Peter Berkery, Executive Director of the Association of American University Presses, visited the University of Texas Press offices in Austin last week as part of his Mellon-funded tour of the AAUP member presses. Peter answered some questions about what he’s learned from his “Listening Tour,” the value of university presses to their host institutions, and advice for young professionals in scholarly publishing.
Follow the Listening Tour on the AAUP Digital Digest, and check out the University of Washington Press's Q&A with Peter from an earlier Listening Tour visit.
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Shiori Kawasaki, 2013
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Now that you are on the second leg of your Listening Tour, what is the most surprising or interesting thing that you have learned from the Presses you have visited?
It’s arcane, but the most surprising thing I’ve learned relates to my prior experience at Oxford University Press. People generally assume that size is what most sets OUP apart from other university presses. Of course size really does matter, but I’ve come to understand that the biggest differentiator is that OUP in the US is four thousand miles away from its parent institution. Being on campus, a direct part of the ecosystem, makes all the difference—and this is a factor that comes into play for many of our members.
What do you plan to do with all of the information that you are gathering?
Originally, the Listening Tour was intended to accelerate my learning curve. While I still have a lot to learn, I’m now 12 months in and I think people are expecting me to act on my newfound wisdom! So the information I accumulate will have several purposes. First, I will be reporting back to the Mellon Foundation (who funded this second leg of the Tour). Next, I’ll be reporting back to our Board, who will use my input to inform a pending revision to the AAUP Strategic Plan. Finally, I’ll base the specific program decisions we make to further the plan in part on what I’ve heard on the road.
One topic that comes up often among university presses is how to strengthen the relationship with our universities. How can AAUP help those in the academy better understand the role that university presses play in scholarly dialogue?
This is a great question, but a challenging one. First, the direct answer: AAUP needs to strengthen its relationships with other organizations that represent various elements of the academy—administrators, faculty, librarians, lawyers, finance officers, et cetera. It pains me to say this, but we’re barely on any of their radar screens. That said, a lot of the relationship-building work has to occur at the grassroots level, by individual presses. AAUP can equip university press leaders to do this critical work through training and toolkits, but the lifting has to happen on campus.
We have heard about a newly formed AAUP Early Career Group that is connecting young professionals in scholarly publishing for career networking and idea generating. What words of advice do you have for the ‘next generation’ of scholarly publishers?
The best career advice I’ve ever received—and I’m forever trying to put it into practice more myself—came from a sales manager I worked with at Wolters Kluwer: Listen! The good Lord gave you two ears and one mouth because that’s the ratio He wants you to use them in!
Specific to scholarly publishing, I’d say listen to what’s happening in your ecosystem. It’s easy for us to get lost in the work we do—our elegant designs, our guerilla marketing strategies, the disciplines we acquire in—but more than ever we need to be mindful of how external changes are impacting the scholarly communications process we serve. Pay attention to how technology is changing research, and what that means for our authors and our customers in the future.
Theresa May, assistant director and editor-in-chief at UT Press, introduces a new series of publications funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The first three of eighteen titles published this spring—Dancing the New World, The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall, and Maya Ideologies of the Sacred—all delve into diverse and fascinating areas of art and cultural history. These are ambitious projects that might not have been accessible to readers without the Mellon Foundation. In light of recent threats to the National Endowment for the Humanities, learn more about our Mellon partnership and the importance of humanities funding from Theresa below:
One of the most rewarding aspects of academic publishing is the partnerships that can develop during the process of finding manuscripts and turning them into books. An ongoing problem in the academy, however, is finding ways to help junior faculty get a first book published, almost always a significant and necessary step toward tenure. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation targeted this dilemma over the last several years through a grant program that encouraged university presses to partner with the Foundation and each other specifically to this end. UT Press joined three other presses in two unique petitions to this Mellon program, and both were fully funded. Over the course of five years, as part of our agreement with Mellon, UT Press will publish a total of eighteen books through the two initiatives, Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture (LACAC) and Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas (RLLA). For authors, the Mellon grant provides funds to help with such diverse expenses as permissions and art preparation costs, indexes, and, if needed, developmental edits. For the publishers, Mellon helps cover copyediting and proofreading, some design and manufacturing expenses, the inclusion of color plates or special features, and a broad program of cooperative marketing and promotion to the appropriate readerships.
We have just released our first three books in the LACAC initiative--Paul Scolieri's Dancing the New World: Aztecs, Spaniards, and the Choreography of Conquest; Amara Solari's Maya Ideologies of the Sacred: The Transfiguration of Space in Colonial Yucatan; and Robert Lloyd Williams' The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall: Mixtec Lineage Histories and Political Biographies. Mellon funds helped us to develop new web features that would allow for additional media outreach, and in cooperation with these three authors, we have prepared podcasts for each of their books. Mellon also allowed us to partner with the British Museum to publish the first affordable edition of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, a significant boon not only for the author and the Press, but also for scholars everywhere who will now have access to this document in a readable and accurate reproduction.
In a partnership like this, everyone wins. Authors who need to have a book published for tenure get help with both expenses and identifying presses who are encouraged to look at first works. Publishers get financial assistance to take on books whose potential audiences might be too small to cover the expense of publishing, especially during a challenging time in the economy as well as the publishing industry. Readers across a broad spectrum of disciplines get access to carefully edited and beautifully produced books on a variety of focused topics that incorporate important new research. Paperback editions of each of the books are mandated as part of the Mellon funds, so within a year or so after the publication of the cloth edition, each of the books will appear in an affordable format appropriate for classroom use, further expanding the readership for these works. And, of course, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's goals, the initial impetus for these grants, will be accomplished by the publication through the member presses of at least fifty-four scholarly monographs by junior faculty over the five year term of the grants. In a time when the national conversation is one of dissension and discord and government funding for the arts through entities like the National Endowment for the Humanities is increasingly targeted for budget cuts, Mellon has encouraged and made it possible for at least some of us to focus on how we can work together for the good of all.
—Theresa May, Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief at UT Press
Forthcoming Mellon series books in Fall 2013:
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The
University of Texas Press is pleased to present our collection of
podcast episodes featuring interviews and conversations with UT Press
authors about the stories behind their books. Hosted by Chris Gondek of Heron & Crane, you may listen to the interviews directly from our web site or through the iTunes store.
Below please find a selection from our spring 2013 and fall 2012 seasons. We are also pleased to feature podcasts that are a part of a new initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – the Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture Publication Initiative.
We hope you enjoy and return often to hear the newest offerings. A complete list of podcasts can be found on our podcast page.
The Fight to Save Juarez by Ricardo Ainslie
Rico Ainslie’s portrait of Mexico’s bloodiest city offers a gripping, firsthand perspective on the drug war that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 2007. In this interview, he discusses the toll the drug war has taken on the city of Juarez and the great efforts the former mayor, José Reyes Ferriz, undertook to try and save his community.
Ryan Adams by David Menconi
In this second book in UT Press’ American Music Series, prominent music journalist David Menconi chronicles the rise of singer-songwriter Ryan Adams. In this podcast, Menconi describes how Adams and his band Whiskeytown led the alt-country movement in the 1990s, and shares behind-the-scenes stories.
Last Launch by Dan Winters
Dan Winters’ Last Launch showcases breathtaking photographs of the final launches of the shuttles Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. As one of only a handful of photographers to whom NASA granted close access to photograph the launches, Winters talks about that experience and his personal memories of the shuttle program.
