High-tech was the flavor of the month at the annual convention of the Association of American University Presses, held in Austin, Tex., last month. It was a particularly well-attended meeting, with nearly 600 people from more than 100 member presses and associated groups participating in what turned out to be a waterlogged occasion, with persistent rain for most of the three days.
On previous occasions, persons from the bookselling and academic worlds had usually been a prominent part of the proceedings, but this year the concentration, in a series of special track sessions, was on the technological aspects of scholarly publishing. The four tracks emphasized the role of the new technologies, their use in marketing and design, and the changes they have brought to journal publishing.
Richard Ekman, secretary of the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the first night's banquet speaker, concluded that early electronic publishing efforts have not been promising. The number of titles has increased while revenues have not, bringing some presses "dangerously close to red ink." The small scale on which most presses operate has made it uneconomical for them to introduce expensive technology. Book-length monographs, a UP staple, are the hardest to deal with electronically; Ekman noted that the foundation had therefore made a $3-million grant to the American Council of Learned Societies to support electronic monograph publication through seven selected presses in small runs (see story on next page). "Determined efforts will make [the plan] work," Ekman asserted .
In a keynote address on the first morning, Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, posited that university presses were "at a crossroads," adding that the whole context of scholarly communication is in a state of rapid flux. Lynch contended there needs to be more dialogue between the presses and their parent universities about their role: were they simply cash cows, or an integral part of the 21st-century university? And, he stressed, it is in no one's interest to make them more like commercial publishers, because the culture at large has special needs not addressed by those publishers.
Three major online issues confront UPs today, according to Lynch. First is the question of archiving-there is no mechanism currently available to handle the vast amounts of information being created. There is also the problem of linking the various networks together; and "many readers out there are irritated at the licensing of content in a limited way." Third, a conflict remains between publishing and higher education communities over intellectual property. Lynch declared, "The copyright issues are not behind us." Database protection issues are still on the table, he continued. "Privacy will be a very hot issue-the question of people being able to see what you're reading and studying."
Lynch said he sees "great creativity" in the publishing world's use of Web sites and believes that the new broadband network (Internet 2) would be very hospitable to multimedia presentation, including video and audio. To take full advantage of such possibilities, however, he noted that UPs will have to be much better capitalized.
In the first of the track sessions, Columbia's Kate Wittenberg contended that presses need partners to exploit new technology; at Columbia, the campus computer network cooperates with the press on such matters. The press now puts the full text of all the books in its international affairs program online. Wittenberg has found this causes no drop in book sales: "It may even help."
Michael Jensen of National Academy Press commented that the principal problem of offering material online was how to charge for it; much of the material National Academy puts online is free, and he believes, like Wittenberg, that this helps book sales by making the work "more visible."
Jensen said he thinks it is library users who are gravitating to online material; book buyers continue to want to own the physical book. On offering work online, Jensen declared: "If we don't do it, or do it wrong, authors will do it themselves."
John Edwards, v-p at Edwards Brothers, a noted short-run printer whose business is 30% UP books, offered a look at the probable printing future. He foresees even shorter runs and more frequent updates. The new direct to press (DTP) technology will likely result in more closely integrated publisher/manufacturer systems, with the printer managing the backlist and helping with inventory. Edwards also foresees fewer suppliers, more niche manufacturing, more titles produced, but in fewer units, which will mean lower returns. There will be much more direct-to-customer shipping, charging full price. Offset printing quality will improve, Edwards predicted, while sheet-fed printing will "fall by the wayside."
Woody Palasek, sales manager of netLibrary Inc., said e-books, which his company makes available on a loan basis, in the same way a public library d s, offer great opportunities in terms of "new uses for old content."
Distance and corporate learning programs have both been significant factors in the growth of e-books, he reported, and libraries are also beginning to buy them. "Customers are willing to pay for brief rentals," he added.
David Witus, business development manager at Microsoft, painted a bullish picture of the e-book's future: growing numbers of titles are available, resolution technology is improving rapidly (he reported that Microsoft's Clear Type moves e-book technology farther ahead without any improvement necessary in the hardware), and player prices are coming down. "Microsoft is convinced of the future of the e-book," he said, adding that UPs have a head start in exploiting its possibilities and are leaving commercial publishers behind at this stage.
Witus projected that e-book sales would ultimately take away print sales, to the extent of perhaps 10%, but that increased sales of the electronic product, which he suggested could expand by 75%, would more than offset that. There will likely be a higher rate of piracy, but he predicts that it will be at an acceptable level.
Bob Stein, who two years ago left Voyager (the company he helped found) and now runs Night Kitchen, a software developer, gave a presentation of TK3, a new tool designed to develop interactive titles that combine text, audio and video and can be distributed over the Internet or by way of fixed media like CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. It is designed, according to Stein, mostly for authors, and it gives them a creation tool that requires no programming. Stein is currently accepting applications for beta users for TK3 (apply at www.nightkitchen.com); he said it would be ready in September and available free for the first six months in order to build a customer base.
Outgoing AAUP president Bob Faherty of the Smithsonian Institution Press said one of the emphases in the past year had been the organization's diversity program, featuring a new poster, development of a special Web site and a newly established relationship with the AAUP's minority mentoring program. He reported that a strategic planning process-to bring the AAUP's mission statements and programs up-to-date, establish a series of new goals for the organization and subject them to a review process-is well under way. The body has also taken a 10-year lease on new offices on West 23rd Street in New York City.
Marlie Wasserman of Rutgers, incoming AAUP president, also spoke of the strategic plan, noting that publishing is changing so rapidly that as soon as one set of problems is identified, "the landscape shifts again, so there is a constant state of urgency." One of the key components of the strategic plan, she pointed out, is to make the association and its activities better known to the public at large. "University presses have been the primary vehicle for the dissemination of new ideas for decades," she declared. The 121 UPs that are members or associates of AAUP currently publish 10,500 titles a year, which is 20% of the American total, and this includes "a very high percentage of the serious books and journals published in this country." The presses also play a significant role by publishing regional books that help create "pride of place" in American communities. The strategic plan, Wasserman continued, "allows us to communicate our power and wield it responsibly and efficiently."
A new Ph nix award was given this year to a press overcoming dire circumstances; the natural winner was the University of Arkansas Press, which managed to survive a threat to close it down early in 1998. The Constituency Award, a kind of MVP for the association, went to Penn State director Sanford Thatcher for his tireless work over the years on copyright issues.
