Tech Elephants & the State of Change at SSP 36

Photograph by William Albert Allard

With each new software release, what's possible grows. With each new company that comes online, or new resource or material that's created, what's imaginable expands. This is simply the state of play; Heraclitus' river is now grade-5 whitewater.

For those who grew up under Moore's law, not only are more things possible; they're inevitable. Whatever you see, briefly, as missing or desirable in any device, service, product, or feature set will be corrected or added to the next build, because if you've seen it, someone is already working on it and since they will naturally have faster and faster processors and more and more code at their disposal, the problem will fall.

It's a funny thing to grow up like that, or at least it's funny to those that didn't grow up like that; the outlooks and world views to come out of such an evidently or presumptively self-ameliorating iterative environment are fundamentally different from those outlooks that came before.

NASA saw the change/s and adapted to them early on. (This I have on the very good and entirely irresponsible, second-hand hearsay authority of a mother of a precocious college graduate who was snatched up to work in NASA labs in Texas a decade or so ago.) Older design engineers used to take lead in design-direction decisions on their teams because they were the most knowledgeable. They knew what worked and what didn't work, what would and what would not, and could guide the younger engineers as they 'came online' out of dream-filled days of school, learned those hard lessons, and caught up with reality. Later, as the pace of change increased, they saw that increasingly younger engineers -- who didn't know any better -- were able to try things that hadn't worked a few years ago, or even a few months ago, and get those things to work, delivering different results faster in rapid iterations. Silicon Valley and other tech centers saw this trend too, back in the late nineties, and regularly "poached" young elephants from computer labs.

It's always tempting to suggest that younger folks are smarter (especially for the less than superannuated among us); but perhaps it's worth while too to consider the case in less debatable terms, that they are less knowledgeable of the river that flowed before; ignorance isn't just bliss, but at times of rapid change, it is alternately enabling. Or to put it another way, when you step into rapids, regardless of your comfort level or experience with whitewater, you're going to go for a ride; it's your experience with the rapidity of the rapids, if you will, that determines whether the trip will be a happy and productive one for you or for your doctor.

Growth

In Erik Brynjolfsson's TED talk on the future of innovation The Key to Growth? Race with the Machines, (TED, February, 2013) he shares stats from the second industrial revolution a hundred and twenty years ago. He notes that the real advances in productivity did not happen when the factories electrified; in fact, it took another thirty years for workflows and processes to be reimagined, based on the flexibility of those new eFactories, for the greatest growth to be realized. That's time enough, as Brynjolfsson points out, for a human generation to turn.

In comparison with our age, he underscored that simply applying new technology wasn't what brought the greatest returns. Redefining who we were and what we set about to accomplish in light of the capabilities of the new technology is, and while we have seen great advances thus far, in our age of the computer, we will see more still if, when, and as we shift from the external focus of applied technology to this more existential and categorical focus of redefining the enterprise itself; i.e., not just replacing traditional processes and products with computers and digitally-built alternatives but in a sense "teaming" with the new technology to imagine what it is capable of in order to define new systems that aspire to do more and entirely new things than did the systems that were in place before.

The State of Change

Rick Joyce of Perseus Books delivered a rousing Keynote address to start the 36th annual meeting of the SSP last week in Boston. He shared many adventures in new marketing approaches at Perseus and its imprints (e.g., Basic Books), including the first ever Publishing Hackathon, from May of last year, and a thoughtful review of future implications of mobile-publishing and content delivery; e.g., work/s regarding famous landmarks delivered or offered to visitors as they pass by. The talk was rich with suggestions for scholarly presses -- such as finding new ways to leverage the inherent value in and expertise of our scholars/authors -- and as soon as slides/video are available, all scholarly publishers should check them out.

via niemanlab.org

Throughout Joyce stressed the growing need for publishers to stretch their definitions of their roles from producers of products such as books and eBooks to deliverers of value and wonder in new forms -- a sentiment that resonated well with the now famously leaked NYT's Innovation report from earlier in the year. Now, if we take a step back and consider the innovation discourse of just a few years ago, back when people were discussing mobile cheese and talking mice (can you imagine?), the argument was more externally focused. The cheese, she is moved; let's go find the cheese. Then, for a time, we heard messages about the pace of change and how the pace of change was accelerating; everything was about keeping up and reacting faster: be nimble, pivot to avoid disaster.

These suggestions that we're hearing today, from Joyce and the Innovation team at NYT and elsewhere, are more organizationally and internally focused (less cheesy). They foreground the need to rethink and radically restructure what we're doing not just how we're doing it (e.g., developing new software programs to deliver our own B2B services, finding new ways to leverage the expertise of our authors). I'd say that this shift in the focus of these strategic suggestions (from how can we react to a sudden change, to considering what else we can do entirely -- taking change as a given) places us somewhere down Brynjolfsson's productivity curve; we may not be running with machines, quite yet, but some of us are choosing up teams.

The 36th annual meeting of the SSP in sum

It's true to say that the SSP 36th annual meeting was, as it usually is, packed with new technology and creative uses of new platforms and practices, but from Rick Joyce's shared vision for new marketing and new programming, to Delta Think's tutorial on contextual inquiry-bassed product development, and on to the closing sessions on new product releases and on augmented reality via Google Glass and via other devices yet to be imagined, it was clearly more than that; it was a proving ground, heralding things to come not only for presses but from presses in the next digitally expansive era that's beginning to open up for us upstream.

Morag and others will of course tell you that there is absolutely no reasonable possibility for successful, meaningful change in the models for publishing, not yet, and they're as right as can be, in retrospect; an elephant never forgets the waters that it has stepped in. But as Joyce and others suggest, the opportunity to change, for the moment, is only the greater for it. 

University Presses have the world by the tail - twice: outside-the-books thinking

I'm going to put you in business. I'm not going to tell you what that business is, or what you sell, but, I'll describe some moving parts, and ask you how you like your chances.

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.

Profitability for scholarly books - overhead allocation in the world of small numbers

How much overhead does each project (or product) at a small press consume relative to other projects, and how many sales are needed to reach break-even? Why would a scholarly press, in its right mind, ever consider doing a distribution deal (for 40-50% of net revenue), when it can do an original publication (for 90% of net revenue); isn't that roughly half as much money?

I adapted an activity-based costing approach (ABC) to model "average" list dynamics at a fictional press to explore rough answers. After looking at them and living with them in the realm of small numbers (a.k.a., today's sales figures), and as applications of new capabilities advance into the new century, next questions may also include: "What comes next?" I.e., post content-monetization alone; what new products and/or services can be added to a firm's offerings to cover overhead?

ABC is used in high-overhead or high-fixed-cost industries to examine performance across product lines to inform R&D, pricing, and production. I added per-product and total contribution and sales figures to model front-list contribution and Return On Assets (ROA) for the year.

Method: For illustration purposes, I used four "product lines" as examples of titles with different "financial footprints" in a press: 1) Average, 2) Complex, 3) Distribution, and 4) FTPB (first-time paperback). Average is a basic monograph or edited volume; Complex might be a coffee table book or a photography or textbook; Distribution is an inventory-only title, for sale in territory; and, FTPB is a paperback edition for a title that came out in hardback in a prior year. Co-pubs could be added, but four types are enough for illustration purposes. Electronic editions are accounted for by lowering the average per-unit variable costs and adjusting average sales and revenue figures for the line. What we're after here is changes in developmental overhead to publish the list.

Each product line spends more or less time on different desks in a press (on average); so, each will consume more or less overhead at different stages. Which are more profitable; which less; and when?

When scholarly presses sold thousands and thousands of copies of any given text, almost any set of choices was financially viable. These days, a press needs to be mindful at a more granular level. So, after modeling ROUGH list dynamics, I take a look ROA and break-even for sales of 200 copies to 1,500 per product type. Additional charts are on the attached.

Numbers for a real-world press will have slightly different break-even points for each product line, but the relative stature of these categories will be consistent; e.g., a chart of data from our mock press shows that Distributions have higher ROA than original titles, all sales being equal. It also reflects the greater ROA of FTPBs, relative to other products; both Distributions and FTPBs are "in the money" at lower sales volume than other titles. These trends suggest answers to our initial questions.

To estimate average ROA per product line, the sheet linked to above apportioned overhead as a measure of fixed assets consumed by each product, and so shows average overhead per project and per product line, or just how "expensive" one project is relative to another.

This can be an important consideration as a press reaches capacity; with resources stretched thin, adding an "expensive" project that will consume many internal resources could overtax capacity and that could result in delays in times to market across all projects. When a press is at or near capacity, it might be time to add a few "inexpensive" projects in order to add revenue without driving [as many] costs. It is also time to consider which projects tax resources specifically in pipeline departments (EDP) where delays can have the greatest enterprise-wide effects.

However, ROA and margins alone don't tell the whole story. A firm needs volume to cover costs. It also needs original publications, before it can offer FTPBs.

On a tool like the attached, a press can see that projects can have a higher contribution margin but be less profitable than other projects with lower margin (they can deliver lower sales volume, less revenue, and/or have lower return on the assets they consume).

Publishers can also note that Distribution titles have small and fixed contribution margins (fluctuation of contribution margin is largely a result of including a fixed cost like copy-editing in COGS), and yet Distributions deliver very high ROA and have a low break even. These figures in aggregate contribute to the ROA for the front list.

A firm needs to look at all the above when considering profitably of a portfolio of product lines: margin, sales volume, project volume, project compliment (how many of each kind of project), and of course overhead.

The sheet linked to herein, includes measures of per title and total contribution and overhead, and so shows several of these "moving parts" of profitability at a glance for planning purposes. With real-world data and structural enhancements to such a sheet, similar ABC approaches can help model impact of changing "product mix" and sales targets to achieve optimal gains for stakeholders.

That said; at a glance, the current mock-up does provide some insight to questions above and shows that various product lines at a given press can have their own metrics and margins contribute their own value to front-list success. Lines can be sub-divided for greater analytic clarity, and new lines and services can be added to deliver new Rs for the Is.

Caveats:

1) Changing numbers of titles published at the fictional press in the mockup would impact total overhead, and visa versa; so these numbers should not be altered in the attached independently. Sales figures, on the other hand, can be; variable costs are set at an average rate and so will adjust with changes in sales. The attached includes sales-figure data tables and charts like the above.

2) The attached has only four, gross categories (Average, Complex, Distribution, and FTPB); product lines and metrics can and should be added/subtracted to reflect a current portfolio at a press.

3) The attached has grossly simplified numbers, as it is for illustration purposes only; more detail would be added in any real-world analysis.

4) One very important thing that this sheet does not model is the impact on the pipeline or on time to market for adding or subtracting certain titles; as suggested above, adding/subtracting some products has more impact on average time to market than it will for others. E.g., Average and Complex titles drive workload in EDP. Distributions and FTPBS do not. So, as the EDP pipeline fills, opportunity costs rise for each Average and Complex title added; delays increase and sales revenue lost would be accounted for as added costs. These costs could include delays in time to market for all front-list titles. Additional Distributions and FTPBs, on the other hand, largely "skip" EDP and could have other resources such as marketing "spread thin" to cover their launch/soft launch. Another tool would be needed to model relative "next title" impact across product lines at or near capacity.

5) Most importantly: best practices for activity-based costing is to utilize a cost driver to allocate overhead in each department. The most common cost-driver is line-worker hours. Herein, one product was used as a baseline "single-unit" of work. Experts familiar with a process can do an excellent job of "ball parking" relative workload for major product lines, compared to a baseline product; however, data reveal more granular detail, and this detail can be surprising. The adapted model attached will reveal trends in list dynamics. It is also advisable to collect data on hours worked on various products (on average) and re-run the analysis to confirm and explicate trends.

Disclaimer:

This sheet, linked to herein, merely models relative product-profitability dynamics for a MOCK company; this in order to demonstrate a managerial accounting approach to overhead allocation by product line for strategic purposes. A bona-fide tool for an actual firm can be built for any company; however, this sheet is for entertainment and illustration purposes only. Please contact me if you have quesitons on the limitations of this sheet.

Scholars and Skate Punks: If the Vans Fit...

When refocusing these posts to include b-school coursework and case studies, I mentioned that scholarly press and especially u presses should read the HBR business case Vans: Skating on Air (Harvard Business School, 2002).

Vans (the company) is a great example of the lateral thinking many companies use to develop new businesses (plural) and several-fold new revenue, from a single core expertise/product/brand; the HBR case is a great study of how a discrete brand can be leveraged and expanded to stage a major turnaround and spur new products, new revenue, and new businesses.

Yes, I'm equating scholars with surfers and skate punks. They will be flattered.

And, yes, I'm suggesting u presses have something to learn from what was once a one-model, mono-coastal, skate shoe company, Vans.

THE CASE: A few things will leap out on any reading:

1. Vans was built on the simple model of delivering skate and surf gear for hardcore skaters and surfers: a handful of products for a small, dedicated market. Though Vans moved out to new markets and new models, they maintained that key, strategic commitment (to the best extreme athletes).

2. By the time of the case, Vans grew to finance a major movie (Dogtown and Z-Boys), narrated by Sean Penn, to sponsor extreme sporting events (triple crown of surfing) and other alternative events (concerts), to open their own skate parks, and begin developing video games.

3. A truly tiny percentage of total domestic revenue came from sales of its key product (extreme sports apparel) to its core demographic (extreme athletes), in specialty skate shops: 10%. Most of its apparel revenue came from sales of less-than-professional versions sold to kids in the suburbs, and large amounts of revenue come from the above various "cultural" events or side products.

4. Most importantly, as may be news to some, Vans had been dying. It staged a 540 degree turnaround, fueled mainly by the extensions into new areas beyond the skate shoe market; e.g., the triple-crown sporting events, music concerts.

Vans leveraged its brand (operational license in extreme sports and with the youth market the followed them) to move into new areas, and in turn these new areas led to growth that allowed Vans to stay in business -- and even to grow to serve its original core market better than ever. The wealth and health of all the other business (e.g., skate parks, extreme sporting events, concerts, a record label, film production, video game development) allowed Vans to over-serve the hardcore surfing and skating markets and to sponsor star athletes as they reach new heights in their discipline -- a market so specialized that serving it alone would not generate enough revenue to support the effort.

THE COMPARISON: For years (100+), scholarly publishers have sold books; they grew beyond books (once) to offer journals. Now, with new initiatives like UPPC and Project Muse, u presses are repackaging and delivering these core products differently; but, these initiatives aren't new businesses, just new modes of delivery.

More businesses could be grown alongside the development and delivery of scholarly content, ones that leverage the historic strength/s of u presses and serve new needs not only among the "extreme" market base of academics, but also among those who would be fans and amateurs of culture.

E.g., would it be an unacceptable stretch for presses to publish blogs for scholars and dedicated readers to access (dedicated to a discipline or subject); i.e., not a press blog -- of which there are many (one for each press) -- but a disciplinary or topical blog published by a u press -- of which there are none ...yet.

Much, much more importantly...

What new businesses could u presses build that would be as distant from yet supportive of scholarship as skate parks, surfing tournaments, and a record label are from and of a simple skate shoe?

THE POINT: The point of this extreme comparison is not to make a recommendation/s -- we'll save that for another post or two -- the point is to note that in many industries, especially where growth and increasing revenue are needed, considerable lateral thinking and experimentation is put forth to build new business units, entirely new business units, and these new units are often what keep the company and the brand alive.

Scholarly publishers are doing great things to monetize content; but, even if it were enough to support scholarship -- which it currently is not -- why stop there? Why not explore growth into new arenas?

The SWOT that Roared — The 3 Strategic Business Units of a Scholarly Book Publisher

An academic press has three main customer-facing business centers—where goods or services are traded with an external party for a return. 1. Acquisitions (acquiring rights to authored content — B2C), 2. Channel Sales and Licensing (deriving revenue from authored content through third parties — B2B), and 3. Direct-to-consumer Sales (deriving revenue from authored content and rights to authored content through direct sales to an end user; e.g., author events, conferences, via “mail order,” fax, telephone, and on the web — B2C). These 3 Strategic Business Units (SBUs) are unique; they have different answers to fundamental questions such as: What do they sell? To whom? And how do they sell it?

It’s important to hold units with separate customers, markets, and approaches to markets apart (at least sometimes in our thinking). Each will have separate Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT). Each will have separate Points of Difference (PODs) and Points of Parity (POPs) with its competitors in its category. Each will have its own changing landscape — meaning that the SWOT, POPs, and PODs are changing in different ways and at different rates for each. Most importantly: Large SBUs will eclipse the needs of smaller SBUs — resulting in lost opportunities for the org.

Since new opportunities and threats emerge at “times of their own choosing,” successful orgs continually review SWOT, POPs, and PODs for each unit to defend against and capitalize on threats and opportunities before (and/or in step with) the competition.

Acquisitions – SWOT Events

The Acquisitions SBU trades developmental, publishing, and/or distribution services for rights to authored content. Customers are authors and other publishing houses (e.g., co-publishing, translation, and distribution agreements). A salient change in the Acquisitions landscape is the explosion of alternatives. Authors can publish in a huge number of new journals — mostly at commercial houses; they can publish in an increasing number of OA platforms; and, they can publish themselves through Social Media (SM) platforms, or directly with prior channel partners (E.g., Amazon). This explosion changes the game, it isn’t going away, it is growing and certain competitors (Amazon and SM) are accelerating in their offerings of alternative publishing solutions.

Acquisitions SBUs need to position against these alternatives as competitively distinct and as “a better choice,” for at least some segment of the market. In the past, Scholarly Publishers only had to position against Commercial Houses. PODs were clear and, more importantly, they were static. Now, with the changing landscape, houses must protect against both the explosion of alternatives and the future.

A publishing program itself (the titles under contract and those that have gone before) is its own best representative—followed by a publisher’s presence at conferences, in the world (author events and traditional media), and on the web. The website is key “storefront” for the Acquisitions SBU to tout its publishing services and past accomplishments. The “online bookstore” is a display of both of its marketing efforts (on behalf of its authors) and the breadth of past, current, and future titles. The blog is a vital new tool for drawing attention to all of the above with past and potential Acquisitions customers (would-be authors).

Acquisitions – Consortia Solutions

In the university press ranks, we have examples of whole presses merging to form consortia publishing houses: sharing resources and markets to achieve economies of scale. e.g., U.P.N.E. and Colorado University Press.

More recently, and more intriguingly, ad hoc collaborative publishing projects (Mellon-funded) have also been explored between several groups of autonomous houses. Examples include: South Asia Across the Disciplines, First Peoples, Early American Places, and the American Literatures Initiative. Herein, a new series of book projects was fielded by a group of houses working together to form an ad hoc virtual consortium.

In each of the Mellon-funded projects, houses committed to working on one series, in an underserved area of the humanities—specifically, in areas where the houses weren’t receiving enough projects separately to field a list on their own. In effect, they took on a new list and partnered on marketing and design. Acquisitions were carried out separately.

These Mellon-funded virtual consortia have benefited scholarship greatly; the series would likely not have been started without the seed money form Mellon and collaborative support from partner presses. In the end, these underserved areas of the Humanities were given world-class publishing support. But, did the houses benefit?

Partner houses were able to take on something they wouldn’t have been able to take on otherwise, but it brought with it many new challenges and did not lighten their existing editorial load. One wonders if “a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B” might also be worth a try.

Could existing segments of Acquisitions programs at a number of houses, all serving the same market segment (discipline) but at a less-than-dominant position, partner to present themselves to that market segment in similar fashion, to achieve a greater presence and greater returns (while in fact lightening their fiscal load)?

Channel Sales and Licensing – SWOT Events

The Channel Sales and Licensing SBU brokers relationships with vendors, aggregators, agents, distributors, other publishers (e.g., electronic publishing, reprints, and course packs) for the ongoing distribution of finished content or rights and permission to use content through their platforms, channels, and services in exchange for a reduced rate (discount), royalty, fee, or permission to add fees to later sales. A major change here is the collapse of the vendors and channel partners market for print sales. The number of individual book stores has dropped significantly, and major players have consolidated. Additionally, total sales of books across the sector have dropped, just as journals subscriptions collapsed in years prior.

Channel Sales and Licensing must do its best to expand remaining network and replace lost channels. As above, presence at trade shows (sales conferences), use of the Publisher’s website, “online bookstore,” and blog are all key communication tools. However, the decreasing number of vendors calls for more than communications can offer.

Channel Sales and Licensing – Consortia Solutions

Several consortia solutions have been fielded here to respond to changes in the Channel Sales and Licensing SBU landscape, primarily in the licensing and aggregation space. Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) was an early-moving third-party solution that stepped in to provide the stone for the stone soup of centralized rights and permissions clearance for presses and authors alike. In similar fashion, JHUP stepped in to build Project Muse for scholarly presses, aggregating journals content into topical “bundles” for libraries to buy under a subscription model — simplifying acquisitions and payments for libraries and returning lost revenue from many years of declining journal subscriptions to publishers. UPCC is a new consortia-based solution, built by JHUP and others, to provide similar aggregation and ease to the sale of electronic university-press-based book content to libraries (and hopefully lost revenue from many years of declining book sales to publishers). No attempt has been made to reclaim lost channel sales, from the collapse in the number of book stores (online and brick and mortar), with a consortia solution, as of yet.

The Tiniest of SBUs: Direct-to-consumer Sales – SWOT Events

Direct-to-consumer Sales include sales of print and electronic copies of books and rights (translations and course packs) to individual end users. These sales at author events, conferences, via “mail order,” fax, and telephone (later email and Skype), wouldn’t really have been profitably isolated and considered as an SBU, traditionally speaking, as most all events were ad hoc: intermittent, short-lived and limited to a tiny minority of the org’s offerings. With the advent of the web, however, presses put out their full-list sales shingles for all print and electronic copies and all rights 24/7—all around the world.

This is a fascinating development.

A) Since the offerings are comprehensive and supported by ongoing operations, it must be considered a sustaining unit of the org and can’t be left out of strategic thinking. So, the move represents the birth of a new SBU! (That is a sizable development, for what some consider a traditionally-minded industry.) B) What’s it for exactly? C) Way more importantly …what could it be?

There’s a lot happening on an academic publisher’s website. Both other SBUs have a presence on it. As mentioned: For Acquisitions, it’s a major storefront for touting its publishing services and showcasing the results of its wares, in the “online bookstore.” For Channel Sales and Licensing, likewise, it’s a showcase and source of contact information for potential vendors, agents, and partners.

Holding Acquisitions and Channel Sales units apart (from other publishers' websites) on an isolated single-publisher or dedicated website makes some sense—for the larger and older SBUs—but, does it make optimal or really any kind of sense for the new kid on the block, Direct-to-consumer Sales?

SWOT analysis for the Direct-to-consumer Sales SBU with respect to the web is one word long: Amazon. By comparison, that word describes the potential Strengths and Opportunities as well as the current Weakness and Threats of, for, and to online Direct-to-consumer Sales for scholarly presses.

We know from the success of Amazon and our own experiences as online shoppers, browsers, and researchers that end users want more to choose from, rather than less; they want platforms that approach one-stop shopping. Aggregate websites enjoy many times the traffic of balkanized sites. Academic presses have participated in consortia solutions, to offer content to libraries, for the same reasons: customers prefer more choice and greater access. We also know, by comparison to Amazon and Barnes & Nobles, academic publishers’ websites are not small; they are microscopic.

Holding Direct-to-consumer Sales sites apart, exclusively as one-publisher’s wares websites, restricts exposure to the market and therefore restricts revenue for the Direct-to-consumer Sales SBU and publisher. To answer the Q above: What is it for exactly? A: The online bookstore on a publisher’s website, as it stands, is mainly functioning as showcase for the publishing-services wares of acquisitions (to encourage folks to submit new projects) and to entice vendors to contact a press representative: it’s a visual aide for the other two SBUs.

Direct-to-consumer Sales – Consortia Solutions

To answer the other Q above: What could it be? A: It could be more. New SBUs need time to grow and mature to support their other SBUs in new ways. Simply replicating the Direct-to-consumer Sales portions of scholarly publishers’ websites together on one dedicated site (though there are many better things that can and would be done with it) would give the publishers’ Direct-to-consumer Sales unit access to far greater traffic and allow them to give growth a try.

As Joe Esposito well notes in his frequent supports for such a move, it would yield access to valuable data among other things. It would also provide a well-trafficked, shared platform for value-added services and new business opportunities (new models). I’d also point out that for the Channel Sales and Licensing SBU, which has lost so many major partners (e.g., Borders), it would provide a major new, freestanding vendor for the their titles — which is no small matter. And for the Acquisitions SBUs, across all participating scholarly publishing houses, that are facing an explosion of alternatives to the publishing services they offer, it would provide the single most comprehensive showcase of the strength, breadth, and depth of their collective publishing programs.

It would be like a year-round University Press week, highlighting what it means to publish with established and laurelled academic houses. It is all about the company you keep.

As mentioned above, the event of scholarly presses moving out onto the web to host their own, individual online “bookstore” sites was and is a fascinating development. Technically, when this happened, they forward integrated into the marketplace to compete with their own partners and other online retailers (most notably, Amazon). To reiterate: each academic publisher’s standalone “bookstore” website currently completes for sales and customers with Amazon.

Now that the ground has been taken and held, the move begs at least two questions: why would you do such a thing, and why stop there?

Way back in 2005, Seth Godin described what he called the “local max” and the “big max.” These notions could provide some explanation; big maxes are much bigger but further away from local maxes and often across a span of risky ground that is lower than the local max. Many firms stay put at local maxes because they’re currently-held ground and familiar. His point brings a Russian proverb to mind: “He, who doesn't risk, never gets to drink champagne.” They serve champagne at the big max.

Summary

Firms review SBUs out of context from one another, from time to time, to examine each unit’s opportunities and threats on their own merits; to be sure each unit is taking best advantage of the terrain. As terrains are always changing, it’s important to “make the rounds” regularly to imagine and discover new opportunities and later to exploit them in the order of greatest strategic value — especially important to make moves that give or will likely give rise to new opportunities. Only then can you be sure that a firm’s SBUs are working in concert with one another to the greatest collective advantage of the organization.

University Presses are hotbeds of experimentation these days. Scholarly publishers are moving smartly to explore consortia (scale-able) solutions for each of their longstanding SBUs. The relatively new Direct-to-consumer Sales SBU has yet to be tested at scale and is well positioned, perhaps best of the three, for life on the web (where scale lives).

As examples of what scale can do: Mashable and Pinterst and Twitter didn’t exist a few years ago (Amazon ‘didn’t exist’ a few years before that). Each has many millions of users now fulfilling needs they didn’t know they had in ways they never knew they would.

It's easy to imagine strategic investment in consortia solutions for the tiniest SBU of a scholarly publisher resulting in similar upticks in exposure to university press-developed books, journals, and accomplishments.

Conclusion

Traditional focus on the larger SBUs at a scholarly publishing house is holding the customer-facing, Direct-to-consumer Sales SBU back from its potential by keeping it tied to an individuated site. This is especially true for university presses; most of which will not draw enough traffic for this unit to be independently viable. The growth potential for a consortium-based solution for the customer-facing SBU is better than that of an average press site.

We would expect university presses to expand their reach and profits through an investment in a consortia based customer-facing website.

Funding the Future: Free riders and Friends

(I promise not to use the word plummeting in the following post. Thank you for reading)

We didn’t have national health care, because we didn’t have it. It wasn’t already in place when we came along. It wasn’t right (that we didn't have it). It just wasn’t.

A) We mostly do what we’ve done before. B) We mostly don’t do what we’ve never done before, because we are committed to a course of action that is well outlined in A.

Here’s the thing.

Currently, we have: JIT acquisitions in libraries; myriad, able new rivals (calling themselves “publishers”) entering the market, from all sides; online vendors backward integrating to join them (i.e., threaten us), and we are certain that it was always meant to be right that we don’t have a national university press foundation? Not one for the ongoing advancement of publishing excellence for the public good? We’re positive of that? No value whatsoever to the American people?

A national u press fundraising entity (centrality)—even one that didn’t accept donations—would bring valuable to the u press network as a strategic hub alone for the sharing of: best practices, resources, enhanced buying power, enhanced negotiating power (chachkies and DVDs to give away), and many other things to be named/discovered later.

95% of donations ($) come in from 5% of donors. “Friends of the Press” programs are largely PR. U presses would realize more $ in donations, under aegis of Friends of U Presses fundraising at a national level than they do now flogging after it endlessly on their own + the brand equity of university presses would rise, significantly, due to attendant, regular national promotion.

+ + Individual presses would still keep their 5% of highly motivated donors; i.e., 95% of current $s raised.

I have thought that universities without presses could be moved to pay into the u press network with such a centralized system, and they could; but, that would more likely be under aegis of Membership rather than as Friends of the Presses.

+ + It would also be better done commercially with centralized services offered through an online, customer-facing site. Or, words to that effect.

R. Barthes on branding – the u press network—part 1

50 years ago, a brand was almost like a product that you sold to consumers. Now, it’s a story you partner with them to create.

We all know this pretty well. Branding thought leaders focus on this concept across every industry: Ongoing meaning-making in collaboration with communities of stakeholders. Customers reject and select narrative/s more than they ever had before. They contribute more narrative/s scraps than ever before. Nutshell: Brand is in the eye of the beholder.

It always was in the eye of the beholder, but great strides are made by companies these days when their Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) stops to find out what the beholder is beholding, first. Successful firms track and guide conversations to capture a gestalt of needs (met and unmet) in order to assess current brand value and to find new opportunities.

Roland B.

Each intro text to branding (e.g., Mythologies, I say with tongue only slightly in check) covers the basics of the making of meaning; i.e., how a single word or symbol (a “logos,” logo, or brand) is tied to myriad narratives/beliefs about that word or symbol. Added all up, all the stories we know about X defines X …for us. Expand the group to include everyone in a market or industry, and shift X to a brand, and the meaning or value of the brand is the sum total of all narrative/s that relate to the brand in the market.

In the most extreme sense, the brand itself is meaningless, until we bring meaning to it, like stone soup. (One caveat: stone soup without flavor doesn’t exist; categorically, that’s just a rock in a bucket.) Some call this flavor- or meaning-making signification; others call it branding.

The important part is that signification or branding (meaning-making) is ongoing and never stops; the stone soup is always changing flavor—depending on who’s adding narrative scraps to it. Meaning is always being created (except in Alphaville).

Some add and attract narrative; others have narrative thrust upon them. That’s what we call culture. You can guide it and influence it, but you can’t make it hold still.

The U Press Network

All these ideas apply to the brands of individual u presses. Brilliant marketers across the network are applying them famously with great success. I’ve been thinking about the network as a whole. And not about the AAUP, which is also guided by brilliant marketers. But if you dig down a little deeper you get to the network itself: what is it; why is it; and what are all of the narratives about it currently adding up to; i.e., what is the existential value of The U Press Network—in the eyes of the beholders?

This would be the subject of a fascinating market research study, and an exhaustive approach would call for complex voice of customer. If any know of such a study having been completed, or would like to partner on one, please let me know. Meanwhile, I am going to hazard some summary analysis of adducible trends or views shared in the media.

The U Press Network has experienced tectonic change/s of late (last few decades); just for starters, the category that it belongs to has been altered. The U Press Network has had narrative/s thrust upon it. We can’t hold things still, any more than we can go back and un-change the category; but, we can influence them, and we should.

Whenever a traditional landscape experiences tectonic shifts, Black Swan opportunities arise. Good and bad things can happen—and they usually do; but, strangely enough, the good things only happen when you go after them; the bad things walk right up, bite you on the bottom, and say We’re here.

Many are discussing Points of Parity and Difference these days, across the category. I thought I’d wrangle a few to see if they reveal ways to avoid the bad and target the good. I’ll cover individual attribute in separate posts to see what compelling PODs they suggest.

beyond eBooks

The ineluctable modality of the digital is just getting started. Where it will go from here was the subject of this panel. Authors and colleagues at other u presses experimenting with new ways to create and interrelate scholarship; Harry Potter-style daily newspapers, with freely embedded videos in text taken as read, portal books and animated archives taken up for discussion.

Chair David Schiffman’s description and opening remarks framed the session well. Schiffman reminded us that following any fundamental shift, there is a period of an “evolutionary” reaction. eBooks are such an example. “Revolutionary” adaptation begins a pace beyond. We are entering the revolutionary period of adaptation: digital education, digital scholarship, primary interactivity. Per Schiffman, the revolution will be digitized or rather the digital will lead to revolutionized temporality and forms of scholarly publishing and revolutionized roles for authors and scholarly publishers. The changing landscape requires new skills; however, higher value (ROI for academe) rests in new solutions. We should equip ourselves accordingly.

Quotable moment: “Many eBooks are trivial interpretations of the medium of e.” – Jeffrey Schnapp

Schnapp was a great addition; having an active scholar on hand, who is both participating in and analyzing the phenomena of change being discussed, contextualized and grounded presentations. Schnapp is “writing to the design” of digital environments. He feels roles are increasingly porous, collaborative scholarship is on the rise, and the notion of authorship may need a revisit. He emphasized the fundamental shift in the temporality of publishing. And finally, noting the nascent trends and the infrastructural (institutional) commitment required, Schnapp says there is a need for a “risk-friendly approach to scholarship” moving forward.

Marguerite Avery, Senior Acquisitions Editor, MIT Press, and Sylvia Miller, Project Director “Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement," University of North Carolina Press, illustrated much of what Schiffman and Schnapp with detailed reports on the moving parts of their digital initiatives.

All participants invited contact. For further reading, the AAUP Digital Publishing Committee publishes important e-pub news on The Digital Digest, here.

PDA Mellon study

We’re not the only ones rowing this boat. Marketing minds and revenue stream strategists go to great lengths to know what their customers are thinking/where markets are heading. In this session, we had a seasoned acquiring librarian breakdown PDA from the library's perspective and a serial CEO/high-level industry consultant analyze how best to take advantage of the current and future situations from the publisher's point of view. A must-see set of slides and video recording ensued, covering this important opportunity in the academic library space:

Rick Anderson, University of Utah Libraries, provided the libraries perspective, here. Joseph J. Esposito, Publishing Consultant, shared results of a Mellon-funded study of the impact of PDA on book publishers, university presses in particular, here. Thank you, Terry Ehling, Associate Director, Content Development, Project MUSE, for chairing the session and providing salient framing commentary.

Not in the slides = Mellon study findings suggest that we will see ubiquity of PDA programs (across all research library collections) in 5 years.

Gist = if we are to steer this ship toward the best possible win-win (to maximize profits on sandy beaches), we’ll have to understand all oarsmen and row this boat in concert with them.

Articles on PDA at the scholarly kitchen, here, are recommended for further reading

Esposito closed with another plug for scholarly presses to field their own unified, customer-facing website, previously mentioned here. Why? This session, as with many others this year and last, is another discussion of managing a shift in leverage away from publishers (over the last twenty+ years). Archimedes is purported to have said: “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.” A unified, customer-facing website is such a place to stand.

exploring new business models for scholarly publishing—part 3: $30M in strategic funding, annually, for u presses

Funding in general and specifically "finding alternate funding sources" came up in nearly every session I attended. As MaryKatherine Callaway described, we need to invest our in future in ways we never have before—perhaps in ways we weren’t designed to, in ways we didn’t sign on for, and in ways our founding mothers and fathers hadn't entirely considered; we need to act more commercially and be more entrepreneurially, and we need the funding to get there.

Yet as the taskforce on economic models concluded in its report on Sustaining Scholarly Publishing, “it is virtually impossible for university presses to generate surplus investment capital from current operations.” Print revenue is collapsing. Vendors have delayed and slashed purchasing; some are closing doors. Further, traditional funding sources weren’t exactly under-exploited previously. The federal government hasn’t the will to commit vast new resources to the growth of the humanities—certainly not to the point of funding experiments. A good deal falls to our key financial supporters (parent institutions) who are already taxed to the point of questioning their investment. With due respect to our parent institutions and the strain this all exerts on our relationships, all-in-all, you have to begin to question it too.

Every institution of higher education, with working faculty and matriculating students, benefits from our output and expertise and has a vested interest in our continuing success. In fact, every faculty member, graduate student (would-be faculty member), independent researcher, most think tanks, and countless research institutes do as well. They all want to keep us outside the university, to safeguard credibility of our imprimatur. They want to keep us within the US, so they don’t have to shop overseas. And they want us to be well equipped, so they have access to the finest publishing services (at the discretion of staff with a selfless dedication to supporting the humanities to the utmost).

In sum, they want us right where we are—only more so.

So why, at the time of our greatest need, are our parent institutions the only ones shouldering the burden? Granted, many individual university departments subvent or partially subvent book projects, but our need is greater than a breakeven P&L. Given what's in play, would it be helpful to our parent institutions and ourselves if we created new ways for others to contribute?

1. What if we establish a new category of membership, call it a Sustaining Member, for colleges, universities, and research centers without resident presses, with funds raised to go in part toward direct relief for member presses (for their individual strategic investment) and in part to be held by the AAUP for collective strategic investment in collaborative research and initiatives? It would of course be non-voting and non-delegating but could be included in our information community. With more than 5,700 institutions of higher education in the US, presuming a participation rate of 9% and an average membership fee of $7,500 (on a sliding scale), that would yield roughly 3.8M in annual revenue for strategic investment in the future success of u presses.

2. Expanding the category, would we then want to look at Individual Sustaining Members? Considering one likely category of potential individual sustaining members, there are 1.5M faculty at institutions of higher education in the US. This category would clearly be non-voting and non-delegating as well. Presuming a participation rate of 12% and an average annual membership fee of $175 (also on a sliding scale), this group would generate 29.9M in annual revenue for strategic investment in the future success of u presses. Of course, membership has its privileges, and in this area we could include special publications (e.g., disciplinary surveillance, newsletters, catalogs, and other market drivers) and explore other synergies (e.g., peer review registry and databases).

Figures above are on the low side for discussion purposes but also presume "up and running" status; initial participation will begin with 1 and could climb higher than indicated above. I've set up spreadsheets, with assumption figures and calculations. Those curious can download the sheets to play with the assumptions (e.g., average membership fee, percent shunted directly to presses) to see what numbers seem most reasonable. You can view it online, but formatting is screwy; I recommend downloading. The first spreadsheet is for "institutions alone;" the second for "institutions + individuals." You can toggle between them online at the bottom left; same as Excel.

3. Last, might we want to establish an AAUP Foundation, as the other AAUP has? This could allow for one-time donations (giving circles, corporate giving) and accept the unassigned funds from membership and other sources. Hard to measure the fund potential here: strategic philanthropy, personal bequests and planned giving, giving circles that might spring up in the academic community, one-time donations both small and large, could add up quickly. Further, this approach might be especially key to encouraging corporate giving; whereas national and multinational corporations might not choose to give to to an individual u press—as that would carry with it a selective endorsement tantamount to a lack of endorsement of every other u press (politically unwise)—they might find it attractive to support us all.

Some of the above may give rise to concerns for individual u presses (mostly in large markets) that centralized fundraising might distract donors and cannibalize dollars from their individual fundraising efforts. Certainly any such approach would require significant research and preparation; due diligence would require an “environmental impact study” before moving forward. However, giving to support the future of scholarly publishing and the enduring strength of the u press system, collectively, does sound like it’s a breed apart from supporting your local or preferred press. The former could have geometrically broader appeal and likely not interfere with the latter. Those motivated to support their press above others would still be moved to do so—as that was their intent—while those seeking to answer the call of need to invest in the future of scholarly publishing like never before, to inspire and help fund the new Culture of Collaboration and attendant initiatives, would have ways of doing so that are not currently available. Last, a portion of all funds raised centrally could be “shunted” directly to individual presses to allay concerns and provide direct relief. This figure could be adjusted to ensure no “loss of consortium,” if you will, but again the two efforts would be—and should be clearly set up to be—entirely different. PBS and NPR both offer examples of similarly coordinated organizational and operational fundraising: national/regional. We could reach out to our friends therein to see how things are going. On balance, such efforts will attract vastly different populations and for different reasons, and one could imagine the real benefits will far outweigh and outstrip projected fears; but it would call for further analysis to be sure.

I understand this post has probably stepped into a dozen conversations and plans may even already be underway or have been thoroughly dismissed; please pardon my ignorance of relevant history. I also understand that each of the above would first require a lot of research and discussion at many higher levels, not to mention at least one proposal to change relevant bylaws to include an aspect of fundraising and strategic, collective investment; nevertheless, I thought it worth mentioning. The topic of alternate funding sources and appealing to foundations to fund our initiatives came up quite a bit. I thought in kind of a Beach Boys Wouldn’t it Be Nice kind of a way that having our own funding source for consortia approaches and research initiatives would be both helpful and attractive and therefore worth mentioning.

As our "communities of practice" grow in size, number, and efficacy, so too might their community of needs; this centrality of purpose might propose an independently attractive donation opportunity for those who want to support all such coordinated efforts, and it might be worthwhile for us to consider building a selfsame donation structure for those who are so inclined; submitted here with respect for consideration.

exploring new business models for scholarly publishing—part 2: via Gravity's Rainbow

"Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation."

— Edward R. Murrow

MaryKatherine Callaway (Director, Louisiana State University Press, 2011-2012 AAUP President) shared this nigh-perfect quotation with us in her inaugural address. Its Yogi Berra-like logic captures the vertiginous unrest of the moment in scholarly publishing. Surveying a changing landscape, trying to connect the dots, stars, planets, and chart a new course—in concert with one another and given the gravity of the situation—can be dizzying.

One corner of the problem may be that, at least in some ways, we’re attempting to learn Calculus without Trig and Algebra under our belts, or we’re trying to install a software upgrade on a program we bought back in high school and haven’t used since—there may be several steps missing that the new fixes need to work.

When tackling a shapeless problem it’s sometimes good to go with the gestalt you do know. Within a succinct statement of a well-known corner of the problem perhaps we’ll find a beneficial view to our new solutions—some Wait, …what? goggles or x-ray specs, (if not a secret decoder ring) that we can use to look at b-models a little differently.

The well-known corner is Music and Film. Folks used to point to the Music industry and then to the Film industry and say: What’s good for the goose will make a good publishing platform. I.e., new media-adaptive solutions would work for all us goodly media folk or lead us all to perfect solutions, and, as we know, they often don’t. To which the pointing folks say: Why can’t you be more like your brother?!

The problem with this comparison corner is that we weren’t created equally; we evolved separately. I.e., this is our first magic box; for Music and Film, it’s their second.

If we want to see comparable business models in action, truly how an industry responded to a similar shift, we have to dolly back about a century to when each one’s first magic box happened—Radio and TV. A) How did they respond to that? B) Where did they go from there? And C) How did they, then, make the leap between magic boxes? A + B + C would be the beginning of an apples-to-apples comparison.

ANSWERS to A, B, AND C: Music and Film lived through generations of adapting to life in America as broadcast media before the Internet happened. Whereas: we didn’t. As Callaway said, we kept our heads down; our nose in our technology, if you will.

As a result, we are adapting what are basically 19th century social models to the 21st century world. By comparison with broadcast media, we evolved Balkanized and a bit unique. We’re running Galapagos2.0. They are driving BMWs on the autobahn.

My point (if ever I will find one) = in order to accomplish some of what Callaway asks of us in her address, we may need to imagine an “alternate timeline backstory” for ourselves to get from there back to here again in a way to compete. I.e., the trappings of those changes (evolutionary adaptations) might serve us well—if we were to suddenly transmogrify ourselves to have them.

So, the What if…

What if we had had our own magic box about a century ago—and it doesn’t need a name for a thought experiment, we can use a variable; call it an X box—that had done for books what Radio and TV did for Music and Film, and we had spent the last eight or nine decades as members of the broadcast media in America—how would we have evolved as an industry? Not technologically, but socially, interdependently, communicatively, behaviorally.

To imagine an answer to that question, we may need to loose our pattern-recognition skills on our brothers in arms in the broadcast media: pbs and npr.

As Callaway said: "[B]eyond good communication and good policies, as the task force on scholarly models stated, it's clear that we must also build on synergies within our own universities and in our larger communities, seek out those with similar interests and goals, and work together to build a stronger whole."

So to risk mis-channeling McCracken: Can we see anything of our who-might-have-been selves—in pbs and npr—that could help us build a patch to the new upgrade(s) of ourselves that will make better sense of current options?

Wait, …what?

exploring new business models for scholarly publishing—part 1

Given everything we’re facing, this session was the most exciting, informative, helpful, and hope-filled of the talks I attended. (Though I hear How Good Is Your MetaData was a close second.) If you only listen to one section of the AAUP recordings and/or only get to pick an attendee’s brain for a few minutes, make sure it’s on this session.

Colin Robinson, Founder of OR Books, showcased a thriving new business model for us—OR Books’ approach to market. Joe Esposito analyzed the industry from the u press perspective and gave us a breakdown of what we will need to look for in our new b-model components; and, Bob Stein rolled out what was basically a concept car of a new book format, calling it "the Social Book." Probably not breaking any news here, but Greg Britton is an evil genius—what a lineup!

First, OR Books: The Movie is required viewing. According OR Books founders, OR Books has reached the point of “no returns.” (Their pun, not mine) They have no warehouse and no inventory; they do only POD and e-pub.

Strategy is about tradeoffs. This tradeoff allows them to shift monies that traditional publishers (we) spend on distribution 100% over to promoting authors and titles, driving greater sales with each dollar spent.

The masterstroke? OR Books works with Amazon as an independent vendor, filling orders themselves. Hence, the model of POD & e-pub products shipping straight from OR Books is preserved, no monies are spent on moving inventory between warehouses, and Amazon’s reach is put entirely at the publishers’ disposal—with the least profits given away in the bargain. Schmart.

The b-model component of a renegotiated relationship with Amazon seems neatly excisable and implementable—I wonder how many u presses will be moving in this direction?

Joe Esposito—what can I say? Esposito held class. Check out his slides, and get the audio. Esposito stressed the need for hybridized approaches; one solution will not cure all of our ills. Also stressed: we are not-for-profits in a commercial arena; with this comes drawbacks and advantages—we will have to be mindful of both. Last, we have major players reshaping the industry in their favor—namely, Amazon, Wiley, SAGE, etal.—and we are overly dependent on one sales channel—Amazon. The combination is a killer. Solutions we seek will have to reshape the industry in our favor AND decrease our dependence on Amazon.

The kicker was Bob Stein giving us a live demonstration of his "Social Book." For those familiar with The Institute for the Future of the Book, what we saw looked to be the next evolution of Commentpress; so, I'm going to call it Socialbook from here on out. Socialbook brings a fixed text into a dialogic space wherein readers can select and comment on passages. As with Commentpress, users work in the margins rather than scrolling "away down below" like traditional blog space, but in Socialbook the text breaks out into chapters intuitively with tabs, and users can work in real time together; i.e., they can occupy the live critical space as a group.

The new coordination(s) of space, text, users, and time, will have clear applications in academic settings (including but not limited to): peer review, book clubs, distance learning, homework, lectures, and author events. Stein said that practical applications for much of what they are working on at the Institute may not hit the mainstream for decades—possibly a century. However, aspects of concept cars usually find their way into production models within a few seasons. We may be lining up Socialbook events sooner than he thinks.

This was a good day in publishing.

plenary 1: innovation & organizational change—a.k.a., release the McCracken! (part 2)

After describing how we might go about keeping an open mind to enhance our collective lateral thinking and improve commercial outcomes for the AAUP, using our inherent and abundant pattern recognition abilities to imagine new organizational structures, new entrepreneurial opportunities, new poly-valent business models, and new modes of enabling the scholarly discussion, Monsieur McCracken went one step further to imagine one such way we might reshape what we do: by our dropping peer review.

Now before it gets ugly, let me say why I think this improved takeaways from the meeting. [insert: humorous anecdote about recovering from knee surgery, where I call Tony the physiotherapist Torquemada, repeatedly cursing his house and questioning his parentage and mental health, but end up being able to ski again.] It just goes to show; sometimes we need to be pushed into uncomfortable positions to re-achieve our full strength and potential range of motion.

Note to self; possible book idea in this: It Takes a Sadist.

McCracken held our editors’ pattern recognition skills apart from the peer review process for us, as value-added assets in and of themselves. He imagined a third product category for us, in addition to our peer-reviewed journals and books. Specifically, what he said was, What if... we stop at our editors’ assessment of X and go to press with it, sans costs associated with too much design and copy editing and of course peer review, in order to field “well written essays, of topical cultural worth, for popular consumption.” Might there be something in this (a new product) that could enable the scholarly discussion and further support our other publishing efforts. (His question to us)

It's a bit of an uncomfortable stretch to imagine our fielding anything perfectly disintermediated; we edit grocery lists before shopping. But, after a good long Wait what? and taking our editorial nature as read (not going anywhere anytime soon), I came up with two possible products in the would-be, acquisitions-driven category:

1. An AAUP zine like Giant Robot or Bust; for the sake of discussion only, let’s call it “U Press Forum”—I'm sure we can come up with something apt and well branded if pressed.

2. A suite of AAUP-wide, print-only, subscription-based publications by discipline, per McCracken's illustrative example of Surveillance; for the sake of discussion, “[Insert Discipline Name Here] Surveillance”—now I'm clearly ducking any name calling.

1. U Press Forum - We already have an example of a zine comprising “well written essays for popular consumption” that also happens to support/parallel other publishing: a little outfit called Harper’s Magazine. As Harper’s has new pubs covered, an AAUP zine could focus on headline news and areas of topical interest, supporting our “Books for Understanding” program.

a) What if we asked authors of Books for Understanding books to respond to current events and tie them into their work (or tie their work to current events); thus, creating a bridge to our books, giving us a new—and monetize-able—promotional tool in the bargain while and by providing our authors with a new forum.

The disintermediated angle could work to our collective advantage, to underscore the timeliness and, dare we say, immediacy of the content (something books aren’t particularly known for), and help keep costs minimal.

b) Another section could be the “Plan C” option mentioned above (not a book or a journal article). If editors review a book proposal that is especially timely or attractively topical—but not quite a book—they could move to engage authors to write an article for the Forum.

We often bounce projects at one press, only to pick it up at another. A brief Forum piece would be an expression of support from (and an equity-up scenario for) the imprimatur of the U Press system at large. It might help spread the word of the work among other presses and possibly grow the AAUP brand in a celeritous direction.

c) And last, we could throw in some feature articles (which probably would call for some editing). These would only be necessary if we wanted to go so far as to field a “Harper’s Mag for U Presses.”

Thus, U Press Forum could be seen to have at least three McCracken-inspired sections for starters: a) scholars at large (rejected or fast-tracked scholarship) + b) the experts speak (in support of Books for Understanding) + c) feature articles. All sans peer review. Feature articles might be a bit of a departure for university presses, but the first two sections seem within reach and reason. By slapping a nominal sign-up/subscription price on it, we could defray added administrative/editorial expense(s).

2. [Insert Discipline Name Here] Surveillance - This one focuses on McCracken’s illustrative example, Surveillance, rather than on his seditious remarks in re peer review. It’s a little busier, as a model, but it would work in step WITH our peer review process (and therefore probably work better for U Presses) and be more likely to generate high subscription revenues while also reshaping the industry in favor of our offerings. It might fall under the headings of both collaborative entrepreneurship and collaborative publishing.

a. We already solicit reader’s reports. What if, roughly when final manuscripts return to Capistrano, when we transmit them to manuscript editorial and therefore about a year out from publication, we go ahead and send a copy out for a single report in a new category: coverage.

This new report (coverage/treatment or whatever you like) could be a boilerplate summary of the book’s content, methodological approaches, arguments, material analyzed, and contributions to the academic discussion—by scholars for scholars—slightly more descriptive than critical, running a few pages at most, and cleared for us to publish.

(I seem to remember “book abstracts” coming up a few times on Scholarly Kitchen and elsewhere—and they no doubt have many times before; this report would be similar but completed by a third-party under work-for-hire. Apologies if I’m repeating anything, but I don’t think anyone has touched on collaborative publishing of such “coverage” by discipline, as a standalone product offering; if so, apologies again, that’s what I’m seeing in McCracken’s suggestion.)

b. All book coverage (from all AAUP member presses receiving a title in a given discipline during the season) would route to one U Press for complication, possibly along with related journal abstracts from the discipline?, and at the end of an acq-season—about 6 + months ahead of publication of the earliest book in the list—we could place an attrctive though disintermediated cover on it and send it forth into the world. We could also send them tri-annually or quarterly, increasing the “lead time” we’d be giving our customers.

The compiling press could easily drop the new McCracken-inspired offering in alongside other serial publications, for a print-only subscription and/or nice cover price (individual/institutional), and revenue could be distributed to contributing presses, per number of titles “covered” in the issue, less administrative costs and shipping fees.

c. Prices could be set gratifyingly high in the first season, as Disciplinary Surveillance would be a luxury item rather than a necessity, containing a wealth of information well ahead pub dates, and could be dropped to free in seasons following—so none could complain of the cost.

Reports could be solicited without cash out of pocket from partner presses, viz., in exchange for a copy of the issue of Disciplinary Surveillance in which their coverage appears. The end result being that news of our authors’ work (our books) will enter the popular scholarly discussion six months ahead of publication without any marketing budget expense.

Most importantly, and even if the Disciplinary Surveillance(s) are distributed “liberally” (pirated), our titles will be quantifiably more likely to breech the 10-page-view threshold (and trigger sales) in the new PDA paradigm, in their first six months-year of publication, as people will already be talking.

Ergo, libraries will be pleased; scholars, engaged; and we will be able to distance ourselves from the commercial press (our competition)—increasing revenues from e-book aggregation options for AAUP member presses and adding an entirely new revenue stream/collaborative product offering in the bargain. I.e., we might just have a 21st century solution built on our traditional, 20th century strengths of peer review, compilation, and serial publication. (Once it was up and running, and scholar behavior had been duly modified, the serial could allow commercial presses to submit coverage as well, for a fee.) Fiscally, that McCracken might be on to something.

d. Finally, responsibility for compiling and publishing disciplinary surveillance could fall to/route among several presses—each of us is a “top contributor” to one discipline or another. Or, compiling operations could be centralized to the AAUP, or to a few or one member press. Economies of scale might support centralization.

So those are my Wait, what?s from McCraken's What if...? in the second half of Plenary 1. I’m sure others are way ahead of me on all fronts; apologies again if I'm out of the loop on anything/repeating anything and sorry for the delay in posting. Should, however, the latter Wait, what? ever sound attractive enough to pursue, I hereby call dibs for Indiana, including but not limited to: Jewish studies, African Studies, Paleontology, and Music, several disciplines which we are proud to support.

Selling to libraries—the new e-book aggregation options

We learned a lot about libraries at this meeting, in “Parent, Press, Library” and in this session most notably, with “Plenary 3: Debating the Humanities” close behind. We are seeing more and more that they are under the same strain to minimize costs while trying to remain relevant to scholars (in a nation whose commitment to the humanities is flagging and wherein adequate budgets are long, long gone—never to return), and we are beginning to understand that in this brave new world that hasn’t many people in it they have far less latitude than we. We have and can explore many customer pools/revenue streams; the libraries being but one of them. For libraries, on the other hand, the university in which they live is the entire world. I.e., while we have friends with shotguns and cellphones nearby, their options for relief from the wolf at the door may be more limited.

Fred Nachbaur showed us the light to start the session, referring us to the Chronicle article by Leila W. Salisbury "Five Things That University Presses Should Know About Working With Libraries," identifying it as a must read for the session topic. Salisbury’s article makes good sense of libraries’ in situ thinking for us. Might want to upgrade it to a vital read, if you haven’t read it already.

APO, JSTOR, UPCC, and UPSO: all fine examples of collaborative entrepreneurship from university presses (and JSTOR). Slides and speakers smartly covered salient attributes of each, and most of the slides read well on their own; it would be worth looking through the slides after reading the article.

Collections Librarian Michael Levine-Clark helped us see these new options from our target market’s perspective: We need to be on all platforms possible, these and others, lest we be left out; libraries are only going to sign up for one or two; we want to be on whichever ones they choose. Libraries want perpetual access to come of these experiments, which may raise some e-rights issues via term limits; part of the current rights discussions. & PDA is coming (read, here) and may limit the revenue potential for subscription models, calling for “per-use” sales. Translation: had experiments been conducted many years ago, books may have been in line for a reflectively long and steep revenue bump as garnered by journals; PDA and other trends may lessen the bump.

Hands down, one of the most succinct and thorough sessions I attended; slides and speakers were on point, a fine comparative overview of the programs was served up, and contextual elements were brought into view via the Q&A and recommended reading. It was a fine window onto how these experiments are proceeding, inspiration for continuing to improve and capitalize on collaborative entrepreneurship.

Maybe in time we can gather our friends with shotguns and cellphones to ride to the rescue for libraries and presses alike.

plenary 1: innovation & organizational change—a.k.a., release the McCracken! (part 1)

The title is a little pop-cultural reference, of course, to Clash of the Titans (the 1980s version) and I bet our speaker would enjoy it—though I am sure he’s heard it a thousand times before. In addition to being the author of the 2010 Chief Culture Officer, Grant McCracken is author of Transformations (IUP, 2008) and Flock and Flow (IUP, 2006), among other u press offerings, and was our plenary 1 speaker—he did not disappoint!

McCracken launched from the podium to launch the 2011 meeting; he jumped down from the dais to stalk up and down the length of the hall, tearing through enough material for two talks, diving into the heart of strategic innovation, reviewing business literature on the subject and new b-school approaches, and tipping at least one sacred cow.

I’m going to treat the two sub-talks separately, in part to capture the fallout from the second half in a lead lined box, but mostly to hold the first half on its own merits for a moment. Somewhere, I will mention that the sum total effect was brilliant; it improved the takeaways from the meeting for everyone in attendance, and therefore the selection of McCracken for the plenary 1 slot—for this particular conference—was inspired.

In the first half of his talk, McCracken noted that we are in an exceptionally tough spot (a theme that ran throughout the meeting), that recent business literature/management advice was of little to no help, and that we’d have to think for ourselves to get out of it (another theme that ran throughout). On the upside, according to McCracken, we are uniquely well suited to tackling this problem head on, given our backgrounds and collective skill sets, provided that we work together and listen to others.

McCracken quoted Peter Schwartz noting that “The organization [as construct] is in a state of perpetual change.” This dynamism has led some analysts and commentators, such as Andy Grove, to endorse a view that “Strategy is dead;” all we can do is damage control, react to things as they come along and hope for the best.

McCracken said that this is ridiculous (on top of helpless and irresponsible) and that really what’s happening is that the nature of change is changing. With so many variables in play, strategy falls to amorphous influence—a dynamic system—rather than, as it did in days of yore, to simple cause and effect thinking.

The game is the same, just less linear and less vertical; it calls for more lateral thinking to win today. This need for “pattern recognizers/shape seers,” in turn, calls for new approaches to management to find, develop, and guide them:

The "A" in MBA today => ∆A

Indeed business schools are shifting to include aspects of more MFA-like studies and exercises in their curricula to “free up” the minds of business school number crunchers, precisely to improve their “pattern recognition” abilities and make them better lateral thinkers. Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind explicates motives for the trend.

The good news according to McCracken: We, as liberal arts majors (editors, designers, and publishers) already have the base skills in abundance, e.g., our ability to spot a project worth pursuing, to craft and nurture it to a fine publication. Therefore, we are uniquely well suited to succeed in our current situation: all we need to do is trust our “pattern recognition software,” see where and when it is asserting itself (with new ideas) and then guard against the new ideas being overruled by force of habit or traditional approaches: the hobgoblins of innovation.

I.e., rather than rightly identifying a new idea as “unfit” (not fitting the mold of what we do) and per force treating it as a different kind of “unfit” (not worthy of further investigation), we will have to see our way beyond the unfitness to take another look at what’s behind the new idea that might lead to something that will help.

McCracken called this, perhaps regrettably for our haute-literate/learned crowd, the “Wait, …what? moment” (WWM). The WWM is when someone says something to you that’s so bizarre, you are tempted to ask yourself if they really know what they’re talking about (or to whom they are speaking) and walk away, but instead you say: “Wait [a minute], what [are you trying to say]?”

In the WWM, “Why are you, (a relatively intelligent person), asking me (a clearly intelligent person) to consider something that is patently ridiculous and not worth my time?” becomes “What aren’t you successfully communicating to me?” or “What am I missing?” or better yet “You are clearly animated and convinced that you are on to something; I have no idea what it is, and maybe you don’t entirely yet either, but together we may be able make a mountain of money out of this mole hill you’ve found yourself on; let’s set aside some time to talk about it.”

He ran through a number of revolutionary ideas (and would later throw out a volatile sketch for one of his own, but we’ll get to that) and listed several noted/notorious lateral thinkers. He showed us that there was little commonality in the thinkers, on the surface, and perhaps less in their ideas, other than that they were often both rejected by others, at first, and later proved to be wildly profitable and pregnant with new possibilities for their industry.

He closed, this section, by noting that the real keys to successful innovation and organizational change are twain (lowercase t, though the other Twain doesn’t hurt): 1) pattern recognition and 2) successfully navigating the WWM.

The takeaway from Grant McCracken (part 1):

Just as opportunity often lies in adversity; innovation often lurks in absurdity—or rendered for takers of the GRE:

Adversity : Opportunity :: Absurdity : Innovation

Those who thus see wrong things around them rightly (or who surround themselves with those who do) will vault forward in the current competitive landscape.

opening banquet: thoughtful advice and a lead for acquisitions

David Simon, MacArthur Fellow; author and producer, "The Wire" and "Homicide: Life on the Street" was our opening banquet speaker—a brilliant idea from Johns Hopkins University Press!

It was hard to know what to expect; harder still to parse (before breakfast) the wisdom and talent evident in what he said and didn’t say to us. I'll just say quickly what we were given.

Publishing advice; cogent analysis of two other communications industries responding to new models and new technologies (the missteps, impacts, and fallouts for each) with an insightful acquisitions lead born of those analyses and bespoken to our situation—in under 30 minutes. 

The unifying theme, “copyright has to be fought for;” i.e., developing worthy intellectual property requires an investment, and maintaining a program of publishing such property (regardless of media) calls for viable commitment (sustainability).

Longtime star reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Simon gave us a privileged view into the precipitous demise of investigative, print journalism in the US in the late nineties for the perspective of a deeply invested participant. Simon’s candor and frustration was palpable as he explained that although the Internet changed newspapers’ competitive landscape, what prevented them from competing on the new format had happened in the years prior—and was perhaps embedded in the value system that lead to actions taken.

Paraphrasing substantially: corporate conglomerates had bought up most all major newspapers in the US, and in an attempt to maximize profits, they cut standing bureaus and reporting staff—brutally. Simon was among the buyouts ordered by Wall Street-minded consultants. Per his analysis, newspapers didn’t keep their commitment to quality IP development and as a result failed to maintain what had made them viably unique and had afforded them a sustainable competitive advantage. They didn’t protect copyright [enough].

Fast forward only a few years sans competitive distinctiveness to when the Internet came along, with its blossom of day-trading pundits and unqualified/un-vetted/over-caffeinated bloggers (e.g., me), and they found that they lacked the confidence in their content to charge money for it online—to hold it successfully apart from free offerings—which in turn hamstrung their ability to “staff up” or otherwise invest to address the problem.

Strategy is about trade offs, and they traded away baby and the bathwater, keeping only the shiny plastic tub to plaster advertising on.

Simon then dovetailed this study with a broad-strokes overview of the rise of pay TV—tracking a successful evolution of b-models, complete with beneficial social and artistic fallout, taking new delivery systems as read.

Paraphrasing again, with ugly language added (mine) to underscore inferences taken: TV content on a free-view model; once you adopt the platform, you can have all the content in the system; broadcasters made their money on advertising alongside the content. With the advent of pay TV, revenue shifted from advertising to subscription, and this changed everything.

When advertisers held sway, eyeballs were all that mattered; hence, pressure from all side to develop content that offended no one, regardless of whether is was deeply meaningful, relevant, or attractive to none. Under the subscription model, content developers shifted to the latter emphasis, holding that deeply interested niche markets would be encouraged to “pull the trigger” to subscribe, so long as some content mattered to them deeply.

The bell curve inverted; minority reports were distributed and read; and strange and wonderful programming, that had been impossible to imagine under the old eye-balls paradigm, ensued (e.g., Simon’s work). 

Across both industries, Simon noted that a suite of decisions had unexpected consequences, one set unfavorable with negative cultural impact; the other, downright bountiful with culturally enriching results. However, with a deft nod to caution via juxtaposition, we were allowed to consider that each industry had made investment decisions based one what it felt would drive revenue, given a chosen/perceived business model.

Simon’s acquisitions lead, born of his early analysis, was to note that a need existed in the vacuum created by the demise of viable investigative print journalism; one that perhaps university presses were uniquely suited to fill?

With our access to peer review, our publishing strength, and our credibility, might we be able to offer journalists a new platform in which to work; namely, and in step with our regional commitment, could we find area journalists who are committed to digging deep and writing important, investigative work, vet it with our access to sociologists, economists, and anthropologists, and bring it forth to social benefit and, possibly, to our greater fiscal advantage.

He closed by noted that we were in a tough spot overall and that choices on either side could lead to negative outcomes. Quoting a Woody Allen, which I will need to look up and correct: ‘You can choose between a quick, excruciatingly painful death or a long, drawn-out, agonizing crawl to grave.’ 

Takeaway: Fortune rarely favors the risk-averse.