Through a door nestled between the Dartmouth Co-Op and theCamera Shop of Hanover, two flights of stairs lead up to the third floor offices of an international publishing company.
Despite its unobtrusive location and modest sign, the University Press of New England is a major enterprise, an intellectual clearinghouse that each year publishes about 75 books on diverse subjects.
What separates the University Press from major New York City publishing firms, other than 250 miles, is the diversity of the books it publishes, from academic investigations into colonialism to poems allegedly written by a cockroach dancing on a typewriter.
And for most of the staff of the University Press, which is owned by Dartmouth and five other colleges, it is the diversity that makes the job worthwhile.
Book Designer Kathy Kimball said, "That's what keeps it interesting."
Books in print
Most university publishers print only books of a scholarly nature. The University Press is one of very few that prints a line of fiction.
The University Press publishes everything from "serious scholarship to sophisticated entertainment," according to Editorial Director Phil Pochoda.
Because universities often publish books of an academic nature, there is little market for most of their offerings. The University Press is trying to target a larger audience by printing books professors might have students read for class. But the University Press's books are hardly traditional textbooks.
One of their biggest sellers is Don Marquis' "archyology," a collection of lost poems by Marquis, a reporter famous in the first half of the century for poems written from the perspective of an insightful cockroach. The book features no capital letters because the cockroach author was unable to reach typewriter's shift key.
Pochoda called it one of their most "improbable books," yet it was very successful.
The University Press will soon release Dartmouth's new "Re-Encounters with Colonialism" series of books, which focus on different aspects of colonialism in the Americas.
Not all of the University Press' books are written by authors from the affiliated schools. Some are published in conjunction with the schools by outside authors, and some come from freelance writers.
The University Press does not focus purely on prose and poetry either. Many of the books printed in Singapore are art books, often projects that develop in conjunction with exhibits at the Hood Museum of Art.
The University Press editorial board, which consists of a faculty member from each of the affiliated schools, approves every book before it is published.
The Board of Governors, which consists of an administrator from each school, is the "ultimate authority," Pochoda said.
Questions of geography
Pochoda previously ran several publishing divisions in New York, "the center of trade publication."
He came to Hanover, in part, because he wanted to return to this area -- he had spent summers vacationing in New Hampshire.
But the relative seclusion of being in Hanover does not adversely affect the University Press. "We don't really feel like we're out of it," Kimball said. "A lot of us have been here for a long time." She said Hanover is a better place for raising families than New York City.
The University Press' Hanover location places it closer to Dartmouth than any of its other affiliated schools.
Pochoda said the relationship with Dartmouth is the same as their relationship with the other schools in principal. And although they have no special relationship with the College, press employees are all on the Dartmouth payroll.
"We feel like we're part of Dartmouth, though legally we're [also] part of the other five places," Pochoda said.
Aside from the fact that she lives close enough to the campus to be able to walk to work, Kimball's proximity to Dartmouth manifests itself in another way.
Due to a similarity between her name and the names of some Dartmouth students, she has frequently received misdirected BlitzMail messages from students inviting her to parties.
'No typical day'
There are no printing presses in the University Press office -- they use printers in North Carolina, Michigan, Canada and even Singapore to mass-produce the books.
But there is no lack of books or paper here, as manuscripts and test printings, as well as copies of the final products, clutter the offices.
Managing Editor Mary Crittendon said there is "no typical manuscript, no typical day." Her job depends on what projects are in the works.
One recent project for the University Press offers insight into the complexities of the publishing trade.
The editors wanted to obtain artwork for their paperback release of Anne Bernays' 1988 novel "Professor Romeo," about a seductive Harvard University professor.
Despite many attempts to find suitable cover art, including sending a photographer around the Dartmouth campus, they found nothing that satisfied them.
Eventually they decided to obtain the original cover art from the book's first edition. But the original artist was dead. So even after they obtained the rights to the art from his relatives, the editors had to find a pristine copy of the original cover to use.
Once they tracked one down, it was scanned into a computer and incorporated into the book's new cover for the University Press's Hardscrabble Books fiction line.
Then they had a test printing made of the cover, which they had to send back for alterations because the colors came out wrong.
But most of the time the editors are not involved in arduous searches for usable art.
Usually, they pass their time looking over manuscripts and making corrections, or reading books in various stages of completion.
Assistant Director of Design and Production Mike Burton said the office now relies on computers to do what used to be done by hand. "Camera-ready copy is basically a thing of the past," he said.
Floppy disks have replaced many of the bulky hard copies of artwork and text that were previously an essential part of the publishing process.
