Harvard Press Head Predicts An End to Deficits by July

The Harvard University Press (HUP) will break even for this fiscal year, Arthur J. Rosenthal, director of the HUP, said yesterday.

The fiscal year ending July 1975 will be up in both the number of books sold and in sales volume over last year, Rosenthal said. The number of books sold is up 20 per cent and the volume is up 30 per cent from last year.

The Press reduced a deficit of a half a million dollars during the fiscal year 1970-71 to a deficit of $79,000 for the fiscal year ending July 1974.

The budgeted deficit under the press Board of Directors' plan to end the persistent deficit over a three year period ending in July 1975 was $117,000, while the HUP's actual deficit was $79,000.

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"The Press spends a higher percentage on promotion than any other university or intellectual press," Rosenthal said.

Among the HUP's recent best sellers are: "The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare" by Marvin Spevack, "The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson" by Bernard Bailyn, "Families and Family Therapy" by Salvador Minuchin and "Impeachment" by Raoul Berger. Each sold over 10,000 copies.

Each year the HUP publishes about 120 new titles. The HUP has 2,400 titles in print. "100-120 is a comfortable number for a university this size," Rosenthal said. "It is one book every other day of the fiscal year."

"The Press should not be just books. We are trying to get the Press back into the mainstream of the University," Rosenthal said. The Press is trying to get closer to Harvard's departments and do things for the University outside the realm of books, he added.

"The Press is absolutely removed from the students" and plans to become involved with a student group interested in publishing, Rosenthal said.

The $100,000 HUP earnings from the third HUP book sale, held on November 7-9, is double the sale's previous 1973 figure. 25,000 people came to the sale and bought 75,000 books.

Rosenthal attributed the sale's success to the science center being a "much gayer place" than the former Memorial Hall site and the fact that the sale was held in the fall instead of during the January reading period as in the past.