The Corner Office: It's All in the Packaging

For that reason, I have tailored our e-book program in such a way that it strongly encourages library purchase of both electronic and print editions. ... We created an offer for buying the two versions together—an offer that we hope is way too good for most libraries to refuse, while still allowing separate purchase of the e-book editions only, if that's what a given library insists on. ...

● What role will e-books play in the press's future?
Cohn: We'll just have to see. It's very much an experiment, and we know it may need to be modified over time as the results come in, but I do expect we will forever have an e-books program of this sort aimed at library sales. And I expect that we will soon start to think [about] how we can also make our e-books available to individuals, probably in quite different ways. This is not because I am imagining that our print sales will soon vanish. But I do think we need to be ready to adapt as the world changes ....

I think perhaps the better you are at doing things the way you do them now, the harder it is to let go of those ways when times change. We had gotten very good at publishing print books according to a certain model. Perhaps we will not be so good for a while at publishing our books electronically. But I feel that we do need to try these new things. ...

● How else has DUP evolved since you initially took the reins?
Cohn: When I became the director, it was my sense that our list had little shape or direction. ... I pushed hard for us to be clear on what sorts of books we did and, just as important, did not, want to publish; and what sorts of books we could publish especially well, so that we could legitimately tell an author, "We can publish your book better than anyone else can." ... I think our own particular changing circumstances—as we moved from a medium-sized and fairly mediocre university press toward becoming one of the larger and stronger and most innovative presses—have made for significant changes in how I perform my job. As we have put strong leadership in place in each of the press's nine departments, I have become far less hands-on as a director. In the earlier years of my directorship, I was involved at some level in just about everything that went on at the press. ... But now I work almost entirely with and through our strong set of managers—making sure that they have the infrastructure and resources they need, and that they stay coordinated and focused on our main priorities, but staying out of their daily operations, which they know how to run in a manner [that] I can simply appreciate and encourage. ... Increasingly, even the coordination between departments is happening without ... intervention from me. ...