Publication subvention

In academic publishing, a publication subvention is guaranteed funding towards a partial subsidy of a scholar's publication in book form. The idea has recently been proposed as a possible solution to the "crisis," as some identify it, associated with the difficulty of publishing scholarly books, emerging from the combination of small audiences (with many academic-press books losing money on their publication, and even good sellers profiting publishers only in the thousands of dollars) and high demands (with a published book typically required for tenure in many fields). Typical proposals call for a publication subvention of a few thousand dollars to be associated with each new faculty job, or even with each admitted Ph.D. student, by the sponsoring institution, in order to alleviate the financial strain on the academic presses' finances and allow them to choose works for publication based purely on merit.