University Presses Publishing Popular Books
 

Princeton Press recently busted out with Sports Analytics: A Guide for Coaches, Managers, and Other Decision Makers. Seriously? You're gonna publish an instruction manual?

It seems like scholarly venues like Oxford Press, Harvard Press, Princeton Press, etc. can't resist the money that comes from publishing popular books.

This might hurt your scholarly reputation. Harvard Press does what businesses do when they have lines of products of varying qualities (Banana/Gap/Old Navy), and that is publish their popular scholarship via a different brand name, Belknap.

Of course, a lot of good has come out of this, as the popularity of books on Mormonism resulted in Oxford rolling out multiple books on Mormonism, leading Mormon studies to be taken seriously for the first time.

And here is the the latest from Harvard, er, Belknap, Mormon Jesus, by the same non-LDS biographer of Brigham Young.

http://smile.amazon.com/Mormon-Jesus...us+john+turner