From: Mary Summerfield <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 16:14:39 +0000

Ann,

Please define 'many' books.

SPIE has the SPIE Press program which publishes about 25 books a year
now and which we would expand if we thought we could do so in a manner
that would allow the program to serve the community well and cover its
costs.

We publish our books ourselves but we have been approached by
commercial houses about taking over our program--usually with a
concept that we'd handle editorial and they'd do everything else and
with some formula for sharing income and costs.

Some societies have such relationships with publishers but we know
other STM societies which have our model. I wouldn't want to guess
about the balance between the two types of book publishing by STM
societies.

Since I worked in strategic planning at Columbia University's Library
in the 1990s, my perception has been that STM researchers are less
interested in books than journals as authors, as they have a great
need to publish journal articles and don't find it appealing (or
remunerative in all senses of the word) to spend the considerable time
required to author books. They get little career credit for books as
generally they pull together information on a field rather than
reporting the findings of new research efforts.

But there is demand for STM books by users--students, teachers, people
outside of academia--who need such information.

In 2014 we launched the SPIE Spotlights program (see
http://spie.org/publications/books/spotlights) of concise books in
hopes that researchers in optics and photonics would see the value of
authoring such works.

Mary Summerfield

Publications Business Development Manager
SPIE
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SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics  http://SPIE.org