The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing and University Presses

Editor’s Note. The paper presented by Matthew Hodgson, at the request of session chair Mary Beth Nor­ton, is printed below for the useful informa­tion it offers on the session‘s theme.

I welcome this opportunity to talk with you about a problem of mutual concern: specifically, the increasing inability of university presses to publish extended, specialized studies in history other than American.

In the decade 1960-1970, a universi­ty press might reasonably have expected to sell at least 1,500 copies of a well­ researched and well-written book in Eu­ropean history,

At the end of the last fiscal year, however, the sales of such titles aver­aged about 500 copies.

Since it is uneconomical for even a small-run, not-for-profit publisher to print fewer than a thousand copies of any book, it followed that most universi­ty presses—both large and small—have decided to contract sharply their pub­lishing programs in European history. Indeed, they have no choice in the mat­ter. Every publisher expects to make mistakes, to publish books that don’t sell as well as one anticipates, but there very few of us so fool-hardy (or affiuent) that we can continue to invest our limited capital in the publication of scholarly works that we know will sell in such small numbers.

I should add here that nearly all uni­versity presses are willing to accept modest deficits from most of the books that they publish. Indeed, if the latter turned a profit, or even recovered their costs, there would be no need for uni­versity presses,

Before I go further, let me respond to a question I am often asked: How much does it cost to publish a scholarly book? The answer that I usually return is the price of a new automobile—anything from $8,000 or $9,000 to as much as $25,000-$30,000. A second ubiquitous question is how few books can one print? The answer to this is almost al­ways the irreducible minimum of 1,000 copies I just mentioned, of which about eighty are sent, gratis, to authors and to reviewers for the national and scholarly media.

If a publisher sells the remaining 920 copies of this title within a year or two, he will probably still have to accept a deficit ranging from $1,000-$2,000. If, after four or five years, a university press disposes of only 500 copies, the deficit is increased three-fold. Thus, the loss from a hypothetical publishing in­vestment of, say, $12,000, may run to $4,000-$5,000. Multiply this last figure by fifteen to twenty books per year and you have cumulative losses ranging from $75,000 to $100,000—or about one-half the financial support received by the average university press from its sponsoring institution.

Obviously, no rational press director will or can accept such losses from a single publishing program. North Caro­lina cannot, nor, I think, can Princeton, Chicago, Stanford, or Wisconsin.

Why, then, am I here, talking with you so openly about such a lugubrious situation? Why not, instead, publish only in American history or popular culture, areas in which most of the books that we publish tend to do fairly well? The an­swer to this is a complicated one, but perhaps it can best be described as a cri de coeur. Having enjoyed the company and friendship of such erudite and be­guiling historians as the late Leo Ger­shoy and Crane Brinton, I, for one, wish to do what I can to preserve and animate interest in European history, to perpetuate the breed, if you will.

I apprehend that since publication is now a requisite for tenure and prefer­ment by and within the academy, the dwindling opportunities for publication inevitably will lead young scholars of promise and even brilliance to direct their interests to other disciplines or perhaps even to pursuits other than scholarly ones.

The poor showing of the historical studies, particularly those in European history, in the academic marketplace needs further examination. A few re­cent books in this field have sold very well, either because they were offbeat, were written by well-established schol­ars, were stylistically appealing, or em­braced broad themes. Examples of these might be Barbara Tuchman’s last two books, The Great Cat Massacre by Robert Darnton, which was published by Basic Books, and Natalie Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre, published by the Harvard University Press. Further, almost any study of the Third Reich seems to  return its costs, probably because of con­tinuing public interest in this horrific subject.

Similarly, English language transla­tions of the best work of European historians sell quite well. The University of Chicago Press has been particularly alert to this opportunity, and its list of books introducing French historians and savants to American students is an impressive one—so much so that its di­rector, Morris Philipson, last year re­ceived a high decoration from the French government. Chicago also pub­lishes its share of monographs by Amer­ican scholars. But sales of these vol­umes, while equal to those of any other American university press, have, I should think, disappointed Mr. Philip­son and his gifted associates.

What are the reasons for these lower sales of specialized monographs, includ­ing a sizable number that have won significant prizes from leading learned societies and have received excellent re­views in major historical journals and even in the public media?

First consideration would be the prices of these books—now nearly three times what they were in 1960. Most individual scholars no longer consider it feasible to assemble personal libraries which were fairly commonplace thirty years ago.

Some presses have followed the lead of Princeton by publishing dual edi­tions, splitting the total costs of publica­tion by publishing relatively expensive, clothbound editions of a monograph for library sales and moderately-priced pa­perbound editions of the same work for sale to individual scholars. Regrettably, unless a particular paperback turns out to have classroom application, this scheme, while societally beneficial, has not significantly reduced the deficits mentioned earlier.

In my experience, many foundation executives display positive alarm when approached by university presses . . .

Quite probably, at least one-fifth of the creditable books in European his­tory published by all presses during the past decade were subsidized in part by title grants from the National Endow­ment for the Humanities or from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A few others have been published with the support of smaller foundations with strong ethnic or national interests.

While of indisputable value to histori­ans, especially younger ones, and to those of us who publish their work, these benefactions are palliatives rather than remedies—bandaids applied to a badly hemorrhaging patient.

What is needed most is the recogni­tion by the academic and foundation communities that the cost of publishing the best research, like the cost of re­search itself, must be subsidized. In the past thirty years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been expended to in­crease the holdings of research libraries, to establish chaired research professorships, and to fund faculty research leaves. The end result of this vast outlay of money is of course manuscripts—in many, if not most instances, those of book-length. But the funding of university presses to publish these manu­scripts, from all sources, has not grown apace and represents a minute fraction (less than 1 percent) of this prodigious investment.

Indeed, when the needs of a particu­lar university, even a very distinguished one, are assessed by its faculty, adminis­tration, trustees, and friends, the circumstances of its press, if noticed at all, receive a very low priority.

What presses need are endowments, some restricted, others general, that will enable them to publish in certain, tradi­tional areas of scholarship in a systemat­ic, efficient, and continuing way. It is my conviction formed by personal experi­ence that these can only be obtained through the active intercession of the academy itself with those persons and foundations in the private sector with the means to help us.

With the two exceptions just men­tioned—Mellon and the  NEH—I have not discovered any of the larger, private foundations, in this country or abroad, to be even remotely interested in assist­ing university presses on a continuing basis, although many establish from five to twenty endowed professorships or research leaves at selected universities almost annually.

In my experience, many foundation executives display positive alarm when approached by university presses on this matter. What assurance do they have that university presses are well-man­aged? Who can guarantee them that the quality of the books published as a result of the requested endowment would be uniformly high? How can they be sure that preference would be given to publi­cation of manuscripts submitted by younger historians, those that need most such assistance?

The answers to these questions are easy. Some university presses are better managed than others, but so are some universities, as any knowledgeable foun­dation officer will attest. Further, all university presses occasionally publish books of inferior content, usually due to the misjudgments or negligence of out­side readers. But what assurance does a foundation have that the very best  scholars will always be appointed to the chaired professorships that they estab­lish? As for assuring that their grants would be used to underwrite the deficits incurred by the publication of books by younger historians, my answer is that a restricted endowment is just that: a press must follow the instructions of a donor or it will find itself in all kinds of trouble.

I have purposely attempted to keep this talk brief in deference to the re­marks to come by my co-panelists; how­ever, you should know that it derives from conversations with many persons active in scholarly publishing—and that my observations should not be inter­preted by you as idiosyncratic. They represent a general and growing con­cern of all university presses.