University presses are known for their wide variety of titles, many of them Nobel Prize-winning works. But how do university presses compare to the overall book production, sales and publisher size? Here’s a look at some figures.
University Press and Title Output
Just like their commercial counterparts, university presses vary greatly in size – ranging from one-person enterprises publishing two titles per year to presses with a staff in the hundreds and a title output of more than 2,000 annually.
The total number of books published in 2005 by the 125 members of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) was 10,159; an average of 81 titles per year or almost 7 titles a month. The total number of books published in the United States in 2005 was a staggering 172,000, of which university press products made up 6%.
University Press Sales Figures
This diversity in the university press landscape is also reflected in terms of annual sales: The smallest AAUP member presses will have annual sales of around $250,000; the largest more than $50 million annually.
In 2005, the total sales of AAUP member book sales were $267 million, an increase of 6% since 2002; an average of $2.1 million per press. In comparison, net sales of all American publishers in 2005 were $24 billion of which university presses contributed about 9%.
University Press Products
Though individual university presses have their publishing programs with preferred academic disciplines and areas of expertise, overall one is hard pressed to find a topic that university presses have not published about. This diversity of cultural expression is surprising in the face of international mergers and acquisitions that concentrate publishing power (and therefore topics that sell) in the hands of a few publishing conglomerates.
How can university presses afford to publish such a variety of books, often for a niche audience? A look at the values of university presses shows that the question should rather be “how could they not?”. Here are some of a university press’s goals:
- publish works dedicated to local cultures,
- publish works by or for ethnic, racial or sexual minorities,
- make available works of international scholars through translation,
- reprint important older academic works
University presses share about 9% of the publishing pie in terms of annual sales; 6% in terms of titles published per year. Yet when it comes to quality, university press products are above average: for example, of the eight Literature Nobel Prize winner since 1999, almost two thirds (63%) have published with a university press; even 93% of Economics Nobel Prize winners.
Sources:
- “AAUP At-A-Glance.” Association of American University Presses. Retrieved from aaupnet.org/news/glance.htm.
- Armato, Douglas, Cohn, Steve, and Schott, Susan. “The Value of University Presses.” Retrieved from aaupnet.org/news/value.html.
Readers interested in this topic may find the following related articles useful as well: the University Press as a Publishing Model, the Association of American University Presses and How Sputnik Helped Academic Publishing.
Simone Preuss - Simone is a freelance writer, editor and translator who decided to go solo after a successful career in publishing. That was more than ...
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