Facing subsidy cut, OU Press seeks more self-reliance

"I'm incredibly excited," said Kevin Haworth, an OU English professor who will serve as interim executive editor of OU Press/Swallow Press. "I love books, I love writing, and I believe very profoundly in what the university press has to contribute to the intellectual life of the university, the intellectual life of the region, and the intellectual life of the nation."

In February, OU officials announced they were considering slashing the budget subsidy long enjoyed by the Press. OU had been underwriting it annually to the tune of about $360,000; that will be cut roughly in half in the near future. Provost and Executive Vice President Pam Benoit has told The Athens NEWS that the Press must become more self-supporting.

"The challenge is, how do we come up with a model that will allow the Press to become financially viable," she explained when the budget cut was proposed last winter.

The project has raised concerns in some quarters. One letter-writer to The Athens NEWS warned that if funding to OU/Swallow were cut, "someday Ohio University will pay dearly to regain even a portion of reputation lost."

Another, a writer whose books have been published by the Press, argued that "it's a blindness to expect the OU Press to publish the kinds of books it does and completely earn its way."

Haworth insisted that what's planned is not a radical restructuring. He said those guiding the makeover simply want to bring a bit more marketing savvy into the process, while maintaining the same quality control in choosing manuscripts. He said the Press also plans to pay more attention to finding its own outside funding sources.

Earlier this year Benoit put together a review committee of faculty and administrators, to come up with recommendations. That committee released its report June 1 though those involved now stress that it was rather a grab-bag of suggestions, some of which have fallen by the wayside.

Tom Carpenter chair of OU's Department of Classics and World Religions, and a co-chair of the review committee said the group's main recommendations included bringing in external reviewers to offer advice on cost control, management, staffing and sales; finding an integrated marketing strategy; creating a comprehensive plan to better align book offerings with "areas of excellence" at OU; setting up a board of advisers; exploring more grant opportunities; launching an intensive fund-raising campaign; actively seeking more outside financial support for academic monographs; and reducing excess inventory.

The biggest change organizationally is elimination of the director's job, formerly held by David Sanders. The press will be overseen jointly by an editorial board (which it has always had) and a managing board, to include a Press staffer, two faculty members and a dean.

That board's role will be to provide business and managerial expertise, including some input on the commercial viability of particular manuscripts; Haworth stressed, however, that the makeup of the catalogue will remain firmly in the hands of the editorial board.

"The management board does not approve manuscripts," he said. "It's my understanding that the managerial board is not intended to function as a second editorial board."

He added, though, that the Press does need to consider a manuscript's sales prospects as well as its scholarly value, and balance these factors for individual titles and the booklist as a whole. This is something university presses have always done, he said, but to which they must now pay more attention.

"I think it's important to note that the Press has always had to balance producing titles of scholarly value, and producing titles that have the potential of a larger commercial life," he said.

This can mean publishing non-scholarly work such as fiction, with a shot at a wider market. Or it can mean being more cognizant of a scholarly book's potential for specialized sales.

As an example, he cited "African Soccerscapes," by Michigan State history professor Peter Alegi. Besides being a solid study, Haworth said, the book came out at a fortuitous time.

"This is a title which has... its primary audience among scholars of Africa," he said. But it was also published at a moment when the world's gaze was focused on the World Cup in South Africa. "This book has already gotten a great deal of attention because of that confluence of events," he noted. "This seems to me like a really good example of thinking about multiple audiences."

The Press will also work to better align its offerings with academic areas in which OU is very strong as it already tries to do, for example, with its African Studies program. And it will begin to work harder at what other OU departments already do doing its own fundraising, looking for more grants, and donors who'll contribute money earmarked for its operations.

Haworth offered assurances that the Press won't relax its scholarly and literary standards to boost its bottom line, and won't forget that "university presses serve a national purpose" to provide an outlet for scholarship. "At the same time," he acknowledged, "it's not realistic to think the press can be only an academic publisher, because the economics of that are simply too burdensome."

It may say something about where OU wants to go with its Press that it has chosen as its most visible representative a man who's first and foremost a literary figure; Haworth teaches creative writing, organizes OU's Spring Literary Festival, and is the author of a novel. However, he suggested, "I think, more significantly, I'm a faculty member. I think that's important, because one of our goals is to create even better connections between the scholarly life of the university, and the public life of the university."