University of Massachusetts Press

• 1. Introduction

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  The University of Massachusetts Press began in 1963 as a publishing arm of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It is a university press, a kind of publisher that exists inside a campus rather than beside it. This documentary asks who decides which books carry its imprint. It asks why a poet's house, nicknamed Fort Juniper, lends its name to a set of literary awards. It also asks how a university publisher came to stand on one side of a courtroom fight over digital books.

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• 2. Faculty Oversight

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  Scholarly books and non-fiction have been the press's core work since its founding in 1963. Unlike a commercial house, it does not answer to a sales department alone. An interdisciplinary faculty committee oversees the imprint, which means professors from different fields share responsibility for the list.

  The press is also a member of the Association of University Presses, a group that links publishers of its kind. That membership places it among peers who share a scholarly mission. Its trade ties extend further, because the press has also taken part in another publishing organization, an alliance that matters in the final chapter.

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• 3. The Juniper Prizes

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  Robert Francis was a local poet, and his house was known as Fort Juniper. The press named its annual Juniper Prizes in honor of both the man and the house. Through these awards, a press known for scholarship also publishes fiction and poetry.

  The prizes cover several kinds of writing. Poetry has two awards: one goes to a previously published poet, and the other to a poet who has not yet published. Fiction has two as well: one for a novel and one for a collection of short stories. A creative non-fiction prize completes the set.

  The awards arrived in stages. The poetry award began in 1975, and the fiction award followed in 2004. The creative non-fiction award is the youngest, first offered in 2018.

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• 4. Hachette v. Internet Archive

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  The lawsuit known as Hachette v. Internet Archive pulled the press into a very different arena. The University of Massachusetts Press joined the Association of American Publishers, a trade organization, in that case. Publishers on that side argued against the Internet Archive's practice of lending digital copies of books.

  The outcome carried a heavy cost for readers. The lawsuit resulted in the removal of access to more than 500,000 books for readers around the world. For a press built to circulate scholarship, the episode shows how a decision about one library's lending can reach far beyond the courtroom.

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