Some University Presses Have Started Blogs

Here's some valuable web surfing! Many university presses have blog sites. For those of you who are interested in finding a new university press, or knowing more about the one where you hope to publish again, this is an excellent way to get a peek inside their doors without actually having to visit. (I do recommend in-person visits, but that's for another blog item.) Following is a list of the university presses I know have blogs, along with links to their sites. I'll also add this as a permanent feature on this blog so you can come back in the future and read them all in one convenient place:

University of California Press
University of Chicago Press
Cork University Press
University of Georgia Press
Harvard University Press
The MIT Press
The University of Minnesota Press
The University of Nebraska Press
Oxford University Press
The University of Pennsylvania Press
The University of Tennessee Press
Yale University Press

The good news is that they exist, they're mostly readable, and some offer a view of university presses that's a bit different from what you see in the glossy catalogues and those mind-numbing rah-rah pieces publishers love to dump on those of us who are looking for real answers. The bad news is that they're generally about THEM. Most UP blogs only talk about their own books. There is precious little about the industry as a whole. The best blog model I've seen for publishing strategies and industry news rather than a predictable rundown of the press's book list is from Cork University Press, where Publications Director Mike Collins has a number of great posts. He notes that he has a specialization in marketing, and I'm not surprised. His blog makes you want to read it and return again to read some more. He doesn't seem to be updating it anymore, but if he starts again I'll certainly want to put it on my regular list of things to read.