It's a not-for-profit business (NFP), but one that engages with customers in open, global retail space to generate revenues in multiple streams; so, market returns are important and good for business: good^2. Your business is well established, not a new concept. You work in media. Your customers are uniformly well-heeled, all earning fine salaries, some extraordinary salaries, they go to live theater, attend museum openings, visit art galleries, they hold respected places in society, they consume mass quantities of media like yours, and they are required to work with your offerings and your competitors' offerings, under penalty of death (publish or perish), for the rest of their professional careers. How do you like your chances?
Before you answer, let me add that some of your expenses and infrastructure will be paid for/provided by a nearby laurelled institution (a university), and, because you're a NFP, you will be held exempt from paying taxes. How do you like your chances now?
Wait: In addition to this customer pool, thanks to your NFP status, you can fund raise to support operations. How do you like your chances now?
The answer to everything in business is, of course, That depends... It depends on what you're selling and if anyone is willing to pay you for it. But, before you get your 'depends' on, you have to stop and take stock of the moving parts described above: that this is a freakishly favorably stacked deck. No entrepreneur gets a play like this, to that kind of customer base, with that kind of support. Most would say, it really doesn't matter what your product is (or are), with a stable bid for the rapt attention of folks like these, you can't miss.
VANS
I've said before that folks contemplating the future of the university press network, branding, and revenues "slash" sustainability should have a look at Vans, in the period described in the Harvard Business Review case study, VANS: Skating on Air. And I'll say it again here:
...Folks contemplating the future of the university press network, branding, and revenues "slash" sustainability should have a look at Vans, in the period described in the Harvard Business Review case study, VANS: Skating on Air.
In brief, it describes Vans' decisions to produce the skateboard movie, Dogtown and Z-Boys, to sponsor myriad extreme sporting events, and develop a line of video games. None of which are shoes. Vans is a shoe company. The answer, for Vans to continue to grow, however, lay outside the shoes.
Monetizing on scholarly content alone is fraught and fragile these days. If a publisher is a book company, with "book" understood broadly as all content the company produces, then maybe it's time to think outside the books.
