Despite the shaky economy, the University of Pennsylvania Press has had a successful year so far.
While other university presses have faced declining sales in recent years, book sales are up 8 percent this year at Penn Press.
In fact, says Director Eric Halpern, sales have actually increased by 20 percent over the last three years.
He added that Penn's numbers have doubled in the last decade, and the number of published titles has also increased by 30 percent.
Halpern credits the recent success to "a deliberate editorial strategy."
The press has "intensely developed a select number of fields" and focused on increasing the number of new titles within those popular genres, he said.
Penn Press has also adopted a different strategy for publishing different versions of their books.
Rather than printing both hardcover and paperback editions simultaneously, Halpern said, the company has moved toward the more "traditional" strategy of publishing a hardcover edition first, then a paperback version later.
As a result, he said, both hardcover and paperback sales of most of their titles are on the rise.
A handful of other university presses have also reported increases in sales, including those at Georgetown, Oxford and Cambridge.
But most have not been so fortunate.
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported significant drops in university press sales.
Of those surveyed by the Association of American University Presses, 62 presses reported that net sales were collectively down more than 9 percent between July 1 and Dec. 31 of last year, compared with the same period in 2007.
This is the case at Princeton University Press, where Director Peter Dougherty says sales are "about 8 percent off from where we were last year" as of January.
He attributes the entire decline to the economic downturn.
"I think it is safe to say that, in general, press sales are less than what they were last year or in the past few years at university presses," he said. "Because of the economy, wholesalers are not buying nearly as much as they used to."
To deal with the loss of revenue, Princeton University Press is trying to "be smarter and more efficient in order to save money," Dougherty said.
Halpern mentioned that book publishers currently face a variety of problems besides the economy - including piracy.
Just yesterday, another Web site that provides free downloads of books was discovered: ebookthief.com.
"The Association of American University Presses' listserv has been buzzing with the piracy issue today as a result," said Halpern.
Although piracy has not been a major issue for Penn Press thus far, he said, "The threat is there, especially as electronic publishing becomes more and more widespread."
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