University presses have less reach than a popular press, but the flip side of that is that they are willing to publish works only of interest to an academic aud

University presses have less reach than a popular press, but the flip side of that is that they are willing to publish works only of interest to an academic audience. If you want to reach a wide audience, then, no, you don't want to publish in a university press. However if you want to publish a detailed study on a niche subject, no popular press will want to touch that. That's what the university presses are for. e.g., here's a title I came across at Princeton University Press, "A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century." Just based on the title, there's no way some place like Penguin Random House is going to even look at that manuscript. The same author may approach different publishers depending on their intended audience. e.g. Daron Acemoglu published "Introduction to Modern Economic Growth" with Princeton but "Why Nations Fail" with Crown (a division of Penguin RandomHouse).