Tim Paulson, Director at University Press of Kansas, reports on visiting the University of North Carolina Press

I was fortunate to be able to spend four days with the team at the University of North Carolina Press. I greatly appreciate the support of AUPresses and its members in making this happen.

As a new director—and someone new to the university press sector—it’s been important for me and the University Press of Kansas (UPK) to close any knowledge and culture gaps, given my most recent experience in commercial trade publishing. When I saw the opportunity for a Directors Residency, I jumped on it. Almost literally. I joked with my UNC Press colleagues that I was probably the first person to apply (same day as I got the email). The timing was also good for me, having been with UPK for about five months before the residency—enough experience to have better questions, but soon enough in my tenure that it can help shape our plans for FY25. In other words, I saw this as a big impact learning event.

Choosing UNC Press was an easy choice: UPK shifted its fulfillment/distribution to Longleaf a few months before I started this past year, and I wanted to deepen those relationships. Additionally, UNC Press has enough similarities to UPK (lists, consortium etc.) that I felt I could find some important strategic and operational similarities. The director, John Sherer, graciously welcomed me, as did the Longleaf team.

My time in Chapel Hill was split evenly between UNC Press and Longleaf leaders. I spent the most time with Joanna Marsland, Development Director, and John McLeod, Director of their Office of Scholarly Publishing Services. Both of these areas are strategically important for UPK as we seek to create a development strategy and consider the wisdom of pursuing a services arm that could be similar to what UNC Press is doing. I also met with Debbie Gershenowitz (acquisitions) and Dino Battista (marketing) to review their processes and best practices, since both functions are fairly different from commercial trade publishing. Everyone was open with me, allowing me to hear how they view their work and letting me share my ideas as well. It was a productive dialogue that allowed me to revise and sharpen my perspectives, often in real time. I took Joanna’s advice on the spot, adding an important element to an upcoming meeting with the University of Kansas Business School’s advisory board. As I told John Sherer on my second day at lunch, “If I had to leave now, I would have gotten more than I expected from the trip.”

Later in the week, I met with UNC Press leaders in finance and human resources. I also met with Kim Bryant, Director of EDP. She was an invaluable help in better understanding our options in terms of process. We have two publishing seasons (as does UNC Press), which can be overwhelming, but she helped me see how some additional run-up meetings could help mitigate the challenge of coordinating such large list launches.

I also met with literally everyone on the Longleaf team—from Director Clay Farr to the newest customer service rep who had only been there for a couple of weeks. (Clay even came into the office to meet me after taking essentially a red eye from the West Coast the night before.) It’s hard to overstate how important it is to put faces to names, especially as you start a new relationship Publishing is a relational business, so it was helpful to cement those relationships with Longleaf.

Meeting with Jen Slajus, Client Sales/Marketing Manager, was particularly important for me, as we consider additional partnership areas in terms of sales representation options with Longleaf. She is a wealth of information!

All in all, I had about dozen 1- to 2-hour-long meeting sessions across four days. I’m thankful for John and his team’s generous and in-depth engagement with me.

In terms of takeaways, there were many. The biggest takeaway is that UPK has a legitimate opportunity to ramp up its fundraising efforts and develop a services arm. Like UNC Press, UPK is a consortial press with a strong mandate to service its system and state. It’s not only possible that UPK could do this, but it’s critical that we consider this. Like many university presses, UPK is focused on publishing monographs in the humanities, but a development strategy paired with a services emphasis would allow UPK to service the whole consortial system, adding value to a much wider spectrum of stakeholders, from the humanities to STEM. This would take a number of years to develop, both financially and operationally, but my conversations largely validated the long-term possibilities here.

Another major takeaway for me is the value of outsourcing and partnerships. As a small press, we can’t do everything. Outsourcing as much as we can to a partner like Longleaf helps us develop efficiencies and operational levels we couldn’t achieve alone. More importantly, it allows us to focus on where we can really add value as a Press. As I mentioned to my assistant director when I got back to Kansas, the question isn’t what we should give to Longleaf, but what we shouldn’t. I don’t mention this as a commercial for Longleaf, but instead as a larger strategic theme of making tradeoffs and generating focus, especially as a “small player.”  It’s not always easy to give up things done in the past, but it’s almost always worth it.

There were some other smaller takeaways from marketing and acquisitions, too. Most of these were best practices oriented, touching on everything from adoption marketing to internal decision-making practices. Many of our processes are the same, but as a press that’s experienced a lot of transition in recent years, it was important for me to get second opinions on the operational change and definition we’re pursuing at UPK.

One final thought on learning: it’s hard to exaggerate how “collegial” the university press community is. It would be unthinkable for me to have a similar experience in the commercial trade publishing industry. (If I did, someone would be fired!)