Program Committee
Alisa Plant, Louisiana State, Chair
Rob Dilworth, Duke
Susan Doerr, Minnesota
Terri O’Prey, Princeton
Tony Sanfilippo, Penn State
Ellen Satrom, Virginia
John Sherer, North Carolina
Program: “Open to Debate”
Sunday, June 22
Pre-Meeting Workshops
Publishing Open and Affordable Textbooks
This workshop is designed for both library publishers and university presses as a practical experience where all involved can partner to learn more and imagine new strategies. Participants will engage in a problem-based learning exercise run by a skilled moderator.
Organizers: Donna Dixon, SUNY Press; Faye Chadwell, Oregon State University Libraries & Press; Sarah Lippincott, Library Publishing Coalition; Raina Polivka, Indiana University Press; Katherine Purple, Purdue University Press; Melanie Schlosser, Ohio State University Library
Let’s Get Analytical! Measuring Your Marketing
This half-day workshop will focus on marketing analytics for a variety of channels, including websites, blogs, social media, and email marketing. Topics to be covered include how to understand marketing metrics, what tools you should use to measure analytics, which metrics you should pay attention to, and how metrics should inform your marketing efforts.
Organizers: AAUP Marketing Committee; Laura Baich, Indiana University Press, Chair
Advice for Ebook Complexities and Quality Control
Creating EPUB files can be frustrating work. Sometimes the process works and you can push out a file with little or no hassle, but other times you spend hours banging your head against the wall trying to figure out why that table just won’t behave. In this workshop, we will talk about some of the most frustrating and confusing aspects of ebook development.
Organizers: AAUP Design and Production Committee; Carol Stein, American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Chair; Kenneth Reed, Princeton University Press [Handout]
Journals Now: Challenges and Opportunities
Join us for a look at the state of journals publishing: our existing challenges and expectations for the future. Special attention will be paid to acquisitions, promoting your strengths when competing against commercial publishers, and collaborations with your university and university library.
Organizers: AAUP Scholarly Journals Committee; Anne Marie Corrigan, University of Toronto Press, Co-Chair; Lauren Crocker, Wayne State University Press, Co-Chair
12:30 – 4:30 p.m. AAUP Press Directors Meeting
4:30 – 5:00 p.m. AAUP Business Meeting
5:00 – 6:00 p.m. Newcomers Reception
Sponsored by Thomson Reuters Core Publishing Solutions
6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Opening Reception
Sponsored by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Opening Banquet and Presentation of AAUP Constituency Award
Speaker: John Biguenet, Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor, Loyola University, New Orleans
Introduction: MaryKatherine Callaway, Director, Louisiana State University Press
9:00 – 11:00 p.m. Dessert Reception
Sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education
Location: Musée Conti Wax Museum
Monday, June 23
7:00 a.m. The Big, Easy 5K Run
Get your blood pumping with an early walk or run before a full day of sessions. Maps provided. Meet in the hotel lobby at 7:00 AM. We promise it will be Big and Easy!
Organized by Beth Bouloukos, SUNY Press, and Greg Britton, Johns Hopkins University Press
7:30 – 8:45 a.m. Continental Breakfast
With networking tables for App Development, Journals Staff, Managing Editors, Editorial Directors, and New Press Directors.
9:00 – 10:15 a.m. Plenary Session
Not Just Open Access
The mission for most university presses is to take scholarship born on campuses and provide access to it by creating, distributing, and marketing the books and journals which capture that scholarship. For most of the last century, presses have embraced information scarcity models with paywalls and cost-recovery to fund and execute that mission. But now we live in a world of information abundance where digital tools allow scholars the alternative of using the scale of the internet to create open access to their work. The plenary will offer three perspectives of how university presses can rethink their missions of access, clarify their value propositions, and explore new models of connecting readers and consumers to scholarship.
Moderator: John Sherer, Director, University of North Carolina Press
Speakers: Mark Edington, Director, Amherst College Press; Joe Esposito, President, Processed Media [Presentation]; Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communications, Modern Language Association
10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Supplier Exhibits Open
10:15 – 10:45 a.m. Coffee Break
Sponsored by codeMantra
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Experiments in Free and Freemium
When the marginal cost of a product heads toward $0, the door is opened to experimenting with giveaways, low prices, and other promotions. A number of presses have experimented with leveraging the power of cheap or free to induce sales of ebooks, print books, bundles of the two, or to just gain visibility. This panel will report on those experiments.
Chair: Dean Blobaum, Electronic Marketing Manager, University of Chicago Press
Panelists: Krista Coulson, Digital Publishing Manager, University of Chicago Press [Presentation]; Amy Harris, Director of Marketing and Sales, University Press of Kentucky; Colleen Lanick, Publicity Manager, MIT Press
[Watch session]
The Birth and Death of Lists: Changing the Shape of a Press
Most presses choose to focus their programs on building lists in a few carefully selected areas. Presses start new lists with the hope of finding new revenue and intellectual glory and close old lists that no longer are performing as desired. These changes are often made when long established editors leave or when new editors with experience acquiring in an area join the press. What factors should a press consider when it is deciding to open a new list? What are the costs of beginning a new program? What happens when a press decides to shut down a list? What factors go into that decision? What are the costs of closing a publishing program? This panel will discuss the birth and death of publishing lists, with the purpose of better understanding these critical decisions.
Chair: Charles Myers, Director, University Press of Kansas
Panelists: Christie Henry, Editorial Director, Sciences, Social Sciences, and Reference, University of Chicago Press [Presentation Notes]; Frederic Nachbaur, Director, Fordham University Press; Eric Schwartz, Sociology and Cognitive Sciences Editor, Princeton University Press
State of the Nation(s): Facing Challenges Posed by International Open Access Mandates
What does the North American university press community need to know about governmental OA mandates across the globe? “Gold OA” seems to be adding to, not alleviating, the major expense of maintaining STEM library spending in some countries—how will we compete? Can reasonable approaches prevail over the seeming “one-size-doesn’t-fit-all” policies being imposed on humanists? Our expert panel will provide answers, insights, and the very latest developments from Canada, the UK, and the European Union.
Chair: Elizabeth Brown, Manager of Publisher Relations, Project MUSE
Panelists: Carolyn Alderson, Acting Head of Licensing, Jisc Collections [Presentation]; Anne Marie Corrigan, Vice-President, Journals, University of Toronto Press [Presentation]; Thomas Parisot, Institutional Relations Officer, CAIRN [Presentation]
Enhancing Production through Workflow Systems
This panel will review the pros and cons of workflow systems designed to streamline the production process, such as XML-first options and typesetting in-house using InDesign or other automated systems. What’s involved in implementing them? Do they deliver on their promises?
Chair: Eric Newman, Managing Editor, Fordham University Press
Panelists: Susan Baker, Director, Editorial Services, Westchester Publishing Services; Sylvia Hunter, Editorial Manager, Journals, University of Toronto Press; Pamela Schnitter, Senior Designer, Princeton University Press
Acquisitions and Rights Revenue
Income from subsidiary rights licenses, such as translations, audiobooks, or reprints, can have a positive impact on the financial picture of a book. Presses may choose to include an estimate of potential subrights revenue in their proposed title budgets during the acquisitions process. Acquisition editors may guide authors to enhance the subrights potential of their titles, encouraging shorter length and broader (less American-centric) treatment of a topic. Acquiring editors may also be aware that certain fields, topics, and authors are more likely to have rights potential. And authors can be coached to avoid obstacles such as restrictive permissions for third-party content. Let’s discuss how university presses can benefit from considering rights revenue during the acquisitions process.
Chairs: John McLeod, Assistant Director and Rights & Permissions Manager, University of Texas Press; Vicky Wells, Director of Contracts and Subsidiary Rights, University of North Carolina Press
Panelists: Rebecca Schrader, Associate Director and Director of Finance and Operations, MIT Press; Myles C. Thompson, Publisher, Columbia Business School Publishing, Columbia University Press
Washington Report: Comprehensive Copyright ReformThe House Judiciary Committee is forging ahead with hearings on “Comprehensive Copyright Reform”—with an eye toward potentially major changes to the Copyright Act. The critical issues include whether the first sale doctrine should apply to digital works (thus allowing the sale of used ebooks), the scope of fair use, orphan works, mass digitization, piracy, and the import of lower-priced foreign editions into the US. The Copyright Office and Commerce Department are holding their own hearings focusing on many of the same topics. Linda Steinman, AAUP’s outside counsel, will provide an update on these hearings and their impact on AAUP members.
Speaker: Linda Steinman, Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine, LLC
12:00 – 1:30 p.m. Luncheon
Speaker: Philip Cercone, Outgoing AAUP President and Director, McGill-Queen’s University Press
1:45 – 3:00 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Metadata Standards for Books, Journals, and Digital Publications
Congratulations, you finally understand ONIX! Now comes the hard part. Rapidly changing metadata standards are raising new questions and forcing publishers to rethink answers to old ones. How do we uniquely identify an author? A series of books, a single book, or a chapter within a book? A journal article? Can the same standards apply to libraries, wholesalers, retailers, and aggregators? Which standards are “safe” to use and which are still evolving? Join a panel of experts to explore the answers.
Chair: Bob Oeste, Senior Programmer/Analyst, Johns Hopkins University Press
Panelists: Rebecca Albani, Publisher Relations Manager, Bowker; Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, National Information Standards Organization (NISO); Carol Anne Meyer Business Development and Marketing, CrossRef; Julie Morris, Project Manager, Standards & Best Practices, Book Industry Study Group
Librarians Speak … About Journals
Librarians representing a range of library types and collection profiles will give their opinions about university press journals and e-resources. Topics to be covered include journal collections and aggregations, title changes, editorial changes, special issues, e-platforms, pricing, marketing, approaches to information sharing, author rights, scholarly communication, and much more.
Chair: Ann Snoeyenbos, Manager of International Sales and Special Markets, Project MUSE
Panelists: Jim Hobbs, Online Services Coordinator, Monroe Library, Loyola University New Orleans; Jeanne Pavy, Scholarly Communications and Collection Development Librarian, University of New Orleans; Lynette Ralph, University Librarian, Xavier University; Eric M. Wedig, Chief Bibiliographer for Social Sciences, Government Publications, and Jewish Studies, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University
Experimental Formats and Models (or, Reduce/Reuse/Recycle Redux)
Taking the environmentalists’ slogan as our starting point, this panel will discuss the ways in which the intellectual environment can be conserved and enriched by new(er) forms of publishing—some in fact very old. Panelists will consider the current trent of short-form publishing in several veins: reduced, essay-style publications; re-used material, such as extracted chapters published as stand-alone volumes; and recycled content such as blog-to-book and serialized publications. We’ll be mixing publishing strategy and experience with some wishful thinking in an adventurous dialogue that we hope will be both controversial and constructive.
Chair: Alan Harvey, Director, Stanford University Press
Panelists: Doug Armato, Director, University of Minnesota Press; William Germano, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cooper Union; Katie Hope, Marketing Director, MIT Press
[Watch session]
Audiences and Analytics: Data for Direct-to-Consumer Marketing
Segments, fragments, preferences, and behaviors: the fact is, no publisher truly has one “audience.” They have dozens of them. What kinds of information can a university press—or the scholarly publishing community as a whole—collect to learn about its audiences and to evaluate its efforts to reach them directly? How do we actually collect that information? And what have we already learned from the analysis? Panelists will discuss their efforts to gather data, share findings so far, and identify opportunities to learn more. This panel will include a summary of the findings of the Mellon-funded study on university press websites and direct-to-consumer efforts.
Chair: Jeff Colosino, Online Outreach Specialist, National Academies Press
Panelists: Dean Blobaum, Electronic Marketing Manager, University of Chicago Press [Notes]; Joe Esposito, President, Processed Media [Presentation]
Alone or Part of a Crowd? The Future of Manuscript Editing Departments
Let’s step back from coding manuscripts, managing schedules, and handling the whole host of details we usually focus on to look at the big picture of manuscript editing departments in the evolving academic press. What is the balance of in-house and freelance staff? Are departments combining with others in the press or are they still autonomous? Has our involvement with manuscripts shifted? How have changes in the broader publishing climate affected our approach to staffing? What types of jobs can both entry-level and experienced editors hope to find in the future?
Chair: Michele Callaghan, Freelance Editor
Panelists: Kristine M. Blakeslee, Managing Editor, Michigan State University Press; Jessica Ryan, Managing Editor, Duke University Press
Publishing the First Book in the Age of Open Access Dissertations: A Roundtable Discussion
Recent policy statements by scholarly organizations such as the AHA have brought new attention to the complex relationship between a dissertation and a first book in the humanities. When universities increasingly expect their PhD graduates to deposit their dissertations in OA institutional repositories, how can university press editors best counsel their prospective authors about whether to embargo their dissertation? If a dissertation is available in a repository, does it require more revision, or is access a way to generate broader interest? Should the bar be higher for first books based on dissertations that are available OA? Does availability of a dissertation online really create a risk that libraries will decline to purchase it in book form? How should university press editors and other staff communicate these issues? This roundtable session will feature perspectives from a recent first-book author and two university press editorial directors.
Chair: Mark Simpson-Vos, Editorial Director, University of North Carolina Press
Panelists: Angie Maxwell, Diane D. Blair Assistant Professor of Southern Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Arkansas; Alan Thomas, Editorial Director for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Chicago Press
3:00 – 3:30 p.m. Refreshment Break
3:30 – 4:45 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Making an Impact on Learning with Textbooks and Course Materials
The landscape for textbooks and learning materials is changing rapidly, as digital textbooks continue to evolve, print textbooks maintain their prominence among many students, and other course materials for online and face-to-face learning are undergoing upheaval. This stimulating panel will explore how university presses can successfully publish textbooks; the role of ancillary materials, websites, and apps; and the impact of new distribution models, text rentals, custom texts, and course management system integration. Panelists will also discuss the impact on publishers by the ventures of Amazon, Apple, and Google in the education market, and review the findings of the Book Industry Study Group’s recent report, Student Attitudes toward Content in Higher Ed.
Chair: Tony Sanfilippo, Assistant Director, Marketing and Sales Director, Penn State University Press
Panelists: Gita Manaktala, Editorial Director, MIT Press; Sara Sapire, New Business and Product Development Manager, Yale University Press; Robert Staats, Director of Client Development, Nielsen Book Company [Presentation]
[Watch session]
Working with Book Packagers: New Models of Vendors and Services
Many university presses are increasingly working with book packagers, who manage book production from copyediting through preparation of final files—or a variety of options in between. The panelists will discuss different ways in which presses can work with packagers, multiple approaches to book packaging services, and the priorities to communicate to packagers. Benefits and challenges of incorporating packagers into press editorial and production departments will be addressed, as well as the importance of adapting procedures to meet the needs of particular projects, schedules, staffs, and workflows.
Chair: Laura Westlund, Managing Editor and Development Officer, University of Minnesota Press
Panelists: Ellen Foos, Senior Production Editor, Princeton University Press; Anne McCoy, Managing Editor, Columbia University Press; Anne McCoy, Managing Editor, Columbia University Press; Michael Stoffel, Assistant Managing Editor, University of Minnesota Press
What Are Libraries Doing as Publishers?
Every year more research libraries are developing scholarly communication and publishing programs to serve their campuses. What are the goals and services of these programs? How do they manage publishing challenges like acquisitions, metadata, web discovery, and promotion? How do they balance the desire for innovation with the need to be efficient? How are they combining open access with for-fee content? In this round-table session, the panelists will also address their priorities, challenges, and future plans. University press staff seeking to better understand the publishing initiatives within libraries will benefit from participating. We encourage questions via Twitter, before and during the session, to #AAUP14LibPub.
Chair: Monica McCormick, Digital Scholarly Publishing Officer, NYU Libraries & NYU Press
Panelists: Kevin Hawkins, Director of Library Publishing, University of North Texas; Sarah Lippincott, Program Manager, Library Publishing Coalition; Melanie Schlosser, Digital Publishing Librarian at The Ohio State University Libraries and Editor, The Lib-Pub
Altmetrics and Social Media: Beyond the Impact Factor
An expansion of the discussion at last year’s meeting, this session will examine emerging standards for understanding and sharing altmetrics. In addition, the session will include examples of publishers using altmetrics to buoy their promotions and social media presence. Panelists will present the core technologies, provide real-world examples of how publishers are using altmetrics to shape their businesses, and show the benefits to all parties within the scholarly community.
Moderator: Katherine Purple, Managing Editor, Purdue University Press
Panelists: Mike Buschman, Co-founder, Plum Analytics [Presentation]; Jill Rodgers, Marketing Manager, Journals, MIT Press [Presentation]; Dave Scherer, Scholarly Repository Specialist, Purdue University Libraries Publishing Division [Presentation]
Researchers’ Panel: What Scholars Look for When They Look for Scholarship
Scholars and researchers are at the center of our mission. They author and edit our books and journals; use our books and journals to inform and shape their scholarship; and select our books and journal articles for classroom instruction. But what do we know about how they find our publications, how they evaluate them for their various uses, what tools they use to organize their research, and what they might want from us to make those activities easier? In this session, we will ask a panel of scholars from area universities about their strategies and habits as they conduct research, search for materials, assess them, use them, and adopt them in the classroom. In the course of our conversation, we will examine in turn the role and impacts of the institutional library, online databases, formats, research management tools, and social media.
Chair: Allison Belan, Assistant Director for Digital Publishing, Duke University Press
Panelists: Ana Croegaert, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of New Orleans; Sarah Fouts, Ph.D. Student, Latin American Studies, Tulane University; Christopher Schaberg, Associate Professor of English, Loyola University New Orleans; Michele White, Associate Professor of Communications, Tulane University
5:00 – 6:15 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Publishing in the Digital Humanities
There are significant initiatives at many campuses to invest in the digital humanities. While DH has become a proxy for a lot of different issues, as humanities publishers, it’s becoming more and more likely that we will need to expand the capacity for what it is we can publish. DH scholars may continue to write long-form text, but more and more often it will be embedded with DH features such as multimedia files, spatial mapping, data sets, archives, and social sandboxes. How will we publish these? How will these affect the work of editorial, marketing, production, and other staff? What types of collaborations will presses need in order to “publish” these new multimodal books? Will these books be digital-only? This panel will be light on presentations and heavy on Q&A and interactivity, so bring your ideas. We encourage you to tweet questions and comments in advance to #AAUP14DH.
Chair: Kevin Hawkins, Director of Library Publishing, University of North Texas
Panelists: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communications, Modern Language Association; Christine Hernández, Curator of Special Collections, the Latin American Library at Tulane University; John Sherer, Director, University of North Carolina Press
[Watch session]
Open Access: Success and Sustainability
How do we define success in open access publishing? By sustainability? High usage? Worldwide reach? And, what are the business models that are the best bets for success? To address these questions, this panel brings together four case studies illustrating a wide range of OA initiatives. We’ll hear the latest from two innovative programs with very different business models, BioOne’s Elementa and Knowledge Unlatched. Then we’ll look at how two university presses are incorporating open access into their programs. Covering both books and journals, this session will inform, inspire, and provide some concrete ideas for how university presses can develop their thinking about open access.
Chair: Elizabeth Brown, Manager of Publisher Relations, Project MUSE
Panelists: David Corey, Director of Marketing and Sales, University Press of New England [Presentation]; Alison Mudditt, Director, University of California Press [Presentation]; Frances Pinter, CEO, Manchester University Press and Executive Director, Knowledge Unlatched [Presentation]; Susan Skomal, President/CEO, BioOne [Presentation]
Analyzing University Press Sales
Sales of university press titles are often mediated through several levels: library wholesalers, retail wholesalers, retail chains, Amazon, etc. This intermediation leaves us relatively data-poor; we know who has bought our inventory, but not necessarily who read it. Without that customer data, we are left blind to the forces driving the intermediary purchasing patterns. This panel will attempt to fill in some of those gaps in our knowledge for monographs, textbooks, and trade books, with presentations aimed to give concrete details of recent shifts in the marketplace and hints at future trends. We will hear about upheaval in the library channel, including the evolution of purchase plans and the rise of demand-driven acquisitions; consumer survey data both in the retail and textbook arena; and feet-on-the-ground experience from one of the country’s premier independent bookstores.
Chair: Alan Harvey, Director, Stanford University Press
Panelists: Jeff Mayersohn, Owner, Harvard Book Store; Robert Staats, Director of Client Development, Nielsen Book Company; Mike Zeoli, Director of Global Consortia, YBP Library Services
Worst Book I Ever Acquired
“The Best Book I Ever Acquired” has long been a staple of the annual meeting program. But what happens when you flip this session, operating from the premise that failure is often a more effective teacher than success? Panelists will discuss which of their book projects failed spectacularly and why. They will also examine the more general lessons and common danger patterns that can be gleaned from these experiences. In addition to acquiring editors, the session will include panelists from other departments, who will address the issue of books that are unproblematic in acquisitions but that end up having serious financial and staff time costs as the book enters the workflow of other departments. Individuals in acquisitions, administration, business, marketing, and other departments will benefit from this frank discussion of the perennial “problem children” on our lists—and how to spot and avoid them.
Chair: Leila W. Salisbury, Director, University Press of Mississippi
Panelists: Doug Armato, Director, University of Minnesota Press; Michael Roux, Marketing Manager, University of Illinois Press; Erik Smist, Director of Finance and Administration, Johns Hopkins University Press; Eric Zinner, Assistant Director & Editor-in-Chief, New York University Press
Manuscript Editors Roundtable
This roundtable discussion for manuscript editing staff will focus on the topic of creating and refining house style guides. Some of the questions we will explore and discuss are: What is the value of having a house style guide? What does it take to write or update one? Is it possible to reach consensus among staff editors in the process? Examples will be provided.
Moderator: Dinah Berland, Senior Editor, Getty Publications [Handout]
Book, Jacket, and Journal Show
Judges review their selections for the 2014 show.
Chair: Nathan Putens, Designer, University of Nebraska Press
Judges: Andrew Barker, Designer, Penguin, Faber and Faber, Pan Macmillan, the Folio Society, and others; Emmet Byrne, Design Director, Walker Art Center; Kathleen Lynch, Founder, Black Kat Design; Maia Wright, Principal Designer, Index, and Assistant Professor of Design at Texas State University
6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Reception
Sponsored by The New York Review of Books
Unfortunately, space limitations will limit reception attendance to AAUP Members only.
9:00 – 10:00 p.m. Tweet-Up
Wondering what that person in the Twitter thumbnail looks like with a beverage in their hand? Make the Twitterverse seem like a small world by flocking to the #AAUP14 tweet-up.
Organizers: Susan Doerr, University of Minnesota Press; Greg Britton, Johns Hopkins University Press
Location: The Chart Room, 300 Chartres Street
Tuesday, June 24
7:30 – 8:45 a.m. Continental Breakfast
With networking tables for Copyright, List Sharing (Marketing), Small Press Staff, and Brainstorming University Press Week.
9:00 – 10:15 a.m. Concurrent Sessions
Metadata and Discoverability: What You Need to Know Now
How do you ensure that your journal, and the articles published in it, can easily be found by potential online readers? This session will explore the ways in which readers search and discover online material, an overview of metadata, current standards relating to metadata, and how to develop strong metadata that will help readers discover your content in an increasingly competitive environment.
Chair: Anne Marie Corrigan, Vice-President, Journals, University of Toronto Press
Panelists: Michael Cairns, Chief Operating Officer, Online Division, Publishing Technology; Terri Fizer, Assistant Production Manager, Duke University Press; Antonia Pop, Production Coordinator, University of Toronto Press
[Watch session]
Building Your Book from the Ground Up
A session on projects conceived in-house and actively guided through the initial stages of framing, writing, and development—including content, format, and illustrations—through to the final stages of publication, marketing, and release. We will look at specific books that have their origins in a range of beginnings: a journal article, an archive, an artist’s work, and an identifiable market need. Panelists will discuss the kinds of planning, editorial, production, design, and marketing concerns that are instrumental to successfully shaping a project designed to meet specific publishing goals. What are the challenges and rewards of tackling such projects?
Chair: Michelle Komie, Executive Editor, Princeton University Press
Panelists: Brian Halley, Editor, University of Massachusetts Press; Niels Hooper, Executive Editor, University of California Press; Casey Kittrell, Sponsoring Editor, University of Texas Press; Elaine Maisner, Senior Executive Editor, University of North Carolina Press
The Legacy of Print and the Digital Future: The Future of Content Delivery in the Research and Teaching Environment
The printed page has been an established method of disseminating research and educational materials for centuries, but advances in content discovery and delivery mechanisms have changed everything from research workflows to how educational content is delivered and utilized. This panel will examine some of the ways in which the digital shift in the scholarly communications is impacting content strategy.
Chair: Erich van Rijn, Director of Publishing Operations, University of California Press
Panelists: Mike Hale, Vice President of Sales, VitalSource Technologies; Bill Kasdorf, Apex Covantage; Stephanie Orphan, Director of Publisher Relations, Portico
A Seat at the Table: Navigating University Structures for Fun and Profit
How can we deliver the message about the importance of our university presses if we don’t understand the organizational structure and key actors of our own administrations? The blurring of lines between the traditional activities of presses, libraries, and other entities on campus makes it more vital than ever to advocate with these decision makers for a seat at the table when important discussions take place; but how do we get there? In a world where new potential revenue streams exist outside traditional sales models, influencing university policy on copyright and institutional repositories, for example, or bringing a publisher’s businesslike approach to digital humanities projects or to digitizing special collections is not only good institutional PR; it can positively impact the bottom line. With this in mind, a somewhat nontraditional “unpanel” will bring together a group of directors representing presses large and small, public and private, and a multitude of different reporting lines to discuss how to map those administrative structures, get to know provosts, librarians, VPs, deans, and CIOs, and get their attention when it’s most important. Instructive and candid case studies, audience participation, and vibrant disagreement will be encouraged.
Chair: Mark Saunders, Director, University of Virginia Press
Panelists: Richard Brown, Director, Georgetown University Press; MaryKatherine Callaway, Director, Louisiana State University Press; Kathryn Conrad, Director, University of Arizona Press; Ellen Faran, Director, MIT Press; Nicole Mitchell, Director, University of Washington Press; Meredith Morris-Babb, Director, University Press of Florida
PressxPress: New Directions in Collaborative Marketing
The cooperative spirit is alive and well in AAUP. From the 2001 launch of Books for Understanding to grant-backed multi-press series to brand new projects like UPinSpace.org, member presses have used experiments in collaborative marketing to promote their brands and increase the discoverability of new titles. How can these brand alliances be used as an effective tool to market university press books? How does this form of collaboration serve the mission of a university press? And what new methods of cross-promotion remain unexplored? This panel will examine the opportunities and challenges to establishing effective and mutually beneficial brand partnerships.
Chair: Danny Bellett, Publicity Manager, Penn State University Press
Panelists: Brenna McLaughlin, Director, Marketing and Communications, AAUP [Presentation]; Katie Hope, Marketing Director, MIT Press [Presentation]; Joe Esposito, President, Processed Media [Presentation]
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Supplier Exhibits Open
10:15 – 10:45 a.m. Coffee Break
10:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Plenary Session
Reimagining the AAUP: Evolutionary and Revolutionary Opportunities
Just as our publishing programs are evolving, so too should our association. Join us for this never-been-tried, highly interactive plenary and share your ideas on how best to realize the myriad opportunities that lie before us. How should we increase AAUP’s profile? In what ways can AAUP enhance collaboration to maximize your own press’s work? How would you change the perceptions about publishers among librarians, administrators, and faculty? Bring your phone and leave it on as we gather your thoughts via real-time text polling. And be ready to roll up your sleeves and work with your colleagues to arrive at creative, innovative, and inspirational ideas to move us forward. The foundation for this session is the new AAUP strategic plan, which will be shared in advance. Don’t miss this chance to have a voice in building the AAUP of the future.
Facilitated by the past, present, and future AAUP presidents: Philip Cercone, Director, McGill-Queen’s University Press; Barbara Kline Pope, Director, National Academies Press; Meredith Babb, Director, University Press of Florida
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. Luncheon
Exhibitor prize winners will be announced
1:45 – 3:00 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Adobe InCopy: An Overview
Adobe InCopy represents an appealing solution to production managers and managing editors looking for a way to maximize efficiency and accountability in their EDP workflows. The software promises many features, but it seems to have been adopted slowly by university press EDP departments. Session highlights will include a presentation of the software’s key features, a comparison with other common university press workflows, a Q&A session, and a live demo of the networking and InDesign integration capabilities.
Chair: Than Saffel, Production and Design Manager, West Virginia University Press
Panelist: Anne-Marie Concepción, Seneca Design and Training
Managing the Modern Press
In this age of constant change, employees more than ever look to directors and department heads for strong direction that allows an organization and its employees to thrive in an under-resourced environment. Experienced leaders will discuss how to foster communication, create organizational buy-in, and mediate the needs of the workplace with employees’ personal lives, as well as how to motivate others (and themselves) when financial reward isn’t always an option. Aimed at directors, chief administrators, and department heads, the session will address managing up and managing down. Panelists will also consider the special issues and needs of millennials in the workplace and how to motivate these employees by the creation and maintenance of a healthy work-life balance within the press.
Chair: Leila Salisbury, Director, University Press of Mississippi
Panelists: Richard Brown, Director, Georgetown University Press; Pam McClanahan, Director, Minnesota Historical Society Press [Handout]; Linda Secondari, Creative Director, Oxford University Press; Liz Williams, Director, Southern Food and Beverage Museum, New Orleans
[Watch session]
Baby Steps: The Care and Feeding of First-Time Authors (and Revised Dissertations)
In this roundtable discussion, experienced acquisitions editors talk about the processes involved in helping first-time authors and working with revised dissertations. The wide-ranging discussion delves deeply into the following issues: formatting of manuscripts, guidance through the peer review and revision processes, management of author expectations regarding marketing and sales, title and design conversations, and the inevitable talking of new authors down from the ledge when things go wrong. Q&A (i.e., trading war stories) will occur in the session’s latter half.
Chair: Walter Biggins, Senior Acquisitions Editor, University of Georgia Press
Panelists: Beth Bouloukos, Acquisitions Editor, State University of New York Press; Gita Manaktala, Editorial Director, MIT Press; Ken Wissoker, Editorial Director, Duke University Press
Editorial Office Challenges
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Working with journal editors and scholarly societies (and their boards) presents a unique set of problems and challenges for journals staff. In this session, an experienced and diverse group of panelists who have seen it all will share their wisdom. Have a nightmare editor and an overly demanding society? Come to this session with your biggest challenges and we will offer useful suggestions on how to deal with them while maintaining your sanity. This will be an interactive discussion session.
Chair: Clydette Wantland, Journals & IT Manager, University of Illinois Press
Panelists: Rob Dilworth, Editorial and Administrative Manager, Journals, Duke University Press; Nick Lindsay, Journals Director, MIT Press; Michael Magoulias, Journals Director, University of Chicago Press
What’s New at Indie Bookstores
In the past, partnering between independent bookstores and university presses was an automatic and natural business practice. This panel will explore ways in which university presses and independent booksellers can once again work together in a mutually beneficial way. Panelists from the AAUP and the ABA will have a lively and frank discussion on what they need from each other to move forward.
Chair: Gianna LaMorte, Sales Manager, University of Texas Press
Panelists: Steve Bercu, Co-owner of BookPeople in Austin, and President, ABA Board of Directors; Emily Hamilton, Assistant Director for Book Publishing and Head of Marketing and Sales, University of Minnesota Press; Jeff Mayersohn, Owner, Harvard Book Store; Johnathon Welch, Owner, Talking Leaves…Books
3:00 – 3:30 p.m. Refreshment Break
3:30 – 4:45 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
AAUP Town Hall: The Revolution will be Subsidized
The market model for publishing scholarly monographs has seldom been robust, but, increasingly, the entire ecosystem around this foundational form is threatened. Two bold ideas have emerged that seek to address these threats by offering new business models intended to restore economic viability to long-form scholarly publishing. In this town-hall style meeting, join representatives of two organizations as they describe their efforts to shift the model for evaluating and disseminating humanities monographs. The press you save may be your own.
Chair: Greg Britton, Editorial Director, Johns Hopkins University Press
Panelists: Peter Berkery, Executive Director, AAUP; Raym Crow, AAU/ARL Task Force on Scholarly Communications; Donald J. Waters, Program Officer for Scholarly Communications, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
[Watch session]
Collaborative Content Strategies: Projects that Work
This session examines collaborative content strategies and tools for developing unique content partnerships, launching digital publishing programs, and building new subject areas in your list, while also enhancing press-institutional relations. Join us for a rich discussion of a variety of successful partnership projects and content strategies.
Chair: Pam McClanahan, Director, Minnesota Historical Society Press
Panelists: Mick Gusinde-Duffy, Assistant Director/Editor-in-Chief, University of Georgia Press; David Ruddy, Project Euclid Lead and Director of Scholarly Communications Services, Cornell University Library; Donna Shear, Director, University of Nebraska Press
Interns
University presses are businesses in campus environments—often one of the few businesses on campus—and we can offer real world business experience to students. When we think of interns, we often picture undergraduate English majors seeking their first opportunity to explore a future career in publishing. But what about graduate students and postdocs? Join this panel to learn about experiences in running graduate student internships, as well as best practices for internship programs generally. The goal is to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship for both press and intern. We will solicit questions from the audience and encourage a highly interactive roundtable discussion.
Chair: Jane Bunker, Director, Northwestern University Press
Panelists: Jim McCoy, Director, University of Iowa Press; Gianna Mosser, Assistant Acquisitions Editor, Northwestern University Press; Carey Newman, Director, Baylor University Press; Amanda Sharp, Assistant Marketing Manager for Publicity and Sales, University of Georgia Press
Raising a Press’s Profile on a Multi-Publisher Platform
Thanks to a host of aggregators, it’s never been easier for journal publishers to get their materials online. However, the move to online platforms frequently leaves a disconnect between publisher and end user. This session will explore the challenges faced by journal publishers, the marketing tools offered by aggregators, and methods publishers can use to promote their brands as well as their scholarship.
Chair: Jeff McArdle, Associate Journals Manager, University of Illinois Press
Panelists: Elizabeth W. Brown, Manager of Publisher Relations, Project MUSE; Sarah Kim, Manager, Marketing and Communications, JSTOR
Data Management Systems
TMS, CMS, DAM, ERM, ERP, or in common university press parlance, the presswide database: whatever one calls these kinds of systems, their basic purpose is to store and organize your valuable data and, perhaps most importantly, share it with the outside world. Perhaps your press is still debating the need for one. Or, maybe you have one but it’s outdated and you’re near-paralyzed by the prospects of upgrading what you have or moving to a new system. What are the options? What are the costs? In this session panelists will survey the current state and future direction of these systems, help you think through the decision to go with a homegrown or custom-built system, and look at your return on investment, including non-quantifiable benefits.
Chair: David Des Jardines, Assistant Director for Marketing and Digital Initiatives, University of Georgia Press
Panelists: Edwin Fager, President, Kensai International, Ltd.; Bob Oeste, Senior Programmer/Analyst, John Hopkins University Press; Michael Upshall, Digital Publishing Consultant