3.26.2009

Sounds desperate and niche

I found an independent publisher that serves a total niche:

...professional development books for adjunct, part-time, full-time temporary and visiting college faculty...[and] include professional development titles for a wide cross-section of faculty who hold temporary appointments, as well as graduate students and distance educators...books [that] are designed to meet the professional needs of Academe's almost 700,000 non-tenure track faculty.

I don't have a problem with niche publishing, especially because the PIC (Publishing Industrial Complex) is crumbling after dominating the publishing industry for years, and other publishers are stepping in to satisfy more specific interests.

But what seems desperate about the market they're serving is the huge amount (700,000!) of faculty who are qualified but will never get full-time jobs with benefits.

Even the publisher's tagline "Your product source for adjunct and part-time faculty excellence" sounds desperate--not that the publisher is desperate, but the "industry" or profession is, and there are a lot of highly educated people running around, wanting a regular professor gig, but not able to get it because schools are stuffing themselves with adjunct faculty.

Actually, I'm a part-time instructor, but I don't want to teach full time anyway, so I'm not writing all this to complain about my situation. It's just something I've noticed and heard about--people want to teach in universities and colleges, but they can't because the full-time jobs are disappearing.

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