Kristin Lawrence is the editorial, design, and production manager at Wayne State University Press. She’s also a newly minted blogger. Over at her site, she promises to share some frank thoughts on life in the scholarly publishing trenches, the UP-library relationship, and other pressing matters.

Her first post on the subject, “On working at a university press,” tackles the ever-more-urgent question of what kind of business model—I’m using “business” in the loosest sense here—presses like Wayne State’s need to adopt in order to stay in the game:

The solution seems obvious: university presses should publish hyperlinked scholarship online for “free.” It’s really neither that obvious or that simple, of course. Note the quotes around “free.” Note the lack of funds forthcoming from our administrations to support “free.” Note the growing list of expensive-to-produce regional books we’d have to sell in large quantities to support “free.” Note the lack of staff experienced in converting and tagging Microsoft Word documents and knowledgeable about creating XML-authoring systems.

Stay tuned.