Interview w/Sarah Pritchard, Univ. librarian, Northwestern U.

[Richard Poynder <richard.poynder@gmail.com>]

*Q:* Does NUP plan to make any of its books OA?*

*A:* I see a lot of advantages to the selective use of OA in both 
monographs and journals. However, the question you immediately 
face is how you get over the hump. For a small press, your 
backlist is your ongoing bread and butter. So you aim to have at 
least one big seller on your backlist, probably a textbook. NUP 
has a couple of big selling textbooks in the field of 
improvisation and the teaching of drama in classes, for example. 
These have become staple texts in theater and performance 
programs.

The problem is that if your backlist is quite profitable and you 
make it OA, which some people advocate, how do you make up the 
lost revenue? Or do you just slash your staff?

The truth is that you can't produce books from nothing, even if 
you are printing them electronically. You still have design, 
marketing, programming, editorial work, copy editing, and so on. 
So OA raises a difficult problem for university presses.

*Q:* The model that many advocate for OA books is making the text 
freely available online but sell the print version, so that etext 
will drive print sales. Do you see it as a viable model for NUP?*

*A:* Absolutely, I see that as a very logical model, and I would 
envisage us moving to that model before we move to a totally OA 
environment. By the way, we are currently in the process of 
moving one of our journals to OA, which we are very excited about 
TriQuarterly.

http://www.infotoday.com/it/jun10/Poynder.shtml
--
Richard Poynder
www.richardpoynder.com