University of Nebraska Press

• 1. Introduction

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  The University of Nebraska Press has published more than 4,000 books since it opened its doors in November 1941. That number is striking enough. But what makes it more remarkable is how the press got there: starting as the 32nd American university press, operating out of a state more associated with cornfields than literary culture, and becoming the twelfth-largest university press in the country.

  The questions worth asking are not just about growth. They are about what choices shaped this institution. Who pushed it into existence? What did it take to move from 97 books in the first seventeen years to over 4,000 total? And how did a regional academic press become one of the most distinctive voices in Native American studies, military history, and science fiction reprints all at once?

• 2. A Chancellor's Gamble

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  Chancellor Chauncey Samuel Boucher was the one who started it. He prompted the founding of the press and hired Emily Schossberger as its first editor. Schossberger's seventeen-year tenure was disciplined and narrow: 97 books, focused largely on regional subjects and the works of Louise Pound, Karl Shapiro, and George W. Norris.

  When Schossberger left, Bruce Nicoll took over as the first official director, with Virginia Faulkner stepping in as editor-in-chief. Nicoll spent seventeen years broadening the press beyond scholarly monographs. He wanted books for a wider audience, not just texts written by academics for other academics. That shift made the next move possible.

• 3. Bison Books and the Truck Stop Strategy

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  In 1961, Nicoll launched Bison Books, the press's first imprint. The idea was deliberately unconventional for an academic publisher: inexpensive paperbacks, sold not just in bookstores but in truck stops, drug stores, and gas stations. The aim was to reach readers who would never walk into a university library.

  In 1975, Dave Gilbert became director and refocused Bison Books toward a western American identity. He also brought book design in-house by hiring designer Richard Eckersley and his wife Dika. That design investment changed how the press presented itself physically. Gilbert later left for Cornell University, and Bill Regier succeeded him as the third full-time director. Regier pushed the press in yet another direction: foreign translations, particularly from France and Scandinavia. Three authors published in translation under Regier's tenure went on to receive Nobel Prizes.

• 4. Sports, Sales, and Scale

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  By 1991, the press had 2,000 books in print, was adding 100 new titles per year, and had annual sales of $4.5 million. When Dan Ross became director in 1995, he sharpened Bison Books' focus onto sports, especially baseball. That decision seeded what would become one of the press's most recognized programs.

  In Ross's first year as director, annual sales topped $6 million. That figure represented a 600-percent increase from 1980. The sports publishing program grew into a defining feature of the press's catalog, alongside its already established strengths in western American history and culture.

• 5. Acquisitions and a New Era

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  Under Gary Dunham's directorship in the early 2000s, the press sold its longtime warehouse in the Haymarket District in 2009. Donna Shear became editor-in-chief and oversaw two major structural shifts. She tripled journal production to thirty publications and moved the press to a print-on-demand model, releasing ebooks simultaneously with print editions.

  In September 2011, the press entered a publishing arrangement with the Jewish Publication Society, founded in Philadelphia in 1888, and described as the oldest nonprofit, nondenominational publisher of Jewish works in English. The JPS is known especially for its English translation of the Hebrew Bible, the NJPS Tanakh. Then in April 2013, the press acquired Potomac Books, a publisher that had begun in 1983 as Brassey's, the U.S. imprint of a British military publishing enterprise. Potomac Books had been renamed in 2004 after being acquired by Books International in 1999. These two additions pushed the press past $7 million in annual sales by 2015.

• 6. Imprints and Their Reach

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  The Nebraska imprint covers scholarly and general-interest books, including critical editions of Willa Cather's work. My Antonia and O Pioneers! are among the titles the press publishes in scholarly edition. Native and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, sports history, and cultural criticism all fall under this imprint.

  Bison Books carries a notably wide range despite its western focus. Its catalog includes work by André Breton, George Armstrong Custer, William F. Cody, Loren Eiseley, Michel Foucault, Che Guevara, Wright Morris, Tillie Olsen, Mari Sandoz, Wallace Stegner, Leo Tolstoy, Philip Wylie, and Stefan Zweig. Bison Books also runs a science fiction series called Bison Frontiers of Imagination, which has published works by Jules Verne, Hugo Gernsback, Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt, E. E. Smith, and Karel Capek. In 2013, Bison Books formally shifted its focus to the trans-Mississippi West. The press now adds approximately 150 titles each year and distributes domestically through the University of North Carolina Press's Longleaf Services.

• 7. The Bancroft Prize Record

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  Three books published by the University of Nebraska Press have received the Bancroft Prize, which is the highest honor bestowed on history books in the United States. That number distinguishes the press not just as a commercial operation but as a contributor to the scholarly record at the highest level of recognition.

  The press remains under the auspices of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the main campus of the University of Nebraska system, and holds membership in the Association of University Presses. Its ranking as the twelfth-largest university press in the country reflects both the 1961 paperback imprint that reached truck stops and the 2013 acquisition that brought military history under one roof.