BOOKS
Staff Writer
The Columbus Dispatch
As bookish boyhoods go, that of Tony Sanfilippo is tough to top.
The future bookseller and university-press leader was raised in suburban Chicago on a street called Library Lane.
The catch: “There wasn’t actually a library there at the time,” Sanfilippo said.
That would soon change.
“My mom and a couple of other neighborhood moms worked pretty hard to get a referendum on the ballot to create a library district — which they were able to do,” he said. “And not long after that, a library was built.”
He credits the time he spent at Poplar Creek Public Library with helping to inspire his career path.
In December, after more than 14 years at the Penn State University Press, Sanfilippo was hired as director of the Ohio State University Press. He succeeded Malcolm Litchfield, who headed the press from 1999 until the summer, when he took a job at Hong Kong University Press.
In the academic world, publishers with connections to universities differ from their mainstream counterparts.
For university presses, “Commerce is a means, not an end,” said Peter Berkery, executive director of the Association of American University Presses — which counts 90 U.S. members, including the OSU Press.
University presses, Berkery said, serve the missions of their institution.
“That might be advancing research and scholarship,” he said. “That might be advancing undergraduate education. That might be informing the public discourse in a state or a region.”
The OSU Press has published about 1,700 books since 1957, the year that the entity was founded. Twenty-four books will be published during the fiscal year to end in June; the press budget for fiscal 2014-15 is $1,358,000, including $255,000 from the university.
Sanfilippo accepted the position in an era when university presses are reckoning with revolution — digital and otherwise.
“Anybody going into publishing has a mammoth job,” said Linda Hengst, former executive director of the Ohioana Library, “but he also has a very exciting job.”
Observers agree that Sanfilippo — a native of Elgin, Ill., who received a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University — is up to the task.
“He’s an original and creative thinker, and I think OSU is very forward-thinking to have brought him on board,” Peter Givler, a former executive director of the Association of American University Presses, said by email.
Sanfilippo, 51, was among 25 applicants, said Mark Shanda, divisional dean of arts and humanities at Ohio State.
“I think Tony brings a dynamic level of leadership to a really opportune time in the history of the press,” Shanda said. “The press is on strong footing and is not at risk. I think that’s one of the reasons that the job was attractive to him.”
Still, the press is playing catch-up in several areas, especially with accessibility.
Sanfilippo is working, he said, to make its books available by fall on a range of digital platforms, including Kindle and Nook.
Since 2003, the press has sold e-books on CDs containing a PDF file — hardly a cutting-edge approach.
The CDs continue to sell, said assistant director and business manager Kathleen Edwards, but they will likely be “phased out” as additional platforms carry the books.
The major challenge for university presses in general, said Givler, who directed the OSU Press from 1985 to 1995, is “managing the transition to digital publishing.”
In the 1990s, as a co-owner of Svoboda’s Scholarly Books in State College, Pa., Sanfilippo saw firsthand the dawn of
the written word’s electronic era.
“At the end of 2000, when the impact of Amazon was really beginning to hit independent bookstores — my own included .?.?. — we eventually had to decide whether or not we were going to keep the store open or closed,” Sanfilippo said.
Svoboda’s closed in 2000; and, the same year, Sanfilippo was recruited to join Penn State University Press as its marketing and sales director. In 2007, he became assistant director of the press.
Under Sanfilippo’s leadership, Penn State University Press began availing itself of “ print-on-demand” technology — meaning that a third party prints a book immediately after it’s ordered.
A similar transition is underway at the OSU Press.
The press had been one of only three university presses not using Lightning Source, a print-on-demand company based in La Vergne, Tenn., Sanfilippo said. Now, it is set to become a customer.
Moving to print-on-demand will be 400 to 500 titles; the vast majority will be making their paperback debuts.
“We are going to get more books into the hands of more readers,” said Sanfilippo, referring to releasing books in paperback for the first time.
The press will continue to release literary-studies titles (an area of focus), Sanfilippo said, but also turn its attention closer to home: A new imprint will feature books on topics related to Ohio.
Such books have been only occasionally published, said Edwards, a press employee for 18 years.
Said Shanda: “I think that’s been kind of a historic missed opportunity.”
Among the books being considered for the imprint, Sanfilippo said, is a history of Ohio State in the 1960s.
There is an eager readership for books about Ohio, said Patrick Losinski, CEO of the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
“The interest in history in our state is very strong,” he said, “and, in some ways, I would say it’s insatiable.”
The shift is the latest evolution for the almost-60-year-old press — which for many years was associated most often with one especially successful title.
“The press was quite small when I arrived — about 15 books a year and three journals,” Givler said. “And the only thing it was really known for was .?.?. And Ladies of the Club, published a year or two before I arrived.”
After the press’s 1982 publication of the gargantuan novel by Helen Hooven Santmyer, its rights were acquired by trade publishers Putnam and Berkley — which turned it into a best-seller.
The number of books now published annually by the press hovers around 30, in addition to the journals American Periodicals, Journal of Higher Education and Narrative.
Sanfilippo wants the yearly output to double to 60 books by 2017.
The Bexley resident — who with his wife, Kate, has two daughters: Aubrey, 11; and JoAnn, 9 — recognizes how evolution will remain an ongoing component of the business of books.
“As soon as you’re finished implementing changes, a new technological revolution will be on the horizon — and suddenly you’ve got to rethink everything all over again.”
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