When a commercial publisher rejected Dr. Francisco Jiménez’s first book manuscript, he knew better than to second guess the merits of his story.

He submitted his manuscript to an academic press, securing a contract he says was standard for scholars at the time — no advance money.

Published in 1997 by the University of New Mexico Press, The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child has sold more than 200,000 copies in paperback.

Jiménez, the Fay Boyle Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Santa Clara University, long believed he could engage a mainstream audience. But he never fathomed such high readership figures when he shopped The Circuit. “I simply wanted my work to find a home.”

University presses are more likely to give voice to stories that might not otherwise be told, such as those involving minority perspectives. But opportunities are shrinking.

As extensions of their parent schools, academic presses rarely reap profits, experts say. Many rely on school subsidies to survive. Factor in substantial budget cuts to education in many states recently, with schools downsizing a variety of programs in response, and that leaves some presses pinched — or even out of business.

The 30-year-old Eastern Washington University Press will close in June. It was once a full-range house devoted to environmental topics, Asia, short fiction and literature in translation. Staff members are fulfilling remaining contracts, which include next February’s release of Modern Poetry of Pakistan, an anthology representing 40 writers and financed in part by a $75,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant.

“It’s a sad loss, but our ultimate obligation is to educate our students,” says EWU provost Dr. John Mason.

The number of academic presses that have died this year or are on life support isn’t known because such reporting is voluntary, according to the American Association of University Presses, which includes EWU among its 133 members. What is more widely agreed upon among individual presses is that the recession worsened their often-precarious financial health, an instability caused by a consistent diet of producing books across all genres yielding low returns.