More success for Liverpool University Press
Liverpool University Press has won the 2015 Bookseller Industry Award for Independent Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher of the Year.
The Bookseller Awards represent the premier accolades for the UK book trade, described as the ‘ultimate recognition of an organisation’s excellence’. LUP stands beside winners in other categories that include the likes of Waterstones, Pan Macmillan and HarperCollins.
The award win comes just two months after Liverpool University Press won other major accolade, IPG Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year. This recognition follows the best year in the Press’ 115-year history and the launch of several publishing innovations in collaboration with the university’s departments and its library, including open-access platform Modern Languages Open and the JISC-funded ‘institution as e-textbook publisher’ project.
LUP operates without institutional subsidy; its 12-person team published 85 books and 24 journals last year.
The Bookseller Industry Awards judges noted: 'Oxford and Cambridge are the names most commonly associated with university publishing in the UK but Liverpool shows there is a lot to admire beyond the collegiate titans. This is a publisher that relishes a challenge.'
Liverpool University Press managing director Anthony Cond, who collected the award from The Bookseller's Benedicte Page and journalist Mariella Frostrup, said: 'Ten years ago Liverpool University Press almost closed. Earlier this year the Press won the IPG award for academic publisher of the year, in succession to publishers such as Sage and Bloomsbury, and now it has claimed the Bookseller Industry Awards title for Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher of the Year.
'This success is both a vindication of the decision to retain a Press in Liverpool, and a testament to a brilliant and dedicated team, a spirit of partnership with colleagues across the campus, and some outstanding authors and editors publishing under the Liverpool imprimatur.'
