The University of Scranton Press is closing, The Scranton Times-Tribune reported. According to the paper, the publishing operation is “a victim of financial pressures and shifting priorities” at the university.
“Basically, it was a budgetary decision. We are a tuition-driven institution, and these are tough economic times,” Harold Baillie, the university’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, told the paper. “Our main priority is the education of our students, and that takes precedence in the distribution of our resources.”
Baillie indicated that the press had become too expensive. “It just reached the point where we could not sustain the losses in the face of our other priorities,” he told the Times-Tribune. The press will finish production on the books it has in the works before it shuts down, he said.
Founded 22 years ago, the press has published some 200 books, the paper said. The publisher’s list is strong in books of regional interest and in scholarly work that intersects with the university’s Jesuit tradition. For instance, fairly recent publications include a biography of the mystic, philosopher, and saint Edith Stein and a book about the European immigrants who worked northeastern Pennsylvania’s coal mines in the early 20th century.
Not currently a member of the Association of American University Presses, the Scranton press belongs to the Association of Jesuit University Presses. That group includes two relatively large publishing operations—Georgetown University Press and Fordham University Press—as well as smaller presses such as Creighton University Press and Marquette University Press. Richard Brown, who directs the Georgetown press, described the association as a low-key group that meets once a year to discuss matters such as cooperative advertising strategies for religion-focused books and journals.—Jennifer Howard
UPDATE 8/16: The Rev. Joseph F. Chorpenning, the editorial director of St. Joseph’s University Press and the current president of the AJUP, sent the Chronicle a comment about the Scranton situation via email. “Together with teaching and research, scholarly publishing is one of the three integral components of the academic mission of a great university,” he wrote. “The rank-and-tenure system is dependent on scholarly rather than commercial publishing, and universities have a responsibility to do their share by allocating appropriate resources to support scholarly publishing. Jesuit universities in particular have a rich, indeed enviable, tradition, dating to the 16th century, of fostering scholarly research and publication, and they would do well to carry this tradition into the future. What’s happened at the University of Scranton is regrettable.”
Follow PageView through your favorite RSS reader: 
11 Responses to U. of Scranton Press to Shut Down
paievoli - August 16, 2010 at 4:08 pm
If they would have simply gone digital a year ago they would still be in business. The entire market is shifting. All university presses have to shift along or they will simply go away. This is a form of incunabula. This is a seismic shift.
11159995 - August 16, 2010 at 5:11 pm
This first comment reflects the all too widespread myth that e-publishing is cheaper than print publishing. It is not. The 30% of costs that are related to print format are replaced by the IT costs that it takes to do e-publishing successfully. And the e-book market has yet to reach 5% of total sales revenues for most publishers including university presses. Going digital is not the panacea that many people think it is.—Sandy Thatcher, former director of Penn State University Press and co-director of its Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing
paievoli - August 16, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Sandy – False. Very simply false and it is merely a misrepsentation of facts. First of all if you aren’t using IT to archive your data then where is it being stored and why isn’t it the same allocation of expense and budget? Second – the eBook market basically shut down Barnes & Noble if you don’t believe that please review the WSJ article concerning that. Third – Why did Dorchester albeit not what one would call a scholarly publication although it does have the expense of any other printer/publisher go completely digital. Fiifth – why is Pete Hamill a 75 year old writer/journalist going completely digital with his next book? I just completed 5 eBooks for the children’s book market all five books cost me less than $2000 to prep and distribute? I understand research costs but they exist whether the end product is digital or paper. I have been in the print/publishing industry for 32 years. Trust me digital is much more inexpensive to produce than print. Entire industries do not go under simply due to a fad or without doing their homework. It is just too big of an operation to not forecast profitability. This is what I have taught for the last 3 decades and made my living at as well. Please do not move numbers around to facilitate a belief or preference it is too costly nationally and globally. Remember Negroponte – are you int he bit or atom business, and that was in 1995. Surely the director/founder of the MIT Medi Lab knows a bit about the dispensing of content?
tee_bee - August 17, 2010 at 12:41 am
paievoli: a series of anecdotes, snippets, and N=1 examples doesn’t constitute a trend, particularly when it seems very clear from what you write that you have much experience with the scholarly book market. Very, very few textbooks and scholarly books are electronic now. The trend is moving that way, but remember, the savings–if there are any–are often offset by demands that the e-book be cheaper. Sandy makes it crystal clear that the production of the physical book is largely offset by increased IT costs. This isn’t the same as just printing everything as a PDF. If the publisher is all electronic, the costs are still substantial, particularly if the press tries to manage its DRM itself. You also suggest that IT is a fixed cost–that once it’s bought, it’s all paid for. This is so clearly wrong that it barely merits a response–IT has to scale too, and while there may be some economies of scale, it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. I am afraid that your experience–children’s e-books–just simply isn’t the same thing as serious scholarly publication. With that in mind, it might be best not to accuse people of lying, when your own expertise is, at best, doubtful.And if we had a dollar for every time Negroponte made a claim that was overbroad or just wrong, we could subsidize U of Scranton Press. And Negroponte doesn’t really know much about digital publishing anyway. I’m not impressed.
paievoli - August 17, 2010 at 1:59 am
tee-bee -How about a 13,000 page encyclopedia by McGraw-Hill? One that is used throughout hundreds of schools across the nation. Is that scholarly and impressive enough? The sixth version of EST was taken digital – taken to CD-ROM in 1987 by my division at the insistence of a brilliant editor Sybil Parker. Please look it up. That was 23 years ago. It wasn’t just a chance venture it later won awards for its innovation. Let’s see an encyclopedia that had hundreds of peer-reviewed scholarly articles obviously from every discipline in the world of science and technology. The original print production cost was $200.00 the CD-ROM version cost $4.95 to produce. Is that a good enough margin? Why do you think these things are going digital? Do you really think all of these scholarly publishers – Pearson, MH, Wiley are going digital just for giggles? Or are all of the textbook publishers not scholarly, we just use the books in class? Or better yet we get a textbook deal and have our students buy the book and yet again it is not scholarly? We just wrote it and had it printed and published?If you want to stay where you are wonderful, I hope nobody minds if the rest of us go forward. Isn’t the purpose of education to make progress? To meld together different thoughts and philosphies and at the end of the day progress to a new way of thinking or is it just to hold onto what we know without any motion?Dr. Negroponte doesn’t know anything about scholarly publishing? Dr. Nicholas Negroponte the founder of an MIT program, world reknown author doesn’t know anything about scholarly publishing? MIT the home of Leonardo – and the press that printed Lev Manovich’s “The Language of New Media”…Leonardo one of the first online publications… all of these people do not know about scholarly publishing? FirstMonday.org – with Esther Dyson – none of these people know anything about scholarly publishing? IT costs if anything go down over time. Technology gets less expensive over time. Douglas Englehardt? Again I guess someone who knows nothing about scholarly publishing… I am storing gigabytes worth of data in the cloud for close to nothing. I am linking my articles to thousands of scholarly writings for close to nothing. I can research from numerous articles – peer-reviewed and vetted for just the cost of doing the research which I would do anyway from a physical book. And all of this is not scholarly? The old model is gone. Time to move forward. Education is not just for the one’s who can afford it. It is now virtual and accessible for anyone with the desire and intelligence to go look for it.Amazing…
11159995 - August 17, 2010 at 11:27 am
There are reasons other than cost to go digital–which is why the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing was set up at Penn State. Indeed, it is a pioneering effort in experimenting with the “open access” publication of scholarly monographs. But it should be chastening that its business model, like that of many other OA experiments, right now depends on the sale of POD versions of the OA works. However you slice it,”first copy” costs for a scholarly monograph constitute about 70% of the overall costs of publishing a scholarly monograph, and every university press director knows this. But even costs like marketing do not disappear in an electronic environment. Indeed, if anything, marketing may become more important simply because there is such a vast ocean of digital content now available (over 700,000 new e-books self-published in 2009, according to Bowker). True, some publications like encyclopedias do not make much sense to do in print form anymore, but the reasons have much more to do with the ability to update constantly and the ease of search than with simple cost savings; functionality is what mostly explains the migration to digital. If cost were the main driver, then explain to me why scholarly books have not gone digital at nearly the same rate as scholarly journals.—Sandy Thatcher
paievoli - August 17, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Because of the people behind them. EMarketing is considerably less cost prohibitive then traditional print marketing. Simply there is no printing cost. The lists cost the same, the hours are the same to write and send the material however there are no printing costs associated with the production of the materials. I was a prepress manager as well. Paper, ink, press time, postage, warehousing, etc. Don’t these all have costs associated with them? Or was it free to put soemthing on press?I completely agree with “open access”, have since I did my thesis on it in 1996. OA is the only way to go.Functionality is key, I agree but even more with venues like Flipboard.com – not a scholarly environment at the moment. However eBooks are already DOA. If it isn’t dynamic it won’t last. This is moving at a rate that is almost incomprehensible. Disruptive technology, not in love with the term, prefer Progressive Technology. Everything will be updated on a daily basis. Researchers will provide the content. The only reason for archival is to limit access. Alternative revenue streams, a new model must be adopted. The cash and carry world is over and it is reflected in all models of commerce. Products are no longer atomic they are bits. Again Negroponte in 95.Firstmonday.org has known this and has been working in this space since 1995 as well. The new group coming up – gen-i – knows this as well. IEPs were once considered a blemish they are now called MLPs and are becoming the norm for teaching. School of One – Joel Rose. Education and all of its ancillary parts are going forward at a rate that desperately needs guidance. If we continue to hamper or ignore it will pass us bye and many will suffer from the ignorance. We need to not only get on the bus but we have to drive it.BTW, we have not even spoken about the onslaught of visual learners and how they adopt to the capabilities of digital content. Dewey anybody? I am not saying reach down I am saying make it workable. If not just go back to clay tablets, what do we need with papyrus anyway? Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts. It changes all the time. Dewey – student experience…. If we do not understand their exerience then how do we create scholarly content that hopefully will be used to further their education? You don’t write a book about surfing without getting wet. Have to experience the environment before you can deliver to it.My lecture this fall is entitled “The Digital Incunabula” looking forward to it.
jeff1 - August 17, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Wow “paievoli” has all the answers! We should turn this all over to him and he will have us ship shape in no time. We are all just brainless Ludites anyway and don’t have the experience or smarts to address this problem anyway. I am so glad people like “paievoli” are out there as life would be so dull without them and their confidence and hubris.
paievoli - August 17, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I only have the answers because I have done it. I have staked my livelihood on it. I have provided for my family by doing it. Isn’t that real scholarly research? There is an old saying “if you have the facts bang the facts if you don’t have the facts bang the table” it sound like the table is about to come undone….
levinjames - August 18, 2010 at 8:48 am
This table will need more than a ‘shim’ to stabelize it!Technology = Relevancy. Embrace the technology. It creates opportunity.Either way, these changes will occur.Wouldn’t it make sense to see it happen w/out resistance and ignorance?
sullivab - August 19, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Rice is closing its digital press. http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Rice-U-to-Close-Its-Digital/26342/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en(Cue paievoli)