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- [00:00]
Rebind Study Bible App Narrator
Go beyond the verses and achieve a deeper understanding of Scripture with the Rebind Study Bible App. An audio experience of the Bible interwoven with expert commentary. The Rebind Study Bible App reads Scripture to you, enriching your comprehension with insights from the world renowned New International Commentary on the Old and the New Testament in an accessible podcast episode format.
- [00:22]
Dennis Lloyd
Be not therefore anxious for the morrow. Matthew chapter 6 each day will have its troubles, but by God's grace they can be survived.
- [00:31]
Rebind Study Bible App Narrator
Use the Rebind Study Bible App's chat function to ask questions and get answers in real time. That's thought provoking discussion and analysis rooted in decades of research and wisdom from more than 40 scholars at your fingertips. The Rebind Study Bible App is a new way to experience the Bible with enhanced depth at your own pace in the moments you have Search the Apple App Store for Rebind Study Bible or go to Rebind App for a free seven day trial it's okay not to be Perfect with finances Experian is your big financial friend and here to help. Did you know you can get matched with credit cards on the app? Some cards are labeled no Ding Decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. Download the Experian app for free today. Applying for no Ding Decline cards won't hurt your credit scores if you aren't initially approved. Initial approval will result in a hard inquiry which may impact your credit scores. Experian the holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal.
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Caleb Zakrin
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Caleb Zakrin
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Rebind Study Bible App Narrator
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Caleb Zakrin
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Rebind Study Bible App Narrator
The New Books Network.
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Caleb Zakrin
I'm Caleb Zakrin, Editor of the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Dennis Lloyd, Director of the University of Wisconsin Press and President of the association of University Presses. Every year, NBN speaks with the President of AU Presses in anticipation of University Press Week this year. Press Week will take place from November 10th through the 14th with the theme Team up to celebrate. I'm thrilled to have Dennis Lloyd on the podcast. Dennis, thanks for joining me today on the New Books Network.
- [02:33]
Dennis Lloyd
Thanks so much for having me, Caleb. It's a thrill and an honor to get a chance to speak to you and to be in a long line of aupress presidents that have had this opportunity.
- [02:43]
Caleb Zakrin
I'm really glad to have you on. I love these conversations and I love doing anything where I get to, you know, do some work with the AU presses, whether it's going to the conferences or getting to speak with the presidents or getting to speak with the, you know, the various people that, that do the work year round that people don't really recognize is happening. But I really think the AU presses is just a phenomenal organization that does such important work. Not only the AU presses, but all of the individual university presses. And before even talking about the AU presses and the, you know, and University Press Week, I was just wondering if you could tell us a little about yourself and your work at the University of Wisconsin Press.
- [03:20]
Dennis Lloyd
Sure, absolutely. I'm happy to. So I've worked in university press publishing for about 30, just over 32 years. I, like a lot of people, I did kind of stumble into it. I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois. I was the first in my family to go to college and then went on to graduate school. And I had finished all the coursework for the, for the dissertation and had passed my initial exams and was, was working on research and writing. And a friend of mine said oh, who was finishing her degree said I, I, I'm leaving this job. I think you'd, I think you'd enjoy it and I think you'd be good at it. And I applied and started as an acquisitions assistant at the University of Illinois Press and had a great, great number of bosses there, including my first boss, and then just kind of moved around. I've worked at a total of six different university presses. From Illinois I went to University Press of Kentucky, then University of Pittsburgh Press, University of Alabama Press, University Press of Florida, and then 10 years ago I came to University of Wisconsin Press as the only the fifth director here. And it's a real honor. I learned something new at every and have just really been enjoyed being a part of this world.
- [04:43]
Caleb Zakrin
Wow, you really traversed North America through that. It's pretty impressive. What is it like for you as the director of the association of University Presses, stepping into that role?
- [04:55]
Dennis Lloyd
It's an honor, honestly. It's volunteer work. It's extra work, uncompensated in financial terms, but incredibly rewarding. I have a lot of that 32 years I have spent knowing about the association, working with the association. My, my first attendance, you mentioned liking to go to the annual meeting. The first time I ever attended was, was in 94, 1994 and, and, and it was a, it was a great experience and I've served on committees and served a previous term on the board. So there's certain tasks that the president's responsible for helping to, to staff, at least to help chair them and then the chairs find the staffs. If things come up over the course of the year, I might be called on to help speak about it to the association or on behalf of the association. But a lot of the work is actually done by Peter Berkery, our executive director and an amazing staff at the association at the central office that handle a lot of the day to day things, scheduling meetings, working with all the other committee volunteers and task force volunteers to help help schedule events.
- [06:14]
Caleb Zakrin
We're a few weeks out from University Press Week and I wonder if you could talk a little about some of the work that you've been, you've been doing right now. What, what is going into preparation for this week where we really celebrate, you know, all the incredible books that the university presses are publishing at.
- [06:29]
Dennis Lloyd
At this point. I think most of the preparation is done. It's just kind of the final, final touches of things. There's a, there's a lot of moving pieces. The, the, the one thing that's interesting about the University Press Week task force that's responsible for helping come up with a theme which is as other in years past has been pointed out, is always kind of a play on the word up as an acronym for university presses. This year's is Team up and the focus on collaboration. But that settled back shortly after one University Press Weekends. Then the work begins on starting planning the next one. So it's the only committee and task force at the association that on an off cycle, most of them the new chairs. The program year runs July 1 to June 30. But the university Press Week Task Force, the chairs appointed in January and they get their work started a lot earlier so that we can be ready with all the different elements of University Press Week that have to take place usually the second week of November.
- [07:35]
Caleb Zakrin
Could you share with us about team Up? What is Team Up?
- [07:39]
Dennis Lloyd
Team up, this year's theme is focuses on collaborations. All the different types of collaborations that go on in University press publishing and the collaborative spirit that really is at the heart of it. And in a lot of ways, all kinds of ways that you look at University press publishing can be seen as a type of collaboration. One of the key elements that makes, makes us different from other publishers is the absolute reliance on peer review and that is collaborative. The Press the editor reaches out to, in most cases, a minimum of two external readers who are scholars in the field or specialists for the kind of trade books or fiction or poetry and have them provide reports that then are used to help improve the manuscript. Then that goes to an editorial board for approval for publication. So a lot of people have to work together for any book to get published by a university press. But there's also collaboration between the press and bookstores for events, collaboration between presses for co publications or books or series. The way libraries and booksellers work with us. So the focus is on all kinds of collaboration in this year's theme.
- [09:10]
Caleb Zakrin
Yeah, one of the things that I found really interesting that's highlighted this year, oftentimes there's you know, a list of, you know, anywhere from, you know, 50 to 150 books that are highlighted and I definitely want to talk about those. But you also highlight a variety of projects that various presses are working on. I was wondering if you'd share a little about some of these projects because I think that it's, it really does highlight this theme. Sure.
- [09:32]
Dennis Lloyd
There's, there's actually, there's a galley of information gallery. Sorry about University Press Week. If anybody wants to go more they can. It, you can actually just go to upweek.org and it will, it will take you to the page. The, the actual URL is longer but you don't need to type all of that in. And among other things there's a gallery with a slideshow for a lot of subject categories if, because not everybody is interested in every book published by every university press. And there's, there's different categories there and one of them is collaborative projects. And these are specifically things that a press or multiple presses are with a partner outside the press and just kind of glancing over this list, I won't hit them all, but there's University of Alberta Press, for example, is co publishing a lecture series with the center for Literature in Canada. Rutgers University Press is working on a project on Korean humanities in translation. Duke and MIT presses are collaborating on a direct to open program. University of California Press is, is working on a first gen program that focuses on how it supports the community of scholars and authors. And my own press, University of Wisconsin Press, we've been partnering with Aarhus University Press in Denmark on a series called the Nordic World of Individual Books. We also have a journal, Scandinavian Studies and a number of other books in the field as well, some in translation, some written by scholars in the U.S.
- [11:16]
Caleb Zakrin
How do you find with the current environment especially where, you know, People are reading fewer books. University presses, some are. Some are. Some do, Are still doing well, but some, Some are struggling. How do you find these collaborations are helping to, you know, weather any potential storms or just the various difficulties that university presses face?
- [11:36]
Dennis Lloyd
It, I'll push back a little bit on the idea that it's a storm or difficulty. When I started in university press publishing, we were been wringing our hands over the fact that, well, we just can't seem to sell 2,000 copies of these monographs anymore. And I think we would all just be amazed if we could sell that number now in three decades. We're selling about a tenth of what we used to sell. And a lot of that has to do. It doesn't have to do with the lack of importance or a crisis in the field. It really has to do with how scholarly publishing has evolved and the Schol communication environment and landscape. Libraries are much more interconnected now, which is good for scholars because if your library doesn't have something, you can find it somewhere else. But that does mean that a lot of libraries are now making harder choices. There's also budgetary constraints. So about 10 years ago, I heard a talk that, that Peter Berkery gave that emphasized that, you know, the ability of university presses to respond to these external market forces is more of a feature than a bug. We're not necessarily in crisis. There are often crises, but that's as the world is evolving. So collaboration, partnering with other presses or other external things. In some ways, this is just what we've always done. We found new, sometimes less expensive, sometimes f, ways to move things through the process of publication.
- [13:25]
Caleb Zakrin
One of the things that I've seen a lot, and it's highlighted in these projects that are highlighted for team up, just a number of open access projects and this shift, obviously open access has been around for some time now, but it does seem more and more like the open access model is becoming, you know, the choice of a lot of scholars that they want their, their books, they want their articles to be accessible to anyone. Can you talk a little about open access and how that's changing university presses and the work that you do?
- [13:59]
Dennis Lloyd
It's a great question. One of the, one of the underlying questions is what is really driving open access, especially in the humanities? Is it authors, is it publishers? Is it libraries? And the answer is a little bit of all of the above. But it does have a different flavor in the humanities as opposed to the STEM fields, where your grant, if you're doing cancer research, for example, your grant may very well Include an open access mandate, but also several thousand dollars to fund the publication of your article that describes the results of your research. If you're a humanities scholar working in the field of history or political science, your entire grant may be only a few thousand DOL dollars to help you travel to an archive to conduct research. So and there's not a component for open access. So finding the funding to help support open access is, is key. But one aspect of of open is not just is it free but also is it available and understanding and can you, can you find it, can you comprehend it? And that one of the ways I think that university presses have have always punched above their weight is, is in the process of peer review that that leads to stronger publications by the time they they come out the door of the warehouse and clarity and tightening of arguments and those aspects I think are some of the ways that that being open has helped from a financial standpoint of course any it helps the press. If the, if a project is open, that means it's been funded. That means you don't have to take the chance that well, I hope we sell enough to recover our cost. University press is generally speaking one of my someone in university presses a few years ago or I've just heard it for years. I don't even know who first coined this but it's one of these sayings that's an oversimplification in some ways, but there's a kernel of truth in it which is a lot of for profit publishers, so called trade houses publish books to make money. Whereas university presses try to make money so that they can publish books. Generally speaking we're mission driven, we're trying to break even, whatever, when we have a big success we usually pour that into the next book. So an open access program where you can say we're going to cover the cost of publications up front, you don't have to worry about whether you sell enough to recover your cost or not is a great boon for a press and for not just the book at hand or the journal issue at hand, but the next one as well.
- [16:51]
Caleb Zakrin
In addition to the shift towards open access, there's also just a lot of conversation though it's not necessarily at the forefront because I feel like oftentimes you don't in the, in the publishing and the press world we don't really know how to talk about it exactly yet. But artificial intelligence, there's lots of conversation about how these various books, these works that, that scholars spend years working on how they are being fed into AI systems, how AI can be used, you know, in ways that might be taking information, not adequately compensating authors, but also ways that, you know, that, you know, the AI models can actually take the information, you know, this really highly well researched information and use it to make the models better, to actually give people that are using various chatbots, you know, actual, you know, actually well sourced information, which is a huge issue. So can you talk a little bit about some of the conversations that you and your colleagues have been having about artificial intelligence and how you think it might transform the future of university presses?
- [17:51]
Dennis Lloyd
I, I'm happy to. I think if I could tell you how it would transform the future of university presses, I would be the most powerful person in, in, in the publishing realm. I don't think anybody really knows. I, I think the fact we're having tons of conversations we have for the last three, three and a half years, but if you go back five years, it wasn't on, wasn't, it wasn't a vowel pair that we were, we were talking about or concerned about. First oa, now AI. I don't know what the next one is, but there's already, one of the things that's emerging is what do we really mean when we talk about AI? There's, on the one aspect of it is the creation of large language models and should we use university press content as well as other, other content, not just from university presses, to help train those LLMs so that they can provide better answers? There's also, are you going to use either an LLM or a different AI product as a tool to help you, to help you promote or repromote the, the deep backlist. There are, there are presses that are, that are doing things where they have a sandbox, a walled garden version of, of an AI program that put in one of their books and the, in a very short time it will spit out a 300 word piece of descriptive copy that includes prominent keywords that could be done by a human, but not in 10 minutes. And so if you've, it's one of those things that really helps. Scale is really key too. So figuring out how to use it, what kind of tools to use it and whether we want to be participating in the, in the training of it. And, and that will differ by author and that will differ by type of book. At Wisconsin, we have a very strong creative writing aspect to the list. We publish seven books of poetry a year, we publish seven books of fiction a year. We publish two or three memoirs every year. And that's nearly a third of our, our total list, not quite between a quarter and a third. Those, you know, I, I can't take credit for this. I read it somewhere else. I, I don't want AI to write my stories for me. I want it to clean my house and wash my dishes and cook my food so that I can spend more time writing and reading stories and creative.
- [20:20]
Caleb Zakrin
Work.
- [20:22]
Dennis Lloyd
And, and, and learning things. So it's, it, it, it, it's a, a lot of the conversations are well, what, what is the right role and what is the right place? And then, then we run into things that I, I think we need to be very careful to realize that the way large language models work, they're only going to be good, as good as the input. And they, they can't distinguish fact from fiction. They only manage to land on fact rather than fiction when enough training materials have been factually accurate. But we have all heard stories of what I don't really care for the term. And now I'm blanking on it.
- [21:09]
Caleb Zakrin
Hallucinations.
- [21:10]
Dennis Lloyd
Yes, hallucinations. Where it just kind of, it's not a hallucination. It just. Well, it's figured out that sometimes this is the answer, but it's not in the specific case and it doesn't necessarily know that. I was reading a really interesting article in a recent issue of the New Yorker last week while I'm traveling that, that, that was about the use of AI for medical diagnosis. And on the one hand it, it can sometimes really find some great cases. On the other hand, it sometimes says, here, try to take this, which ends up poisoning the patient.
- [21:45]
Caleb Zakrin
So I, I think some of these, you know, I think you, you could refer to it as like a wall, a walled garden AI, you know, or large language model that's trained on a specific corpus. You know, it would be amazing to, in the future be able to, you know, load up, you know, Oxford's library, all of the books in Oxford or Harvard's libraries, and be able to search it and have it only dig through, you know, highly researched books. I actually was using a version of this the other day. The Financial Times has a kind of a walled garden LLM where you can ask the questions. Then it will, it will give you the articles or citations with the, with the information. It's not perfect, but it's, it's definitely interesting. And what I like about it is that it focuses on the citations. It focuses on the actual material and content. It gives due credit to the author. And that's, that's oftentimes what I find concerning because you know, the reality is, is like, it's not necessarily a great financial decision for someone to decide to go and spend seven years researching a topic that, you know, might be very interesting to them. It might be very interesting and important to a small group of people, but isn't necessarily, you know, going to have the same, you know, cash value that, you know, other types of books or other types of, you know, activities might have. Doesn't make it any less important. And that's oftentimes something that I, that I worry about is just, you know, the fact like, how do, how do we sustain this type of research if it's not necessarily being valued by the market in the same way that other things are? And, you know, I know that that's constantly conversation, you know, constantly on the top front of mind for a lot of people in the press world. You know, we've talked about it a little bit already, but I'm wondering, you know, is there ever discussion about, you know, how some of the, you know, maybe more well off presses can, can, can do things to help support some of the smaller presses? Because I oftentimes worry about the smaller presses, like how are they going to survive into the future?
- [23:49]
Dennis Lloyd
Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. I used to, when I was at Florida, a former business manager there used to say some version of, I won't get the quote quite right, but he would say, you know, we want to be close enough to the experimental edge that we can take advantage of new opportunities and new ways of thinking about things, but we're not, not big enough that we can be on the bleeding cutting edge. And so I've been influenced by that for many years. And I think that's one of the ways that a press that has greater resources can afford to experiment in some ways, whereas a smaller press may not. That said, one of the things I've also learned by working at a variety of different size presses, there are efficiencies of scales and scale in both directions. There's some things that you can do better when you're small and nimble, and there's some things that you can do better when you are large and have the numbers behind you. So it, I would say it kind of depends on, on what the experiment is. Yeah, if you're, if you're throwing a lot of content to try to train an LLM, more content is better. And so you're gonna, you're gonna have, have the benefit if you're larger. But there are, for example, the Wilfred Laurier University Press has has experimented with doing peer reviewed podcasts which I, I don't know. I know some other presses including Aarhus in, in Denmark that has. Has radio or podcasts as an element under their umbrella. But I, the Wilfrid Laurier examples is one of the first ones that I know of a period of view podcast. So, so you can do different things at different sizes.
- [25:39]
Caleb Zakrin
It's certainly true, I think that, that you know, there, there and just the, the. There are so many university presses that focus on different things. It is remarkable where it's like if you talk to someone in a particular discipline, they will be able to tell you the four or five presses that specialize in that discipline that you would want to get published by if you're working there. Like, you know, I know you know, for example, like University of Press of Kansas, really great in American History. There, there are, there are tons of different presses that have these specialties like you know, you're doing Scandinavian studies, for example. And I think it's a really, I think it's really fantastic that there is that there are like these little communities that are cultivated by the presses and it's, it's oftentimes unexpected too. So I guess there is, you know, up north there is a pretty large Scandinavian population in the United States. So it does actually make, make a bit of sense. There's also a highlighting in addition to these, these 13 projects, you also highlight books and without asking you to go and like list every single book that is being highlighted in the gallery I was reading, you know, are there, are there some books that you want to sort of call out, pick out as, as, as particularly interesting books? The types of books that, you know, presses are, that you're seeing that presses are interested in publishing, in bringing to, to a new audience.
- [26:55]
Dennis Lloyd
This is, this is always a difficult question for me. You know, it's like saying, oh, so, so you have three grandkids. Which one's your favorite? I. Impossible question to answer. I mean all I can really do is I can poke around in there and kind of just see some things that pop out that like, oh, that looks interesting to me. Like there's a whole indigenous studies section of books and these include things. For example, from Colorado, there's a book called Exploring the Mesoamerican Subterranean Remains Realm which combines, you know, spelunking and cave art and indigenous studies. And that's a fascinating mix of topics all at once. University of Washington Press Fighting for the Pulia Tribe, which is a memoir of a civil rights leader, Ramona Bennett, Bill. And this is much more history and political science and memoir. And so just even within this range, this small subject area, you find a lot of different topics and suggestions. And then you can bounce around to. Let's pick something arts, performing arts and media studies, and just. I'll see what, what jumps out at me. I've looked through all of these. They're very interesting. I love the title of this one from Wesleyan University Press, Brass Roots Democracy. And the subtitle is Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons. I haven't read any of this. I don't know anything about it, but I just, it's. And it's got a beautiful cover, which is one of the things I really enjoy. A lot of University press covers are just fantastic. We were just talking about this. Here's one from Amherst College Press, Critical Making in the Age of AI Podcast Studies, Practice into Theory. Also from Wirford Laurier, as it turns out. So, so a lot of, a lot of great little things, just little nuggets. No matter what you're interested in, there's going to be something that you'll find that you'll go, oh, that I didn't know about that book. Maybe it's on the shelf of, of your, of your local bookstore. If you're in a big city with lots of great local bookstores, maybe it's not, but it's, it's. It's available online and it's, it's available here to kind of see.
- [29:20]
Caleb Zakrin
Absolutely. I'm curious, you know, for any listeners who might be authors already or they're, you know, maybe they have a manuscript, you know, their dissertation, they're thinking about how they can turn it into a, into a book. Is there any advice that you would give to people about how to find, how to connect with the right press for them?
- [29:42]
Dennis Lloyd
Reach out, ask questions, look on their website. My advice a lot of times is don't feel like it has to be perfect before you reach out and, and recognize that for an author, it's not just a matter of, I need to find somebody, anybody who will accept my book. There's probably several places that would, I'd recommend that you think about it in terms of, I need to find an editor who shares my passion, who shares my enthusiasm, who can help me make this better. That may or may not be at your dream university, University Press, but it might be. But in the long run, you'll have a. You'll have a better experience, you'll have a better book. So, you know, look on, look on websites, don't don't overstate the importance of your book. I, I get, I used to do this when I would give talks about publishing and publishing with the university press. One of the things I would do to talk about subject is I would ask everybody in the room to raise their hand if they had ever seen a film based upon a Jane Austen novel. And of course everybody raises their hand. And then I said, okay, keep your hand up. If you've read a James Jane Austin novel, a lot of the hands go down. And I say keep your hands up. If you have read a work of literary criticism about Jane Austen or her novels and then most hands go down, there may be one or two left. And if I say, and keep your hand up, if you read that for fun, there's no more hands that, that remain up. And then I, I use that as an example to say if you've written such a book, there's value in it. But don't tell me that everybody who went to see the latest iteration of Sense and Sensibility is going to want to read it. They're not. We both know that. Tell me the truth about it. Tell me what you've done that's interesting. So don't, don't over hell, it's, we're not, we're not looking for, oh my God, everything has to be the next huge big thing. We're looking for really solid work.
- [32:00]
Caleb Zakrin
The thing too with a lot of these books, you know, works of criticism, is that criticism, history, any sort of books that, that, you know, non fiction book, obviously, as you mentioned before, you publish, publish fiction and poetry as well, is, I think, you know, it doesn't need to reach a hundred thousand, a million people for it to be impactful. Oftentimes these books, because of the care with which they're written, have a really long shelf life. So they very well might be connecting with a reader, you know, 40, 50, 60 years down the road who's, you know, looking, looking for that one quote for their dissertation that, you know, might have, might have saved, saved a chapter for them. And I, and I really do think that these books, books, you know, they just have unbelievable shelf life. That, that movie based on a Jane Austen novel might be really entertaining, but how many people are going to watch it again, you know, 10, 20 years down, down the road? Well, with streaming people might be, but whether or not it actually has, you know, has, has real meaning, real impact, it's hard to say. So I, I, I just think it's such, it's so hard to, to value to price these, these academic books, but I really just think that they have such incredible, incredible value. Long term value. Really.
- [33:13]
Dennis Lloyd
I think so too. Absolutely. It's one of the things that you often hear we're not able to. Generally speaking, university presses are not able to offer the same kind of advances, for example that a trade house can. But we're also very unlikely to declare a book out of print within a year or two. We're much more likely to still have it on our backlist, even if it's just selling a handful of copies a year, in year five, in year ten, and, and every press I've worked at, which me since it's 6, which is just a small fraction of the 168 university presses in the association, but it's still enough that I feel pretty confident saying almost every press probably has a book still in print, still chugging along that is decades old.
- [34:04]
Caleb Zakrin
My last question is about work. It's at a university press. As you mentioned, you first got a job at university press while you were in grad school or right after you were in grad school. And I think a lot of people in grad school, they're thinking about what their prospects are, postdocs getting tenure, whether or not that's feasible, depending on what their discipline is. And also what's even happening at universities. I think there's a lot of uncertainty and one thing oftentimes when I'm talking with people or thinking about, about careers, you know, where they want to be surrounded by books in some capacity, oftentimes recommend, you know, go, go take a look at the university press job lists because there, there are some really great ones and I was wondering if you have any advice for anyone who, who might be considering working in the university press world.
- [34:53]
Dennis Lloyd
I, yeah, I would. I, that's a great question. Thanks for asking it. I, I think what you just said, go look at, go look at a jobs list as well. I, I would also a couple of other things. If there's a university press near you or even now in the age of zoom, it may not necessarily have to be near you, but reach out to, to an acquisitions editor or, or a project editor or, or a marketing publicity manager or, or the director and, and ask for an informational interview just you know, to be able to, to, to ask questions about what's it like to work in publishing. What are you looking for for entry level people? What, what can I expect as an entry level? It's. Don't be afraid to, to reach out to look into may be if you're in a place where there's not a press nearby, that may be a challenge because at a, at, at, for, for that kind of a starting job, you don't always, you're not always going to get relocation expenses and, and that sort of thing, but ask, talk to people, try to meet people. If the annual meeting is going to be in your town, it's a closed meeting, so you're not going to get to attend as an individual, but you might be able to stop by and try to meet some people or something.
- [36:17]
Caleb Zakrin
And the university press world is filled with so many nice people. That's one of the things that I enjoy the most about. Even though New Books Network isn't directly in the university press world were, you know, sort of glommed on tangentially related, I still go to the meetings and, and I'm just, I'm just struck by how interesting how nice so many of the people are. You know, every, everyone has, has some special interest. You know, what whatever it is, whether it's, you know, the most, from the most obscure topics to, you know, to topics that kind of touch every, every corner. I'm just amazed. It's so fun to, to be in a world where everyone is a reader and everyone has, has, has a really just deep interior life. So I, I think it's, I think for, for, for anyone who's, who loves to read books, it really is just can. It can be in many ways a dream job and I think a great, a great way to, to, you know, to experience life through, through working with authors through working with, with people that really care about bringing knowledge and.
- [37:19]
Dennis Lloyd
Look, I, I would agree and I think it's, it's also working with people who really care about their fellow employees and their fellow people in similar positions at other presses and, and their, and their other and, and other presses. It's a. I learned fairly early on in my, in my own career that what I, what I absolutely loved the most most about university press publishing was what I loved the most about graduate school. In graduate school, every semester I got to take a new class and take a deep dive into a new topic in, in the field that I was studying and, and the ways that, that I would pick up something here that I could apply there and really enrich my understanding of. I was studying musicology, so, so enrich my understanding of music and culture and history history. And I feel the same about every season in a, in a university press as it's, it's a, it's a new focus It's a new ability to, to take a deeper dive into certain subjects or certain types of books. The university press, the association of University Presses, is on one level an industry trade group, but on a, on a deeper level, it's a community. And that's one of the things that's always been really powerful. Yeah, sometimes we compete with one another for signing projects, but we just about as often will say, you know, this isn't right for us. But I happen to know that this press would be a perfect fit and I know that editor and you should reach out to them. Here's their name and how you should contact them. And, and we want to solve problems together. The, the level of support from, from the, from the community is just fantastic.
- [39:06]
Caleb Zakrin
And many people like you have moved around to different presses. So there is this kind of, you know, this, this network beyond it just being, you know, a network based on the fact of, you know, everyone's operating in the same industry. There is also that social network that exists too. People at one press that know someone at a different press. And, and it, it, it really is, you know, this incredible, you know, almost hidden network that spans the globe that many people might not even be aware of. But it's so, it's, it's such an important part of the university ecosystem. And I, I don't think without the, the university press world that the universities and the ideas that they are, you know, that are, are being explored, being discovered, being created, they would not get out in the way that they do. Like, it's not just, you know, obviously we, we talk about book, but we've been talking a lot about books. But university presses, they also publish all the journals for the most part part. So I'll, yeah, especially have the oncology, the cancer research, everything. It's, it's humanities, it's sciences, it's, it's literally like the, the, the amount of knowledge production that funnels through university presses is actually remarkable, which is, you know, part of, like, why the AI question comes to mind for me, because I'm like, a lot of this information is kind of downstream, the work the university presses are doing at some level.
- [40:23]
Dennis Lloyd
Absolutely. It's. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
- [40:26]
Caleb Zakrin
Well, Dennis, it was really so wonderful to have you on and to get to talk to you about the association of university presses, the work that you've been doing for so long at the University of Wisconsin Press, at other presses as well, and to talk about that team up and all the great work that is being done in collaboration with the different university presses and the workers there. And it, it's, it's really great to be able to, to celebrate University Press Week, which is going to be taking place from November 10th to 14th. So make sure that you go to the website, there'll be a link in the show notes, you could see the gallery of books, you could see the gallery of projects and learn a lot more about, you know, what's going on at the university presses. So, Dennis, thank you so much for being a guest on the New Books Network.
- [41:11]
Dennis Lloyd
Thanks so much. If I may also add, on that same website, you can also see a number of, of events, some that'll be in person and some that will be virtual that you could participate Press Week. And there's also a blog tour with a number of posts from different university presses every day of that week that focus on a different aspect of the why, what, where, when of collaboration among university presses.
- [41:39]
Caleb Zakrin
Yeah, that information will be in the show notes as well. So, Dennis, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
- [41:44]
Dennis Lloyd
Thanks so much for having me. I've enjoyed the time.