Layoffs and Restructuring Hit Harvard U. Press

Harvard University Press, one of the most prestigious scholarly publishers, has done away with seven positions as the university as a whole faces hard times. The lost jobs include three in marketing, one in sales, one in design, and two in editorial, according to William P. Sisler, the press’s director. The editorial layoffs did not include acquisitions editors, Mr. Sisler said, “and did not affect the composition of the list.”

The layoffs are part of a broader, institution-wide purge of jobs at Harvard, which eliminated 275 positions in late June, with more downsizing to come. The poor economy played a part in the layoffs at the press, but Mr. Sisler said that his shop had been rethinking its strategies and structure before the downturn.

“Even before the economy really began to tank last fall, we were already engaged in planning for the changed and changing publishing environment,” Mr. Sisler wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle. “Then the bad stuff hit, the university saw its endowment drop, and our small segment of that obviously dropped as well, sales decreased, etc., etc., and the change process was expedited.”

In a sign of how book marketing has changed, the restructuring hit the press’s publicity operation hardest. “We have reconstituted the group formerly known as publicists into ‘media specialists’ to reflect the fact that much of the activity of getting books exposed has moved on to the Web and into social media,” Mr. Sisler said.