University Press Publishing

By Andrew Grabois - Sep 03 , 2007

University presses are more important than their collective sales, which amount to less than 2% of the industry total. Affiliated with, and subsidized by, major universities, their mandate is to publish scholarly works regardless of their commercial sales potential. To help offset losses incurred in the advance of human knowledge, many university presses try to publish reference and other titles that have some chance of penetrating the trade market. Unfortunately, more than a few presses have been seduced by the free-market, hit-driven, dynamics of the trade.

After 9/11, for example, there was an urgent demand for books about Afghanistan, Islam, and terrorism, which only university presses could meet. They ended up over-printing on a number of scholarly titles that, while addressing a larger than usual demand (for their world), did not have legs for the trade. As a result, they had to accept lots of returns from bookstores, something trade houses have been contending with since the Great Depression. Though this remains a temptation, the presses seem to have learned from this experience.

Stephanie Oda and Glen Sanislo do a nice job of summarizing the issues facing university presses today, in an essay that appeared in Book Industry Trends 2007, a publication of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). While university press sales increased 2.5% in 2006, with some individual presses enjoying double-digit increases, Oda and Sanislo found that everyone in the segment was worried about diminishing sales to libraries, historically the biggest market for university press titles. For some presses, library sales have plummeted from as much as 70% of sales to as little as 20%. Constrained by shrinking budgets and demand for alternative media, libraries can no longer afford to be repositories of print knowledge. Books must compete with subscriptions to electronic resources, journals, audios, and videos. For the books they do buy, libraries are buying to meet demand, which means how-to, self-help, genre-fiction, and children’s books.

Fortunately for the presses, as sales to libraries have declined, the Internet has become their fastest growing sales channel. University press sales to Amazon and other internet booksellers have skyrocketed in the last few years, especially the secondary tier backlist titles. The chains have also been cutting back on their purchases of scholarly titles and have handed the market over to the Internet booksellers. In addition to online sales, Oda and Sanislo found out that many presses are making up for library shortfalls by selling regional titles to big-box discounters like Sam’s and Target.

According to Book Industry Trends, university presses generated net publisher dollar sales of $513.5 million in 2006, an increase of 2.5% over 2005, but less than the 3.3% increase in sales enjoyed by the trade segment last year. BISG is projecting a dip to 1.7% for 2007, after which sales will grow 2.2% every year through 2011. Net publisher unit sales in 2006 numbered 31.4 million, the same as 2005. BISG projects a 0.6% decline for 2007, 0% growth in 2008, and 0.3% increases in unit sales from 2009-2011. Hardcovers generated $179.9 million in net dollar sales for university presses last year, an increase of 2.5% over 2005. BISG is projecting a smaller rate of increase for hardcovers in 2007, and then increases of at least 2% through 2011.

Sales channels for university presses are pretty simple: domestic and exports. While the percentage of total net university dollar sales that came through domestic channels is close to that of trade publishers, the latter could learn a lot from the presses on exports, which accounted for more than three times the percentage share of trade exports last year. The percentage split in net university press dollar sales last year was:

• Domestic direct to retailer/consumer = 87%
• Exports = 13%

The split for just the domestic direct to retailer/consumer channels were:

• Libraries and other institutions = 30%
• College = 28%
• Retailers = 25%
• Direct to consumer = 15%
• Schools = 2%

University presses have been publishing around 14,000 new titles and editions per year, according to Bowker. The last time Bowker released separate output figures for university presses was 2005, but we can still get a pretty idea of what the presses are publishing. Below is a graph representing new title output of university presses from 2001-2005:

The most popular categories (as classified by Bowker) for new university press titles in 2005 were:

• Sociology/Economics = 21%
• History = 11%
• Science = 10%
• Literature = 6%
• Philosophy/Psychology = 5%
• Biography = 5%
• Religion = 5%

The bestselling university press titles on Amazon, where so many are sold these days, include style manuals and other reference works, economic treatises, classics of philosophy, and the illustrated Jane Austin. Topping the lists are:

• Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Univ Press)
• Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Disertations (Univ of Chicago Press)
• The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, by John A. Nagl et al (Univ of Chicago Press)
• Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford Univ Press)
• The Craft of Research, by Wayne C. Booth et al (Univ of Chicago Press)
• The Chicago Manual of Style (Univ of Chicago Press)
• Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton Univ Press)
• Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition (Oxford Univ Press)

Below is a small sample of new deals for university press titles from Michael Cader’s deals database:

• DEBUNKONOMICS: What Market Evangelism Misses About Human Nature, by Peter Ubel M.D. Explores the myth of human rationality that has dominated economic thinking, calling for a serious reassessment of the frequent conflict between liberty and happiness in modern life. (Harvard Business School Press)
• MEN ARE NOT THE ENEMY: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, by Jennifer Scanlon . A biography of Helen Gurley Brown, author of the 1962 bestseller Sex and the Single Girl and longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, which places her at the heart of the modern feminist movement. (Oxford University Press)
• ELEPHANT BREAKDOWN: Animals in Crisis, Humanity in Charge, by Gay Bradshaw . About our treatment of and attitudes toward wild and domesticated animals. (Yale University Press)
• WHEN EVIL CAME TO GOOD HART: An Up North Michigan Cold Case, by Mardi Link . An atmospheric examination of the unsolved 1968 murder of an entire family and its impact on the residents and wealthy summer visitors of a woodsy resort community. (University of Michigan Press)
• ON MONSTERS, by Stephen Asma. Tracing the cultural and un-natural history roots of the some of the most frightening monsters to haunt humankind, from Alexander’s fear of saw-backed hippos and talking trees, to Darwin’s freaks and Frankensteins, right up to the present day variety that lurk under the bed. (Oxford University Press)
• IN PRAISE OF COPYING, by Marcus Boon. Taking a wide view of the role of copying in human civilization; addressing issues surrounding copyright, intellectual property, plagiarism, file-sharing, sampling, counterfeiting, fair use, appropriation; and arguing that copying is an essential part of being human and worthy of celebration. (Harvard University Press)
• MEN TO BOYS: THE MAKING OF MODERN IMMATURITY, by Gary S. Cross. About how popular culture went from Cary Grant to Hugh Grant and turned permanent adolescence into a market. (Columbia University Press)
• BEFORE TRAGEDY STRIKES: The Quest for Predicting Megadisasters, by Florin Diacu . Explaining how researchers are struggling to forecast these events and minimize the damage they produce. (Princeton University Press)
• TWO LIVES: Gertrude and Alice, by Janet Malcolm. A nuanced account of the legendary couple’s relationship, with emphasis on their mysterious survival during World War II; paired with a reading of Stein’s modernist masterpiece, The Making of Americans. (Yale University Press)