Princeton University Press

On Nov. 11, the Association of American University Presses kicks off the first University Press Week, an event designed to celebrate the literary and cultural achievements of university presses across the country (more at aaupnet.org). As with all publishers, university presses have been affected by digitalization and changes in the retail environment. Book Business asked a selection of directors of university presses the question: What do you feel is the best way to steer a university press successfully into the future in this age of rapid technological change?

Back in March, the Digital Digest profiled Princeton Shorts, a new short-form e-book program launched last fall by Princeton University Press. At least two more AAUP presses have launched short e-book programs this spring: Stanford, with Stanford Briefs, and North Carolina, with UNC Press E-Book Shorts.

For Princeton and North Carolina, the digital shorts content comes from already-published, bestselling titles. Princeton Shorts and UNC E-Book Shorts re-package excerpts of full books—as North Carolina describes it, "essential concepts, defining moments, and concise introductions." In contrast, Stanford's Briefs are made up of all new content.

The University of New Mexico Press, University of South Carolina Press and Indiana University Press have selected Ingram Content Group Inc. CoreSource as their digital content distribution system. The University Press of Florida, University of Virginia Press, and Wesleyan University Press recently enhanced their CoreSource relationship with the CoreSource Plus option. 

Princeton University Press appears to be the first university press to join the e-singles game. On November 9, the press will launch Princeton Shorts, a series of nonfiction e-singles consisting of selections from previously published books.

Harold W. McGraw, Jr., who began his career as a book company sales representative in the firm founded by his grandfather, James H. McGraw, and went on to lead McGraw-Hill's rapid growth as a diversified global company through the dawn of the Digital Age, died peacefully at his home this morning at the age of 92.

Smart book production and manufacturing departments routinely evaluate their workflows and look for new and creative ways to streamline their processes, with a keen eye toward trimming both time and costs. Today, as the book publishing industry finds itself struggling in the same challenging economic environment as the rest of the United States, working efficiently is even more critical to preserving the bottom line.

Widely regarded as the print industry’s most prestigious event, the 2009 Gold Ink Awards received more than 1,000 entries across 45 competitive categories, including Book Covers, Book Jackets, Books (Fine Editions), Softcover Books, Hardcover Books, Children’s Books, Fine Art Lithography, Cookbooks, to name a few. In all, 132 entries were selected for Gold, Silver or Bronze honors.

Registration is now open for Book Business magazine's first-ever Publishing Business Virtual Conference & Expo—Digital Content Day @ Your Desk—which will be held on Thursday, Oct. 29. The virtual show is free to all registrants and will offer a full day of interactive conference programming, including live and on-demand educational sessions and audio and e-chats with industry-leading digital-content experts.

Ten years ago, digital, ondemand book printing officially burst upon the scene at Book-Expo America. With IBM’s roll-fed and Xerox’s sheet-fed equipment producing books on the show fl oor in Chicago, Ingram (then Lightning Print) and Bertelsmann (through OPM) invited the industry to get on board while the train was at the station. Since then, Lighting Print has transformed into Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram Industries and the nation’s largest 24/7 book-at-a-time printer. Book and journal manufacturer Edwards Brothers, which had also been operating a one-off DocuTech service for some years before 1998, has expanded its reach and now has seven satellite digital

Chris Anderson’s ironic farewell to the retail bookshelf is a harbinger of how direct distribution in the supply chain is bypassing the traditional foundations of bookselling—as well as library patronage­—and is also flowing into nonprint formats. But while that transformation is nibbling around the edges of distribution, the fact remains that the book publishing industry’s supply chain model has as its primary target a physical book on a physical bookshelf. In this special two-part series, I want to discuss how digital data management drives workflow through the operations, acquisitions, development, production and distribution supply chain; in particular, how use of the Online Information Exchange