The Next 200 Years; Communicating Scholarship, Part 1

university presses produce works of very wide region was important is that sometimes and they're extraordinarily fortunate to reach a wide audience such is the case now with publication being pursued texas press the book of marlon by t h white ms nisha and communication this is next to him here as the united states looks beyond the bicentennial celebration the next two hundred years explores the american future this week's panel as rnc league vice president and dean of graduate studies at the university of texas at austin and professor of philosophy willful couple not chairman and professor of spanish and portuguese at ut austin and member of the faculty advisory committee to the university of texas press and

iris t hill senior editor of the university of texas press this is rex where the publishing industry in the united states include psalm fifty nine university presses publishers producing books not only for scholars floor of general reading audiences well those university presses at a significant dimension to the history or a cultural heritage of america's diverse regions what kinds of books which are in interest to a general audience are published by university press's <unk> gently susan roden <unk> books produced university presses of those that are likely to be the most anxious to jordan's published by rowan university press or regional books and books on latin america also books nonfiction in the case of our original books the books on the history of the

southwest from the natural history of the land in the hills the desert and the coast the results is this part of the country the case of latin american books new books about the people's parts of latin america and everyone of course knows what fiction is what is your reaction to that statement about a rogue awful cook obama well i believe that i would stress their translation instead arum published by the universe to press its i think that beauty press has been very fighting forces from that american from all of the world and have presented to find words of fiction and theater and poetry and non spend a translation which i think are also interested in the public and a representative of the world the university of texas press so merciless ill i would agree with that logic and back to cut down and doctor

leaves comments are and i could add that you can offer published by university press writes well and catches the broader significance of the subject and that merck will appeal to a general reader an educated general reader and arab works as sadat believe commented are fit this category birth in a regional and national international census since many people in the state no us for our regional nature studies and histories and it's the kind of remark the english speaking people at the world know i strap translations of books by borges and hires another great latin american writers that if a book is written way out then are people who have a good arm background good education can can read the book and our sight is an example for months ago we published a survey of american women poets and it's

already sold over seventeen hundred copies we were printing it eighteen years ago we published at roger williams alcoholism the nutritional right approach mattered that has sold over thirty thousand copies and it's still in print and those books are real bill instructed books and be not just directed two very narrow specialist readers lebron deceptive just what is the purpose of a university press and they publish books that primarily cannot be published by commercial prices and why your distinctive officers for the commercial process and the university press's know there are occasional over an entrance university presses and grew words to the publication services for the scholarship of research universities that scholarship normally does not helpful want enough audience to capture

the attention of commercial prices the scholarship has to be communicating can now be confined to the classroom come out be confined to once immediate colleagues in the course of their development over the last fifty years some scholarly presses interested prices have grown very large and have developed a wide ranging last summer remained small more local more directed to limit its government works the university of texas press which we know best here is a very wrenching press it's one of the larger presence in the country i think that there is an economic factor that has entered the ticket and a recent years i am i can think of quite a number of books a score evokes the special escort of books published by a on commercial biases and did they say fifteen thousand years back i think about time do this

some of the commercial press competed rather clooney with the better universe oppressors but the economic pinch top of the sixties i think made a commercial presses less able to pick up this goal of the book and the unfortunately the same our economic good factors entered the same but just about the same time i do is to press a solar been arrested but has had to re consider aren't their arms off whole lists and i just started to eliminating second in port said before were easily bought miserable they're working just to specialize amano grab some things that are now better off perhaps served reduced to two articles for publication or in some cases in scientific cases armed

there are even starting publications over and over different major from port the regular record published book rod that we have known in the past that we were going to that later perhaps a practical way of looking at this art is also to talk in terms of preference a university press kirtley has to think in the most limited print run would be a thousand copies on a better program fifteen hundred arm we would like to be held to train every birth in three thousand copies but then are we wouldn't be doing our certain kinds of scholarly publishing which is essential for the continuation of advancement of knowledge which is our nature purpose in life what happens is that there are certain fields in which you have seven hundred fifty specialists of five hundred arm but we what happens to these these works the major studies that are done that affect very

deeply the intellectual lives have five hundred people university presses it cannot perhaps take it works of this nature and any longer unless they were great subsidies available so on these books are not being published by university presses in you'll have fallen own apps of the xerox on on for distribution of them underground distribution among us cards ready university press's get the money to other issues and raise your prices earn most of their own money in the book business is conducted suitable business supports itself they're offering they will be supportive or both product persons who have an interest in the subject of publication there were also typically be partially supported by

the universities which sponsor them and some prices for a lot of support from some presses require a little support little presses seem to require some support i was going to mentioned in connection with the observations that have been made that because of the change in economic character of publishing both for commercial purposes and for university press's there's been a great deal of exploration about how inexpensive to produce scholarly works it will reach a limited audience the variety of finding instruments that are available today is perhaps not very widely known so will produce some of our works and very limited editions and in the second house for the graphically reproduced little known university presses and i think that the distinctive office in the us are in the

main agencies for fine bookmaking in this country and foreigners are in and find warning and fine printing making is a splendid art and industry presses made a distinctive contribution which it you mentioned some of it is done in house especially typesetting only scully boats which can be done electronically today and reproduced the runoff certain photograph clinch mountain what do you do for a book that you want to turn out on an excellent quality book who prints it who binds it do you get it done the same players do you should adopt a thousand miles to the store owners of dharma in the region there i was a scout you go but to the yes we used many frank is we have a contract trent is for certain kinds of odd jobs aren't a reprint contract printer in which at the beginning of each fiscal year our production department prepares specifications and gets beards from bridges around the country and a low

quality printer with him canino and as a chance everywhere signifying bookmakers then on special of books and the book will be specified by the designer and how is it does i'm a kind of papers being new style of the format has ended and the specifications are sent out and beards are brought in on end a jewel box from india's capacitors the printers are finders and out me and i would be out in one that it's the realistic and be appropriate so this collection works that we have worked very closely and with a greater satisfaction with the printing division in our own universe and they have a remarkable resources of course very busy because they have

many constituencies book to have been at great pains to help us when we needed help and on a schedule that would be of use to assume the quality of their printing is extraordinarily is this that we're very fortunate to have a state a year facility here i think they should we also have other local suppliers that we do use used to be the books were printed abroad armed before things sir became too expensive than two bitter split between clinton and a great many endeavors to press books in the past they came in now their fastballs sundin they were bound and arranged over here in this country but i'd assume that so much anymore i don't think so even our our prices are here aren't competitive with britain end up our color where to said people used to go to italy for a color production and now there doesn't seem to be necessary

i can think about thirteen cents golly has is that or go to hong kong for around linguistics settings and de you can get damn good inexpensive the summer porn heroics is that those specialists of higher quality in different parts of the country and you know indeed still abroad and out of our entire several interests producing inexpensively producing good books depending upon the carter center's typographer is the availability of paper we go where we have to but then as iris moved because of our own extraordinary resources for many things were fortunately dispose so that we can do with the printing division and with suppliers who are in the state of texas when they got notice that has happened in texas in recent years there seems to be an increasing number of small regional commercial publishers they have developed a market that they are able to a barely

exist commercially know that within the past few months i think i have attended three or four in productions of new books the author's aaron paul from a small publisher of the overall regional i think it there would be a somewhat different kind of regional and if i saw it like the bird life of texas which we published in nineteen seventy four a two volume massive definitive study on birds and stay i've been there it's unlikely that a small regional publish it could have been had the resources to publish a book of this sort that took twelve years to edit you know i had been asking then we'd years of action similar lay out in the trees and shrubs and what he finds in the nature of the tackle work we do a kind of regional history also which is a more scholarly works only in terms of the kind of regional books we do we we we do

a book that has more on what analysts say well more depth to it and often it is the workout day yet as scarlet it has a scholarly book with you but i'm i consider the wild prescott where clerks scalia thirties when the texas great historians end it is a regional crisis in action and also it's not only me brought out a study of the way and just recently the book was featured in times literary supplement and in london are because that was being disguised as that as a major historian in the american experience and so this is a different kind of regional politician whose collection troops to remember that lots of people right books so i'm not sure they'll ever be enough provisions for the people on a published book so there's plenty of room for publication but the existence of

publishers nearby who share some of our interests guzman lived hand to what they're doing things that we can do and sometimes we can give us our suggested longer preparation to more comprehensive works of then other smaller publishers can do so there's room for everyone to explore and to the region mr gleick i think certainly in texas not every state has a strong a regional market as the state taxes i was talking which to it a director of the midwestern university press he was ending our list our regional lists and which is a regular find again very interesting for us and it heated he would have loved to be out to do books of that so that people in his state didn't have the same interest and i mentioned to him that i felt well texas once had been a nation and that this gave it a

kind of a sense of a cultural history that made it unique wrestling it's important to notice a counter to the emphasis in our earlier conversation that in addition to original works university press's produce works of very wide reach and what importance sometimes and they're extraordinarily fortunate to reach a wide audience such is the case now with publication being pursued texas press the book of marlin but did to it this isn't the first university press book would i know about recently and that is on the bestseller list and we are delighted and ecstatic and we have had now how wonderful news coverage throughout the country new zealand newspaper reviews for this art and it is being down a lot by

fans not only a t h y that by people who like a good book and handsome is very beautiful looking it has beautiful illustrations foreign introduction it's a wonderful story of four people are familiar with the arthur legend that i should mention that i emphasize the fact that we found the manuscript when he spoke in the nineties reached research center collections here at the university of texas this is another are major resource for us as publishers in in austin the yacht manuscript was down by our special projects editor archer mayor who realized that you know because he's a good amateurs and ah we were just wonderful yeah i'm excited about it and then moved ahead linkedin and commissioned an introduction from aunt sylvia

townsend who's very white biographer and the illustrations but argh if we demand humanities research center here we wouldn't have found the manuscript that we're looking at it at the center's collections quite carefully with now dan up a lewis carroll facsimile edition childhood magazine after he had written as an adolescent with hispanic of the rectory menacing and we've got in the car that has a beautiful little book by the way is let's explain in connection with the maryland book you see the uncertainties of scully pre publication and they overlapped with commercial interest in this because the book was originally conceived it was thought that we would produce one was for us the last three or four thousand copies and now of course we would lose many more copies in many many more people and so well i

think that it's been called a sleeper incentive the un median plants that dot the yeah i swore that would show you this is an unusual arm the book fur university press to do art in height has to do with the distribution of books in our country and if we had to are we were fortunate at this time that we have to build up a better sales national sales force than we had in previous years so we have a man who sells for us in the northeast and we go out to california we have our own salesman in this southwest until we have a midwestern represent is editor of that when you compare what a university press can do its own exchanges would either university press sales forces that we might take on washington's list and they might take on hours and they reach an audience to look at what the

publisher like random hand selling chevies in hundreds of this as i'm going to be the seventh out of the stores that's that is that you can realize your day you are selling book goes out that commute but these are these books almost and even aware that they're widely distributed now most of those seven i wanted to remind you of a kind of spirit among university presses this is a remarkable find and yet our associates another university press's have expressed great delight in this five letters and you find out which draws attention university press's draws attention to them as well and we've heard colson letters expressions of congratulations people offered us the advice we've sold about the production and distribution of the book as a very foreign

community among the directors the editors production people in university presses in the country and i very much enjoyed the very short affiliation with the press what we consider daily that the price of the university is one of the best vehicles to transmit scholarship and knowledge that is the primary function of a university by publishing this scholarship in various forms we've also seen that although it may be a scholarly work it can be as interesting and in fact maybe more interesting than that some of the types of material the corner news to her regular popa patients so we can find that the university press provides a great fortune for the university as well as for our nation and i do we invite you to join us next week for a continuation of the

program on the value of the university press in american society this as rex we're for the next two hundred years whole area is a continuing series of weekly conversations about the american future the next two hundred years is produced by katie of them an association with the news and information service and distributed by communication service university of toxins about this is and they're an ailing chief it