{"id":1109,"date":"2019-11-22T14:17:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/?p=1109"},"modified":"2020-04-27T12:12:18","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T11:12:18","slug":"conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.acast.com\/5e957b9f339fe2a164bb4536\/episodes\/5e957bbc3bd94228345c189a?theme=white&#038;cover=1&#038;latest=1\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\" allow=\"autoplay\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This week we have an interview with <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Amy Brand (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/about.me\/amybrand\" target=\"_blank\">Amy Brand<\/a>, who for the past four years has been director of the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"MIT Press (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">MIT Press<\/a>. In a recent Q&amp;A that appeared on the <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org\/2019\/06\/13\/robert-harington-talks-to-amy-brand-director-of-mit-press-to-discover-more-about-the-recent-launch-of-the-knowledge-futures-group\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Scholarly Kitchen (opens in a new tab)\">Scholarly Kitchen<\/a>, Amy said of her role at the MIT press:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>The job is a perfect fit for me because it builds on my experiences beyond publishing in academic science, university administration and research startups.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In our conversation, we talk about the changes Amy has made at the press and how she sees them against the wider context of the publishing and scholarly landscape. Amy&#8217;s appointment in 2015, in fact, marked a <\/strong><em><strong>return<\/strong><\/em><strong> to the MIT press, as she&#8217;d been their executive editor in cognitive science and linguistics from 1994 to 2000. Between those appointments, Amy&#8217;s career included a number of years at Harvard University, first as program manager of the Office for Scholarly Communication and then as assistant provost for faculty appointments and information.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>When I spoke to Amy on the phone, I began by remarking that I&#8217;d noticed she was producing a documentary, so she was clearly interested in a wide range of ways of presenting knowledge beyond the traditional university press categories.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Very, very much so. You know, that dates back to the experience I had as an editor at the MIT press in the &#8217;90s. The director of the press at the time, Frank Urbanowski, was, I would say, ahead of his time in terms of thinking about the potential for digital media in relation to scholarship. We were one of the first presses \u2013 along with <a href=\"https:\/\/cup.columbia.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Columbia University Press (opens in a new tab)\">Columbia University Press<\/a> \u2013 to begin to really invest in online communities and specific subject areas. For us, it was cognitive science, which was my area as a PhD and also as an editor; for Columbia was political science. And I became fascinated with how we could translate the work that was going on in the academy for a broad audience and build in opportunities for immersion beyond your typical journal article or monograph in terms of the genre of the information. So that set me down that path. I had been an acquisitions editor here for about seven years before I left in 1999\/2000 and that experience is what led me away from MIT initially, because I became so interested in digital publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/catalogs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"894\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/MIT-Press-catalog-cover-2020.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1141\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/MIT-Press-catalog-cover-2020.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/MIT-Press-catalog-cover-2020-268x300.jpg 268w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/MIT-Press-catalog-cover-2020-768x858.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Going all the way back to undergraduate work, you studied linguistics. Am I reading too much into it to see that interest in deep structures and connections that that linguists are involved in as something that&#8217;s a thread running through your interests subsequently?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Not at all. I think that I&#8217;ve very much stayed true to this\ninterest in how language conveys information, how the mind structures language.\nAnd I see what university presses do and what publishers do is about that very\npath from text to knowledge. And so I see a great deal of continuity between my\nearlier interests and what I do now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>But unlike some directors of university presses, you stepped outside the university press world. You were for a number of years an assistant provost at Harvard University. So I guess there must have come a point where you had to decide, do I want to step back into the university press world? Or, given that there are lots of questions about what his future holds, you might have decided, no, there are other areas that will absorb and retain my interest outside that world. But you made the conscious, very specific decision to come back.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. You know, I again see a lot of continuity in that. The Harvard story is a little bit different. What happened was, I left the MIT Press where I&#8217;d been an editor. I went to work at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossref.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Crossref (opens in a new tab)\">Crossref<\/a>, which I am is an organization I&#8217;m still very involved in as a board member. And I feel very strongly about how it&#8217;s transformed scholarly information. But when I was working at Crossref, that was sort of the start of the open access fervour. And a friend of mine, someone that I had known for my academic days, who was a professor at Harvard, reached out and said, \u2018I&#8217;m starting this office for scholarly communication.\u2019 That&#8217;s when I left Crossref to go help start up the office for scholarly communication at Harvard. And it was when I was in that role that I began to see that there&#8217;s really this fascinating connection between publishing and academic careers and access to information. And in some respects, the Harvard job was kind of shaped around my interest because it wasn&#8217;t just straightforward academic administration. It was, \u2018how do people present or narrate their contribution to scholarship, to new knowledge, and how does that impact their careers?\u2019 And so it was very relevant to my whole set of interest in that space; it wasn&#8217;t as much of a departure as people think.&nbsp; Now, it was very different work environment from working in the university press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>So what was it like, Amy, coming back to MIT after having been away for a number of years? Did it feel familiar or had everything changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ll never forget when I first came in to meet with staff\nbefore I started here. Now, the position I left to come back to the MIT Press\nwas literally a block away. It was down the street on First Street in\nCambridge. This was the US offices of Digital Science, which is part of Nature\nMacmillan. And I was actually running the US office for Digital Science. So I\nwalked down the street because I&#8217;d just been hired, and the outgoing director\nsaid, \u2018I really want you to meet with all the staff.\u2019 And I come back into the\nlarge conference room here and the majority of the people were the same people\nthat I had worked in the \u201890s. Yes, there were some new faces, but it really\nwas like coming home to my second family and I&#8217;ve certainly felt that way since\nI&#8217;ve been here. It&#8217;s just over four years as director. So it&#8217;s a homecoming in\nmany respects. It&#8217;s not just the Press, it&#8217;s MIT and MIT&#8217;s culture, which is\nvery different from Harvard&#8217;s culture. And it&#8217;s a focus around the Press \u2013 but\nI think was there when I was here as an editor too \u2013 which is, this isn&#8217;t just\nabout complacently doing what we&#8217;ve always done. It&#8217;s about constantly\nrethinking what kind of publishing is best for universities and for MIT in\nparticular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And when you became director in 2015, you consciously gave yourself six months, I think, in order to produce a five-year plan for the Press&#8217;s future. I&#8217;m sure there are many, many aspects to that, but can you maybe summarize how you set about that task?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, yeah. It was very conscious. It was not, I think,\nimposed on me. It maybe came a little bit from the mindset that I had had\nmanaging at Harvard a lot of complex projects, where I had learned about agile\nproject management and things like that. But it meant that in order to be able\nto produce this thing that I wanted to produce, that I had to spend a lot of\ntime meeting with and listening to people at the Press and also on campus. And\nso that was extremely valuable. And it also was an incredibly valuable\nteam-building exercise for my senior staff, the folks that report to me\ndirectly, because it was very much a joint effort. Every member of the senior\nteam had a part in producing that report and those recommendations. And then we\nbrought them up to the provost. It gave us a roadmap for the way forward. I\nmean, when we&#8217;re when we&#8217;re sitting there thinking, is this consistent with\nwhat we said we wanted to do? It&#8217;s very valuable to be able to check back. We\nhad emerged with a list of eight strategic priorities at the time and it&#8217;s been\nvery helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, I would say four years in \u2013 it was a five-year plan \u2013 it&#8217;s\noutlived its usefulness, in part because we surpassed our financial objectives.\nAnd so we&#8217;ve already reached where we wanted to be. But also because I learned\nin the process that the way we had done that was not actually maximally\nengaging to the staff here. So they had a voice. And then this thing was\ndelivered to them. But they weren&#8217;t given the information about &#8216;how does what\nI do in my unit support those higher-level priorities?&#8217; And so now we&#8217;re taking\na different approach to strategic planning called OKRs, objectives and key\nresults, which of course, like everything else, emerges out of Silicon Valley.\nBut it&#8217;s been a really good process for engaging staff so that there is much\nmore local ownership over what those priorities are and what needs to be done\nto realize them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And again, I know this is a big question, so just tell me if it&#8217;s impossible to answer succinctly, but I was thinking about that process you undertook of going out and having conversations. And I was thinking about all the constituencies that you would inevitably have been thinking about: about staff, your authors, readers, students, faculty, your parent institution. And then the wider culture, the whole economy of knowledge. So you must have had to navigate quite a sensitive course in order to boil that down into eight strategic priorities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I would say it probably wasn&#8217;t a perfect mapping\nbetween the evidence base of what I heard from all those constituents and what\nwe ended up with. None of these things ever is, right? But I think that it was\nquite a process and, in addition to helping us get to those priorities, it was\nalso an exercise in bridge building that&#8217;s been extremely important in how the\nPress works with the rest of the university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of what I&#8217;ve tried to do in my leadership since coming in is really take the university press and pivot it back towards the institute rather than away. It&#8217;s always a difficult thing to navigate because, of course, you want to have complete editorial independence. And of course, most of our authors, at least 90 per cent of our authors, have nothing to do with MIT and shouldn&#8217;t. So it&#8217;s not about that. It&#8217;s about how we best serve to amplify what MIT is trying to do, and its faculty are trying to do, and how we bring other voices into the mix. But we have, as a result of that strategic planning process, many new partnerships with different units, with the open learning folks, certainly with the Media Lab, with the libraries. We never had, for example, a partnership with the <a href=\"https:\/\/mitsloan.mit.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Sloan School of Management (opens in a new tab)\">Sloan School of Management<\/a>, which publishes a lot. Their faculty publish quite a bit, wonderful business and finance books. And now we have two series. MIT&#8217;s magazine, that&#8217;s quite well known, is Technology Review. They had started publishing some great books in science fiction and were looking for a partner to help distribute them, and if I wasn&#8217;t doing that listening tour, I wouldn&#8217;t have known that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And is that part of one of your strategic priorities that you&#8217;ve described as &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@mitpress\/embracing-change-the-mit-press-and-the-future-of-university-based-publishing-f43c7f820ab1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"opening up the black box of publishing (opens in a new tab)\">opening up the black box of publishing<\/a>&#8216;, unbundling what publishers do in order to create new strategic partnerships rather than a manuscript is delivered at one end and out pops a book at the other?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, it definitely is. It&#8217;s forming those partnerships\nbecause faculty in many cases are their own kind of publishing entity. I\nremember actually when I came into the office for scholarly communication at\nHarvard and we were starting it up and I thought, OK, the first thing I&#8217;m going\nto do, since this is all about helping Harvard do more open access publishing (the\nfaculty, it had nothing to do with the Press at Harvard), I was going to do an\naudit of how many journals are being published at Harvard. And it turned out to\nbe something like 60. Most of them were within departments and they were\nhandling it themselves. And so, to me, it just seems that if you are, as we are\nin our case, which isn&#8217;t, say, true of Princeton, we are part and parcel of MIT,\nwe&#8217;re not even a separate physical entity, no separate tax ID, we&#8217;re just part\nof the institute, that part of our role should be to be serving those faculty\nwho are doing that. The other thing that I should really point out is that most\nuniversity presses don&#8217;t publish journals. And so, of course, how we&#8217;re going\nto look at this space is going to be coloured by the fact that we are doing\nboth books and journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yes, so you have that expertise in-house to draw on. I don&#8217;t know if it was the top priority only in terms of numerical order, but enhancing the trade list was something you set down as a priority. And certainly I was looking through the <a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/catalogs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"catalogue (opens in a new tab)\">catalogue<\/a> this morning and the trade titles come at the front and they run to about 85 pages, so it&#8217;s a very rich and varied trade list that you&#8217;ve developed there. In those four years, has that come on greatly? If I&#8217;d looked at the catalogue from 2014, would the trade list have been significantly smaller?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>It would have been significantly smaller and it would have\nbeen largely focused around art and architecture. Part of the history here is\nthat the Press had developed very, very strong expertise around trade\npublishing, in design and publicity and marketing and all of that, but was only\napplying it, or largely applying it, to one part of the list. And so it wasn&#8217;t\nso much coming in and saying, &#8216;OK, I just have to reinvent the MIT Press.&#8217; It\nwas coming in and saying, &#8216;We should be applying our ability to do trade books\nmore broadly, and in particular because of my background through more on the\nscience side and my interest in the fact that part of what I was seeing out\nthere in the world is a much larger appetite among reading audiences for\naccessible science and technology information, it seemed like a good\nopportunity and it also was a way in which we were serving the objectives of\nthe institute around being a science and technology (for the most part, not\nexclusively) university that believes in using that research and scholarship to\nsolve problems in the world. That would be a way for us to align with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I noted one of the titles in your current catalogue has the subtitle &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/books\/curating-after-global\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"roadmaps for the present (opens in a new tab)\">roadmaps for the present<\/a>&#8216; and it seemed to me that that actually was something that you were delivering on across the catalogue. You were looking at a technological, scientific issue, problem or development, but you were actually presenting books which were up to date in thinking about its real world applicability: how will this actually have an impact on people&#8217;s lives? What are the things we should know about this and how should we be handling developments&#8217;?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/books\/curating-after-global\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"750\" height=\"1074\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/curating-after-the-global.jpg?fit=660%2C945&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1146\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/curating-after-the-global.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/curating-after-the-global-209x300.jpg 209w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/curating-after-the-global-715x1024.jpg 715w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Right. And it&#8217;s often a tough call. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve\nheard this from other directors that you&#8217;ve spoken with. The line between what\nis a professional book and what is a trade book is sometimes quite blurry and\nit&#8217;s something that we wrestle with constantly. We&#8217;re not like a trade\npublishing house that puts out a truly popular treatments of this kind of topic.\nWe are much more about books that honour the complexity of their subject, even\nwhen they are trade books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Well, I wondered, because sometimes you buy in rights, I think from UK trade houses, don&#8217;t you? So I guess you&#8217;re always asking yourself that question: \u2018does this meet the criteria of an MIT Press trade book?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, everything that we do, you know, 99.9 per cent of what\nwe publish, is going to undergo a fairly rigorous peer review process.\nSometimes the imports will not in the same way because, say if we&#8217;re\ntranslating a book from French or Italian, we&#8217;re not going to do big revisions\nin the English edition of that book. And there are reviews published and we can\nalready get a sense of the quality of the work. Sometimes when I do a\ntranslation, I&#8217;ll reach out to the press director of the original language publication\nto get their view. But yes, everything that we published does go through peer\nreview and that&#8217;s an extremely important and interesting part of what\nuniversity presses do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And I&#8217;ve heard it said by some of your peers that it&#8217;s something that should be made more of in the wider public forum, because it&#8217;s not an impediment to publishing. It&#8217;s something that gives university press publishing part of their character in their calibre.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Absolutely. I think among university presses we&#8217;re probably\nmore rigorous than most in terms of the number of reviews we do at different\nstages. But I think the whole system is flawed. I mean, I think it served us\nvery well and continues to serve us well, but I tend to think about peer review\nin the context not only of publishing, but also in terms of academic careers,\ntenure and promotion, grant making and review panels around that. When you have\na process that&#8217;s highly anonymized, yes, it can be more trustworthy, but it can\nalso be a vehicle for amplifying bias. And I think that that&#8217;s some of what\nwe&#8217;ve seen around peer review. And then, of course, the other thing is it&#8217;s\njust hard to get peer reviewers if you rely on the typical way that most of us\nthink about getting experts to comment on research. It\u2019s a bit cronyistic,\nright? You go back to the same network and people get exhausted. They&#8217;re also\nmanaging a whole set of incentives around conflict of interest and things like\nthat. I&#8217;m currently working on peer review as a research project because I\nreally think it&#8217;s an opportunity to improve how we do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Well, we must definitely speak about that again when you publish and I&#8217;d be fascinated to talk in more detail about that. Do you have time, Amy, to acquire books? Or are you really operating at the strategic level and unable to give attention to books?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, that has been one of the hardest things for me\nhere because I always want to acquire books. I&#8217;m constantly meeting people and\nhearing about great projects. And I&#8217;d love to do it, but I don&#8217;t have time. So\nwhat I do is go so far in a conversation and then hand off the connection or\nthe relationship to one of my editorial colleagues. And I think it&#8217;s worked out\nwell. I don&#8217;t ever want them to feel that, because I think so-and-so is\ninteresting and the project is interesting, that therefore the director said\nthis, so we have to publish it. It&#8217;s not how it works. It&#8217;s just sort of, &#8216;you\nshould look at this and then it&#8217;s completely in your hands&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>So you get a little bit of vicarious satisfaction, but it&#8217;s not quite the same as seeing it all the way through yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes.&nbsp; Exactly. And,\nyou know, sometimes I&#8217;ll stay a little bit more involved, especially, all of us\nuniversity presses tend to do regional interest books or books that touch on\nour home institutions. And I tend to stay a little bit more involved in those\nprojects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And if I said, let&#8217;s take quality of content as a given, but if I said what would you like the MIT Press colophon on the spine of the book to say to a fairly sophisticated reader, a reader who is aware of colophons and what they might mean? What sort of values would you like them to associate, albeit subconsciously, with that on the spine?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"693\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1138\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo-300x208.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo-768x532.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, that&#8217;s a really good question. I think that \u2013 there&#8217;s\nword I&#8217;m searching for, I&#8217;m having a hard time finding \u2013 that means something\nlike a little bit edgy and challenging, whatever the subject matter is. You\nknow, I&#8217;d like to think that we&#8217;re very independent. We like to foster\ncross-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary, anti-disciplinary work, which also\nraises questions for peer review because it&#8217;s sometimes harder. And we want to\nbe the best publisher in the areas in which we publish when it comes to\nbringing fresh new voices. What&#8217;s fascinating about that is, we are a\nprestigious press and I want to protect that prestige, but never to the point\nof saying, &#8216;I&#8217;m going to make a decision about publishing a book based on the\npedigree of the academic who&#8217;s writing it&#8217;. So you&#8217;ll see in our list a lot of\nyounger voices, a lot of assistant professors, even postdocs who are writing\ntheir first book because they have a fresh perspective on what might be an\nentirely new field or subject matter, where they bring that kind of passion to\nit. I think there are some more established presses that don&#8217;t tend to do that\nas much. We take more risks that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>If I were to ask you, Amy, what are the &#8216;known unknowns&#8217; that keep you awake at night or that you wake up thinking about in the morning? What&#8217;s on your list?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s a really good question as well. You know, I&#8217;m\nconstantly asking myself in the bigger decisions that I make every day, &#8216;Am I\nconsistently putting the Press&#8217;s interests and reputation above my personal\ninterests and my personal reputation?&#8217; Because I hope that I am. To me is\nextremely important. I don&#8217;t know if you saw it, I wrote a piece recently about\nleadership, posted it to LinkedIn: after years of reflecting about leadership, realizing\nthat there&#8217;s so much humility and being given the opportunity, to use that denigrated\nGeorge Bush phrase, be the decider. And you can never do that from the position\nof hubris; that has to be really from &nbsp;&#8216;I\ndon&#8217;t think that I necessarily know more than you do or I&#8217;m better, I&#8217;m\nsmarter. But I take this responsibility and I put it above myself.\u2019&nbsp; When you have a complicated web of\nrelationships with senior administrators at the university where you work and\nwith authors who feel like they&#8217;ve known you for 30 years, as many of mine\nhave, and they want to call in a favour \u2013 you know, that kind of thing.&nbsp; But I do think about that a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Again, this is a big question, but what about the wider question about the evolution, or the revolutions, taking place in the knowledge economy and whether there&#8217;s going to be a squeezed place for the university press? Is that something that keeps you awake?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s top of mind for sure. I feel pretty confident\nin our strategy, which I think is also quite unique. Which is, again, the sort\nof pushing more towards trade and being successful in that space, while not\nsacrificing on quality and peer review and serving our authors. And at the same\ntime, going all out into the publishing innovation space, where one can support\nthe other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think it goes in both directions. So, I don&#8217;t think the\nneed for the Press is going to be obviated by library-based publishing, for\nexample. I see a renaissance, an interest in the types of books that we\npublish, certainly among bookstores and booksellers and through that the sales\nthat we&#8217;re seeing. I&#8217;ve never really believed in certain dichotomies that\npeople talk about, &#8216;well, it&#8217;s gonna be all digital&#8217;. Well, no, you can have\nbooks and print continue at the same time that people are listening to audio\nbooks and reading on their Kindle. And similarly, I&#8217;ve never seen the dichotomy\nbetween all open or all paid. I think they can coexist very productively. And we&#8217;re\ndoing a lot of work around that now with our professional, truly scholarly\nmonographs, around &#8216;what would it mean to get to the point where actually all\nof those books are subvented and published open access even as we continue to\nproduce print and sell print?&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This is always a tough question for people, but if I were to ask you to choose an MIT Press title that you think embodies the spirit of what we&#8217;ve been talking about this morning, it needn&#8217;t be a bestseller, but a title that that you cherish for whatever reason, either because you published it or &#8230; Does anything come to mind?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, no, there&#8217;s so many! It&#8217;s like so many children! I&#8217;m\ntrying to think&#8230; I&#8217;m running through these books in my mind and I can think\nof our bestselling book that sold 350,000 copies, and it wouldn&#8217;t be that, so\nI&#8217;m not going to mention that. And I can think of my personal favourites, which\nwouldn&#8217;t necessarily be representative of the whole Press. So, rather than\nsaying the title, I can tell you about the process. I think my favourite books\nare often \u2013 in more recent times, because there&#8217;s so many fabulous MIT Press\nclassics and backlist titles \u2013 the ones where the process reflects intellectual\nengagement on the part of the editor in identifying the subject matter and\nmatching it up with the right author. We have books where the editor&#8217;s read or\nI have read an article in <em>The New Yorker<\/em> and I think, oh, my God, this\nhas to be a book. When that happens, it&#8217;s extremely satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/books\/dialogues-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"750\" height=\"943\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1142\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-cover.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-cover-239x300.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, actually, now I think I can mention one book, a recent book, which I think speaks to a lot of what the Press is trying to do. So with the hedge that this isn&#8217;t the best or most important book that the MIT Press ever published, there&#8217;s a book called <em><a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/books\/dialogues-1\">The Dialogues<\/a><\/em> by a physicist at the University of Southern California named Clifford Johnson, which is a graphic novel treatment about the origins of the universe, using African-American drawn figures having conversations. This book has been extremely successful and I love it because I love the author. I love Clifford and I love the fact \u2013 and it&#8217;s been a top seller for us \u2013 he tried to have the project agented and failed and ultimately came to the Press. And he also was very insistent about doing the drawings himself and designing it exactly the way he wanted it designed. It&#8217;s brought us into a whole new market, the whole kind of Comic Con world. And we have many more graphic novel treatments in the works. But that to me represents, you know, we&#8217;re moving into a bit more kind of the popularization of science, capturing new voices, capturing new genre and formats. So I think <em>The Dialogues<\/em> is a really good example of what we&#8217;re trying to do now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"1061\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-sample-page.jpg?fit=660%2C875&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1143\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-sample-page.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-sample-page-226x300.jpg 226w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-sample-page-768x1019.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/clifford-johnson-dialogues-sample-page-772x1024.jpg 772w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>That sounds like a very good choice; I should definitely check that out. And which other presses do you look to with particular admiration?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, I mean, there are so many. I had the privilege recently of being on a review committee for <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Duke University Press (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dukeupress.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Duke University Press<\/a> and digging in to what they&#8217;re doing, and I have so much admiration for their approach to publishing in the humanities, which is quite different from what we do. We have had a very close relationship over the years with <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Princeton (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/press.princeton.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Princeton<\/a> and <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Harvard (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hup.harvard.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Harvard<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/yalebooks.yale.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Yale (opens in a new tab)\">Yale<\/a> because of our various sales consortia here and also <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Columbia (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/cup.columbia.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Columbia<\/a> and <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"California (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">California<\/a>, so I get kind of more of a front-view look into what those other presses are doing. And sometimes I&#8217;m a little jealous that we don&#8217;t do more in history because those are books that I love to read and all of those presses do a fabulous job. I don&#8217;t see us going in that direction. But I think there are so many just wonderful university presses and they each do things slightly differently. I will say, in a more competitive spirit, that I don&#8217;t think anybody&#8217;s as distinctive as we are!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hedgehog &amp; Fox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Here&#8217;s a very last question, Amy. When you want to switch off from all these big questions we&#8217;ve been discussing today, at the end of the day or when you&#8217;re on holiday, how do you switch off?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Amy Brand<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>That has a very easy answer for me. Certainly time with\nfamily is top. I have three kids. Two of them are out of the house now because\nthey&#8217;re older. The other thing is I have a very serious yoga practice. It&#8217;s a\npart of my life and I find that that&#8217;s probably the quickest way for me to\nswitch off, to be able to go to that space. That&#8217;s where I can reset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/688420435&amp;color=%2328241c&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.acast.com\/5e957b9f339fe2a164bb4536\/episodes\/5e957bbc3bd94228345c189a?theme=white&#038;cover=1&#038;latest=1\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\" allow=\"autoplay\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hedgehog &amp; Fox This week we have an interview with Amy Brand, who for the past four years has been director of the MIT Press. In a recent Q&amp;A that&hellip; <a class=\"excerpt-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,34,3],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-publishing","category-conversations-with-publishers","category-podcast","tag-podcast"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press - The Hedgehog and the Fox<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amy Brand reflects on her first four years as director of the MIT Press and its place in the wider university press publishing landscape\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press - The Hedgehog and the Fox\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Amy Brand reflects on her first four years as director of the MIT Press and its place in the wider university press publishing landscape\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Hedgehog and the Fox\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-11-22T13:17:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-04-27T11:12:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"693\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"G Miller\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"G Miller\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"24 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"G Miller\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/8e04938e443a636a971e0c21379aa2d1\"},\"headline\":\"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-22T13:17:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-04-27T11:12:18+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\"},\"wordCount\":5031,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"podcast\"],\"articleSection\":[\"books &amp; publishing\",\"Conversations with Publishers\",\"podcast\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\",\"name\":\"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press - The Hedgehog and the Fox\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-22T13:17:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-04-27T11:12:18+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/8e04938e443a636a971e0c21379aa2d1\"},\"description\":\"Amy Brand reflects on her first four years as director of the MIT Press and its place in the wider university press publishing landscape\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg\",\"width\":1000,\"height\":693},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/\",\"name\":\"The Hedgehog and the Fox\",\"description\":\"Answering questions large and small\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/8e04938e443a636a971e0c21379aa2d1\",\"name\":\"G Miller\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0776b634bbf57654833bbacfd16d780c674aa5d2e41797a9fbf4f255099258e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0776b634bbf57654833bbacfd16d780c674aa5d2e41797a9fbf4f255099258e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"G Miller\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/author\/geomiller65btinternet-com\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press - The Hedgehog and the Fox","description":"Amy Brand reflects on her first four years as director of the MIT Press and its place in the wider university press publishing landscape","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press - The Hedgehog and the Fox","og_description":"Amy Brand reflects on her first four years as director of the MIT Press and its place in the wider university press publishing landscape","og_url":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/","og_site_name":"The Hedgehog and the Fox","article_published_time":"2019-11-22T13:17:59+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-04-27T11:12:18+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":693,"url":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"G Miller","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"G Miller","Estimated reading time":"24 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/"},"author":{"name":"G Miller","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/8e04938e443a636a971e0c21379aa2d1"},"headline":"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press","datePublished":"2019-11-22T13:17:59+00:00","dateModified":"2020-04-27T11:12:18+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/"},"wordCount":5031,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg","keywords":["podcast"],"articleSection":["books &amp; publishing","Conversations with Publishers","podcast"],"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/","url":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/","name":"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press - The Hedgehog and the Fox","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg","datePublished":"2019-11-22T13:17:59+00:00","dateModified":"2020-04-27T11:12:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/8e04938e443a636a971e0c21379aa2d1"},"description":"Amy Brand reflects on her first four years as director of the MIT Press and its place in the wider university press publishing landscape","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg","width":1000,"height":693},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/2019\/11\/22\/conversations-with-publishers-amy-brand-mit-press\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Conversations with Publishers: Amy Brand, MIT Press"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/","name":"The Hedgehog and the Fox","description":"Answering questions large and small","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/8e04938e443a636a971e0c21379aa2d1","name":"G Miller","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0776b634bbf57654833bbacfd16d780c674aa5d2e41797a9fbf4f255099258e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0776b634bbf57654833bbacfd16d780c674aa5d2e41797a9fbf4f255099258e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"G Miller"},"url":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/author\/geomiller65btinternet-com\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MIT-Press-logo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1216,"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions\/1216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podularity.com\/thehedgehogandthefox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}