University of California Press has decided to cease publication of its FlashPoint series, which launched five years ago and specialized in scholarly literary studies titles that were released in simultaneous trade paperback and free electronic editions.

“We were told by Press management that the series is not economically viable,” says Ed Dimendberg, FlashPoint coordinator and professor of film and media studies studies at U.C. Irvine. “Yet it has cost us almost nothing to publish the books, thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation and assistance from the California Digital Library that’s covered much of our expenses since we started.” FlashPoints has released six titles, with eight more under contract in the pipeline that the Press is committed to publishing. The dissolution of the imprint was announced in March 2011.


According to Dimendberg, U.C. Press is a $17.5 million operation “facing an unprecedented financial hardship.” In recent years the Press has made an editorial shift away from academic publishing in favor of an increased number of trade and general interest titles. The Editorial Committee of the Press has been alarmed by the apparent decision to cease publishing in the areas of philosophy and literature. “Academic titles are equally as important as trade books. We can’t afford to move away from the areas of core studies. No one in the Press cares about FlashPoints, and we’re in discussions now with another university press about distribution.”


The Editorial Committee issued a statement of resolution on June 30 to Press management in an effort to have the decision on FlashPoint reversed. As written by the series’ former chair of the faculty editorial committee Louis S. Warren it states in part, “We wish to remind Press managers that shared governance must be the approach in many publishing decisions. The editorial committee is appointed by the Academic Senate to advise UC Press and to ensure the academic integrity of its publication program . . . our sense is that FlashPoints may have been terminated before its titles had sufficient time to reach a market. If the experiment was failing, appropriate responses would have included adjusting the business model before canceling the series.”


When asked why the press decided to discontinue FlashPoint U.C. Press director Alison Mudditt said, “The short answer is that it was losing money. After deciding about ten years ago to get out of the literary studies area, as other university presses have done, FlashPoints was an experimental way to get back into that discipline. It didn’t work, and we learned a lot of lessons because of it.” Mudditt explained that the most copies any of the series’ titles sold was 250, and that the free electronic access provided by the California Digital Library probably had something to do with such poor sales.


Mudditt also clarified the role the Mellon Foundation grant actually played in the financial support of FlashPoint. “That grant was to be specifically used to publish first books by scholars working in foreign literatures,” she said. “Only half of the series titles met this criteria, so the press had to pay all the expenses on the rest.” UC Press has been in a financial crunch for the last two years, primarily due to diminishing library sales. Press management is looking for the right strategy to use in its commitment to scholarly publishing while continuing to bolster its trade division, which had tremendous success recently with The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1.


"You can’t run a business based on scholarly books only, but we’re committed to specific disciplines in the humanities,” said Mudditt. “Going forward, trade will become an extension of our academic publishing. We’ll find ways to replace FlashPoints, but our intention above all else is to help UC accomplish its mission."