press release

NEW YORK, December 20, 2007—Five university presses have joined together to launch a new collaborative project to expand the publication of first books by scholars in the humanities, NYU Press Director Steve Maikowski announced today.

The five university presses—NYU, Fordham, Rutgers, Temple, and Virginia—have established the American Literatures Initiative, designed to create new opportunities for publication in underserved and emerging areas of humanistic scholarship. The venture will be formally introduced at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, to be held December 28–30 in Chicago.

The Presses will receive $1.37 million over five years from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the American Literatures Initiative. With the assistance of the Mellon grant, which will be administered by NYU Press, the five presses will confront the publishing crisis in literature and literary studies, an area in which the annual number of university press books has declined steeply in recent years, even as the number of new Ph.D.s being awarded has remained relatively stable.

Maikowski, the author of the original grant proposal, said that the American Literatures Initiative will be an innovative, entrepreneurial, cooperative effort to expand the number of books published in literary studies by reducing costs and increasing the audience of readers. Each press will continue to acquire and develop titles according to its own needs and editorial criteria, looking for high-quality first books by promising scholars and seeking out the best scholarly work about English-language literatures of Central and North America and the Caribbean.

The most innovative aspect of the program will be the establishment of a shared, centralized, external editorial service dedicated solely to managing the production of books in the initiative. This service will handle all copyediting, design, layout, and typesetting costs, and manage each title through to the point where it is ready for printing.

“Sixty percent or more of the unit cost of a typical monograph is in these developmental costs,” said Maikowski. “Under our new model, we’ll see significant savings, and each member press can receive electronic files for its books ready for printing and publishing, with most costs already covered.”

Mellon funds will also be used to pay authors modest royalty advances and develop robust, collaborative marketing efforts among the five presses—which will reduce costs for advertising and electronic marketing, publicity, academic conference exhibits, and other efforts.

A goal of the initiative is the creation of a sustainable model of scholarly publishing in this area of the humanities. Each press will increase its output yearly—up to five books each year—so that after five years, as many as 125 new books will be published that might not previously have been viable.

The collaborative production model developed under the Mellon initiative should create permanent efficiencies and enable presses to experiment with innovative print and electronic publishing models. The targeted, visible marketing should also better highlight the scholarly value of this important field.

“The project has the potential to give literary scholars an important vehicle to publish the kind of research that currently does not have adequate publishing outlets,” said Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association. “It’s a twenty-first- century approach to this problem through a collaborative strategy designed to engage publishers, faculty members, and administrators. The fact that each press will be able to maintain its individuality and utilize its own strengths, while at the same time cooperating with other presses, is a unique and laudable feature.”

For more information on the American Literatures Initiative, contact Michael B. Richards, Assistant to the Director, NYU Press, at michael.b.richards@nyu.edu or 212-998-2575, or the office of the director at any of the participating presses.

Editorial Statements from the Presses in the American Literatures Initiative

NYU Press (www.nyupress.org), Eric Zinner, Editor-in-Chief
We will pursue the innovative, exciting work in American literary studies emerging in the “long” nineteenth century—from the Revolutionary period through early modernism—focused on the relationship of literary production to the world-shaping events of this period.

Fordham University Press (www.fordhampress.com), Helen Tartar, Editorial Director
We are particularly interested in scholarship that rigorously extends disciplinary boundaries, especially among philosophy, religion, and literature, and that showcases in fresh ways the methods of close reading.

Rutgers University Press (rutgerspress.rutgers.edu), Leslie Mitchner, Editor-in-Chief
We are most eager to find titles that cross lines between ethnic groups and minorities and open up discussion beyond a particular identity group.

Temple University Press (www.temple.edu/tempress), Janet Francendese, Editor-in-Chief
We will maintain our focus on race and ethnicity, emphasizing the literary production of relatively new immigrant groups or groups whose numbers are growing as a result of new waves of immigration.

University of Virginia Press (www.upress.virginia.edu), Cathie Brettschneider, Humanities Editor
We welcome submissions for our series New World Studies, which publishes interdisciplinary, multilingual research that seeks to redefine the cultural map of the Americas, encompassing the Caribbean and continental North, Central, and South America. We also consider work in twentieth-century American literature, Black American literature and culture, and ethnic and postcolonial studies in language and literature.