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?
2013-05-29
2013-04-23
R. Barthes on branding the u press network - conclusion
One path to branding is:
attributes -> points of difference (PODs) -> sustainable competitive distinctiveness.
...with generous amounts of narrative and myth-making thrown in.
This series of posts reviewed a number of attributes of u presses:
• Arm’s length = tied to research institutions but not beholden to them
• Ameliorative = increasing the communicative power (impact) of texts
• Multidisciplinary = rendering arguments across the disciplines
• Premium (and Open) Access = impact-driven; market-facing
• Active in the marketplace = impact-driven; market-facing
Let's add two to these that may seem obvious, aspirational or historic:
• Future-facing = being the source of forthcoming, original work
• Not for profit = non-commercial
• Hosting the academic discussion = res ipsa loquitur; however, less loudly than res used to
Let's also add a salient, unique asset that is nearly a corollary of some attributes above:
• University and faculty-facing = on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions
Choosing from among these attributes or adding to them further to make up a list of leverage-able points of difference (PODs) -- on which to position or brand -- can be complicated. You'd have to decide which strategic Other (category of competitor) was the most important to position against; PODs might change for each, and if you choose more than one strategic Other, you'd have to select varying attributes for different reasons.
For example:
A) To position against Commercial publishing houses, u presses could stress/leverage their Not-for-profit status and their being on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions, University and faculty-facing.
B) To position against (or as complementary to) Libraries, u presses should stress/leverage their being Future-facing and Active in the marketplace (public facing).
C) To position against Amazon/Google, u presses should stress/leverage their being on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions, University and faculty-facing and further stress and leverage their Not-for-profit status.
D) To position against (or as complementary to) Authors, u presses might stress/leverage their being Multidisciplinary and their Hosting the academic discussion.
Who should u presses position against (or seek to complement) in the changing landscape? Commercial publishing houses? Amazon/Google? Libraries? Authors? Each of these strategic Others has increasing publishing resources at its disposal and together (in aggregate, not conspiracy) they can and will wipe out large swaths of demand for publishing services, unless u presses can assert a brand with sustainable competitive distinctiveness -- in the eyes of the beholder.
The answer, of course, is: E ) All of the above.
The best play for the u press network will be to brand on all of the attributes and assets listed in competitive examples A through D: they need to leverage their Not-for-profit status and their being on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions or University and faculty-facing; their being Future-facing and Active in the marketplace (public facing); and their being Multidisciplinary and their Hosting the academic discussion to strategically align with Authors and Libraries and even Google/Amazon and position against Commercial publishing houses.
Many of these potential brand attributes go without saying; e.g., Not-for-profit and Multidisciplinary . However, they are strategically moribund; they provide strategic upsides that could be leveraged to significant and lasting advantage.
The most important attributes for u presses to successfully project going forward (i.e., the things that u presses will benefit most from being seen as unimpeachably owning in the eyes of the beholder in the next few decades) will be Future-facing and Hosting the academic discussion -- i.e., what's happening now everywhere, rather than what has happened here and there of note. The u press network's ownership of these characteristics (operational license) is often questioned. If the network can shore up its collective brand in these two key areas, it will improve/secure its sustainable competitive distinctiveness into the future and therefore the lot of all u presses.
attributes -> points of difference (PODs) -> sustainable competitive distinctiveness.
...with generous amounts of narrative and myth-making thrown in.
This series of posts reviewed a number of attributes of u presses:
• Arm’s length = tied to research institutions but not beholden to them
• Ameliorative = increasing the communicative power (impact) of texts
• Multidisciplinary = rendering arguments across the disciplines
• Premium (and Open) Access = impact-driven; market-facing
• Active in the marketplace = impact-driven; market-facing
Let's add two to these that may seem obvious, aspirational or historic:
• Future-facing = being the source of forthcoming, original work
• Not for profit = non-commercial
• Hosting the academic discussion = res ipsa loquitur; however, less loudly than res used to
Let's also add a salient, unique asset that is nearly a corollary of some attributes above:
• University and faculty-facing = on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions
Choosing from among these attributes or adding to them further to make up a list of leverage-able points of difference (PODs) -- on which to position or brand -- can be complicated. You'd have to decide which strategic Other (category of competitor) was the most important to position against; PODs might change for each, and if you choose more than one strategic Other, you'd have to select varying attributes for different reasons.
For example:
A) To position against Commercial publishing houses, u presses could stress/leverage their Not-for-profit status and their being on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions, University and faculty-facing.
B) To position against (or as complementary to) Libraries, u presses should stress/leverage their being Future-facing and Active in the marketplace (public facing).
C) To position against Amazon/Google, u presses should stress/leverage their being on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions, University and faculty-facing and further stress and leverage their Not-for-profit status.
D) To position against (or as complementary to) Authors, u presses might stress/leverage their being Multidisciplinary and their Hosting the academic discussion.
Who should u presses position against (or seek to complement) in the changing landscape? Commercial publishing houses? Amazon/Google? Libraries? Authors? Each of these strategic Others has increasing publishing resources at its disposal and together (in aggregate, not conspiracy) they can and will wipe out large swaths of demand for publishing services, unless u presses can assert a brand with sustainable competitive distinctiveness -- in the eyes of the beholder.
The answer, of course, is: E ) All of the above.
The best play for the u press network will be to brand on all of the attributes and assets listed in competitive examples A through D: they need to leverage their Not-for-profit status and their being on a collegial basis with most scholarly authors and their institutions or University and faculty-facing; their being Future-facing and Active in the marketplace (public facing); and their being Multidisciplinary and their Hosting the academic discussion to strategically align with Authors and Libraries and even Google/Amazon and position against Commercial publishing houses.
Many of these potential brand attributes go without saying; e.g., Not-for-profit and Multidisciplinary . However, they are strategically moribund; they provide strategic upsides that could be leveraged to significant and lasting advantage.
The most important attributes for u presses to successfully project going forward (i.e., the things that u presses will benefit most from being seen as unimpeachably owning in the eyes of the beholder in the next few decades) will be Future-facing and Hosting the academic discussion -- i.e., what's happening now everywhere, rather than what has happened here and there of note. The u press network's ownership of these characteristics (operational license) is often questioned. If the network can shore up its collective brand in these two key areas, it will improve/secure its sustainable competitive distinctiveness into the future and therefore the lot of all u presses.
2013-01-10
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.
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.
2013-01-03
Managerial Accounting thru the I's of the Other
In addition to deeply thought provoking and insightful, Jacques Lacan is hilarious. If you haven’t spent some time with his works, I highly recommend it! He’s constantly cracking inside jokes of language and is wonderfully obsessed with Freud. He’s the Woody Allen of French theorists.
Freud was a systemic thinker. His theories were rigid, interdependent, and all had to add up to the bottom line of his overarching thinking — usually tying out to your mother and/or father in some rigidly unpleasant way.
Lacan was a Freudian, but what he did with and for Freud was, in a way, anti-Freudian. Lacan reclaimed Freud’s work by treating it as metaphorical rather than literal. The rapport of elements within the system was more important than their absolute value or nominative location. To reference the thinking of another noted Frenchman, it was as if he said there’s “truthiness” to Freud’s thinking; so, let’s not dismiss it entirely without first taking another look at it — looking at it sideways and in broad stokes (letting lines blur to the abstract) might yield new structures and give rise to alternate understanding, and indeed it did.
Lacan reified Freud’s truthiness. His work yielded insights well beyond superficial readings of story and character (of the subject and her family) to the deeper structures of the making of meaning in society: the very building blocks of understanding.
Lacan : Freud : : Managerial Accounting : Financial Accounting
Financial Accounting (FA) is what we all grew up with (and what many believe is the full story of accounting) with debits and credits and everything adding up to the red or the black bottom line. FA = Bean Counting. There are two versions of FA in an organization, Tax Accounting (for for-profits forms) and Balance Sheet Accounting (for everyone). One version breaks down financial transactions to assess the taxable change/s in value over a period. The other version breaks down financial transactions to assess change/s in overall value over the period. Both are purely interested in …financial transactions.
Managerial Accounting (MA) may be the best kept secret in modern bidness. It is strategic and it is not at all interested in counting beans. It is metaphorical, subjunctive (i.e., future-facing and what if…? in nature), and as a result IMHO Humanities Majors probably have a greater ability to grasp the thinking behind it than most CPA-style accountants — which is pretty huge.
One downside – the results of MA are useless to FA purposes, so it must be undertaken adjunct to FA duties. The upside/s – MA tools, once built, are brilliantly useful to managers!!!
The contextual recipe for profitability
It’s a shame, but understandable, that accountants often get a bum rap in the humanities. Many loss-leaders are needed to find one gem. Humanities majors (who probably dated painters, poets, and band members in college) will get this. A Financial Accountant will blow a gasket when multiple loss-leaders (financial losers) hit the books. This alone will set many humanities and FA folks at odds.
MA, on the other hand, can take loss-leaders and almost any “fuzzy logic” that you can describe into account — in fact, creative application of MA tools such as Activity Based Costing analysis can reveal not only what prices would support projects of a certain type and maintain success for a firm (or describe and defend needs for subventions), but with the help of a little FA and modeling it can also reveal how many must be undertaken in the next season specifically (of each type, selling at varying rates, and into uncertain markets, and given the ongoing performance of the last several lists, back- and mid-) to give rise to the increasing overarching success of the firm — with that success being defined as progress toward any number goals (financial and/or missionary).
In a word, Managerial Accounting reifies bean-counting's truthiness. It yields insights beyond superficial readings of the bottom line (of debits and credits with respect to the budget) of what happened yesterday in the business to the deeper structures of creating and adding value in society, how the firm can contribute more to the top line in a meaningful and lasting way on into the future: the very building blocks of profitability.
Perhaps most importantly, MA tools can be used to illustrate (to the more FA-minded members of staff) that the firm is in fact right on track and making the desired progress toward its broadly agreed-upon goals when that next wave loss-leaders or seasonal slumps in sales hits the books — so those discussions don’t have to begin again.
Admittedly, though they are pretty simple to master, Lacan’s concepts can seem complicated to get a hold of the first time you see them. Likewise, MA tools can seem complicated to build when you look them over, though in the end, as with most things, they’re not.
Lacan is hilarious and highly recommended, but I've found MA reading thoroughly enlightening as well. I'd say add some to your wish list, and even if you don't ever get to it, it's worth keeping in mind that there is another kind of accounting out there, a future-facing accounting, for measuring the strategic potential for the creation of value (financial and/or missionary) by a firm beyond the typical postmortem approach of an FA breakdown of how value was destroyed (and should rather be destroyed less--duh) in the comparisons of budgets with debits and credits.
Freud was a systemic thinker. His theories were rigid, interdependent, and all had to add up to the bottom line of his overarching thinking — usually tying out to your mother and/or father in some rigidly unpleasant way.
Lacan was a Freudian, but what he did with and for Freud was, in a way, anti-Freudian. Lacan reclaimed Freud’s work by treating it as metaphorical rather than literal. The rapport of elements within the system was more important than their absolute value or nominative location. To reference the thinking of another noted Frenchman, it was as if he said there’s “truthiness” to Freud’s thinking; so, let’s not dismiss it entirely without first taking another look at it — looking at it sideways and in broad stokes (letting lines blur to the abstract) might yield new structures and give rise to alternate understanding, and indeed it did.
Lacan reified Freud’s truthiness. His work yielded insights well beyond superficial readings of story and character (of the subject and her family) to the deeper structures of the making of meaning in society: the very building blocks of understanding.
Lacan : Freud : : Managerial Accounting : Financial Accounting
Financial Accounting (FA) is what we all grew up with (and what many believe is the full story of accounting) with debits and credits and everything adding up to the red or the black bottom line. FA = Bean Counting. There are two versions of FA in an organization, Tax Accounting (for for-profits forms) and Balance Sheet Accounting (for everyone). One version breaks down financial transactions to assess the taxable change/s in value over a period. The other version breaks down financial transactions to assess change/s in overall value over the period. Both are purely interested in …financial transactions.
Managerial Accounting (MA) may be the best kept secret in modern bidness. It is strategic and it is not at all interested in counting beans. It is metaphorical, subjunctive (i.e., future-facing and what if…? in nature), and as a result IMHO Humanities Majors probably have a greater ability to grasp the thinking behind it than most CPA-style accountants — which is pretty huge.
One downside – the results of MA are useless to FA purposes, so it must be undertaken adjunct to FA duties. The upside/s – MA tools, once built, are brilliantly useful to managers!!!
The contextual recipe for profitability
It’s a shame, but understandable, that accountants often get a bum rap in the humanities. Many loss-leaders are needed to find one gem. Humanities majors (who probably dated painters, poets, and band members in college) will get this. A Financial Accountant will blow a gasket when multiple loss-leaders (financial losers) hit the books. This alone will set many humanities and FA folks at odds.
MA, on the other hand, can take loss-leaders and almost any “fuzzy logic” that you can describe into account — in fact, creative application of MA tools such as Activity Based Costing analysis can reveal not only what prices would support projects of a certain type and maintain success for a firm (or describe and defend needs for subventions), but with the help of a little FA and modeling it can also reveal how many must be undertaken in the next season specifically (of each type, selling at varying rates, and into uncertain markets, and given the ongoing performance of the last several lists, back- and mid-) to give rise to the increasing overarching success of the firm — with that success being defined as progress toward any number goals (financial and/or missionary).
In a word, Managerial Accounting reifies bean-counting's truthiness. It yields insights beyond superficial readings of the bottom line (of debits and credits with respect to the budget) of what happened yesterday in the business to the deeper structures of creating and adding value in society, how the firm can contribute more to the top line in a meaningful and lasting way on into the future: the very building blocks of profitability.
Perhaps most importantly, MA tools can be used to illustrate (to the more FA-minded members of staff) that the firm is in fact right on track and making the desired progress toward its broadly agreed-upon goals when that next wave loss-leaders or seasonal slumps in sales hits the books — so those discussions don’t have to begin again.
Admittedly, though they are pretty simple to master, Lacan’s concepts can seem complicated to get a hold of the first time you see them. Likewise, MA tools can seem complicated to build when you look them over, though in the end, as with most things, they’re not.
Lacan is hilarious and highly recommended, but I've found MA reading thoroughly enlightening as well. I'd say add some to your wish list, and even if you don't ever get to it, it's worth keeping in mind that there is another kind of accounting out there, a future-facing accounting, for measuring the strategic potential for the creation of value (financial and/or missionary) by a firm beyond the typical postmortem approach of an FA breakdown of how value was destroyed (and should rather be destroyed less--duh) in the comparisons of budgets with debits and credits.
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