Scholarly publishing

[charlesg]

          Those of you who are concerned about the future of scholarly
          publishing in the fields of Slavic literature, linguistics,
          and folklore might want to take a book at The Chronicle of
          Higher Education, March 3, 1995, pages 1 and 2 of Section B
          (the pull-out section).  There is a long and interesting
          article by the head of the Pennsylvania State University
          Press on the problems of trying to publish scholarly works
          of literary criticism.  Before going any further, let me
          note for those who don't know me that I am the owner,
          editor, publisher, bottle-washer, etc. of Slavica
          Publishers, which most of you probably do know.  What I say
          is modified by what I have learned in the course of
          publishing over 230 book titles over nearly 30 years, but of
          course it could also be seen as griping about Slavica's
          troubles.  I hope that it will not be, and that it will
          serve as an impetus to some serious consideration about
          scholarly publishing in our field.
          Thatcher, the Director of the PSU Press, notes that they
          have published 150 titles of literary criticism since 1985.
           Of the 150 titles, 65 percent have sold fewer than 500
          copies and 91 percent fewer than 800.  Only 3 percent have
          sold more than 1000.  This of course presumably includes
          mostly titles in fields bigger than Slavic.  I should note
          that literature sells much better than linguistics or
          folklore, in our experience.  Our breakeven point, since we
          have very low overhead, is about 600 copies.  Very few
          scholarly books ever reach that; most sell between 200 and
          400 copies of a period of many years.  PSU Press is, as I
          understand it, subsidized, as are most university presses.
          Private companies, such as Slavica, Peter Lang, de Gruyter,
          Rhodopi, North Holland, Kubon & Sagner, etc. (to name a few
          of the major producers of books in Slavic that come to mind)
          are not subsidized and much cover their losses in some other
          way.  One way is subsidies from authors and/or their
          schools; another is to take the profits from one type of
          book and use it to cover the losses from another (we use
          profits from textbooks to cover losses from scholarly
          books).
          I will stop with one more quote from Thatcher's article:
          "The market for books of traditional literary criticism has
          now shrunk to the point that it is no longer possible for a
          small, unendowed press like Penn State's to continue
          publishing such works."
          I urge you to read the article.  In a time of
          publish-or-perish (or publish-and-perish!), this is an issue
          that touches most of you, and the presses putting out the
          new Russian textbooks that (may) make money do not seem to
          be ready to publish scholarly books in our field.
                  Charles Gribble   Gribble.3 at osu.edu