The Cost of UP Books

University presses are pricing themselves out of existence. Not all, of course. But most are.

Here’s an example: I’m reading a book, one published this year, that I received through Interlibrary Loan. The cover price is $65.00 (hardcover). It’s black and white, nothing fancy. I recognize that it was printed on demand at a specific factory in Tennessee, which means I also know approximately what it must have cost to produce this book; very little money was spent to bring this book into the world. It features 24 scholarly essays—probably included at little to no cost to the press—and the editor most likely did not receive an advance. The university press has a staff, but it’s unlikely that the UP’s sales are tied to those salaries; university press employees will be paid by the university if a book underperforms. 

So why $65? Individuals can’t afford that. Institutions, such as university libraries, presumably can, but why charge them more? Just because they might pay it? That’s still a severely limited audience. My university library, you know from my first paragraph, did not purchase this book for its collection.

And if it’s aimed at a limited audience, why make the book available through places like Amazon, where it’s on sale for (gasp) $57?

The subject matter is the superhero in American comic books. You know, the genre responsible for billions and billions of dollars that flow into Hollywood each year. So the audience really isn’t that limited, either. It might not become a bestseller, but individuals (hundreds, at least, maybe a few thousand) are interested in this topic.

We often have conversations about book pricing at Engine Books. Our current title is a big novel, and we raised the cover price by a dollar, to $15.95, even though it’s twice as big as some of our recent titles.

A buck. And we weren’t sure we should even do that, but researching what big commercial publishers are charging for paperbacks made us reconsider. Bigger publishers also used POD to keep older titles in print. I love Robert Boswell’s Century’s Son, for instance, but its $19.00 cover price tells me that it’s only available because of this on-demand technology, which comes with a higher production cost (but less money—no money, really—upfront). The publisher, Picador, then raises the cover price in order to cover that higher production expense. The book stays in print, and the publisher’s profit margin on that title stays consistent. 

And even that practice must be considered humane compared to how most university presses treat cover prices.