We in the Higher Education Division have spent the last few months describing and reflecting on the work we’ve been doing in the five years since joining UTP in this textbook adventure. Through a series of connected blog postings about who we are, where we came from, what kinds of authors we publish, and how we craft, market, and sell our books, we’ve tried to explain why we come to work each day. It comes down to a few simple things: we love ideas, we love books, and we love sharing them with as many people as possible. The publishing and university teaching systems are exciting, intricate, and sometimes uncertain worlds. They are worlds, however, that we understand and value greatly. They are worlds that we feel privileged to participate in by publishing great books for students and teachers.
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e owe a great deal of thanks to all of our authors. We appreciate our recent authors, and those who followed us from Broadview Press, for bringing their book projects to us, for sticking with us, and for believing that a teaching book and a scholarly book aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Thank you for spreading the word about UTP: a Canadian press with an international vision; a friendly and creative home for books of sound scholarship and pedagogical value; and an academic publishing house with active sales representatives who spread the word about books that matter.
The Higher Education Division is not an island, and five years is not a tremendous milestone (we have no illusions about this). But by celebrating these first five years at UTP, we honour the 112 years of publishing experience behind us at this press and thank those colleagues who have worked with us and supported us as we became ambassadors of every facet of our organization. The Higher Education staff represents UTP to prospective authors regardless of whether they are looking to publish a monograph or a textbook, to university bookstore managers and buyers, to instructors looking for their next course text, to students when they are buying online from our website, and even sometimes to a customer of Amazonian proportions.
Finally, a tremendous thanks goes out to those instructors who support the Higher Education Division’s publishing program and who continue to assign our books in their courses. We value your feedback and we acknowledge your quest for accessible, well-written course books that have a point of view. Tell your friends about us! We know you have lots of choice and we appreciate your support of our books.
The next five years at UTP Higher Education will likely be very similar to our first five. We will publish more, thoughtful, well-written course books and make them available in a variety of formats. We will continue to provide accessible and clear options for instructors and students. Also on the horizon: more ancillary materials to help new and overworked instructors design and implement thought-provoking courses; flexible and affordable custom publications of UTP content to provide even more options for instructors and students; ongoing marketing with clarity and personality; and a further reduction of our environmental footprint through electronic delivery of examination copies and other course materials.
But perhaps that’s enough reflecting for now. Thanks for the first five years. We look forward to many more years to come!
-University of Toronto Press, Higher Education Division
