 "Photo: Jonny Green")
Texas A&M University Press publishes and distributes 60 to 75 books a year on everything ranging from biographies of Dat Nguyen and Reveille to scholarly research on nautical science.
The publishing company's list, every title printed with the Press imprint, has evolved to include books for academic and general audiences, as well as open-access books available online. It has published online versions of the 13 books in the Fay Series, a series in analytical psychology. These can be accessed through the University Repository or the Texas Digital Library, of which Texas A&M is a co-founder, said Director Charles Backus.
"Our books and all university presses' in the association [Association of American University Presses] have outside peer reviews of the manuscript to ensure that what we decide to publish is a caliber that represents our University," said Marketing Manager Gayla E. Christiansen.
Backus said there is a faculty advisory committee to whom they present every project that will be published with the A&M imprint, and the committee must approve publication for that to go forward. "They are an important safeguard to the quality of the imprint," Backus said.
University Press' editorial interests include agriculture anthropology, nautical archaeology, architecture, borderland studies, economics, military history, natural history, presidential studies, veterinary medicine and Texas history and culture. About half of the books are targeted toward an academic audience, but others are targeted toward a more general audience with the goal of spreading authoritative knowledge to a wider audience, Backus said.
Publicity and Advertising Manager Holli Estridge said the University Press is one of the leading publishers in American military history and is distinguished for its nautical archaeological list. Backus added the University Press tends to publish in those areas "because there is a strength here at the University."
But only about 15 percent of the Press' authors are affiliated with the University. The others come from across the country - even around the world. The Press looks to publish the most knowledgeable authors of each respective field, regardless of his or her academic home, Backus said.
Last year was a banner year for University Press, in which the Press' publications raked in 30 awards. "Doug Welsh's Texas Garden Almanac," by A&M horticulture professor Doug Welsh, won three awards for graphic design and overall product from the Garden Writers Association. "The Country Houses of John F. Staub," by Stephen Fox, a fellow at the Anchorage Foundation of Texas, was granted the Ron Tyler Award for Best Illustrated Book on Texas History and Culture from the Texas State Historical Association.
University Press is co-sponsoring a symposium Feb. 11 through Feb. 13 to examine the impact of the technological advancements in communication on scholarly publishing for advancing knowledge, disseminating it and making it accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
"All of this has, in some cases, unintended consequences in terms of how all that is organized and put together and funded," Backus said. "This symposium will be meant to examine some of those issues and what impact they have currently at Texas A&M and what A&M should be doing to meet those challenges."
Texas A&M faculty members have been invited, as well as faculty from other institutions, including University of Texas and University of North Texas. The symposium will include speakers from Harvard, Stanford and the Mellon Foundation.
Through the Texas A&M University Press Consortium, established in 1981, the Press markets and distributes titles published by six other institutions, including TCU Press, the University of North Texas Press and the Texas State Historical Association. These publications are listed in the consortium's biannual catalog. The books are printed by outside companies and the individual presses select, edit, design and produce their own books, and then send them to Texas A&M.
Texas A&M University Press is housed in the John H. Lindsey Building, across from the south side of Duncan Dining Hall. The approximately one million individual books of the consortium, printed by outside printing companies, are housed in the adjacent warehouse. The company offers a 20 percent discount for all books bought directly at the Press.
Sophomore political science major Claudia Bustamante and junior economics major Daniel Yanez are student workers at the Press. Bustamante works as a marketing apprentice, designing advertisements for books in the form of flyers and postcards. She uses the summary of the book, quotes from credible sources, graphics and author biographies in the advertisements she designs.
"How you position things on a page really matters, some people don't know that," Bustamante said. "We have a more conservative, professional style, we target more scholarly types of people, so the design is different from like an advertisement for students."
Yanez assists Estridge, mainly by selecting quotes from critics' reviews that would be good publicity on the back cover of a book.
"I think a lot of people depend on quotes to decide whether to buy a book," Bustamante said. "I know that's the first thing I do, I want to know what other people are saying about the book."
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