Columns:: Full-court press: New director discusses her plans for University of Georgia Press

since 12/15/98

Columns::November 26, 2001

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Full-court press
New director discusses her plans for University of Georgia Press

By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

Nicole Mitchell moved to UGA this fall to become director of the University of Georgia Press. She had been

University of Georgia Press director Nicole Mitchell

with the University of Alabama Press since 1988, and had been director since 1996. She talked with Columns about her plans at UGA.

Columns: Have you been here long enough to have some vision of the Press’s future?

Mitchell: The University of Georgia Press already has a very fine reputation as one of the largest and most reputable presses in the South, and it’s particularly known for its list in environmental studies. That is an area of the Press’s list that I’d like to grow. I’m particularly excited about the new College of the Environment and Design, and I would like to link to that strength on our campus.
We have a very good history list, particularly civil rights history and African-American studies and women’s history—I’m excited about that. I’d like to explore a closer relationship with the new School of Public and International Affairs, because I think that that is an underpublished area for university presses, so it might be a niche for Georgia.
Georgia is also known for its literature and poetry, particularly its Flannery O’Connor Award series in short fiction, and of course I want to continue publishing in those areas.
So we already have a very vital program, but there is lots of room for expansion, particularly books about the region and the state. I developed what’s known as a regional trade list at Alabama, and I would like to do that here.

Columns: The Press has always produced some regional books.

Mitchell: Coastal Georgia seems to be a neglected area that could tie to our existing list—photography, literature, history, natural history, perhaps some field guides. Ron Carroll, who’s on our editorial board, noted on a recent field trip with students to the Georgia coast that he couldn’t find any good natural history guides to that area, so there are some obvious gaps that we can fill. We are already planning to publish a history of Cumberland Island.

Columns: Are field guides standard fare for an academic press?

Mitchell: The University of Texas Press publishes a lot of field guides; California publishes a lot of natural history. Georgia has already published some—on wildflowers and trees.
One of the things I did at Alabama was develop publishing partnerships with state and regional agencies—like the Historic Chattahoochee Commission or the Alabama Architectural Foundation. We published a history of the Crimson Tide in collaboration with the Paul W. Bryant Museum—a best seller. We were able to pool our resources and publish high-quality, educationally focused regional trade books that neither of us could have produced by ourselves.
These days most university presses have to balance the academic sides of their lists with some general interest publishing that has a regional or national focus.

Columns: That brings up the broad question of the viability of university presses. Should we be worried about the future of academic presses?

Mitchell: I think there’s more attrition among commercial presses, largely because they’re controlled by eight major media companies and they’re more focused on the bottom line. One of the strengths of university press publishing—one of the luxuries of being in university press publishing—is that we are usually partially supported by our parent institutions. We can continue to publish important scholarship—which we can only publish with a subsidy—without being as concerned about the bottom line as a commercial press.
And our publishing programs are tied to the tenure and promotion system at universities. As long as refereed book publication continues to be part of that process, university presses will serve an important role. That’s what distinguishes university presses from other publishers—the refereeing process, which basically maintains quality. The editorial board is another safeguard that commercial presses don’t have. We have a two-tiered screening process—external referees and our editorial board.

Columns: But many university presses are nonetheless worried about the bottom line these days.

Mitchell: Yes. And that’s why a lot of university presses—especially in the last five years—have launched fund-raising programs to support particular series or parts of their list. Or they may have created a “friends of the press” group, the way that museums or NPR affiliates or botanical gardens have. That’s something I’d like to do here. I would like to create a friends group and tie it to the regional trade part of our list, to publish high-quality books about the state and the region, books we might not be able to afford to do without that kind of fund-raising support. I’m sure there are lots of corporations and individuals who would be interested in supporting such a publishing program.

Columns: Does the Press have plans to get into Web publishing?

Mitchell: The Press is a pioneer in this area already. We are a partner in the Online New Encyclopedia of Georgia, which is the Press’s first venture into electronic publishing. I imagine as we learn more about electronic publishing that we’ll be doing more.

Columns: A good first project—several partners, an obvious audience.

Mitchell: Cost recovery is the big issue, because everybody expects whatever is up on the Web to be free. At the moment this project is being entirely underwritten by private foundations, the Georgia Humanities Council and an NEH grant, with in-kind contributions from the university and the Press. We have three staff members working exclusively on the encyclopedia. It will only be available online, and will be hosted by Project GALILEO, another in-kind contribution from the University System of Georgia.
It’s very exciting. Other university presses that are initiating state-based encyclopedias are learning from what we’re doing.

Columns: Online fiction? e-books?

Mitchell: During my interview for this position at the Press, I asked the members of the search committee if they had read an e-book recently, and—almost without exception—everybody pulled out a handheld device and showed me a free e-book that they had downloaded off the Internet. So I think it’s probably just a matter of time.

Columns: And academic books?

Mitchell: I think there are some areas of scholarly publishing that will become totally online. As the audience for those books becomes more specialized, it may begin to make sense not to invest in the paper, printing, and binding costs of traditional book production. At the moment it’s not terribly cost-effective to publish electronically and cost recovery is still an issue.

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