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Prestige & book presses?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

How prestigious are presses like Bloomsbury, Routledge, Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington, etc. compared to university presses? On the one hand, I have sometimes heard people in the humanities say university presses are the "gold standard" for academics in terms of hiring and promotion. On the other hand, many of these non-university presses rank higher in informal surveys than many university presses (e.g. https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/02/best-philosophy-publishers-in-english.html). I am especially interested in Bloomsbury's reputation: since the time of Leiter's survey, it has obtained a number of other publishers ranked in the top 20, such as Rowman & Littlefield. Does this indicate that Bloomsbury has a comparable prestige?

I'm not sure what to go on here beyond the Leiter poll referenced above. In terms of Bloomsbury, it obtained Rowman & Littlefield, but they're still different "imprints" right? So, I'm not sure that Bloomsbury purchasing them out affects the prestige of publishing with Bloomsbury per se.

What do readers think?

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6 responses to “Prestige & book presses?”

  1. Michel

    Yes, what matters is the imprint-level reputation. Although Bloomsbury now owns Roman and Lexington, they all still operate independently, with different practices and standards.
    Independently of those acquisitions, however, Bloomsbury has been significantly expanding its philosophy catalogue. It wasn’t in the 2013 T20, but I believe it absolutely would be, now.

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  2. OP

    OP here: for added context to my original question, Bloomsbury’s website says that as of June 2025, “the Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington Books, and other associated imprint names under Bloomsbury (with the exception of Backbeat) will be retired…[W]e feel it is a natural fit to transition all titles to the Bloomsbury imprint name.”

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  3. good company

    I presume people have seen Schwitzgebel’s post on the most visible presses in Philosophy (https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-most-visible-academic-presses-in.html). It provides another interesting way of looking at things.
    In any case, my impression has always been that you should publish with the highest ranking university press you can, but it does get murky if your options are lower ranking university presses or well known commercial presses. I am not sure what to do there except that, if you are employed in a TT job, you should just ask your chair about it for your institution. Perhaps at the point, it’s really a matter of seeing who else is on that publisher’s list and if it looks like good company to keep.

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  4. Assistant prof

    Routledge is fine, though not a first choice. The rest will not do you many favors.

    Reply
  5. A librarian’s test

    About the prestige and impact of various presses, just look at your own bookshelf. If you do not have books by a publisher (or have BUT one or two), then the press is not having much impact (at least not on you). I have a large library – by far the greatest number of books I have are published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. I work in philosophy of science, so I also have numerous books published by Springer and University of Chicago Press. I do have some Routledge books, but not near as many as these other Presses.

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  6. some cents

    FWIW I don’t think Springer is all that much more impressive than Routledge especially since they seem to publish dissertations (which are a mixed bag). I mean, sure, we all know OUP and CUP are the top two academic presses. But after that, I think work that comes out with Chicago, especially in the area of 19th and 20th century European philosophy is all over the place in terms of quality. Princeton’s nice, though they seem to be more of a preferred choice when it comes to trade-ish philosophy these days. Which is great! But just pointing that out.

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