The average first printing for a scholarly book from a university press is about 600 copies.
Many publishers don t sell half that number.
And then there s the story of Walter Edgar, the George Washington Distinguished Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and director of its Institute for Southern Studies. It continues to make regular appearances there, along the way becoming the top-selling scholarly book ever published in South Carolina. I m still surprised, Edgar said last week. I still pinch myself to see if it s all real. It s an example of the best of scholarly publishing, and it s a book we re enormously proud of, said Catherine Fry, director of the University of South Carolina Press, which published Edgar s volume.