Trend-Spotting at AAR
By Marcia Z. Nelson, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 11/12/2008
What looks like a book, provides revenue to publishers, and allows custom content for religion scholars in the college classroom? The answer is Professor's Choice, a custom publishing program from St. Mary's Press launched at AAR. Professor's Choice uses print on demand and licensed content from publishers to provide college and university religion teachers an opportun’ity to mix content chunks—book chapters, images, maps, glossaries—into a course book that can be shipped within 48 hours. Participating publishers are largely Catholic, but the evangelical Christian imprint IVP Academic is already on the roster, and St. Mary's is expecting to grow in religious variety quickly. "We had 20 publishers come by on the first day," said Bradley Harmon, academic sales and research manager for St. Mary's. The press is also in conversation with Buddhist publishers.
Since AAR is often the venue for publishers to introduce new books to the academic religion community, it is also a good opportunity to look at new and growing categories. According to attending publishers and scholars: comparative and/or global theology; green religion; Pentecostalism; Islam, Islam, Islam. Omid Safi, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chair of AAR's study of Islam section, said section membership has grown to more than 400 this year. In 2001, the section had 40 members.
