The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an overview of the 2008 Association of American University Presses Annual Meeting by Jennifer Howard ("Scholarly Publishers Discuss How They're Adapting to Changing Realities"; restricted access).
An interesting revelation from the conference was that the University of Minnesota Press has found that its "sales figures through Amazon were 26 percent greater than its combined sales to libraries." Also, rumor had it that Amazon was pressing university presses hard to move any print-on-demand publishing to its BookSurge service (university presses aren't the only ones affected; Booklocker.com has filed a class action suit against Amazon over its POD distribution policy).
Another interesting disclosure was that, with six exceptions, university presses have embraced Google Book Search.
In another CHE article ("Thunderstorms and Open Access"), Stan Katz of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton recounted his trip to the conference, and, reacting to a speech by Stevan Harnad, said that "I fear that the obligation to 'publish' by mounting articles on free Web sites will make it impossible for nonprofit presses (such as the university presses I was addressing in Montreal) and learned societies to sustain themselves." Harnad has replied in "Exchange with Stan Katz at Association of American University Press Meeting in Montreal."
It's possible that there was more conference coverage on the AAUP Blog, but we'll never know, since access to that Weblog is restricted to AAUP members.
