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Publishing for the Americas

This talk was delivered by Sayri Karp, Director, Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de Guadalajara, on June 18, 2005, at the AAUP Annual Meeting Philadelphia, as part of the panel "Publishing for the Americas."

Before I begin, I wish to thank Peter Givler for his invitation. It is an honor for me to attend the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses and to be on this panel.

Overview of Mexican university presses

The Royal Pontifical University of Mexico was founded in 1551. Some years later in 1554, the first publications appeared: three teaching works, which we would nowadays call “textbooks." These works were printed in the Juan Pablos printing shop, which was the first printer in the New Spain. This printing house produced an average of five books per year. So 1554 marks the beginning of university publishing in Mexico.

Ever since then, university presses have occupied an important place in Mexican publishing; such activity has generated an extensive and rich catalogue thanks to the work of the institutions of higher education, without which we currently would not have knowledge of works of vital importance.

Unfortunately, we do not have enough accurate and systematic information regarding publishing in our country, and less about university presses.

Jesús Anaya, Editor-in-Chief of Planeta México, made a study regarding the university publishing activity in our country in 1987, which revealed the following information:

• In that year 4,150 new titles were published in the country, which gave a total of 39.5 million copies.
• Of these, 40% were titles published by universities, cultural and academic publishing houses, and the large private corporations of the publishing industry.
• Of the 279 universities, technological institutes, and teachers’ training colleges forming the National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education (ANUIES) there was constant publishing activity detected in 65 institutions. However, only 54 are registered in the Mexican ISBN Agency, and 23 have participated regularly since 1980 in the National University International Book Fair in Mexico City.
• Making an overall calculation, we could say that one out of every five new titles published in 1987 were the responsibility of the university presses, without counting new editions or reprints.

In June last year, more than 50 universities met in Mexico City to analyze the proposal for the creation of a Mexican association of university presses. The figures produced by a questionnaire made in that meeting show us that some things have changed in 17 years, especially with reference to print runs: 20 years ago the average run per title, at least in the University of Guadalajara, was between 3,000 and 5,000 copies; at present it is 1,000 copies; likewise, the tendency has been to publish more titles and have less copies. Now in the National University the print run of any of their titles is 500, and 1,000 for co-editions; but they are thinking to reduce it to 200 copies per title.

We can say that at present we have 50 public universities with systematic publishing activity:

• Some of them have several separate publication units hence we counted around 200 publishing departments.
• Between these, around 2,800 titles are published each year, which are converted into approximately 2.96 million copies.
• The National University of Mexico alone has 99 publishing sections and it publishes 1,300 titles a year.
• Jointly, all the public university presses offer a current catalogue of around 20,000 titles.
• Approximately 50 small book fairs are held in the country each year.
• And there are about 60 university bookstores in existence.

We can classify all these universities in five groups according to the number of titles published annually.

The first group is formed solely by the National University of Mexico, the publishing activity of which occupies a preponderant place. This university is the heir to the Royal Pontifical University of Mexico, and is also one of the largest publishing houses in the Spanish-speaking world. Through 2003, it had an historical catalogue of 13,000 titles, half of which is still in print. It has 461 collections and 299 series. It edits 700 issues of magazines per year corresponding to approximately 100 different titles, and between 500 and 600 book titles, including reprints and new editions. Additionally, it has a network of ten bookstores and a central warehouse. As you will realize, this represents a giant which by itself could constitute an association, since it is confronted with more complex problems than all the remaining university presses together.

The next in importance is the National Polytechnic Institute, which has specialized in publishing textbooks for high school and higher education with runs of more than 20,000 copies per title for use only by its own student community; and the Metropolitan University and the University of Guadalajara, which publish an average of around 120 book titles annually and between 20 and 25 periodicals.

The third group is formed by the institutions which publish between 70 and 100 titles each year, such as the University of Veracruz, El Colegio de Mexico and the Benemérita Universidad de Puebla.

The fourth group is integrated by those universities which publish between 40 and 70 books per year, such as the Colegio de Michoacán, the University of Querétaro, the Center for Investigations and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (“Ciesas”), the University of Chapingo, the University of the State of Mexico, the University of Sonora and the University of Yucatán.

The remaining public institutions publish between 10 and 30 titles annually.

The Altexto Network

For several years now, ANUIES has promoted an alliance of university presses on a regional basis. However, only the central Western region has maintained a cooperative relationship, a network of 12 institutions known as the Altexto group (university text alliance) for the last six years. The University of Guadalajara is a member of this network.

Each member has a responsibility to contribute to the work of the network, and for this purpose serves on one of the following committees:

• Promotion and catalogue
• Training and publishing handbooks
• Joint publications
• Peer review and evaluation
• Distribution and sales
• Web page
• Publishing news and trends

We meet three times a year to exchange opinions and plan the network: propose co-editions; decide which fairs to attend; produce a joint catalogue; publish a manual for university presses which may shape policies and basic rules on publishing, legal and commercial issues. This experience has been enriching for all the members of Altexto.

Additionally, each institution is committed to carry out a small one-week book fair, in order to promote and market the books published by the institutions in the network. Those which have their own bookstore (seven in all) are obligated to exhibit and sell the books of all the rest. This alliance has been particularly productive for increasing attendance at national and international book fairs, in Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Bogotá, Santiago and Santo Domingo.

The First International Forum of University Presses

Last year the Association of Spanish University Presses (AEUE), the International Book Fair, and the University Press of the University of Guadalajara organized the I International Forum on University Presses—due to the fact that Catalonia was the special guest for 2004.

The objectives were:

• To promote a dialogue between the universities of Spain and Latin America.
• To raise the professionalism of the staff of university presses.
• And to propose some solutions to the problems with which we are so familiar yet which have not been easy to solve.

Taking these problems into account, we divided the forum into three large panels:

• New university publishing strategies
• Planning for university publishing
• Marketing, sales and distribution

For this forum were with us: the ex-President, the actual President and the Vice-President of the Association of Spanish University Presses, the President of the Association of Brazilian University Presses, and the Executive Director of the Association of American University Presses, Peter Givler, and other experienced publishing staff from Argentine, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

The Issues

The issues for university presses in our country are very similar to those in Spain and Latin America. To paraphrase Antoni Furió, Director of the University of Valencia Press, we would say that most of our university presses are weighed down with grave problems of financing, structure, functioning, and even problems of identity—of a clear definition of what a university press is, or should be.

Taking into account that many of the academic books have a longer life than the titles published by the commercial publishers, and that the university books do, in fact, sell if they manage to arrive at their destination, it is fundamental to promote inter-institutional alliances in order to create broader distribution networks and to define publishing policies to fulfill our fundamental mission, which is to spread the knowledge generated in the university.

I think university presses still has a long way to go, and for this we need an association of university presses in Mexico as soon as possible.

To finish I wish to invite you to attend the II International Forum on University Presses which will take place at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara in November 2006. I should be delighted if you would accompany us, and I trust that this relationship, which we have established thanks to Peter Givler, may grow and enrich the relationship between the American and Mexican universities, and that we shall soon be able to carry out joint projects.

Thank you very much for your attention. Muchas gracias.