Harvard Press On the Way Back

TWELVE months ago the Harvard University Press was struggling through the most turbulent period in its 60-year history. Saddled with a mammoth $379,000 deficit, a storm of emotional repercussions from the abrupt dismissal of its director, a disorganized and inefficient warehouse and delivery system, and a backlog of near-unsalable books, the Press was in a precarious position. Not only was its financial and competitive status under fire, but its reputation as the exemplar of university presses in the country was endangered as well.

Last August when Arthur J. Rosenthal left the security and lucre of his job as editor-in-chief of Basic Books, he knew he had a big job ahead of him. But few people who were familiar with the economic and administrative quagmire into which Harvard had allowed its Press to slide would have given even as sound an editor and businessman as Rosenthal much chance for pulling the operation out of its organizational muck by the time the next Commencement rolled around.

Well, since the traumas of last June, a lot has happened inside the Press's 79 Garden St. headquarters. And people familiar with the Press as recently as a year and a half ago would scarcely recognize it if they visited today. The "stand pat" philosophy of previous Press Director Mark S. Carroll '50 had run up a deficit of nearly $500,000 in 1971. The Press today, under the management of Rosenthal and the supervision of President Bok's vice president for Administration, Stephen S.J. Hall, has not been afraid to try new approaches and new people. And beginning with Carroll's dismissal in February of last year, "change" has been the password for the Harvard Press.

With the exception of operations manager Brian Murphy, who has been at the Press for a year and a half, every department head inside the Press is new. Add this to the fact that Rosenthal himself has only been at Harvard eight months and the completeness of the transfusion of new blood into the Press becomes apparent. "The Press is in a process of change and self study," Rosenthal wrote in the 1973 Management Plan he submitted to Hall. And from all early indications, the Press will never be the same again.

The lion's share of the blame for the Press's problems can be attributed to the less-than-firm hold that then-director Carroll had on the controls of the operation. And to compound the problem, Carroll and Hall--the man who supervises the administration of the Press along with ten other service organizations--had real conflicts in philosophy and personality. "We couldn't get on common philosophical wavelengths," Hall said repeatedly after Carroll's dismissal. And as the antagonism that existed between the two men grew worse and worse the inevitability that one of them would have to go became more and more apparent. Carroll was the one to leave.

If Carroll was a man at odds with Hall's philosophy, Rosenthal seems to be ideally in tune with him. First of all Rosenthal has a lengthy background in commercial publishing and a solid business sense--traits that Hall with his love for making ends meet appreciates. Consequently, Hall is effusive in his praise of the new Press director. "Rosenthal is probably as proficient a manager as Harvard has in its Administration," Hall said last week. "He is an excellent businessman, but he brings with that a finely honed appreciation of scholarship. I am absolutely and completely confident that there are two very fine hands on the wheel of the Press, and that those hands belong to Arthur Rosenthal."

THE NEW harmony between Mass Hall and the director's office at the Press is particularly apparent in the returns coming in on the state of the Press finances since last June. Last year the Press budgeted for a $379,000 deficit. After the dismissal of Carroll and a general tightening up of the economic reins, the Press did better than expected. The final figures show that the Press lost only $349,000. But there is evidence that the first year of Hall's tighter management of Press monies was even more effective than that. "We did much better than our projection last year," Hall said. "We came out well ahead of our projected loss."

These "extra" monies were not put directly toward reduction of the deficit. Hall says that the Press's management put the extra capital into the Press's reserve for bad debts to be used as "insurance" against setbacks in the future. But from the way things are going, there don't seem to be any setbacks looming in the near future. For the fiscal year 1973 the deficit has been budgeted at $147,000 but Hall says that the Press will definitely lose less than that figure. "We were originally scheduled to break even in 1976, but we could break even a year ahead of schedule," he said.

It is difficult to attribute the upswing in the economics of the press to one particular thing. First of all, the changeover of warehousing and shipping procedures from control by the Harvard Computer center to Technical Impex Corporation of Lawrence has certainly improved the filling of orders and has reduced the Press's costs considerably. Secondly, clearance of the backlog of old titles via the annual Memorial Hall book sale brought $52,000 last year and reduced the cumbersome inventory. Thirdly, the Press staff has been drastically cut back from 144 in 1971 to 69 this year. The cutback has both increased efficiency and reduced expense. The reduction in staff will save the Press $130,000 this year alone.

While all these elements have contributed to the improved financial status of the Press, the major force working within the Press is Rosenthal himself. Unlike Carroll, he combines impeccable editorial credentials with a shrewd and solid publishing mind. He is aware of publishing market trends and has already begun gearing the Press's activities to these trends. "Books always feel the economic pinch first," Rosenthal said last week. "The problems that the Press ran into here were largely not understanding the market. After the fantastic money of the Johnson years, the Press didn't prepare for less affluent times. A press should bend itself to the nth degree to publish as many scholarly works as possible, but you must ultimately reach a certain point which you cannot pass or you will destroy yourself. The Press here crossed that point."

While Rosenthal gives the Press the firm publishing mind at the helm that it has lacked, the new Director's greatest strength is his view of the Press's future. Already he has introduced and put into effect new projects that will expand the horizons of the Press.

ONE OF the most striking of these new projects is film--both the production and distribution of it. In the past the Harvard Press has never been involved with film, but both Rosenthal and Hall feel that film has a definite role in the Press's future. "I had put my toe into film just a bit before I came here, and I got very enthused about it," Rosenthal said. "There are two possible ways in which the Press could get involved with it: tying short films to books and distributing educational films. Since we ship and deliver books, we could logically ship and distribute film as well. As we grow we will have a role to play in film, both in the service and the creative end."

Rosenthal refused to elaborate on what kinds of creative film activity the Press could get into, but in his Management Plan which he submitted to Hall, he wrote that one of the immediate goals of the Press is "to establish the Press as an active participant in the University's audiovisual plans and to produce and distribute one 16m.m. educational film."

Another of Rosenthal's innovations is the establishment of seminars for members of the Press staff. This year six seminars were given, covering the different areas of the Press operations. "When I arrived here I found a kind of shattered atmosphere and I wanted to draw people together," Rosenthal said. "One of the purposes of the seminars was to get people to feel that it was their Press. The ideas were not to get people to know their own jobs better, but to get to know the other aspects of the Press's work and to get to know the other people better."

The publishing seminars may be extended in the future to include undergraduates at Harvard, as the Press opens up its operations to more people in the Harvard community. Rosenthal is tight-lipped on the Press's plans as far as student participation is concerned, but he is on record last Fall as in favor of opening up the Press to the whole Harvard community. "I want the Press to become a vibrant part of the Harvard community, a place where both faculty and students are welcome," he said last Fall. In this year's Management Plan which he prepared for Hall, he wrote that one of the Press's goals is "to continue the seminars now in effect for all Press personnel on the mechanics of book publishing and to offer a program for Harvard students who may be considering publishing as a possible career."

WHILE THE Press is in better condition today than it was a year ago, there are still distinct problems that Rosenthal must deal with before the Press will be wholly sound. The foremost of these concerns the very nature of the list of titles that the Press publishes. According to Rosenthal, 120 of the Press's 2300 titles comprise 50 per cent of the Press's business. And of these 2300 over 1000 sell less than $500 annually. With this fact in mind, Rosenthal wants to improve the editorial "mix" of the books on the Press's list of publications. The press will continue to publish unheralded scholarly works, but it will also go after authors who will have obvious public appeal. By integrating the two, the popular books will cover financially the "unpopular" ones.

Beyond this, Rosenthal would like to see the Press expand its paperback publications. In the past the Press often did not publish even its own most popular titles, selling them instead to the big commercial companies. "My predecessors at the Press felt that paperbacks were not an integral part of university press publications," Rosenthal said. "I have exactly the opposite view. We should be publishing our own best paperbacks. Our paperback list is almost first priority for us to strengthen." Through this step, as Rosenthal wrote in his Management Plan, "our own hardcover titles will be reserved for our own paperback list."

1972-73 has been a year of change for the Harvard Press. There have been widescale personnel changes and the new management has re-worked the Press's fiscal philosophy. While there are still problems to be solved and improvements to be made, the Press is presently on firmer financial footing than at any time in the last four years. And despite the closer tabs being kept on the pursestrings of the Press, the editorial quality of the Press does not seem in danger of declining.

Rosenthal said last week that the Harvard Press, even with the difficulties of the last few years, still "has the finest scholarly list of the English world outside of Oxford." He added that he saw no reason to believe that that should change because of the new economic policies. Hall asserts that "right now the Press is probably the finest university press in the country, if not the world."

In his 1973 Management Plan which Rosenthal submitted to Hall, he wrote that "our goal is to bring the Press into a break-even financial situation within the next two or three years, while at the same time increasing its contributions to the world of learning." It would seem, that despite the radical alterations in the structure of operations at the Press's Garden Street home, the Harvard Press is on the way to realizing that goal.