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What were we thinking?
• A great time to enter academic publishing– Publishers cutting back on titles– Publishers ceasing operations– Good scholarship going unpublished – Recurrent good news/bad news joke:
• “Your book has passed peer review…”• “…but we can’t afford to publish it.”
Warning signs or signs of opportunity?
Underlying factors
• Books becoming increasingly expensive, largely due to rising cost of paper
• Library budgets for books growing increasingly tight
• University press budgets shrinking as costs keep rising
• And then there’s the ugliest word in academic publishing…
SUBVENTION
So..what WERE we thinking?
Rice University’s (not necessarily coordinated)
response
• 1996: Rice University Press euthanized• 1999: Connexions founded
– Create– Mix– Rip– Burn
• And then…
Revival
• 2006: Rice University Press returns
Tradition meets technologyContrary to popular belief…• Manuscripts are subjected to rigorous peer
review• Authors must be serious academicians• Work must be stellar• Acceptance by RUP should be a boon to
professors seeking promotion and tenure• But once a manuscript is accepted….
“Digital” publishing• Books are published online, viewable
for free– Multimedia– “Prestige economy”
• A meritocracy in which knowledge and scholarship are the only real currency
– Create. Mix. Rip. Burn. • Those ideas contribute most that are used
most, and in the most ways (Homer, sudoku)
Speaking of Homer…
• Matt Groening:– “Copyright infringement is the sincerest
form of flattery.”
Digital to print
• Connexions’ “secret sauce”– Automatic formatting for print
• RUP books are printed on demand– No costly bets, print overruns, or
inventory management• A production method that makes the
impossible possible
Case in point:
Long Tail Press
• A Rice University Press imprint• Books peer-reviewed and accepted
elsewhere, but too costly to publish• Co-publishing with other university
presses
The “plan”
• 2007-08– Two or three titles per year– Tinker with financial model– Build peer review panels discipline by
discipline– Secure funding
• 2009– Add staff, add titles– Take off in earnest
Summary
• What is RUP really?– Neither a traditional publisher…– …nor a “digital” publisher
• World not ready to do without books• But the printed book, clearly, is waning• Rice, for now, is a bridge between old
and new worlds of “book” publishing
Web sites of interest
• www.ricepress.rice.edu• www.cnx.org• www.qoop.com• http://creativecommons.org/