From the issue dated September 20, 2002
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University Presses Take Different Approaches to Making CutsBy SCOTT McLEMEEAcademic publishing is where developments in scholarship meet the bottom line. Presses struggle with increased production costs, falling sales, and diminished subsidies from sponsoring universities. Scholars must make calculations of a different kind. What areas of research will satisfy not only their curiosity but also the demands of the profession? Should a given project be turned into a journal article, or is it worth the risk of developing the argument into a "tenure-track hardback"? Either way, a scholar's thinking will be shaped, in part, by the work peers have managed to publish -- if the library can afford their books. As budgets tighten, the people making editorial policy at university presses find themselves playing an unaccustomed and disagreeable role. They have always been proud of influencing scholarship by helping new ideas see the light of day. But now they face the challenge of determining which specialties no longer make the cut. At the State University of New York Press, James Peltz, the editor in chief, wants to put that moment of truth off. "We're committed to all of the fields in which we publish," he says. "We may do fewer titles in some of them, but there's no decision on that yet." He notes that sales of SUNY's titles in a few disciplines, including religion, philosophy, and education, remain relatively strong. But the key word is "relatively." Mr. Peltz calls the situation "just terrible," while declining to release precise figures. "Sales were bad anyway because of the recession, and they got worse after September 11." Over the past year, the press has laid off two people and not replaced three others who departed, leaving the staff at 35. Among those lost was one of the press's six acquisitions editors. Mr. Peltz says that it "may be a matter of time" before it becomes necessary to cut areas of scholarship that the press can no longer handle, though he is reluctant to speculate on which fields. At Stanford University Press, the reconfiguration of scholarly knowledge is well under way. Geoffrey Burn, who was hired as director in 2000, runs through a long and precisely calibrated set of changes in its list. Some areas, such as linguistics, the history of science, and Slavic literature, are being phased out entirely. Egyptology too, he says, is "a goner." But other cuts resemble the slices made by a microsurgeon with a laser. "Gender studies, as embedded within critical theory or history, we will keep," he says, "but not publish gender studies in their own right." Books on Latin American topics will remain part of the history list, but not the literature list. Area studies are fading from the Stanford catalog -- with one huge exception: "Asian studies will continue to be a strong area of focus for us pretty well across the board, including Asian-American studies." The two publishers make an interesting contrast. The authors in Stanford's list include many of the most influential names in contemporary thought. While SUNY's catalog has its share of prestigious figures, a larger percentage of its titles are monographs of interest to specialists, often by scholars whose careers are just starting. In 1997, SUNY published 224 titles to Stanford's 110, according to figures reported by the Association of American University Presses. Over the past five years, that gap has narrowed somewhat; Stanford issued 120 books this year, while SUNY published 206. The growth or drop of almost 10 percent each may reflect differences in how each pays its bills. Stanford receives a subsidy from its parent institution, while SUNY is self-supporting. For all of their differences, Stanford and SUNY share some striking similarities. Both have backlists covering many fields in the humanities and social sciences. While as happy as any other press to have their books adopted in upper-division courses, both have left the textbook market to others. Neither publishes scholarly journals -- a sometimes highly profitable venture, but one involving considerable overhead expense. Nor has either press gambled on the potentially lucrative market in trade books, as many university publishers have over the past decade or so. (For every successful cookbook or deluxe volume of coffee-table scholarship, there is a warehouse full of academic-press titles returned by chain bookstores.) In short, both presses have traditionally concentrated on works by and for scholars. So observers in the world of academic publishing have taken note of a recent change in the Stanford catalog: the emergence of a new focus on areas including economics, finance, business, law, and public policy. The shift reflects the influence of Mr. Burn, a successful commercial publisher with a background in management science. Mr. Burn emphasizes that the change in Stanford's list is not simply a matter of abandoning some areas (for example, ancient history, ornithology, and contemporary European politics) to make room for others that are more profitable. "Our business list focuses very squarely on questions of organization -- organizational theory, organizational development, strategy, management," he says. "That sits very comfortably alongside, and meshes with, our sociology [list] as it's now developing, because it too focuses on organization, the sociology of work, and cultural sociology." Likewise, Asian studies could prove a rewarding field, intellectually and otherwise. A monograph on Chinese business law, for example, might be of interest not only to both Sinologists and legal scholars, but also to people in business schools and practicing lawyers. "Our purpose is primarily to create and disseminate new knowledge, principally for scholars," Mr. Burn says. "But we also have the opportunity to ask who else can consume that knowledge. The question is how we can occupy that unique space between rigorous scholarship and the realms of [nonacademic] professional practice." It is a pressing question. Stanford University "is continuing to invest during this period of reorientation for the press, in the form of increased subsidies," but only until 2006, says Mr. Burn. "At the end of our strategic-plan period, we should be operating on a basis that costs the university nothing," he says. "Eventually, we would like to make a financial contribution to the institution." Even after the catalog's disciplinary mix has been revised, and the professional niches for its books all carefully target-marketed, at least half of Stanford University Press's output will remain pure scholarship -- titles that can be considered successful if they break even. Meanwhile, at SUNY Press, the recession is affecting the shape of scholarship rather more bluntly. One scholarly species in particular is on the verge of extinction: the literary-critical monograph focusing on the works of one author. A dip into SUNY's backlist, for example, turns up an analysis of "fragmentation and dualism in The Four Zoas," William Blake's longest and least-read poem. "Nobody's buying them," says Mr. Peltz, the editor in chief. "Academic libraries aren't, and even specialists don't feel the need to keep up with them." It is a sentiment often heard from academic publishers, but its implications are more dire coming from SUNY, where such monographs have long been a staple. If highly specialized works have no audience, it doesn't necessarily follow that "interdisciplinarity" will make the cash registers ring. "Interdisciplinary work is definitely the way scholars are moving now," Mr. Peltz says, "but it presents its own problems." For one thing, getting the word out is more expensive and time-consuming. "With a narrower book, you buy the mailing lists appropriate to the discipline, you put an ad in such-and-such a journal, and that's it. With an interdisciplinary volume, you have at least twice as much of an audience to reach. And then sometimes you turn out to upset people in two fields. It's a crapshoot." Over the past three years, Mr. Peltz notes, the press has published about 200 titles annually. This year, he says, "it will be in the range of 160 to 180 books. And I'm thinking more like 160." The prospect of shutting down a section or two of the catalog is clearly one that Mr. Peltz dreads. For now, he sounds unhappy enough at the thought of publishing 40 fewer books, whatever the topics. "That's a fifth of the list," he says. "That's maybe 20 assistant professors who won't have a book." Nor, implicitly, a job. http://chronicle.com Section: Special Report Volume 49, Issue 4, Page A12
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education