IU Press director named one of top 50 women in publishing by national magazine

Janet Rabinowitch joined the Indiana University Press and climbed her way up to the top.

She started as an editorial director in 1975 and advanced to the head director in 2003, where she remains today, with more than 800 publications under her wing.

With all of her work, Book Business Magazine honors Rabinowitch as one of 2009’s top 50 women in book publishing, and she said she is not stopping anytime soon.

Rabinowitch supervises the entire press, including editorial, production, marketing, business offices and warehouses and works as an acquiring editor, sponsoring publications of studies involving Eastern European topics, the Jewish Holocaust and Russian Studies.

She has also acquired and published works involving the United Nations Intellectual History Project, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the upcoming Indiana University Press Online.  

She finds interest in manuscripts that give a lot of input on various cultural backgrounds from publishing works, such as the 19th century Russian cookbooks and personal biographies of the Warsaw ghetto.

Editorial Director Bob Sloan has been working with Rabinowitch since 1986 and describes her as meticulous, hard-working and caring.

“She brings intelligence, good sense and a fabulous work ethic to her position,” Sloan said. “And she knows that by taking the extra care with her authors and manuscripts that become books, it will all become beneficial in the long term.”

But like most women in the late 1960s, Rabinowitch had a hard time getting started in the publishing industry.  

After earning her doctorate in Russian history, she said it was difficult to work at the same institution as her spouse.

However, while she was working on co-editing a book with her husband, the aspiring teacher discovered her immediate interest in editing. With her passion, her career took off from there.

Rabinowitch also said she tries to lead the University Press in its main mission to publish scholarly and academic books used in teaching and to publish more popular books about the state and region.   

IU Press was founded in 1950 under the direction of former IU President Herman B Wells.

Rabinowitch said she tries to follow Wells’ declaration that “the University Press should be the intellectual arm of the University that should make the scholarship of the University available to the outside world, and to publish books of the literature and culture of Indiana and of the Midwest.”

“She’s certainly a source of stability for the Press,” Sloan said. “These are not the best economic times for book publishing, and she’s done a very good job in keeping everyone focused and concentrated on the job at hand with a strong faith that we will pull through this.”

With technology in the online world growing at a rapid rate, Rabinowitch said the Internet serves as both an opportunity and a challenge.

She also acknowledges the difficulties and struggles the print industry is having with the publication of books.  

But with the distribution of wireless reading devices such as the Sony Reader, IU Press is also making its way into the electronic field.

It will start by publishing more than 29 journals that will be available electronically by subscription, along with electronic editions that customers will be able to download.

Although online material might be easier to obtain, Rabinowitch said there are still some books, such as ones with heavy illustrations, that do not lend themselves to electronic publishing.

“There’s something aesthetic about the layout of art in a book that is hard to replicate on a computer,” Rabinowitch said.  

In the future, Rabinowitch said she plans on writing a work of her family history telling the story of her Russian immigrant descendants, and regardless of the pressures facing the print industry, she plans on continuing her career in publishing.

“I don’t think books are going to go away anytime soon,” Rabinowitch said.