By Dan Verdick and Alli DeMan
The Association of University Presses annual conference in Seattle was a productive event, with nearly 500 staffers from academic and university presses attending the meeting. The three days of sessions were focused on addressing the many challenges facing publishing these days, some perennial along with others that are particular to the times we currently find ourselves in.
Things kicked off with a festive scene at the hotel where the conference took place. The Egyptian World Cup team was in town to battle Belgium and were staying there, as were dozens or perhaps hundreds of their fans who had traveled to the US. The fans were proudly sporting their team’s colors and celebrated in the lobby and street outside as the bus was loaded to start the journey to the stadium, and they continued the party after the game and through the week.
AUPresses 2026 and the Power of Community
AUPresses 2026 was a reminder that publishing, like the World Cup, is fundamentally a community effort and a team game. Between the opening reception, networking sessions, plenary talks, exhibit hall conversations, and breakout sessions, the conference created space for the kind of information exchange that helps publishers manage costs, create strategies, and come up with ways to keep their programs surviving and thriving. The tone of the first in-person AUP meeting to be held on the West Coast since 2018 was a bit less festive than the World Cup, though, as this Publishers Weekly recap of the meeting shares the details of the serious issues university presses are facing, including enrollment cliffs, hiring freezes, political attacks, university relations, funding questions, and more.
The conference agenda also made it clear that university presses are navigating in a fast-moving and swiftly changing landscape, with crises ranging from the challenges that have always faced publishers to newer ones from operating in a politically charged environment where vital funding can be quickly rescinded with little warning. Sessions on accessibility in production, WCAG AA compliance, remote work and inclusive recruitment, AI in publishing, rights and permissions, and resilient publishing all pointed to the same conclusion: sustainable publishing now depends on flexibility, collaboration, and the ability to adapt thoughtfully.
Westchester’s Role in Supporting University Presses
That flexibility and collaboration was a major thread running through the conversations we had with both longtime customers and new friends who visited the Westchester Publishing Services booth. Along with our longstanding service portfolio for university presses, we’ve added solutions to meet the changing needs of our customers, from remediating ePubs in large batches to meet budget grant deadlines to editorial services provided by our highly experienced UK staff, and collaborating with the Duke University Press Scholarly Publishing Collective and Scholastica on our new Allied Journal Publishing offerings, designed for the specific requirements of independent journal publishers across several areas, including peer review, distribution, hosting, and subscription management.
According to AUP’s website, the seeds of the Association were planted in the 1920’s. This June, a little over a century later, Alli was ecstatic to attend the conference for the first time. Having joined the publishing industry in September 2025, she finds enjoyment in sharing her fresh perspectives on experiences and events that colleagues have been familiar with since before she was born – and AUPresses was no exception.
After spending several months cultivating relationships online, collaborating on workflows, and solving problems via email or video calls, getting to meet university press clients in-person was a highlight that underscores why we do what we do. AUPresses’ commitment to amplifying the collective voice of the university presses in attendance was very inspiring. Listening to the common threads and shared challenges running through every conversation confirmed a comforting reality: we are all in this together, working as a collaborative ecosystem with a shared goal of moving scholarly publishing forward.
A session called “Rethinking the Divide: Journals and Books Programs Integrate and Thrive” on the second day of the conference provided a helpful perspective on what scholarly publishers are struggling with, and what potential solutions could look like. Understanding the goals publishers want to achieve and the specific challenges they are encountering in the process, allows us to build workflow solutions that take these factors into consideration.
The sheer energy and passion driving this sector of the publishing industry is incredibly contagious. We left Seattle feeling more inspired than ever by the community that welcomed us so warmly. To everyone who took the time to chat, grab a coffee, or share a laugh with us during the conference, thank you. It was an incredible week, and we’re looking forward to keeping the momentum going as we continue to build these partnerships.
Westchester helps you level the playing field
Westchester Publishing Services supports over 70 university presses in the US and around the world, providing a full range of services including composition, editorial, and digital conversion services for print and ebook formats. Download our handy solutions checklist, and contact us to learn why dozens of your peer presses value our full range of customizable workflow solutions for their books and journals programs.
This theme carried over into the session: “Reading is Social Again: Building Community in the Platform Age”. Speakers from Podium, Substack, TikTok, Penguin Random House, and Kickstarter each stressed that audience-building is no longer only about promotion in the leadup to book launch. Instead, it is about sustained and authentic engagement, by understanding where readers and fans already gather and connecting with them in those online venues. The advice was notably practical: focus on quality over quantity, use content intentionally across platforms, be transparent with authors, and remember that digital community works best when it is rooted in real relationships rather than performative reach.
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The 2026 