Washington State University Press, which had been slated for closure after university officials voted to eliminate its $300,000 annual funding, has been granted a second chance. WSU provost Chris Riley-Tillman, who joined the university on July 1, “has committed funds from central administration for the press, and we’re going to be collaborating on different kinds of in-kind support,” interim dean of libraries Trevor Bond told PW.
As of September 1, WSUP is being “managed under the umbrella of the libraries, with our fiscal officer providing support,” Bond said, and the main goal will be to reduce expenses while maintaining revenue. Because the press is a nonprofit, “we're not trying to make money,” he explained. “We’re just trying to meet our production costs.”
Editor-in-chief Linda Bathgate and marketing manager Caryn Lawton will continue to lead the press, which was founded in 1928 and has published more than 260 titles. WSUP’s offices will move into the library building on the main campus in Pullman, Wash., and, although the press and library will continue to function as separate entities, this affiliation gives the press access to a development director. “I’m looking forward to learning a lot about fundraising and working with donors,” Bathgate said.
Bond looks forward to working side by side with WSUP. “One of the realities of the library is that we’ve shrunk our staff about 40 percent,” he said. “I’m excited about the intellectual energy that the press generates, and the chance for the library to become a little more entrepreneurial as well.”
WSUP’s threatened closure was not without its consequences. One full-time WSUP staffer was let go, and a half-time position was returned to the campus design and printing office when the budget cuts were announced. Bathgate said she and Lawton “were given six months’ notice, with the objective that we would disassemble the press, get to work on returning rights to authors, and get rid of inventory” by the end of December. Even when the provost saved the press—with encouragement from alums, donors, and WSUP authors—budgetary limitations made it impossible to bring back the lost position.
Now, Bathgate and Lawton continue to process orders and returns in addition to their regular work of acquisitions and marketing, because WSUP has its own warehouse and does much of its paperback printing and binding on-site. This means “we’re doing all of our distribution ourselves,” Bathgate said. “We do use Ingram and Baker & Taylor as our wholesalers, but everything comes out of our warehouse. So it’s been a real challenge.” She and Bond are discussing how student employees might help “maintain the business part of the press until we either find an outside distributor or enough funds to support a staff.”
The temporary pause also interrupted the publishing timeline. “We had a list of seven titles for the fall, and the catalog had gone out,” Bathgate said. “We were never instructed to stop production, so we kept moving forward.” Once the new arrangement with the library was in place, Bathgate talked with Bond about “how to space out that fall list and move some books into the spring season, to manage our expenses and keep things more sustainable.” Current and forthcoming titles include Thomas Bancroft's Beyond the Wonder: An Ecologist's View of Wild Alaska, Dennis Crockett's Northwest history Becoming Walla Walla, Tony Tekaroniake Evans's Believing in Indians (Nov.), and Bruce A. Ramsey's Seattle in the Great Depression (Jan. 2025).
In the near future, the central WSUP brand will be Bathgate’s “top priority,” because it involves peer-reviewed, editorial board–approved scholarship. Yet WSUP remains committed to its imprints, the regionally focused Basalt Books and collaborative venture Pines Press. “Pines Press is a new imprint, and a lot of the editorial work is done through Whitworth University” in Spokane, Bathgate explained. “So we’re providing the marketing and production expertise to help Whitworth have a publishing arm” and plan one book per year. WSUP also serves as distributor for Spokane independent poetry publisher Lost Horse Press, which focuses on Ukrainian poetry.
WSUP has come through a rocky year, and its restoration is “a dream come true,” Bathgate said. “We’re turning 100 in four years, so it’s nice to think we can plan for our 100-year anniversary.”
