Fulfilling the Cultural without Forsaking the Commercial: University Presses in the Philippines from the Perspective of Three Directors

This paper departs from the mostly Western research focus in the area of scholarly publishing and the book trade. We investigate Philippine university presses and how their publishers operate in the context of a developing country. From semi-structured interviews with three university press directors, we find that Philippine university presses operate under less pressure from administration to be financially self-supporting and are hence able to concentrate on their cultural roles—a marked difference from their Western counterparts, which struggle for money. Other findings reveal that university publishers in the Philippines 1) have weaker professionalization standards, 2) operate in a small industry with intense competition, and 3) are still in the experimental stage in ebook publishing. Results of this study provide a non-Western perspective on university press publishing and offer lessons for professionals in the scholarly publishing enterprise.