When the University of Michigan Press published its first open-access books, almost 20 years ago, there was a lot of skepticism among authors. "Are you anticipating the death of print? Will my tenure committee respect my work if it is open? Why would I give away my royalties?" These were reasonable questions from authors in a scholarly environment that now seems almost as remote as the Middle Ages. With the revolution in high-quality digital printing, the erosion of tenure, and a decline in academic print book sales as remarkable as the surge in ebook usage, we live and work in a world transformed since 1995.

The publication of our fall 2025 catalog is always a moment of internal celebration in Ann Arbor. While the uses of seasonal catalogs for selling books in academic publishing have almost completely vanished, the chance to back away and survey the landscape of our publishing list gives us great satisfaction. Perhaps it is from viewing the list through rose-colored spectacles, but the quality of U-M Press books overall has never felt so high. We're honored to be attracting the smartest and most innovative authors in the world, and the opportunity to publish open access without a charge is one of the main reasons - alongside an ambitious and creative editorial team.

Many authors are leveraging open access to advance the natural interdisciplinarity of their work, blurring boundaries between media and theoretical traditions. David Tenorio, the author of Queer Relajo, explores the "nightscapes" of Mexico City through the lens of film, digital media, and drag autoethnography; Vanessa Warne, By Touch Alone, explores how reading through touch not only transformed the lives of thousands of nineteenth century blind people but created the inkless book culture that digitization has made ubiquitous; returning author Julia Fawcett visits, through Movable Londons, a city transformed by the Great Fire of 1666. She shows how the introduction of movable scenery revolutionized not only public theaters but the way in which architects and builders understood and reconstructed spaces.

For other authors, open access offers opportunities to reach their colleagues in countries where books may be hard to obtain - because of cost, censorship, or logistical impediments. Political Trust in China by Lianjiang Li explores how much Chinese citizens actually trust their government; Screening Precarity by Megha Anwe and Anupama Arora surveys how marginal identities are shaped and scripted by a Hindu nationalism that permeates Indian cinema; Dancing Opacity by Amy Swanson shows how Senegalese choreographers and dancers contend with repressive regulation of gender and sexuality within the country while also transforming Western perceptions of African dance.

Last but not least come the policy-influencers; authors who aim to nudge change through authoritative studies accessible not just to increasingly stultified central governments, but to the local mayors, activists, and non-governmental organizations who are oriented toward long-term thinking. In From Kosovo to Darfur, Siditi Kushi surveys the far from equitable distribution of humanitarian aid, exploring why some violent crises are more likely to prompt interventions than others; Nina Beguš breaks through the technology in her intriguing Artificial Humanities to show how the humanities can deepen our understanding of artificial intelligence and its development; Sam Moore, meanwhile, turns the mirror back on organizations like ours as he surveys open access, care, and the commons in his bravura study of Publishing Beyond the Market.

Each book is different and each author has their own ambitions which our talented marketing team studies and advances. However, the pattern of the "open access book advantage" that is emerging across all 60+ open access books that the supporting libraries of the UMP Fund to Mission program have made possible this year is clear. Open access advances interdisciplinarity, shapes public policy, and advances social justice, amplifying the voices of the scholars and practitioners who've honored Michigan with their fantastic works.