University Press Extends Its Market Reach

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - As part of its ongoing plan to increase its sales and open up new markets for its books, the University of Arkansas Press recently entered into agreements with the Google Books Partner Program and with Eurospan, a United Kingdom company that provides a complete range of sales, promotion and distribution services for its client publishers.

    With the Google agreement the University of Arkansas Press now joins a growing number of other university presses that participate in the Google Books Partner Program, an online book marketing program designed to help publishers and authors promote their books. The UA Press will be providing Google with one copy of all of its books, as well as the books from the presses it distributes. Google will scan each copy and enter the material into its database. Internet users can then see a few full pages from the book as a preview. They can conduct multiple searches within the book, or browse through the available pages.

     This is not a book “reading” program; this is a book “finding” program. Once the books have been entered and users start to search and learn more about these books and, more importantly, their contents, they can make informed buying decisions and thus provide a new income source for the UA Press.

     Based in London, Eurospan was established in the mid-1960s and now has more than 100 U.S. and foreign publishers as clients, more than 75 percent of which are from the U.S., and of those more than half are university presses, including those from New York University, Syracuse, Penn State, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas A&M, Northwestern and Michigan.

     Eurospan promotes and markets the books to bookstores, libraries, academics, and other customers throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa via direct mail, display advertising, meetings and conferences, book fairs, including the London Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair, and through their own sales representatives who call on bookstores. In the area of promotion, Eurospan will also be able to target foreign media and arrange for review copies of the UA Press’s books to be sent from their warehouse directly to the publications.

      The UA Press already had sales representation in Canada, Asia, and Australia, but with this new agreement it now has worldwide representation. Most importantly, Eurospan will provide the UA Press with a European base that will enable it to efficiently sell and ship books to foreign customers that previously were very difficult and costly to reach. Many of the Press’s books will now be stocked in Eurospan’s warehouse in England for immediate shipment to its customers. 

        Tom Lavoie, director of marketing and sales for the UA Press, said: “This is something the Press has been wanting to do for a few years now, and we’re very pleased that Eurospan feels as we do that ours is a list of books that definitely has good sales potential in many foreign markets. They were particularly interested in being able to carry our books on the Middle East, our extensive list of books on American history, including the Civil War and civil rights, and our internationally known poetry list. With Eurospan we will be able to tap into markets we haven’t been able to get into before.”