reason for moving into online advertising: following their customers. Dafina Blacksher Diabate, Advertising Manager at Duke University Press, described Duke’s use of online advertising as “a matter of meeting the readers where they are.” Figuring out exactly where those readers are online, however, is a less obvious matter. One of the biggest challenges for presses just entering the online realm is the seemingly infinite venues well beyond online versions of the print publications they have traditionally advertised in.
Particularly when advertising scholarly titles, Diabate has found that a good amount of research time is required to evaluate the various options, although she has found it worth it in the end. Duke has advertised in a variety of online formats, but one that Diabate feels is particularly effective is the e-newsletter. As such newsletters are opt-in forms of communication, readers have chosen to receive it and have a confirmed interest in whatever the targeted subject matter might be. She especially prefers ad placement at the top of these newsletters, which ensures that the ad is seen even by those who do not scroll down to read the whole message.
Baylor University Press, which Associate Director and Product and Sales Manager Nicole Smith Murphy says began to think more strategically about online advertising in the summer of 2009, has found success with small, targeted campaigns. Baylor focuses particularly on “pay-per-click ads within Facebook, Google AdWords, Twitter promotions and announcements, and blocks of advertising within [their] own e-newsletters.”
Murphy described a shift away from their original tendency to view books with wider general reader appeal as the best candidates for online advertising. She has found that as scholarly societies, institutions, and publications have become more web savvy, targeting specific groups has become more feasible and beneficial. The press recently ran a Facebook ad for Liberalism without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition by Christopher Evans, targeting “users who identified a likeness for or an affiliation with several key liberal to progressive divinity schools and seminaries.” Spending under $400, the press has received 742,986 impressions of the book’s cover with brief copy and received 865 click-throughs – results Murphy classifies as “hard to match in print publications.”
Florida has pursued online advertising since 2006, and has used a variety of formats including web sites, newsletters, Facebook ads, and Google AdWords (which they found to not be adequately targeted for their purposes). This year, they will also be trying a regional take on web advertising, participating in the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s “Circle of Sites” promotion, which will place their ad on the sites of “approximately 45 independent bookstores for a week.”
The possibility of targeting advertising to ever more granular groups of readers is an aspect of online advertising where presses have taken different approaches. Florida “consistently seek[s] the most targeted media and placement for our advertising,” only opting for generalized placement when dictated “by the media itself.” Diabate however, is sometimes wary of targeting that can be too narrow, in the cases of niche sites, which might have fewer general visitors.
On the design side, production of online ads brings its own challenges, particularly when ad design is done, or brought, in-house. Amy Harris, Advertising and Direct Mail Manager at the University Press of Florida, explained that when the press moved to designing web ads in-house last year, some challenges became evident, as “most of the process—from image management to layout to proof—is slightly different from print design and may require knowledge of a separate suite of design programs.” When Duke added an in-house ad designer, they made sure to include banner ad design as part of the hiring criteria.
The increased restrictions on design for the web in comparison to print are a concern that can add to the work of creating an online ad, as designers must use web-safe colors, fonts, and formats, and ensure that the ad will display correctly in an array of browsers. At Duke, size limits on some banner ads have caused the press to alter their approach.
Diabate noted that she found the shorter lifetime of online ads to be a drawback, in contrast to print ads, which she finds more “researchable,” as readers are able to refer back to a publication long after its initial release.
Among the presses interviewed, there seems to be a consensus that while online advertising is inevitably becoming a larger portion of the overall advertising budget, they do not see print advertising disappearing in the near future. At Florida, Harris has found that directly attributable sales were “roughly the same” for print and web ads when tracked through discount codes. The challenge at the moment, Duke’s Diabate says, is “finding a happy medium.” Harris explains that she sees “the butter being spread ever thinner on the bread…the truth is, we reach our customers through both formats. The key will be to judiciously choose our outlets.” This is, in a sense, a balancing act that advertising departments have been dealing with for years, but the pool of possible venues continues to grow.
While the data-gathering potential of online advertising, such as tracking views and click-throughs, has its appeal, presses say it is not generally a driving choice behind their advertising choices. Harris explained that the most important reason for moving to web ads is “following our customers,” but metrics like click-throughs do offer a “measure of the audience’s engagement with advertising, so they should be taken into account in any well-run promotion.”
Murphy believes that online advertising can work for even the smallest of presses, and advises those considering testing the waters to “just set aside a little money and start doing it.” The small scale of some options allows for close monitoring and tweaking when necessary – she found that two of the most important components were having a “good landing page” for links (your website or another retailer) and ensuring that those links are functional. Baylor typically “set[s] an initial limit of $20 per day” for their campaigns, and after a few days either refines the message or ups the per diem, a process that Murphy describes as “quite helpful on-the-job education.”
The field of online advertising is still very much in development, and for this reason Diabate sees an opportunity for publishers to play an important role in the way it develops. Saying, “we’re forging into uncharted territory,” she feels that marketing instincts still play an important role, and that for university presses, it is “worth being in on the conversation,” helping publications to understand where scholarly publishers are coming from.
Harris advises presses: “Don’t be (too) afraid. With careful planning, the right tools, and a little training you’ll find that online advertising is manageable and worthwhile.” As Murphy emphasized, “With online ads, your potential readers are only one click away from being able to make a purchase.”
A number of publications within the AAUP Cooperative Advertising Program have begun offering discounted rates on their online advertising rates to AAUP members. Learn more here: http://www.aaupnet.org/members/advertising/index.html
Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
Each year, a group of middle and upper level staff members from AAUP member presses are selected to spend a week in residence at another press, providing an opportunity for professional exchange. Grantees typically spend their time at presses larger than their own. Finding scalable models that would translate well at their home presses, this year’s participants illustrated how similarities among university press are often greater than their differences.
Steven Yates, Marketing Director for the University Press of Mississippi spent his week with various members of NYU Press’s marketing team, with the goal of “learn[ing] how electronic marketing…is being executed at the ground level, and then how that work is coordinated into an overall marketing program.” Emma Cook, who organized his residency, Joe Gallagher, Brandon Kelley, and various other NYU staff, were generous in sharing their time, expertise, and files, affording Yates “every opportunity to seek the knowledge Mississippi needed.”
Yates was interested to learn from Kelley about NYU’s two-pronged approach of seeing e-marketing “as a support rather than a future replacement of printed direct mail.” He appreciated Gallagher’s candor in sharing “both his successes and his struggles” in the development of web sites, email lists, a press blog, and video content. This practical knowledge, combined with bigger-picture discussions that concluded his visit, provided Yates with a wealth of ideas on “how Mississippi might shape and refine its tactics based on current resources.”
Acquisitions Editor for the University Press of Kentucky Laura Sutton had her time spread out over the development, marketing, and editorial departments of the University of Texas Press, allowing her to “pick up information on behalf of the entire home press.” Working with Director Joanna Hitchcock who organized her visit, and staff across departments, she found that “UTP is not so large that Press practices might be irrelevant to how we do things at UPK.” Texas’s strategy of involving the press director and a core group of individuals in fundraising, “creative, high-energy” editorial meetings, and approach to their regional list were all things that could translate well at the University Press of Kentucky.
Sutton also noted the way in which the professional exchange was truly reciprocal: “For UTP’s part, several staff members noted that it was useful to explain and defend their practices to an outsider, perhaps more so now that UTP is looking critically at how it does business and begins to develop a new strategic plan.”
Further west, University of Nevada Press Marketing & Sales Manager Barbara Berlin spent her week at the University of Arizona press, taking the opportunity to work with Kathryn Conrad, who “is known as an excellent marketing manager.” Having spent many years in journals marketing, Berlin planned to expand her marketing knowledge in the areas of scholarly and trade books.
Having chosen to visit Arizona because of the similarity of its list to Nevada’s, Berlin found that many of their practices and marketing strategies would be applicable when she returned: “Although Arizona has a marketing department of five, unlike my own of only me (and a part time assistant), I began to see what I could take from them and revise to my own resources and time, and what I needed to leave alone for the time being.” Like many of her fellow participants, Berlin described the best part of the experience as the network of colleagues she developed, and is now able to call on when she has questions or needs advice.
The Chicago Distribution Center (CDC) played host to Sara Davis, Manager of Distribution and Inventory for Harvard University Press, allowing her an opportunity to “gain a fresh perspective on different ways of handling similar situations,” as she observed the operations at CDC’s warehouse, their client relations, and the University of Chicago Press’s Bibliovault. During her stay, organized by Sue Tranchita and facilitated by various members of the CDC staff, Davis was particularly impressed with the CDC’s system for handling returns and their metrics for warehouse productivity.
While the CDC operates on a larger scale than Harvard’s warehouse, TriLiteral (TLT), does, Davis was able to find aspects of Chicago’s strategies that were adaptable to TLT, including a system of measuring warehouse productivity (which she presented to her Executive Committee upon her return), making more detailed or customized reports to distribution customers, and pushing for more direct connection between customer service and the warehouse.
Raymond Lambert, Editorial Manager for the Duke Mathematical Journal at Duke University Press, also traveled to Chicago, spending his week with the University of Chicago Press’s Journals Division. Lambert’s trip, organized by Diane Lang, gave him “a thorough overview of UCP’s journals operations and a comprehensive understanding of UCP’s editorial processes,” as well as a “chance to discuss broader topics related to scholarly journals publishing” during less formal lunch meetings with staff. Given Duke’s recent acquisition of mathematics and science journals, he described how they “may have to think differently in the near future,” and how his visit gave him “an appreciation of this and also spurred me to brainstorm about possible ways to improve our current processes.”
Lambert’s experience at Chicago highlighted the way in which the residencies are a boon not only to one staff member, but to the entire home press. Before leaving for Chicago, he met with various Duke staff members to hear what they were interested to know about Chicago, and upon his return, offered a well-attended presentation to his colleagues, many of whom expressed interest in continued exchange and cooperation with those at Chicago. Lambert also remarked on the reciprocity of the experience, as he shared information about Duke’s processes and vendors with interested Chicago staffers.
In closing, Lambert emphasized the collegiality and cooperation that has perennially characterized the experience of week-in-residence grantees: “I quite enjoyed feeling like a contributing member of the scholarly publishing/university press community. The week-in-residence experience deepened my perspective of the university press’s role in scholarly communications.”
More information on the Whiting Week-in-Residence program can be found here: http://www.aaupnet.org/programs/meetings.html#week. Applications for the 2010 program will be available in March.
Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic and Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP
In recent years, the idea of e-catalogs has taken hold in the publishing industry. The reasons for this are many, and start from the observation that more book communications— involving buyers, readers, reviewers, authors—are in the digital space, and catalogs should be, too. Moreover, digital technology should be able to provide the most accurate and up-to-date sales metadata to all users. As marketing and sales managers face tightening budgets, cutting down on the expense and waste of printed and mailed seasonal catalogs is also a major goal.
But print catalogs are a universal ‘technology,’ and independent bookstores were particularly concerned that e-catalog formats and features would proliferate, spreading more confusion than convenience. Then Ann Arbor-based Above the Treeline launched Edelweiss, an open, multi-publisher standard e-catalog service, in May 2009, with the endorsement of the American Booksellers Association. Major trade publishers such as HarperCollins and Random House were quick to add their catalogs to the system. Several university presses, beginning with Cambridge and Columbia, and followed by NYU, Fordham, and Georgetown, also signed up.
In January 2010, AAUP was pleased to announce an agreement with Above the Treeline to offer the Edelweiss service to AAUP members at a significant discount. Along with a special first-year incentive to upload backlist titles for free, the new benefit program has already attracted more than 40 member publishers to Treeline-hosted web demonstrations of the Edelweiss service.
Many of the initial Edelweiss tools were designed with independent booksellers in mind. Bookstores who use Above the Treeline’s POS (point of sale) and inventory data streams can incorporate that information into the catalogs they view on Edelweiss, examining sales of comparable titles, and streamlining their ordering. Sales reps can mark-up publisher e-catalogs with notes for particular booksellers, and highlight specific titles and local connections.
As the service grows, Treeline is constantly developing new tools for other book industry communities. With the AAUP program attracting more scholarly publisher users, Treeline is looking to develop features specific to academic book marketing, particularly course adoption tools. The existing ability to create customized subject catalogs for particular contacts has great appeal for academic and regional publishers, and the possibility of handling exam-copy requests through the service was a matter for discussion at a September 2009 meeting between Treeline and AAUP members. To serve publicity needs, Edelweiss will launch a partnership with NetGalley in the spring. Being able to provide e-galleys for reviewers complements the existing “Buzz” feature, which tracks the appearance of book titles and authors’ names in blog and Twitter feeds.
Two AAUP members, Fordham University Press and Georgetown University Press, shared some of their early experience with using Edelweiss. While cutting the print catalog was a major goal for both presses, neither Georgetown Marketing & Sales Director Gina Lindquist or Fordham Director Fredric Nachbaur foresee a time when they will not also produce a print seasonal catalog. Nachbaur points out that the print catalog is used as more than simply a sales tool for a list of titles, but is also a key promotional piece for the press on campus and at academic meetings.
Fordham and Georgetown publish similarly sized lists, averaging approximately 20-30 titles per season. While larger colleagues such as Cambridge have been selective in loading titles with specific trade potential into Edelweiss and leaving out more specialized monographs, Fordham and Georgetown have both chosen to upload the entire catalog for the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 seasons. Fordham is considering creating a regional catalog on the platform with both front and backlist titles.
A motivating factor for Fordham in using the service is that the press is part of the Columbia University Press Sales group, along with NYU Press. As Columbia was an Edelweiss early adopter, Fordham’s sales representatives were already in the field using the system. In contrast, Lindquist reports that Georgetown’s main goal right now is to convince the press’s regional commissioned sales reps of the value and capabilities of the e-catalogs.
She is pleased with the possibilities of the Edelweiss platform and the extra tools it offers reps, such as customizing catalogs for individual accounts. “You’re never selling the whole list” at an independent book store, Lindquist notes, so the “tailoring is really great.” She admires the support and training that Treeline offers reps and buyers getting used to the system, but believes that success will ultimately rely on the system reaching a critical mass of publishers, rep groups, and buyers using it. The new AAUP program gives her optimism that the moment of reaching that mass may be closer than ever.
Readers can check out all the catalogs on Edelweiss for free, registering here: http://edelweiss.abovethetreeline.com/
AAUP members can learn more about the discount benefit program here: http://aaupnet.org/programs/epub/edelweiss.html or contact Brenna McLaughlin at bmclaughlin@aaupnet.org to inquire about future web demos.
Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
The Modern Language Association’s 125th Annual Convention was held December 27-30 in Philadelphia, PA. The convention attracted just over 7,300 registrants this year. MLA officials also noted that a record number of visitors purchased one-day passes to the exhibit hall.
The 2009 MLA Exhibit was held in Franklin Hall at the Philadelphia Marriot Downtown, and included displays from 114 publishers and related vendors exhibiting a wide variety of scholarly publications and tools. The exhibit hall’s location on the same floor as some of the conference sessions provided easy access for attendees, and ensured those after-session bursts of traffic in the aisles.
The AAUP cooperative booth featured titles from 19 member presses, with more than 140 books and 13 journals on display. For the first time this year, all presses participating in the cooperative exhibit were listed individually in the program, making navigation much easier for exhibit-goers looking for works from a specific press.
The AAUP cooperative booth was surrounded by fellow university presses, who made up some of the 34 member presses exhibiting individually at MLA.
The next MLA Convention will be held January 6-9, 2011, in Los Angeles (due to the adjusted time frame, there will be no convention held in 2010). For more information on the convention, please visit MLA’s web site.
Nearly 80% of AAUP members offer some form of free content on their web sites, and 35% offer full text of books. More than 90% work with the Google Books Partners program. Almost 44% are incorporating XML into some point of the production workflow. And approximately 83% of AAUP publishers find the lack of proven business models to be a serious concern in pursuing e-publishing, but 63% find the specter of online piracy to be at most a mild concern.
These are just a few items we learned from a survey of members in late 2009 on digital publishing. The survey had two goals: 1) to update and expand AAUP’s online directory of e-publishing projects; and 2) to gauge the extent to which various digital strategies are being adopted in members’ book publishing programs.
The report from the latter part of the survey has now been released and is available for download.
The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) opened a Public Access Forum in December and January. They posed nine questions relating to public access to archived publications resulting from federally funded research, and solicited comments from interested members of the public and scholarly publishing community.
AAUP submitted comments to the OSTP Forum on January 21.
Earlier in January, the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable, convened by the House Committee on Science and Technology to develop “consensus recommendations for expanding public access,” also issued their report. In the association’s comments to the OSTP, the Board of AAUP endorsed the shared principles and many of the recommendations in this report. Most especially, AAUP echoed the call that funding agencies should develop public access policies within a coherent set of guiding principles, taking into account the differing needs and scholarly norms of various fields, and “in cooperation with all stakeholders.”
Read AAUP’s contribution to the OSTP Public Access Forum in full.
Read the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable Report and other relevant materials.
Judging of the 2010 AAUP Book, Jacket, & Journal show took place January 28-29 at the AAUP Central Office in New York. Throughout its history, the AAUP Book, Jacket, & Journal Show has honored the design and production teams who further a long tradition of excellence in book design. Approximately 281 books, 286 jacket and cover design entries, and 8 journals were entered. 56 books, 1 journal, and 40 jackets/covers were chosen by the jurors as the very best examples from this pool of excellent design.
These selected entries will be displayed at the premiere of the 2010 Book, Jacket, & Journal Show during the AAUP Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, June 17-20, 2010.
View the 2010 Selected Entries:
http://www.aaupnet.org/programs/marketing/designshow/winners2010.html
The parties to the Google Book suit submitted a revised version of the settlement to the court on November 13. After the submission of the amended settlement agreement, supplemental notice was issued, and an extended comment period was opened.
The Department of Justice filed its Statement of Interest regarding the Google Book Search Settlement on February 4. Among the concerns the statement details is that the federal court lacks the authority to approve the settlement, which should properly be a matter for Congress. A fairness hearing was held on February 18, during which Judge Chin heard from 26 speakers (21 against the settlement, 5 in favor). Most notably, the court heard from U.S. attorney William Cavanaugh, who argued that the class action vehicle was not appropriate for this matter and that the settlement went too far in modifying copyright, and Duralyn Durie (for Google), Michael Boni, and Bruce Keller (for the plaintiffs) who countered Cavanaugh’s claims and urged the court to approve the settlement.
View the statement of interest from the Department of Justice regarding the proposed amended settlement agreement: http://thepublicindex.org/docs/amended_settlement/usa.pdf
A number of Books for Understanding bibliography topics have been in the news of late. Updates to these lists ensure that Books for Understanding includes the most recent and up to date scholarship published by university presses on these subjects.
In the wake of the devastating January earthquake, the Haiti list offers insight into the history and culture of this troubled nation. The Emergency Management List provides background on the massive reconstruction necessary as the country begins to rebuild after the disaster.
Each February, the U.S. celebrates Black History Month. The Race Relations in the U.S. bibliography features scholarship on African-American history from the era of slavery and abolition through the present, as well as on issues of race in politics, education, the military, sports, arts, and culture.
Home of the newly crowned 2010 Superbowl champions, New Orleans also celebrated Mardi Gras with its famous parade on February 16.
The American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (the PROSE Awards) were announced on February 4, at the annual meeting of the Professional and Scholarly Publishers (PSP) division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). Once again, works published by AAUP member presses took an extraordinary number awards, in addition to Finalist/Honorable Mention designations.
Since their inception in 1976, the PROSE awards, judged by peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals, have annually honored distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in a wide variety of disciplines. The prestigious R.R. Hawkins Award, recognizing outstanding scholarly works across all disciplines of the arts and sciences was presented to the University of Chicago Press for Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues.
View all 2010 winners here: http://www.proseawards.com/current-winners.html
Staff at AAUP member presses are encouraged to submit article proposals to the Exchange about initiatives at member presses, industry news or trends, and other topics of interest to the scholarly publishing community. Feature articles are typically 700-1300 words in length.
The copy deadline for the Spring 2010 issue of the Exchange will be Monday, May 3. Initial proposals should generally be submitted at least one month in advance of the copy deadline.
Proposals may be sent to the Exchange editor, Meredith Benjamin, at mbenjamin@aaupnet.org.
Frankfurt Report 2009
The Entrepreneurial University Press
The Charleston Conference: Usage and Innovation
A View from Ithaka: An Interview with Kate Wittenberg
Amended Google Settlement Submitted
Miscellany:
University Press Books Honored
Books for Understanding Updates
U.S. v Stevens Argued Before Supreme Court
Green Press Initiative Publisher Toolkit
Submission Policy
Calendar: See the Events Calendar at www.aaupnet.org
Peter Givler
Executive Director, AAUP
Everyone expected that this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair would be slower than usual, but no one knew by how much. As it turned out, it was slow, but not nearly as bad as the 2001 Fair that took place a month after 9/11, when there were significant last-minute cancellations and many empty booths. Attendance this year was down by 4%, according to the Fair management, and my general impression in Hall 8 (headquarters for U.S. and U.K book publishers) was that almost all the usual publishers were there, although perhaps with smaller stands and fewer people. The AAUP members I spoke with all felt the business they were doing was, if not great, certainly good enough. This was surely helped by the fact that the book trade in the U.K and Western Europe has been much less affected by the economic downturn than it has been in the U.S.
A few items of general interest. Each year the Fair designates one country as a Guest of Honor. This year it was China, which caused a certain amount of drama during the Fair because of the Chinese government’s policies restricting freedom of expression. The New York Times has provided a good summary: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/world/asia/19books.html.
In April, I became Chair of the International Publishers Association’s (IPA) Copyright Committee, and in that capacity attended a number of IPA and other publishing association meetings held during the Fair. One matter of general concern is how the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) so-named Development Agenda will play out. The Development Agenda basically instructs WIPO to give particular attention to the needs of developing economies. Under that directive WIPO is now considering the question of whether it should, by means of a treaty, mandate that its members implement copyright exceptions in their national laws to address the needs of Visually Impaired Persons (VIPs), and to permit cross-border transfer of educational materials.
According to the World Blind Union, 80% of VIPs in countries with developing economies live below the poverty line. No one disputes that low-cost or cost-free access to the written word in appropriate formats—large type, Braille, audiobooks, etc.–is a fundamental requirement for personal and social advancement. The only question is whether this goal can be best achieved by means of a WIPO treaty, which takes 5-10 years to create and up to an equal amount of time to be implemented by WIPO’s member states, or whether there is a faster path to implementation through voluntary cooperation among stakeholders. Representatives of VIPs, publishers organizations, and reproduction rights organizations (RROs) have been making good progress on creating a framework for the necessary infrastructure.
The ethical imperative for an exception permitting cross-border transfer of educational materials is perhaps less clear. On the one hand, there is an undeniable need for low-cost access to educational materials in developing economies. On the other, educational publishing is the bedrock of local publishing in those same developing economies, accounting for as much as 90% of the industry. So what would be the overall effect of an educational exception on the local publishing industry and the development of an indigenous book culture? From a legal point-of-view, bringing something as broad as an educational exception into harmony with the Berne three-step test will present interesting challenges. This complicated issue is scheduled to be formally introduced at WIPO later this fall.
Finally, and on a completely different note, Saskia DeVries and Eelco Verwerda at Amsterdam University Press convened a two-hour meeting of interested parties to discuss the desirability of starting a European Association of university presses. 50 people attended, representing some 30 presses from 12 countries. The challenges are obvious, but there was great enthusiasm for the idea and a wonderful discussion of needs and possible joint projects. An organizing committee was formed, and there will be a follow-up meeting at the London Book Fair next year. This is a very exciting development; AAUP began with just such a series of informal meetings held in the 1920s at the ur-precursor to BEA, and I wish our European friends every success.
Robin Derricourt
Director, University of New South Wales Press, Australia
How does a university press stay solvent, with resources to fulfill its mission, when it receives no funding in cash or kind from its parent university, has no foundation support, and operates in a relatively small and highly competitive market? One simple answer is flexibility and diversity, a willingness and structure that allow adaptability and change, with an entrepreneurial staff willing to embrace the new or different. In challenging times for US and other university presses the UNSW Press example from Australia may be of wider interest.
University of New South Wales Press (operating since 1962) has continued to expand annually and with over 50 staff is now the largest of the diverse university press operations in the southern hemisphere. We operate in a domestic market of 22 million people, but with only 40 universities whose libraries are both centralised and boast of their efficient interlibrary loan system, so they do not provide an adequate market for domestic books. To enable to us to survive and to grow we have developed structures and strategies that differ from most of our US colleagues.
The first is diversity of activities: we are book publishers, we run a retail bookshop, and we also provide marketing, sales representation and distribution services for the books of 35 other publishers. In 1997 we rebranded our sales division as Unireps (renamed NewSouth Books in 2009) and took on a wide range of academic and up-market trade lists from Australian and international publishers. Our Australian sales representatives are our own employees, operating a monthly sales cycle of 12 sales kits (not two seasonal kits) and we do the marketing and publicity for the overseas publishers, while the domestic publishers handle their own marketing. Operating NewSouth means for us we can control our own reach into the trade.
Since 1997 we have also operated our parent university’s campus bookshop, selling all books at discount while paying directly to the university a cash dividend from sales. In its first year the shop was named Australia’s Campus Bookseller of the Year and has won or appeared in this award many years since. The strength is that a textbook (and course materials) shop at the start of each semester turns into an outstanding general and academic bookshop for the rest of the year; and is supplemented by an on-line bookshop with seven-figure revenues, a secondhand bookshop and outreach for event sales.
There are several advantages to a university press in being book publisher, bookseller and book representative/distributor. They lie first in cash flow and the ability to generate a modest annual trading surplus which would not readily be achievable from publishing alone. The economies of scale support overheads in IT, accounting, operations and general management which it would be hard to maintain on the revenues of a mid-sized publishing list alone. For UNSW Press is structured not as a university department but as a not-for-profit company whose directors, including outside experts, are appointed by the university.
Australia has four university presses, in the conventional sense of fully staffed operations creating printed books for sale; some other universities have developed small in-house and e-book operations. Of the four, those of UNSW and Melbourne University operate as companies, those of the universities of Queensland and Western Australia as departments with a modest annual grant; both these include literary fiction in their programs. Melbourne formerly operated their university bookshop and now receives a large annual university grant as well as foundation funding. Queensland formerly ran the university bookshop which they have now subcontracted. Only UNSW Press has its own sales and distribution division.
Willingness to move into new areas of activity has to be matched by willingness to withdraw from them. Until 1974 we were also book printers. In 2009 we closed our 45-year old warehouse and outsourced order fulfilment: a decision brought on by the substantial growth of sales (and stocks!) and the ever increasing capital costs of software development and physical infrastructure; we were able to reduce staff numbers as a result. Australian has no wholesalers, only publisher/distributors and these provide the efficiencies of scale.
But primarily a university press is judged by the quality of its publications. We have maintained diversity in our publishing: our books win many awards, though sales revenues and public praise are not always neatly aligned. Flexibility in our list development is achieved by the energies of our commissioning but also by our structure. Publishing decisions on individual books do not involve the university or the board members; they are taken at an internal meeting of editorial, marketing, sales, production and financial staff; each contract proposal has to meet criteria of excellence, saleability and financial profile. The Press list emerged, unusually, from a tertiary textbook program but in the face of stiff competition from the multinational publishers this has been in retreat, as has a small program of professional books. The current model for quality scholarly books is to underwrite their publication from internal resources on condition of matching funding from the institution hosting the research. There are challenges here since Australia’s centralised government research funding body disallows used of grants to help publish results.
Our larger emphasis has been on important “books of ideas” for a wider audience, often but by no means always authors based in a university, aiming at a market beyond the specialist; this award winning list is one which has all the challenges of the “crossover” titles. Experiments in more ambitious trade non-fiction have had their challenges too. The most successful titles include ones which sell a substantial coedition to a US or other international copublisher. We have maintained our own books for a program of trade reference publishing, but focusing on proven strengths. And a final program is creating books which meet our criteria for content but sell back to the sponsor: institutional histories, for example. Occasionally like any publisher we have acquired lists by purchase or collaborative arrangements, but we have also been willing to sell a title or a list for strategic reasons.
All this produces a program of 60-70 books a year, spreading the publishing risks across a range of genres. And spreading risk in ever changing markets is probably a major benefit of the diversity in our operations and approach. As a university press, our primary goals lie in fulfilling our mission and in the content of what we publish, rather than in financial surplus, but our primary duty is to survive on the resources we can create so that we can continue to publish. With no external subsidy, a flexible approach to what we do and how we do it has enabled us to continue and grow.
For further information on scholarly publishing in Australia, see Robin Derricourt’s articles:
“Scholarly Book Publishing in Australia: The Impact of the Last Decade”
Journal of Scholarly Publishing 33 (4), 2002
“For a few dollars more: a future for scholarly books in Australia?”
Learned Publishing 21 (1), 2008
“Book publishing and the university sector in Australia”
in Making books: contemporary Australian publishing (ed. Carter & Galligan), UQP, 2007
Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic & Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP
For the past 29 years, academic librarians and academic publishers have gathered in Charleston, SC, in early November to discuss common “Issues in Book and Serials Acquisition.” In 1980, it was an informal group of 20 sharing problems and brainstorming solutions—now, the Charleston Conference hosts more than 1,000 attendees every year. This past November, while the hallways seemed less crowded than in 2007 (before the current economic decline had taken hold), plenary sessions were still filled to capacity and the program was overstuffed with interesting topics. Despite its growth, the conference maintains its reputation for collegial professionalism between publishers and academics—and still puts the emphasis on practical knowledge sharing over visionary set pieces.
One particularly well-conceived panel of interest to AAUP members was a session on the e-Duke Books project subtitled “What have we learned?” The session featured Michael McCullough, Sales Manager at Duke University Press; Lois Schultz, the Duke librarian handling cataloging and MARC record creation for the e-book collection; a Georgia State University librarian who acquired the collection; and a representative of collection vendor YBP. The session was a frank discussion from all sides of how an innovative e-book experiment was developed, and the real challenges they met.
Other AAUP members spoke at sessions on how the economy affects editorial programs and on advising librarians on best practices in publishing. Doug Armato, University of Minnesota Press Director, and Kevin Guthrie, Ithaka President, spoke at the annual “I Hear the Train A Comin’” plenary, focused on what’s around the bend in scholarly communications. Many of the plenary sessions were recorded and are being made available, after editing, at http://www.katina.info/conference/video.php.
The official 2009 Charleston tagline was “Necessity is the mother of invention,” but another, one-word theme seemed prevalent in many sessions and informal conversations: “usage.” In the journals world, usage statistics have long been an important component of pricing and licensing discussions. A detailed presentation on how the Institute of Physics develops journals digital pricing made clear how key the “cost-per-access” data point is (as did several tough questions from purchasing librarians in the audience). As monograph-length scholarship begins to ford the book-journal digital divide, usage statistics are going to have an increasing impact on value perceptions in the book world. Indeed, the GSU librarian mentioned that e-Duke Books’ offering of COUNTER-compliant usage data was a point in its favor.
There are “usage stats” in the print world, too, of course, though they are often more anecdotal and based on the only partial picture of circulation studies. Highly specialized monographs in small fields can be reasonably assumed to have low circulation (or usage). While it is reasonably argued that increased discoverability of e-books may increase even the most esoteric title’s usage, the expectations, standards, and patterns of usage will always be different for books and articles.
The most primal of a book’s “usage stats” is at the base of one of Charleston’s hot topics this year: patron-driven acquisitions. Under this model, books (in whatever media) are not purchased until requested by a library patron. The University of Denver shared details of their demand-driven acquisitions pilot project. Blackwell Book Services maintains the Denver library’s approval plan, and is paid for metadata and profiling work. While certain collections remain on an automatic approval basis (not waiting for a patron request), other books are simply exposed through library systems until a user requests the title. Books are sourced through whatever means will be the appropriate mix of fastest and cheapest, and patrons are given the choice of print and/or e-books when possible. Denver selectors continue to do their usual job of selecting library acquisitions up to the point of purchase. At the end of the pilot, selectors’ choices will be compared to user requests and general collection needs to see if this model will continue.
While the Denver librarians talked of this experiment, their hometown was host to another relevant conference, Educause. There, the overlapping ideas of e-books and library-catalog-as-storefront were implicated in Syracuse University librarian Suzanne Thorin’s bombshell statement that “the library, as a place, is dead.” The basic research tool of browsing the stacks may be taken out of the toolbox, with online search and discovery serving as a substitute (though not a replacement). Days later, Thorin faced an uprising of scholars on her own campus protesting the plans to move part of the Syracuse print collection to a storage facility more than 200 miles away. The bits and bytes and algorithms are thriving, but the stacks have life in them yet. Back in Charleston, publishers and librarians strive each year to bring some harmony to the resulting clamor of scholarly communications.
Interviewed by Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
Early in 2009, Kate Wittenberg was appointed to the position of Project Director, Client and Partnership Development at Ithaka. A longtime member of the AAUP community, she had previously served as Editor-in-Chief at Columbia University Press, and went on to found and direct the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) at the university. As head of EPIC, Wittenberg oversaw pioneering projects in digital publishing, including CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online), and Gutenberg-E.
Wittenberg brings this history of innovation and experimentation to her new position at Ithaka, in which she focuses on consulting for research institutes, scholarly publishers, and libraries who are involved in the planning and sustaining of digital resources. Among the services she and her colleagues in Strategy, “help clients conceptualize and plan projects, develop business models, think about partnerships, and analyze infrastructure and staffing issues that need to be addressed in the digital environment.”
Responding to questions by email, Wittenberg offered her thoughts on press partnerships, digital scholarship and tenure, sustainability for scholarly publishing, and the thinking that is driving Ithaka’s newest projects. Says Wittenberg, “I believe we are in a period in which there are unprecedented changes taking place in digital research and scholarly communication, and I find it very exciting to be able to play a role in helping those involved in this important work.”
MB (AAUP): Gutenberg-e, which you worked on at Columbia, focused on the relationship between publishers and scholars and the challenges of prevailing tenure standards. Is Ithaka doing any work on these issues?
KW: The relationship between publishers and authors and the related issue of academic credentialing is at the heart of scholarly communication and university press publishing. The Gutenberg-e project suggested new ways of thinking about born-digital scholarship and demonstrated that both scholarly publishing and peer-review can make the transition to a digital environment. These issues are also central to Ithaka’s work, and a number of our projects here focus on these and related issues. In one of our current projects we are consulting with a research center that is developing an inter-connected set of digital initiatives that will introduce new models for publication of digital scholarship as well as the mechanisms for peer review and credentialing of that work.
MB: It seems that while publishers have been willing to try new digital models, junior scholars are reluctant to change, fearing that those making tenure and promotion decisions are not as open to these formats. Do you think presses can work more with scholars to change these perceptions or is this something that will have to happen within the community of scholars?
KW: This gets right to the heart of the problem. I honestly don’t know whether changes in the perception of digital scholarship can come from the outside through innovative work being done by presses, or whether it is something that must be generated by the scholarly community itself. I suppose I really believe that it will have to come from a number of places. That is, as presses provide an increasing number of viable options for publishing peer-reviewed digital scholarship, and as scholars themselves demand the platforms and tools that will allow them to present evidence and make arguments in new ways, the academy will have to create new mechanisms for credentialing and professional advancement that acknowledge the value and richness of
these new types of scholarly communication.
MB: What are the biggest obstacles to press partnerships with other institutions?
KW: Historically, presses have worked independently from other parts of the information industry. Until now they have not only controlled the development of content, but also its discovery and delivery, creating and managing their own systems for content development, production, and marketing. In a print-based world, it was possible to remain largely independent, and thus maintain one’s autonomy and “brand” in the publishing environment. I think that this tradition has made it difficult to create close partnerships with other organizations, partly because of a concern about losing one’s identity. But now, the old model of working in an industry that operates independently from other sectors of the community is no longer effective. The desire to remain apart from other players in the information industry has become a handicap for presses in an environment where collaboration and partnerships are necessary in order to succeed.
MB: Has the current economic climate made the need for new partnerships and initiatives more urgent for presses?
KW: Yes, the current climate has clearly increased the urgency for new partnerships, and although this need has been driven by a very difficult economic environment, I believe that in the long-term, this drive to collaborate and innovate is a good thing. Presses cannot deal with the dramatic challenges posed by the economy and advances in technology alone. While one natural reaction to these changes is to focus on trying to repair the traditional model of university press publishing, I think that all of us involved in this field are starting to see that partnerships, collaboration, and new models are where we need to focus our energy in order for presses to survive and thrive.
MB: Has the Case Studies in Sustainability project affected Ithaka’s thinking about future projects that it might undertake?
KW: Yes, this project has definitely affected our thinking about future projects. We have been thinking about how to maximize the impact of this project for the community, and we are considering a number of possible next steps. One possibility is to develop tools for project leaders that will help them plan and implement sustainability strategies from the early stages of their work. Another idea is to develop a curriculum or institute for project leaders that would enable discussions and interaction among leaders who are facing similar challenges and need some guidance in thinking about their business and organizational planning. We are interested in knowing from the scholarly publishing community what would be helpful next steps in this project in terms of the challenges they are facing.
MB: What sorts of new initiatives or experiments do you see as most promising for making scholarly publishing more sustainable?
KW: Scholarly publishers face real challenges, but also significant opportunities in the current environment. Academic presses have played an enormously important role in advancing the scholarly communications process, and the value and skills that they bring to the table can remain important going forward. Presses must be seen as central to the university’s mission, as well as important players in the scholarly communications process. I believe that the most promising activities for presses will involve the following: thoughtful but bold experimentation with partnerships that complement their skills and reduce their costs; a clear focus on the next generation of readers/users and their changing expectations and needs for scholarly content; and a willingness to embrace change by re-envisioning their role, and thus making themselves essential partners in the academic process.
For example, presses might begin to see themselves more as research centers that play a significant part in leading innovation in a scholarly discipline, rather than as production-and-dissemination organizations. Or they might consider partnerships with technology organizations that can support the new ways in which scholars and students conduct research, teach, and learn. A number of presses are already moving in these directions, and this is a very positive and exciting development. It will be important for the scholarly publishing community as a whole to do this on a larger scale as our environment continues to present both new challenges and opportunities.
The parties to the Google Book settlement submitted a revised version of the settlement to the court late on November 13. Revisions include a reduced scope of coverage (limited to works registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, or published in the U.K., Australia, or Canada), the establishment of a fiduciary working out of the Book Rights Registry to look out for the interests of orphan works rightsholders, an increase in the possible number of library access terminals, and the ability for rightsholders to make their books available for free or under licenses such as those from Creative Commons. The “most favored nation” clause that was a cause of concern for many has been eliminated, allowing the Books Rights Registry to “license to other parties without ever extending the same terms to Google.” Publishers from the U.K., Australia, and Canada have been added as plaintiffs, and will have representation on the Books Rights Registry.
Under the revised settlement, the deadline to claim books has been extended to March 31, 2011.
In a court order filed on November 19, Judge Chin gave preliminary approval to the revised settlement. In his preliminary approval, he set important dates for moving forward: supplemental notices will be sent beginning December 14, objections to the amended portions of the settlement must be filed by January 28, and a final fairness hearing has been scheduled for February 18.
In a memorandum filed the day following the court order, November 20, Amazon requested that judge to reconsider the preliminary approval he had granted to the settlement, citing that the decision was made without the benefit of opposing viewpoints from members of the class.
View the amended settlement agreement and the supplemental notice (a shorter document which details the changes to the settlement) here: http://www.googlebooksettlement.com
View a redlined version of the settlement: http://thepublicindex.org/docs/amended_settlement/amended_settlement_redline.pdf
Books published by university presses were much lauded this fall, with five National Book Award nominations, one of which went on to win in its category. On November 18, Keith Waldrop’s, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, published by the University of California Press, was named winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for 2009.
Joining Waldrop with nominations in the Poetry category were Versed by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan University Press) and Open Interval by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (University of Pittsburgh Press). In Fiction, American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell, a story collection published in the Wayne State University Press “Made in Michigan Writers Series,” was nominated. Adrienne Mayor’s masterful combination of storytelling and scholarship in The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, (Princeton University Press) was nominated in the Non-Fiction category.
The announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prize Winners also highlighted the importance of scholarly publishers. Two university presses had published the work of 2009 Nobel Laureate in Literature Herta Mueller in translation: Nadirs is available from the University of Nebraska Press, and The Land of Green Plums and Traveling on One Leg from Northwestern University Press. Elinor Ostrom, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, has had her work published by a number of AAUP presses. MIT Press recently published Catherine Brady’s Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA, tracing the life and work of one of this year’s Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine.
AAUP congratulates these presses, along with the many other AAUP members who every day publish works honored and valued by scholars, associations, and prize committees.
Press release:
http://www.aaupnet.org/news/press/october2009prizes.html
All prizes and honors received by AAUP books:
http://www.aaupnet.org/news/prizes.html
In October, AAUP released a newly revised version of its Books for Understanding New York City bibliography. Now featuring more than 300 titles from 34 presses, this extensive list includes books on the city’s history and culture, as well as guides and reference works.
Other recently updated Books for Understanding Lists include China, Social Security, the Nonprofit Sector & Philanthropy, Somalia, Sudan, and Voting & Elections.
http://www.booksforunderstanding.org