The Unscholarly World of ScKolarly Publishingrnby Gregory McNameern•” A – ^llkrnUniversity presses are in trouble these days. Beset by a declinern(intellectual and numerical) in the specialized academicrnreadership to which they have always catered, encounteringrnrising production and overhead costs, and supportedrnwith fewer and fewer dollars from their parent administrations,rnmany of them now face the prospect of closing their doors or remakingrnthemselves so that they no longer publish the work theyrnwere created to publish in the first place—namely, scholarlyrnbooks for scholarly readers.rnThe days, golden for a certain breed of academic, are longrnpast when university presses served as printers for on-campusrnscholars—who would, the legend has it, drop off a manuscriptrnon some abstruse subject and return some months later to pickrnup bovrnd copies of their book. And gone, or rapidly disappearingrn(and rightly so), are the days when university presses actedrnmainly as gatekeepers not so much of the general culture but ofrnacademic staffing, publication by a reputable press once havingrnbeen nearly a guarantee of tenure.rnThose were the hallmarks of moneyed days, and those daysrnare past. University presses now can take very few risks on meritoriousrnwork meant for small audiences. Driven by the need tornfund their own operations, given the choice between publishingrna second-rate book by an established scholar or a first-raternwork by a newcomer, many now must resign themselves to thernformer, if only to pay the lighting bill.rnViewed in the commercial terms that are now brought tornbear on them, universit- presses have always been in trouble.rnSpecializing in books that almost by definition have hny audiences,rnoperating on slender margins, most have in the past beenrnsatisfied just to break even. Presses with large endowmentsrnGregory McNd7nee has vvorfeed in scholarly and trade publinhingrnand bookselling since the early I970’s. His most recent bookrnis Grand Canyon Place-Names (Mountaineers Press).rn(Stanford, Harvard) and the so-called Bible presses (Oxford,rnCambridge) with strong backlists had less to worry about thanrnthe little houses attached to land-grant colleges and universities,rnbut even the majors are scrambling these days to tighten theirrnbelts and generate greater incomes.rnThings were not always so tight. WTien I went to work for arnuniversity press in 1981, it was still customary for large staffs directedrnby dilettantes or retirees from commercial publishing tornlavish inordinate attention on the few titles they published eachrnyear. Parent institutions subsidized their presses without complaint,rnhome-campus authors were able to find a home for theirrnwork right next door, and young editors were able to undertakerna program of leisurely apprenticeship that educated them in allrnaspects of publishing. Those days were the last gasps of a generationrnof educational largesse, the golden age of universityrnpresses. It is long gone as well, a time, misty in memory for allrnbut a few working members of the universit^’-press community’,rnwhen the federal government, threatened by Russia’s Sputnik 1rnlaunch, poured millions and millions of dollars into Americanrnuniversities to train scientists and general scholars alike. Textbooksrnwere cheap (I still have a shelf of Harper Torchbooks paperbacksrnfrom the early 1970’s, thick academic books with coverrnprices under three dollars), audiences were large, andrnpublishers could issue almost anything they cared to with thernknowledge that they could count on selling at least 1,500 copiesrnof most books, even the most specialized monographs, throughrnstanding orders to university and research libraries.rnThings are much different today. Federal money goes morernto research than to general education. Textbooks are so expensivernthat many instructors prefer to make “course packets” ofrnphotocopied materials rather than burden their students withrncosts that verge on hardship. University presses can count on libraryrnstanding orders of, on average, no more than 150 copiesrnof a specialized title. And then there is the problem of declin-rnMAY 1998/27rnrnrn