Editor’s Note: Previously, this series on scholarly publishing has offered advice on approaching an editor, getting a book contract, and writing a “timely” book.
I received a contract for my monograph in 2015, while working full time outside of academe in nonprofit fund raising. Like most first-book authors, I had never seen a book contract, so I sought advice from a grad-school friend whose manuscript was under contract with another university press.
“Just make sure the contract you sign doesn’t require you to pay the publisher a subvention.”
“A sub-what?!” I’d never heard the term before.
“A subvention. A guy I know had to pay his publisher $1,000.”
Horror-stricken, I read and reread my contract. No such mention of money. I signed the contract and, happily, have never had to pay my publisher — except when buying extra copies of my book with my author’s discount. Now, as a senior acquisitions editor at a scholarly press, I’m suspicious of this apocryphal guy suddenly forced to pony up money. It’s also possible my friend was exaggerating for comical effect, and I was too anxious to catch on.
Either way, rest assured: I don’t know of any scholarly press that requires a payment as a condition of publishing your book. We are not pay-to-publish businesses. That said, university presses, as nonprofits, may ask you to try to secure financial support for your book. And there may be exceptional circumstances in which a nonprofit or for-profit press might require that. Most academics don’t fully understand how subventions work, who pays them, and what they’re for. Myths abound and I get asked a lot of nervous questions. Hence this FAQ with everything academic writers need to know about this quirk of publishing.
What is a book subvention? Most Ph.D.s writing their first book learn about subventions as I did — late in the game — and assume other writers must know more. I promise you, they don’t. A subvention is money paid to a press to help offset the costs of publishing a book. It may also be referred to as a “publishing grant” or a “subsidy.” As with other kinds of grants, the term “subvention” may be used to describe the award (“congrats, you won a subvention!”) or the payment to the press (“we received a subvention for So-and-So’s book”).
Subventions are typically paid to university presses, and not to for-profit ones, which makes sense since the former are nonprofit entities. Many of the books we publish are intended for a narrow readership of fellow specialists. A scholarly book may sell only a few hundred copies — total — and, thus, may not recover the cost of its production. That’s where a subvention comes in.
“Across university presses, there are different practices around subventions, and the expectation for authors to provide a subvention varies greatly,” wrote Dawn Durante, editorial director of University of North Carolina Press, in a recent forum post on The H-Net Book Channel. “Some presses ask every author to explore possible resources for subvention support. On the other end of the spectrum, some presses never ask.”
If a for-profit press starts asking you for money to defray its costs, my best advice is to run. But it’s entirely common for a university press to ask if you, as an author, know of any available funding.
There are unique cases in which a press — nonprofit or for-profit — may require a subvention. The two primary instances are: (1) if you want to include color images (which can drive up the printing cost); or (2) you want — or your institution requires — an open-access edition of your book to be published.
Who actually pays the subvention to the publisher? For authors, the good news is that the money doesn’t usually come from your own wallet but rather via a grant from your university or from an agency or organization that supports research.
“Not all universities, and not all departments within universities, make publication subventions available to their faculty, but some do, and it is worth asking about the possibility,” said a 2020 post on Ask UP, a website on the basics of scholarly publishing run by the Association of University Presses. “Such subventions, when they are available, are usually administered either on a departmental basis or through the provost’s office, though sometimes a university will have partnered with a foundation or other entity to make such funding available.”
As with all things in higher ed, there are major institutional disparities between who has access to subventions and who doesn’t. There’s also variation by country. In Canada, for example, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences awards 180 book-publication grants of $8,000 annually. I don’t know of anything comparable in the United States. Although, crucially, some professional organizations — such as the American Comparative Literature Association — make subvention funds available to members via annual competitions.
So, what does a subvention payment cover? As an author, you are typically responsible for securing any necessary permissions to reprint text or images, and preparing your book’s index. Both tasks may cost you: The rights holders may require a fee; some authors hire a freelancer to draft their index. You might have a research grant or institutional funds to cover those fees — or not. As an independent scholar, I decided it was worth it to pay a friend $1,000 out-of-pocket to draft my index.
Unlike book-related fees paid to other companies or individuals, a subvention goes directly to the press to “defray the bottom line of a book’s production,” as Durante put it.
What exactly it may cover varies, depending on the press and on the terms of the grant. The aforementioned ACLA subvention grants, for example, are specifically for first books. Your university may offer subventions only for junior faculty members. Some subventions can be used to subsidize standard publishing costs (e.g., copy editing, typesetting). Others are designated for specific costs (e.g., production but not marketing expenses) or for something extra that would not otherwise be feasible (e.g., color images).
Subventions also can be used to help lower a book’s price or to issue a paperback at the same time as a hardcover. And, in general, they enable university presses to fulfill our missions — to keep publishing beautiful, brilliant books that we simply couldn’t produce if profit were the sole goal.
How much of a subvention grant will I need? Honest answer: as much as you can get. Some authors are able to secure $5,000 or more from their university. Others get only $500. Every bit helps. To get a sense of how much: In 2016, Ithaka S&R published a study of the costs of publishing 382 monographs across 20 university presses, not including printing expenses. The per-title costs varied significantly — “from a low of $15,140 to a high of $129,909,” the study said — depending on the size of the press and other factors. That high number is really high. But even a book on the low end is a major investment — hence our eagerness to accept any support an author’s institution can provide to help mitigate the inevitable risk of publishing it.
Why do university presses need subvention payments? Over time — and I mean decades, not just the last few years — the institutional budgets for university presses and libraries have taken major hits. Expensive STEM journals, many published by for-profit companies, have taken a greater share of what little money remains for acquisitions in campus library budgets. Meanwhile, the expectation that scholars in some fields produce a monograph to get or keep a job has skyrocketed, along with paper prices (and paper shortages).
Subventions are a relatively small but important revenue stream that helps us make ends meet while keeping list prices relatively low — especially those of us at presses without big endowments or substantial operating subsidies.
Who is responsible for subventions at a university press? Some publishers have designated fund-raising staff members. Most don’t. At my press, the acquisitions editors are responsible for:
- Communicating with our authors about possible funding opportunities.
- Providing budgets and other materials for applications.
- Creating and submitting invoices.
We ask writers whether their department or university makes subventions available only after a project has been peer reviewed, approved for publication by the editorial board, and put under contract — unless there are special circumstances that merit discussion earlier, such as when an author knows they’ll need color images. This timing is important. It lets you, as a writer, know — and should telegraph to tenure committees — that your book has been thoroughly vetted and approved for publication strictly on the basis of its merits. Any funding you’re able to secure at that point is just a bonus. All books go through the same rigorous review processes and, as I always assure authors, we will produce the same high-quality book regardless. We won’t use thinner paper or a smaller, hard-to-read font if you didn’t secure a subvention grant.
Should I mention having subvention funding in my book proposal? Yes — along with as much information as possible about your book’s format (e.g., length, illustrations). While we won’t ask about available funding until later in the process, it helps to know. Again, part of my job as an acquisitions editor is fund raising. More than anything, subventions help me feel a wee bit less nervous about costs and sales. A few thousand dollars may technically make it more feasible for me to publish a costly 200,000-word book, but I’m still going to tell you that you should probably halve that length to maximize the book’s reach. (FYI, 80,000 words is usually the aim for monographs, though my own was closer to 140,000.)
I have never, and would never, express interest in a book project just because an author has a subvention grant.
I once saw a scholar on social media mischaracterize subventions as a bribe. They’re not — and it’s up to senior professors to help disabuse their mentees, colleagues, and administrators of this erroneous assumption. At university presses, subvention funding is generally welcome but it won’t be the — or even a — deciding factor, and it won’t mean that you get to skip any steps of review or call the shots on the book’s production.
What else can scholars do? If it were up to me, all subvention grants would go toward subsidizing the standard costs of book production. Some subvention grants tie the money to something extra: color images, a lower price for a single title, open access to the book — a practice that, I worry, benefits a privileged few authors who happen to be at well-resourced institutions or win external grants. A targeted subvention means less money goes toward defraying your book’s and the press’s bottom line, and that’s what many university presses, like all nonprofits, most need — support for general operating expenses.
So, if you are working with a university press, here’s what can you do as a writer to make sure that your book gets all the funding support it needs:
- Read your contract carefully, and feel empowered to ask questions.
- Talk to your editor — upfront and throughout the process. Let us know if elements of your manuscript change and confirm that won’t be an issue. Presses — and even individual titles — have budgets. We’re trying to stay on track. Of course books often change in the writing. But nervous editors, like nervous writers, don’t love surprises. So keep us posted. We can talk through what is, and isn’t, feasible. Another 10,000 words? Probably OK. Color images? That will take funding.
- Ask your colleagues and peers about available funding for book publishing costs — in your department, institution, and field. Apply for what you can, and let us know how we can help.
- Put yourself and your costs as an author first. Durante makes this point, too. If you’re able to secure research funding from your university, you absolutely should use it to cover your own fees — for permissions, an index, that pricey contemporary image that you have your heart set on for your cover — before even pondering if there will be some left over for your publisher.
