University Press Week 2015 Blog Tour Roundup, Days 1 and 2

The 2015 University Press Week blog tour is off to a great start, with more presses participating than ever before! As in previous years, a theme is selected for each weekday and various university presses sign up to post on the theme of their choice. Each of the first two days have gone off without a hitch, and there have been a ton of fascinating posts so far on both the Monday’s theme (Surprising!) and Tuesday’s (The Future of Scholarly Publishing). We’ve collected all the posts from the first two days below, so you can #ReadUP!

Monday: Surprising!

At The Florida Bookshelf, the University Press of Florida takes us on a food tour of Florida through seven of their exciting (and surprising!) cookbooks.

At the University Press of New England’s UPNEblog, Marketing Manager Tom Haushalter tells the story of the remarkable experience of marketing Marc Solomon’s Winning Marriage: The Inside Story of How Same-Sex Couples Took on the Politicians and Pundits—and Won while “marriage equality had ascended to being the most important social movement of its time.”

Steve Yates, the Marketing Director of the University Press of Mississippi also has a surprising story to tell: how UPM collaborated with Mississippi booksellers and newspapers to create a “Mississippi Bestsellers List” that would feature writing by Mississippians about Mississippi.

The University Press of Kentucky took a novel and, dare I say, surprising approach to the topic. Rather than write an article for their post, they created a quiz centered around surprising facts about university press publishing.

The University of Nebraska Press also went a non-traditional route: they had all UNP employees answer an anonymous survey and created an infographic displaying the surprising results!

Finally, the University of Wisconsin Press blog discusses one of their most surprising booklists: mystery fiction!

Tuesday: The Future of Scholarly Publishing

Through the story of a still-unpublished manuscript he received early in his career, Indiana University Press director Gary Dunham discusses what he sees as the heart of academic publishing, both now and in the future: the ability to listen to and collaborate with important voices inside and outside of the academic world.

At the OUPblog, Editorial Director Sophie Goldsworthy runs through a number of the most important changes (often seen as negative changes) in the scholarly publishing landscape (the decline of library budgets, the rise of demand-driven publishing, the democratizing force of the Internet, to emphasize what an exciting time this is for the publishing industry.

At the George Mason University Press blog, John Warren discusses a global survey on the use of digital tools in research workflow, and encourages scholars and publishers to take part.

The University Press of Colorado blog has reposted a particularly relevant article considering the 50th anniversary of UPC, the past of the press, and concerns and hopes for the future.

University Press of Kansas Director Charles Myers considers the balance, both now and in the future, of what OUP president Niko Pfund calls “inter- and intra-tribal publications.”

At the University of North Carolina Press blog, UNC Press director John Sherer makes a compelling case for the continued financial support for the process of scholarly peer review, even when education budgets are being slashed all around the country.

Should university presses take an active approach to the acquisition and publication of scholarly books? West Virginia University Press Director Derek Krissoff certainly believes so, and in his post he makes the case for the continued importance of UP acquisitions editorial departments.

At the JHU Press blog, Editorial Director Greg Britton notes the difficulties we have always had in attempting to predict the future with any specificity, but does guess that, in the future, format will continue to matter less and less, and that content will become more and more interactive.

Finally, the second day of the UP Week blog tour wrapped up with a post from Direct Mail Manager Jason Bennett, who makes the case that university presses can continue to occupy a crucial spot in the publishing world: that of risk-takers.