Indiana University Press blog

Two IUP employees win Pat Hoefling Memorial Grants

We're pleased to announce that IUP staff members Laura Baich, Electronic Marketing Manager, and June Silay, Project Editor, were recently awarded professional developments grants from the Pat Hoefling Memorial Fund. This fund allows new and mid-career level staff to attend publishing conferences in order to learn about new technologies and practices within the industry. Baich and Silay will use their grants to attend the AAUP annual meeting in Boston this June. 

The Pat Hoefling Memorial Fund, which is supported by donations, has helped send several IUP staff members to AAUP over the last few years. Past winners include Production Coordinator Dan Pyle, Sponsoring Editor Raina Polivka, and Trade Marketing and Publicity Manager Mandy Clarke.

Pat Hoefling was sales and marketing director at IU Press from November 2005 until her death in July 2010. During her tenure at the Press, she positively affected staff members by generously sharing her knowledge and encouraging them to learn new skills to advance their professional development.

Both of this year's winners spoke of how Pat’s legacy endures through these grants. "I'm very honored to receive this grant," Baich said. "Pat was a great advocate of my career development while she my boss, and it means a lot that she can still help me further my professional goals."

"I am pleased and grateful for this opportunity," said Silay. "It is gratifying to know that this memorial fund is stimulating more and more interest and applicants each year. In itself, this is a testament and a tribute to Pat's spirit."

To learn more about the fund or to make a donation, visit the Pat Hoefling page on our website.

You're gonna flip for the digital flip versions of our catalogs!

OK, so I'm a little late to the "make-a-cool-digital-flip-version-of-your-catalog" party, but I've finally arrived with our first issue using Issuu. Check out our fall 2013 books and journals catalogs, and tell us what you think!

Fall 2013 books catalog

Open publication - Free publishing - More academic

Fall 2013 journals catalog

Open publication - Free publishing - More humanities

We're moving!

One week from today, we'll be moving to our new home at the Wells Library. The office is a flurry of activity with boxes being packed, furniture being removed, and the new owners of the building working on the roof (as I'm typing this!). After spending 53 years in the same location, you can only imagine some of the stuff we've found while cleaning out the building. Here are some of the highlights:

Nothing says class like a neon sign. This gem was found in the back of our vault (yes, we have a vault in our building—two of them, in fact!). After doing some in-depth research (consisting of yelling over the cubicle walls, "What's up with this neon Indiana sign?"), I discovered that it was used for a BEA show many years ago. My boss is taking it to his new office at the library. It will now be used to indicate when he's at work.

Some of the best items we found were correspondence from former IUP director John Gallman. It was really hard to decide which letter to post, but ultimately I decided on this one. Because who doesn't need a little witchcraft in their lives?

Tucked away in a desk drawer were these handy guides from the 1960s (what people had to use before the internet): The Executive Secretary's Complete Portfolio of Letters and The Executive Secretary's Word and Phrase Finder. I turned to the Letters guide for its advice on writing an announcement about a company move:

Prices go up or down. Your company moves to a new location or opens a branch office. ... These events and many more have to be announced to people.

Announcements are usually produced by mimeograph, offset, thermography or some other process. ... Announcements should:

• Be brief and factual.
• Be attractive and neatly produced.
• Stress any benefit to the readers—even when news is bad.
• Be copy-read carefully.

Unfortunately, our mimeograph machine is in the shop, so I hope this blog post will do. Starting this Friday, March 22, please send any correspondence (printed thermographically or otherwise) to our new address:

Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 E. 10th St.
Bloomington, IN 47405-3907

Check out the rest of our Morton Street memories in this retrospective video:

IU Press launches new digital shorts imprint

Today, Indiana University Press launched a new digital imprint, INshort, which will publish short e-content on contemporary and historical issues and provide discerning readers with short, engaging views of important and compelling topics in multiple formats. Titles in the series will feature original content from award-winning authors and will also showcase carefully selected excerpts from previously published IU Press books and journals.

Women in American Popular Music, by S. Kay Hoke, is a chapter from the edited volume Women and Music: A History, featuring composers, performers, patrons, musical contexts and an expanded view of women's contributions to music in the 20th century.

Patterns of War—World War II, by Larry H. Addington, is taken from his second edition of The Patterns of War since the Eighteenth Century and is an excellent introduction for students and general readers on the evolution of warfare during World War II.

“We chose to launch our INshort series with titles in music and military history because these are two of the most prominent areas in which IU Press publishes, and because our military history and music titles have traditionally done well for us as e-books,” said Kate Caras, Director of Electronic and Serials Publishing.

Titles planned for next season are on women in jazz and on Abraham Lincoln. Future plans for the imprint include the release of at least four shorts a year in the same wide spectrum of subject areas in which IU Press currently publishes.

“We’ve launched our INshort effort with the repurposing of previously published materials and with the goal of adding, in the very near future, original essays on topics of immediate interest,” said Caras. “We expect to receive the manuscript of our first original essay—on Martin Luther King and race in America in the age of Obama—early next calendar year.”

INshorts are available for purchase through all major e-book retailers and the IU Press website. The first two titles retail for $2.99 and $4.99.

“It is increasingly clear that the digital environment is the inevitable future of scholarly publishing. If we are to remain successful, we must be more responsive to the demands of our market and take advantage of the promises of these technologies,” said Caras. “Our INshort series is an attempt to do ‘right-size publishing’ in answer to our market’s current interest in online short-form content. It is the beginning of what I hope is a shift in our thinking about how we can use technology more effectively for the benefit of our readers.”

IUP editor Linda Oblack to give talk on Break Away Books

IU Press sponsoring editor Linda Oblack will give a talk on our Break Away Books imprint this Friday, November 30 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. in the Bloomingtonfoods' Community Room (316 W. Sixth St., Bloomington, IN). This free event is part of the Lemonstone reading series presented by the Writers Guild at Bloomington.

About Break Away Books:

Focusing on fiction, memoirs, creative nonfiction, and poetry with a Midwest connection, this series places characters and/or action in the Midwest, yet has a universal reach as well, not of a region, but transcending region. The books connect the reader to the region via childhood memories, the land itself, defining moments in one's life that took place in the region, historical subjects or events.

University Press Week features

We're excited for the start of University Press Week on November 11! We have a couple of features lined up next week to celebrate the important work that university presses do. On Thursday, November 15, we'll feature a post from former IUP intern Nico Perrino as part of the UP Week blog tour. He'll discuss why university presses are vital to furthering intellectual debate and advancing our society. We'll also host a trivia contest about IU Press and university press publishing, where you'll have a chance to win fabulous book prizes! The contest will run daily from November 12-16. Watch our blog for more details!

And if you like to see all the activities that other presses have planned for University Press Week, visit the AAUP website or follow the hashtag #UPWeek on Twitter.

New addition to University Press Week blog tour

We're pleased to announce that Columbia University Press will be joining the University Press Week blog tour! That brings the grand total up to 26 presses! The tour begins next Monday, November 12, at Harvard University Press. You can see a complete schedule here. Look for some great content celebrating university presses during that week!

What is the global reach of IU Press?

As part of AAUP's University Press Week activities, we've created an influence map to show the impact of our press on the world. This map includes just our Fall 2012 books, but as you can see, our reach still spans the globe!

View Indiana University Press Influence Map in a larger map

Several other presses have created influence maps. Check out the footprints of our colleagues:

The University of British Columbia Press

Columbia University Press

The University of Illinois Press

MIT Press

Princeton University Press

Syracuse University Press

The University of Virginia Press

If you find additional influence maps, please include the links in the comments section!

26 presses kick off University Press Week with a blog tour

This month, the Association of American University Presses will celebrate University Press Week from November 11-17. This week started back in the summer of 1978 when President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a University Press Week “in recognition of the impact, both here and abroad, of American university presses on culture and scholarship.”

In the spirit of collaboration that pervades the university press community, Indiana University Press and 25 other presses will come together for a blog tour during University Press Week. This tour will highlight the value of university presses and the contributions they make to scholarship and our society. Bloggers include authors, book review editors, university press staff members, interns, booksellers, and university press advocates, most notably Bruce J. Miller and Ned Stuckey-French, who led a successful social media campaign to save the University of Missouri Press.

Harvard University Press kicks off the tour on Monday, November 12, and it continues coast-to-coast with stops in Canada and Hawaii before ending on Friday, November 16, at Oregon State University Press. The tour comes to IU Press’s blog on Thursday, November 15, with a post by former IUP intern Nico Perrino. See a complete University Press Week blog tour schedule here.

In addition to the blog tour, the AAUP and other member presses are planning several features and events for University Press Week. For more information, visit www.universitypressweek.org.

IU Press director Janet Rabinowitch to speak at Purdue this Wednesday

In honor of the Association of American University Presses' 75th anniversary, Purdue University Press is hosting a seminar titled "The University as Publisher: Strategies and Opportunities." The seminar will focus on how changes in the scholarly publishing landscape have affected universities, what new opportunities are arising, and how publishers can better serve scholars in the digital age.

Janet Rabinowitch. Courtesy of Indiana University.

IU Press director Janet Rabinowitch, along with Dr. Timothy Sand, acting president of Purdue, and Ellen Faran, director of MIT Press, will discuss these issues.

The seminar will take place on October 31 from 2 to 3 p.m. in the East and West Faculty lounges in the Purdue Memorial Union. The seminar is open all members of the Purdue community, and refreshments will be served.