Longleaf Services

About

Longleaf Services, Inc., is a non-profit company exclusively serving the university press community since 2006.

Longleaf Services was established by The University of North Carolina Press to provide order processing, collection management, warehousing, and fulfillment and to make these services available to university presses.

In 2015 Longleaf Services began offering additional operational services, marketing support, and editorial, design, and production services to university presses. We provide efficient project management for books and journals.

Our goal is to provide the best possible services to clients and to bookstores and wholesalers. We currently provide complete fulfillment services including customer service, order processing with full EDI (electronic data interchange) and ASN (advanced shipping notification) capabilities, credit and collections, sales and inventory reporting, and warehousing and distribution for the following distinguished publishers.

The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot

In June of 2018, Longleaf (through UNC Press) received a three-year $998,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a digital-first open access monograph pilot for university presses publishing in the field of history. We have signed up 23 presses (including some Longleaf distribution clients) for participation and the first monographs are in the pipeline and due to be published later this Fall. There are several blog posts on the Longleaf website with more detailed updates about the program.

Initiatives and Grants

Longleaf has also been involved with several major grants from organizations like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Arcadia Fund to support innovation in university press publishing. Grants have supported the expansion of general publishing services, the creation of new work-flow tools for the development and distribution of open access monographs, and the exploration of open-sourced tools to support a wide range of university-based publishing activities. Participation in these grants keeps us on the cutting edge of innovation in scholarly publishing.

The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot

In June of 2018, Longleaf (through UNC Press) received a three-year $998,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a digital-first open access monograph pilot for university presses publishing in the field of history. We have signed up 23 presses (including some Longleaf distribution clients) for participation and the first monographs are in the pipeline and due to be published later this Fall. There are several blog posts on the Longleaf website with more detailed updates about the program.

Next Generation Library Publishing Partnership

In August of 2019, Longleaf was chosen as one of five partner institutions to execute a $2,200,000 grant awarded to the Educopia Institute, buy Arcadia—a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin—in support of the “Next Generation Library Publishing” project. Longleaf will work with the other partners (California Digital Library (CDL), Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), LYRASIS, and Strategies for Open Science (Stratos)) to provide new publishing pathways for authors, editors, and readers by advancing and integrating open source publishing infrastructure to provide robust support for library publishing.

Collaborative Services Platform for University Presses

In December 2014, the University of North Carolina Press received a three-year $998,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a suite of scaled publishing solutions addressing many of the current challenges facing university presses. These offerings, developed upon our wholly owned distribution affiliate Longleaf Publishing Services, are providing savings, tools, and efficiencies to presses in ways which could not be achieved individually. With a particular emphasis on publishing high quality digital monographs there were three categories of services being developed: Editorial/Design/Production Services; Marketing Services; and Publishing Operations.

Our Story

Longleaf Services was incorporated in the State of North Carolina on November 28, 2005 and commenced operations on July 1, 2006. As an affiliate of The University of North Carolina Press, Inc., Longleaf’s mission is to provide cost-effective fulfillment services for university presses. Longleaf Services, Inc. is a separately incorporated 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization and functions as a quasi-partnership. Its business model is designed to operate on a break-even basis by sharing fulfillment and other costs among client publishing partners, making Longleaf an ideal partner for university presses seeking professional and efficient distribution at the lowest possible costs. The activities of Longleaf are managed by a Board of Directors, which includes three client-publisher representatives. To the best of our knowledge, this inclusive governance structure is unparalleled in the publishing fulfillment industry.

What differentiates Longleaf from other fulfillment vendors is that it is not a profit center for its parent organization. Longleaf is truly intended to be a cost-sharing organization that works to drive down the cost of doing business for our publishers. Any surplus generated by Longleaf is allocated by the Board of Directors to either pay down the initial start-up costs, go into a Longleaf “R&D” fund, or be rebated back to the client publishers. Thus far, Longleaf has been able to successfully operate at close to break-even, but as more publishers are added, fulfillment service fees are likely to decrease or a surplus will be generated and distributed as described above.

Now in its 13th year of operation, Longleaf has established a reputation for excellence in the academic publishing community and with the related book-buying customers. It enables client publishers to enhance their competitiveness, improve operating efficiencies, and create economies of scale, resulting in better service to their customers and lowering overall operating costs for both publisher and book buyer.

In 2015, with the assistance of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Longleaf further expanded its suite of publishing services to address the current demands and challenges university presses face. These offerings, developed in close collaboration with our client presses, take advantage of economies of scale to provide services, tools, and insights at costs that individual clients cannot achieve. The added services include Editorial, Design, and Production; Marketing; and Operations.