Pressing On

University publishers tackle digital revolution

by Jean B. Eggemeyer
November 16, 2009

The Model T and the Amazon Kindle may share space in the history books of the future as technologies that transformed an industry. And, rather than printed books, those future histories are likely to be electronic files.

Gabriel Dotto, Michigan State University Press.

Gabriel Dotto, director of Michigan State University Press in East Lansing, compares the advent of electronic book readers, like the Kindle and Sony Reader, to the rise of the automobile. Ford Motor Company sold only 1,700 cars in its first year of production, yet the automobile quickly became a required piece of machinery.

Today, it’s almost impossible to find exact sales figures for the new e-readers because, Dotto believes, the makers don’t want to publish numbers that would be “demoralizing.” Yet, like cars, e-readers are destined to become ubiquitous, he believes.

So with nervous excitement mixed with a bit of fatigue and apprehension, the directors of Michigan’s three venerable university presses are diving boldly into the future of publishing. Once sleepy operations grinding out the scholarly works of their respective universities’ professors, in recent years the presses have broadened their scopes, refocused their missions and begun retooling their business models.

None of the three has strayed far from its core function — to publish and disseminate quality, peer-reviewed knowledge from scholars (now located anywhere in the world) — nor do they want to, but how they accomplish this mission is undergoing tremendous change.

This reorientation is due, in part, to budget pressures brought on by the state’s prolonged economic problems — made more acute by the national recession — and increasingly uncertain state higher education funding levels, which trickle down to their bottom lines. It’s also due to significant market and readership transformations. But the biggest catalyst for change is the technology tsunami engulfing the publishing industry.

E-Publishing
Electronic publishing — making works available online or for electronic book readers, smart phones and the vast array of other digital devices — holds the potential to greatly increase the presses’ ability to more widely disseminate their books and journals.

The flip side is that there are many, potentially damaging, unknowns, including whether or not revenue traditionally generated from book sales, which are declining significantly, can be made up with e-book sales.

“There is a whole series of aspects of the technology challenge,” explains Phil Pochoda, director of the Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan Press, which is the largest of the three Michigan presses, publishing about 140 new books per year with a staff of 33. “We need to draw up a new business model, develop a new technology model, a new production process model…it calls everything into question and forces us to scrutinize — literally — everything we do.”

Phil Pochoda, University of Michigan Press.

“This is a world-transforming moment,” he adds. “We’re in the middle of that tipping point.”

Jane Hoehner, director of the smaller Wayne State University Press in Detroit, which produces about 35 new books and six journals per year with its staff of 17, concurs. “How we get to electronic publishing is so multifaceted…most of our progress is just questions and ideas we’re thinking about.

“This isn’t even anything new, really, but we’re at this critical point where the economy is as it is and the book industry is as it is. Book sales are dropping off and, with things like iPhones and Kindles, people want their content in different ways on all sorts of different platforms. We are trying to figure out how, as a small, traditionally scholarly book press with limited resources, we can make that move.”

Dotto, who has directed the 62-year-old Michigan State University Press for two and a half years, has a unique perspective on the technology transformation. His 30 years of experience in the publishing industry include time spent in music publishing, which has been beset by controversy over access, illegal downloads and copyright issues.

“Sooner or later, we will be seeing the same thing with books that we saw with music — illegal downloads, illegal sharing — and the next step will be a societal change,” says Dotto. “We’re starting to see this already…[with questions such as] why should there be copyrights? What rights should authors have on their intellectual property and for how long? And that’s always been a huge battle because intellectual property is intangible and, of course, that worries authors.”

“[Illegal downloading] causes you to take a very hard look at what your core business really is…At the end of the day, are we publishers of books or are we judges, editors and disseminators of information in whatever format? Obviously that is our core business.

“Right now the business model is scary for everyone because the electronic formats are so diverse and no one wants to risk choosing BETA over VHS.”

Contrary to public and author perception, it is expensive to get into e-publishing, the directors explain. Sending books to be printed and bound is not a large part of the cost that goes into a book, particularly a time-consuming, peer-reviewed academic title. Reformatting book titles, especially if the presses include their many hundreds of previously published works, involves an enormous amount of time and, thus, money.

“As publishers we are being extremely cautious,” says Dotto, “because we can’t throw millions of dollars into experiments that go absolutely nowhere. But, on the other hand, we want to do the best we possibly can for our authors.”

1.5 million+ copies sold

3,000 in print

The large, national trade publishers can expect to sell more than 1 million copies of their popular political books, such as Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope or A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity by Bill O’Reilly.

Michigan’s three university presses are tickled pink (or maize and blue, green and white or green and gold) if their politics- and policy-related books reach more than 1,000 copies sold.

The bread and butter of the presses has traditionally been academic books, particularly those that become required texts for courses. In decades past, the presses could count on selling 750–1,000 copies of every academic book produced. A few years ago, that number fell to around 300, and now it can be as few as 100.

“Library budgets are dramatically falling back,” says Pochoda, who has been with the 40-year-old U-M Press for eight years. “The other thing that has hurt us is that the used book market has been heavily organized and rationalized in the last few years. Now more than half the books that are bought for courses are used books, which means money right out of our pockets. The two historically primary sales channels have really been decimated.”

“Now the issue is,” he continues, “can the digital channels pick up some of the slack? The answer is we hope so, we need it to be so, but we’re not sure. All publishers are in that bind. We have the investment in digital capacity and resources and severe uncertainty as to whether the revenue will be there. And we have to learn how to monetize these digital materials.”

In a recent reorganization, each of the publishing entities at the University of Michigan, including the press, was brought under the umbrella of the U-M Library. With the reorganization, the press is now committed to providing free and open access to view its books. Readers, once they find books they’re interested in, will be provided options to order all or portions of the books in a variety of formats, including digital and print options. By December of this year the press expects to have 500 e-books available for digital sale and distribution and expects that number to grow to 1,500 in a year.

“Rental” options also will be available on the U-M Press website, which will also host its e-books. Readers will be able to purchase full access to text in any electronic format for 30 days, 180 days or to purchase books outright.

Wayne State University Press is working with a third-party consultant to guide the organization through its transition to e-books for new titles and, similar to U-M Press, is partnering with the Wayne State Library to provide the college community access to its titles.

“We’re trying to make the case with the administration that we really have to adapt our business model [to e-publishing] and we have to try to anticipate what we can expect in the future,” says Hoehner.

“There is a smaller group of [university presses such as Wayne and U-M] that are outside the mainstream thinking and really back open access,” she adds. “In my opinion, open access is at the crux of what we’re doing — scholarship and the distribution of research and knowledge — you want it to be as widely available as possible.

“There is, of course, the very legitimate point of the value-added that we provide. Are we putting a lot in and then, what happens if you don’t sell the material; how do you make up for that? We’re experimenting with these questions with the libraries, which is great.”

MSU Press is diving “whole hog” into e-publishing and will have 200 of its books available digitally by December. With its journals, the press hopes to bring cutting-edge information to light more quickly through electronic means. Rather than holding a completed article until all the other articles in the issue are written and reviewed, as occurs with print journals, the press hopes to post scholarship as soon as it’s been vetted to foster online discussion.

“The electronic format brings publishers quite directly into the dynamic discussion process of cutting-edge fields,” says Dotto.

Chasing Dollars
Prior to their reorientations to address technology transformations, the presses had already been honing their areas of expertise and searching for new channels to make up for declining academic book sales.

Each press has a handful of scholarly areas where it excels and where there is little competition from other presses — whether from colleague presses in Michigan or presses located elsewhere around the world.

WSU Press’ strengths are in Jewish, African American, film and television, and fairy tale studies. U-M Press focuses on English as a second language, economics and nationally focused books on social, political and cultural issues. MSU Press is strong in environmental, African and American Indian studies.

There is some crossover, however, between the three in-state presses, particularly in the area of Michigan and Great Lakes life and history. But the rivalry is characterized by the directors as friendly.

“We each really have a distinct focus in the regional studies,” explains Hoehner, who was named director of the 68-year-old Wayne State University Press in 2002 after serving as acquisitions manager since 1999. “And we’re quite collaborative. We can look at something and say to the author, you’d be better suited going [to another in-state press].”

Among the three presses’ regional titles are works ranging from water ecology to urban architecture to Michigan flora and fauna and true crime novels.

All three “presses” have outsourced the actual printing and binding of their titles for many years. It just so happens that a primary cluster of academic printers is in the Ann Arbor area, so each press is able to use Michigan-based printers for many of its books.

Peer reviewed, scholarly titles still make up the majority of books the presses publish, but roughly 20 percent of their works are also intended for a non-academic audience. By expanding into areas of more general interest, the presses hoped to capture wider audiences, elevate their stature and increase revenues. For the most part, they’ve succeeded.

MSU Press, which employs 15 people full time and publishes 34 books and 11 journals per year, has had great success with contemporary poetry titles in recent years, for example.

A book of poems by Heid E. Erdrich, National Monuments, sold out its first print run of 1,500 — a large quantity for any university press run, but particularly for a challenging poetry book. Another poetry title, She Walks into the Sea by Patricia Clark, has become a top seller in international poetry circles.

There are also challenges inherent in producing general interest titles that call into question the continued viability of that market channel.

WSU Press launched its general interest imprint, Painted Turtle (named after the state reptile), in 2004. Painted Turtle books don’t go through the editorial board process and can be produced more quickly.

Jane Hoehner, Wayne State University Press.

“Those titles are a business decision and an interesting experiment,” says Hoehner. “They are our ‘big books’ — our beautiful, expensive trade books and they are typically much more demanding and need more handling. There is so much more on the back end with marketing and sales efforts.

“It really takes a lot out of us. We get quite a bit back, but we’re trying to figure out if that [channel] makes a lot of sense.”

WSU Press has made another foray into general interest that is doing well, however. Its Made in Michigan Writers Series, now nearly five years old, was the brainchild of in-house acquisitions editor Annie Martin.

“We would get a lot of material into our Great Lakes submissions queue that would be interesting and well done, but we didn’t do fiction, so we would send authors to U-M,” explains Hoehner. “So then we thought, we’re turning some really great books away and there is not a real home or promotion for in-state authors, so we launched this series.

“Every aspect of every book in the series is made in Michigan — the authors live here or are from here, the cover design art is by Michigan artists and they are typeset, designed, printed and bound in-state. It’s the publishing version of the slow food movement, and it’s done very well for us,” she says.

U-M Press has had success with its regional titles, but struggles now with its nationally focused books.

“National general interest books are now harder to sell successfully simply because the publicity channels — the book review sections [of newspapers and magazines] — have all but disappeared,” says Pochoda. “And the few that are left are unwilling to devote their scarce space to university presses. We do far fewer of those now.”

Support
The not-for-profit presses receive between 15 and 20 percent of their budgets — which total in the low millions — from their parent universities and are expected to generate the remainder through sales and other means.

As publicly funded universities experience budget pressures brought about by dwindling state support, recession-affected endowments and pressure to keep tuition increases palatable, the presses must make their case for support each budget cycle.

And, from the directors’ perspectives, that exercise is not difficult. The university presses provide a unique service that cannot and would not be duplicated by for-profit commercial publishers because of the economics of scholarly works. Oftentimes, the university presses’ books are aimed at a very small market and may not break even, yet are important additions to the discourse in their respective fields and serve to raise the parent university’s stature.

Most of the titles the presses publish go through a lengthy review process and editorial board oversight to ensure the content is of high quality and adds to the body of work in its field. The process can take anywhere from six months to five years. (One director admitted there are “horror stories” where it has taken decades to get a book in print.)

“It is terribly important — especially these days, when so much garbage is being thrown out on the Internet — to have beacons where you know that the vetting process has been long, careful and painful,” says Dotto.

“In the years since I’ve been here the [university] subsidy has been reduced,” says Hoehner. “There is a chance [of budget cuts] on an annual basis. It’s just something we know could happen; that’s just reality…

“On occasion I have to remind the administration what our mission is,” she adds. “They would love to see us publish the next Divinci Code. I have to explain that it’s just not realistic and here is what we do publish, why it’s important, why it’s specialized and why the university should be funding it. But I don’t really worry about us being shut down. If I did, it would be all I would do.”

The Wayne and MSU presses are also looking to endowed funds to help meet their budgets, and are allocated endowment officers through their universities.

“If I had some sugar daddy pop in with a $10-million general endowment, I could live off the interest,” says Hoehner. “It could conceivably replace the subsidy. The goal would be to get to where we could lessen the reliance on the university.”

Says Dotto, “We’ve come very late into the game…Many other presses have been able to [raise endowment funds] in much more flush times when it was much easier to find money. We’re working hard…to get us to the point where, between the mix of our basic investments and the income that we draw from books, it will put us very close to something that might be described as self-sufficient.”

Marketing Remake
Along with the e-publishing transformation, the presses also have had to reorient their marketing strategies to reach existing and new audiences.

“Increasingly, we’re using digital marketing in a variety of ways — e-mail blasts, podcasts, video podcasts, social networking sites — so that we have migrated the vast bulk of our marketing to the net,” says Pochoda.

The U-M Press academic marketing manager, Kris Bishop, noted that the press uses the “Obama method” to reach out to new markets — that is, collecting as many e-mail addresses and “slicing and dicing the list” to target just the market that will be interested in a particular title.

Heather Newman, trade marketing manager for U-M press, has had great success when she can entice authors to develop blogs, post YouTube videos and, in other ways, make themselves visible online.

“Our marketing folks are really ingenious,” Pochoda says. “They have done an amazing job with limited staff in exploiting the full range of net opportunities and options.”

At Wayne, staff members use an e-mail program to reach a list of about 3,500 to 4,000 people on a monthly basis, and the press updates its Facebook page daily. Hoehner is also in talks with vendors who can help the organization increase its electronic presence.

MSU Press has an agreement with Google Books, where about 60 of its titles are currently listed.

“We’ve noticed quite a bit of traffic has been routed to our website that I don’t think we would have had otherwise,” says Dotto. “Visitors can search for and see the book, read sample pages and then click through [to our site] and purchase it.”

All three presses also rely on traditional marketing methods. They each secure outside sales representatives to call on book sellers — mainly independent retailers in the Midwest and East Coast — to get titles on bookstore shelves. Internal salespeople focus on local stores and the larger national chains.

Face-to-face marketing is still important as well, both in the scholarly realm and in the general interest area, and the three presses still rely on print catalogs to reach distributors and customers directly.

As Dotto sums up, “The most important thing to our authors is how successful the dissemination is…At the end of the day we want to make sure everyone who could possibly be interested in a book has at least come to know about it, whether they purchase it or not.”

And the new e-publishing technology — despite its potential pitfalls — provides a remarkable opportunity to do just that.

“In fact, all of the presses have been preparing for change even before this [technology revolution],” explains Pochoda. “If you put the digital shift on top of the recession, it’s clear that the face of publishing is going to look very, very different even in three years, much less a decade. There are a lot of bets, a lot of speculation and false starts ahead, and I’m not sure how it’s going to play out.”

Despite the uncertainty, the directors of the three university presses remain remarkably calm — perhaps because they are preparing as best they can and, more importantly, believe wholeheartedly in their missions and their products as they press on into the digital storm.

Jean B. Eggemeyer owns communications and marketing firm Carillon Communications LLC, serving the business and association communities.