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.

SSP = recommended for 2014

Reflecting on all that I am thankful for from 2013, I’d say that getting a chance to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), meeting all the folks I met, and learning all that the SSP is about – and learning all that attending the SSP’s annual meeting entails for an individual scholarly pub professional – is near the very top of the list. Attending the SSP changed my worldview and enhanced my understanding of the industry.

The SSP comprises leading industry consultants from around the world, heads and key staff of libraries, executives from all the major commercial presses, directors and staff of university and other not-for-profit presses, as well as professionals from third-party vendors (B2B providers). Having diverse populations from the communications ecosystem so well represented makes the SSP meeting a richly flavorful melting pot; not only are expert panel sessions informed and thought provoking, but all conversations in the halls, around exhibits, and in receptions are charged with brains and knowledge of multiple perspectives.

Moreover, in keeping with the principles of the founding members, the SSP is compellingly democratic; each professional, regardless of the “rank” of the individual or the focus of the individual’s firm, is able to and indeed expected to contribute to the SSP, to serve on the board of directors, and to participate in keeping up the high standards of networking and the sharing and development of best-practices in scholarly communication. (Deadline this Friday, 12/6.) This democracy of membership emulates (and accelerates) the cross-pollination and cross-strata flow of ideas that is in keeping with today’s best practices for competitive idea generation in successful firms.

My experience in attending this year’s meeting may have given me a uniquely swift and thorough view into what the SSP is all about: I won one of several Student Travel Grants offered by the SSP, and as a first-time attendee, I was paired with a “Meeting Mentor.” I was also grouped with other first-time attendees, for peer-to-peer networking, and as a group we were all under the further wing of the First-time Attendee Coordinator. My Meeting Mentor was Heather Staines, VP of the Stanford-born startup SIPX, past board member of the SSP, and long-time industry pro. My fellow first-time attendees and grant winners were similarly diverse professionals from library sciences and publishing programs across the country and overseas (I was the only MBA in the mix and the first one to participate in the program, thus far.) Our First-time Attendee Coordinator was none other than Will Wakeling, Dean of University Libraries, Northeastern University, founding member of the SSP, and industry/meeting icon.

The SSP meeting is huge, the orgs in attendance cover the globe (and all the walks of life above-mentioned); it might take several years to learn where the ropes are, let alone learn how to use them. Having a meeting mentor and first-time attendee coordinator accelerated the process for all of us and, for me, having a Meeting Mentor so versed and experienced as Heather Staines and a First-time Attendee Coordinator so knowledgeable and widely respected as Will Wakeling meant that I got to chat with international professionals at every level of the ecosystem, meet nearly all the past presidents of the SSP (and a host of the Chefs from the Scholarly Kitchen), and learn about the founding principles and history of the organization.

The sessions and conversations I had at the meeting were amazing; each more informative and eye opening than the last, and I could go on at dizzying length (as is my apparent wont) about the best-practices I learned of and the ideas I came away with – many of which have informed new initiatives I’ve begun since – and I will no doubt post some thoughts born of those takeaways. However, this post is about what I am truly grateful for from this experience, and that is getting to learn what the SSP is about: the people I met.

In the SSP logo, it says: “innovative people advancing scholarly communication.” I can say that the emphasis there is on “innovative people.” I met a dynamic, driven, and welcoming worldly horde of people. I’ve been to a number of meetings and attended some “schooling” here and there. In the first few minutes of the SSP, I met dozens of folks from a host of organizations and backgrounds, all of whom I look forward to seeing again and continuing to learn from, as we advance in our careers.

CENTRAL TAKEWAY/LEARNING:

The wealth and diversity of backgrounds and perspectives (commercial execs, consultants, vendors-as-members!, librarians en masse, and not-for-profits), the democratic nature of the organization (a focus on you as an individual professional), and the generous disposition of the members (founders, Presidents, attendees, mentors, and colleagues) are what distinguishes the SSP at heart; these elements make the SSP exceptionally welcoming and engaging and make discussions at the meeting uniquely generative of new thinking and opportunities.

THANKSGIVING:

I am thankful for getting to meet all my fellow grant recipients, and for getting to meet so many of the best and brightest in scholarly communications (the many chefs, heads, and execs). I owe special thanks to Heather and Will and other SSP stalwarts who all took such a personal interest in our experience – I can’t thank you enough! On that broader front, I would be remiss if I didn’t back up and say thank you to the SSP itself for giving me the opportunity to attend this year’s meeting and to everyone I met who made the experience so rewarding.

Given my experience, I would be further remiss if I did not say to all my fellow colleagues in scholarly communication, whom I have not met yet (and likely already talked your ear off in this regard) and who are planning professional development activities for the coming year: I’m renewing my membership in the SSP and making plans for Boston. I recommend, whole-heartedly, that all seeking new ways to advance scholarly communication do the same and join the polyglot discussions at the SSP next year. When you do, I look forward to meeting you there!

How to Spot Ugly Black Ducklings: next competitive frontiers in scholarly publishing

This is a pre-print version of a piece I wrote for the upcoming issue of Learned Publishing, LEARNED PUBLISHING VOL. 26 NO. 4 OCTOBER 2013

[It] reviews events of SSP 2013 and AAUP 2013 within the context of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notions of Black Swans (unexpected game changers) to anticipate the formation of competitive arenas (i.e., new models and revenue streams) for scholarly communications. It examines Tim O’Reilly’s keynote address at SSP 2013, the advice of Michael Schrage from the opening Plenary at AAUP 2013, and Tim Sullivan’s discussion of Harvard Business Publication’s use of a topical blog network as new publishing platform to access global digital communications networks, in the Reaching the World session at AAUP 2013. The essay extrapolates from the case studies presented in these sessions to overlay the strategies of successful practitioner presses and the advice of sought-after business consultants on the work of academic houses, to imagine the next competitive frontier/s in scholarly publishing.

We are all familiar with a Black Swan (capitalized). A Black Swan is categorically unexpected; contrary to all experience and thought likely not to exist or ever have impact on anything we hold dear—like our business models—but it comes along and has impact: massive impact. Simply put, it is an unexpected game changer. Could be good; could be bad; it depends how close you are to the volcanic vent on the ocean floor when it opens.

So, how do you launch your own Black Swan event—that changes everything for the better/in your favor? More importantly, how do you spot the potential for doing so in the world around you, when, by the very definition, a Black Swan is wholly unexpected and unpredictable?

The short answer is to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s latest book, Antifragile, apply its tenets to your situation, and shape your fate and business model to be improved by all the challenges it faces; i.e., to exist in a state beyond robust and resilient, in a state that actually “feeds” on shocks to the system.

The other answer (hard to say which is longer) is to learn how to spot Ugly Black Ducklings, spare them from the day-to-day ducks, and wrangle and raise them as your own Black Swans. Important to note, however, that a Black Swan can never be anticipated or predicted; so, an Ugly Black Duckling is doubly-unrecognizable. This brief piece is therefore about doing the impossible; assaying the latent outsized potential in the rightfully dismissed.

Suggesting that we can develop aptitude for spotting what might lead to an unpredictable game changer is seemingly irresponsible; but, fielded here for an important reason: Amazon constituted a Black Swan event for brick and mortar bookstores (and later publishers). Importantly, founders of and investors in Amazon had reasons to believe they could reshape the world in their favor, and they were right. So, somewhere amid the noise and chatter, quacks and squawks, someone saw or heard the Black Swan that could be …someone spotted an Ugly Black Duckling.

If I had one of those fancy things called a thesis, it would be very near to some of Taleb’s thinking: namely, that game-changing opportunities (Ugly Black Ducklings) are all around us; the world is lousy with them. (E.g., Amazon found one; Twitter too.) That’s the good news. Bad news, according to Taleb, we are naturally disposed never to notice them.

Two Ugly Black Ducklings for scholarly presses
I was fortunate to have attended two, outstanding, international conferences this summer: SSP 2013 and AAUP 2013. Across both, at least two Ugly Black Ducklings waddled. I’ll discuss the moments in the meetings when I saw them waddle, and latter imagine the Black Swan/s that might come from them. You can draw your own conclusions and see what ducklings you see in each of the following:

1. O’Reilly Media
The first Ugly Black Duckling waddled across both conferences; I will move back and forth across both sightings.

Michael Schrage got backs up in the opening Plenary at AAUP 2013 by saying that university presses were too focused on “publishing,” (e.g., how to publish books better, how to sell more of the books published, and promoting the value of the work of publishing generally); as an organizing principle, “publishing” is limiting, and Schrage felt that university presses should find a new organizing principle. He pointed to a phrase in the mission statement of the AAUP for starters: “…to advance scholarship.” Advancing scholarship, he noted, is broad enough to yield new vistas over old terrain; it would be more likely to lead to new products, services, and profitable moves in the market.

Two weeks earlier, Tim O’Reilly had given the keynote address at SSP 2013. Interestingly, he had similar advice for all scholarly presses. In his address, he stressed innovation and experimentation with new models. He quoted a Silicon Valley investor who said: “only invest in solutions that close the loop;” i.e., that provide complete solutions to a given set of needs. His example of an approach that is working to close a loop: Google’s self-driving car. Organizing need: helping people to get from point A to point B. Example of a publishing solution: a road atlas; specifically, the Rand McNally Road Atlas. Example of the evolution of a more complete solution—of closing the loop: MapQuest and Google maps; mobile GPS with real-time updates and synthetic voice directions; next, a self-driving car. Obvious to all: the obsolescence of the publishing solution.

What Schrage pointed to at the AAUP was just such a broader notion of the set of needs to be addressed; one that might carry a business forward in such an evolutionary progression, to help safeguard it and its products from obsolescence, if not help it to be the one to finally deliver the goods and close the loop.

In the panel sessions at the SSP, we were also reminded by an exec in O’Reilly Media, Allen Noren, of what Tim O’Reilly said to his management team to spur them to innovation: “In five years, if all we are is publishers, we’ll be out of business.” That was decades ago. They became more than publishers and are increasingly innovative and successful today.

I caught Schrage after his talk at AAUP 2013, and told him of O’Reilly’s remarks. He said, “O’Reilly gets it.” He also told me that they had worked together in the past; so, this isn’t too surprising that they agree on everyone targeting being more than just publishers. But, what is it that we should get from this, exactly; what can we make of it in scholarly publishing?

2. Harvard Business Publishing
The second Ugly Black Duckling started waddling back in 2011 (possibly before) and appeared again at AAUP 2013 …not a day older!

Grant McCracken was the lead plenary speaker of AAUP 2011. He spoke on “Innovation and Organizational Change,” summarizing the state of strategy in business today and emphasizing the need for radical creativity in the face of new challenges, especially in scholarly publishing. Then, he offered a modest suggestion: In addition to standard forms of peer-reviewed journals and books, scholarly presses should consider including a new form of publication, a new platform for ideas, without peer review; in this format, presses should base approval on an editor’s sense of the author’s work and the need in the popular discourse for the information it contained alone—and go straight to market with it.

Mayhem ensued; editors armed themselves with pitchforks and throwing-cats, monsters sang show tunes, frogs fell from the ceiling; McCracken barely made it out alive. Things didn’t settle down until champagne was uncorked at the reception.

Tim Sullivan, editorial director at Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), spoke in the Reaching the World panel session at AAUP 2013. The session was inspired by Peter Dougherty’s speech as President of the AAUP in 2012; a later version of which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Global University Press.” In it, Dougherty advised university presses two capitalize on “two converging trends: the growth of international scholarship, and expansion of digital communications networks.” Sullivan and others in the session spoke on HBP’s use of the latter.

HBP operates three market groups: Higher Education (coursework), Harvard Business Review (the journal/magazine we know as HBR), and Corporate Learning (management training). HBP and HBR manage a blog network to support all of its publishing programs.

Sullivan stressed that the blogs are not a promotional tool/s; they are one of several, integrated publishing platforms; 100% editorially driven and strategically knit with other offerings. HBP/HBR simply utilizes the web as part of its publishing program. Posts are not peer reviewed and they are not always tied to or inspired by other HBP/HBR publications. Sullivan and other editors acquire content directly for the blogs, from researchers or specialists in interesting areas. The blog network even has its own published submission guidelines, inviting unsolicited submissions to the blog. These posts can develop into articles or book projects, but that is not always the goal; the goal is to publish good blogs.

Of course, the reverse happens as well; authors of articles or books are approached by HBP/HBR editors or offer to write for the blogs on their own. In these cases, posts have links that tie the reader to a HBR article or HBP book (and sometimes to books published by scholarly presses).

Regardless of the content’s origins, Sullivan noted that through the original, topical content of the blog network, HBP/HBR engages the world and culture at large by delivering instant real value in the form of original, shareable insights from leading experts in the field—and then connecting readers through links to more resources/products.

At a glance, three things are unique about the HBP/HBR use case of accessing global digital communications networks, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, via its blogs: 1) as stressed above, the blogs have all original content and are wholly editorially driven, without peer review or exclusive marketing input, 2) because all of HBP/HBR content focuses on management and leadership, the content across the blog network is topically cohesive; i.e., all posts are relevant to the HBP/HBR target audience, and 3) the topical “tags” on the blog tie out to all HBP/HBR content – across all HBP/HBR platforms: e.g., journal articles, books, book chapters, online tools, cases, audio CDs.

How can, and perhaps more importantly why should, the strategies and advice of these largely practitioner presses be applied to the work and business models of the more scholarly presses?

To spot the ugly & black amid the yellow & cute
New product strategy is like hosting a dinner party; specifically, it’s like planning the menu for a dinner party. I have it on good authority that you are an excellent host/hostess; so, you know that what you do NOT do is set out to make the very best dish you are capable of making. This can be expensive and it can kill your guests, and killing your guests, as it turns out, or sending them home with swollen hands and feet, shoes in a sack, and lips and eyelids that look like cooked shrimp, has a deleterious and lasting impact on your reputation as a party thrower.

Of course, you check what’s new in the markets, what’s in season, and maybe what’s on special, if cost is an issue. Of course you think of your best recipes, and what wines you have on hand to pair with everything. You also take into account the likes and dislikes of your guests, if you want them to return. Most of all, however, you make sure to ask if anyone has any food allergies, and if you can’t shift the whole menu to accommodate, you make sure you have something in the works for everyone to enjoy the bash and make it home in good spirits, without recourse to epi-pen or ER room.

The ugly & black duckling (an antifragile business model) takes such things into account.

Scholarly publishing’s guests are displaying an allergy to copyright. Like it or not, folks are using more material more freely and preferring not to pay for it. Downside for publishers: copyright undergirds most all publishing revenue streams. (In a traditional SWOT analysis, this would show up as a W.) Therefore, scholarly presses would not regret having a revenue stream (b-model) that was not copyright-dependent; it would diversify their portfolio/s and decrease aggregate risk.

Further, guest are displaying allergies to peer review, to the protracted periods between completion of their research (submission of new ideas) and our publication of them (sharing of their ideas with the world), and to the burden – especially on junior scholars – of having to generate an instant, wide-reaching, and vibrant blog following, on top of all other research and teaching responsibilities. Scholarly presses would not be unpopular for helping to alleviate the discomfort of these allergies; doing so would further help turn the press’s Ws into Os that could lead to more Ss.

The Black Swan/s

1. O’Reilly Media
One of the first ways O’Reilly Media became more than publishers was by hosting conferences in the subject areas in which they published. Much of their content addressed emerging topics with nascent communities; the conferences provided hubs around which the subject-oriented communities could turn and grow. O’Reilly Media benefitted.

Many scholarly communities (societies) and conferences are long-established. Nevertheless, as a service to societies and the scholars who run and participate in them, scholarly publishers could (and many already do) lend their centralized and highly-specialized organizational strengths to offer conference-hosting services: event planning, post-meeting video, audio, and slide deck posting, registration and project management on down. Just as with journal publishing services, centralized investment in conference hosting services would lead to economies of scale.

This is common practice among commercial houses, but again at least Schrage was addressing university presses, when the Ugly Black Duckling waddled. In their ranks, it is rarer. This subset of scholarly presses could move to offer top-services to the smallest of conferences and, in time, offer to shoulder infrastructural burden for larger conferences.

In fact, a few university presses do already offer such services, having made the investment in doing so many years earlier. So, the true Ugly Black Duckling, and perhaps Uglier and Blacker for it, would be for university presses to partner with one another to offer these services; thus partnered they could hazard scale of nigh-commercial status and achieve greater market penetration.

Though there are many primary and ancillary benefits to such a move in the market, an immediate effect will be to expand revenues beyond content-monetization and to expand the suite of services the organization offers scholars/scholarly societies, thereby expanding the role of the publisher in scholarly communications.

2. Harvard Business Publishing
The suggestion to be inferred from Sullivan’s presentation of the HBP/HBR case study was more direct: If it hasn’t done so already, a scholarly press could move to host a thoroughly integrated and editorially-driven, topically cohesive (disciplinary) blog – with 100% original, directly acquired content that is linked to all other published offerings – as HBR has; however, a few caveats.

- HBP/HBR has a proverbial lock on the practitioner space in management. It certainly is the market leader. More importantly, it doesn’t publish in any other areas; e.g., how to knit is not often a subject of HBR articles. So, the HBR brand is both nigh-synonymous with AND dedicated to one subject area. Presses that publish in several subject areas – or enjoy a less-than-authoritatively-dominant position within a discipline – will either need to publish one or more separate blogs (branded by subject) and/or explore a partnering strategy with other presses to cover one subject persuasively well enough to attract dedicated users and achieve similar results.

- HBP/HBR blogs are clearly editorial, not institutional – and they have been that way for some time. As a result, HBR blogs have independently acquired original content. As with any other publication, the focus of the blog/posts in such a network must not be on the publisher or on the business interests of the publisher (e.g., fund raising, sales, and events); that’s what an institutional blog is for. They also must not be limited to the published authors of one press or another. The focus of a disciplinary blog must rather be purely on ideas and dedicated to the discipline or topics of interest to the community at large. Scholarly presses that have blogs with an institutional focus (i.e., that post promotional announcements or limit themselves to only the ideas of the press’s published authors) will have to reconceive the blogs’ role in the press’s publishing strategy (engaging with the community) and/or launch a separate blog or blogs under topical branding and with the new focus.

- HBP/HBR blog posts are integrated with all other content offerings – the topical tags on HBP/HBR blog posts link to every other “chunk” of HBP/HBR informational products (e.g., journal articles, books, book chapters, online tools, cases, audio CDs). Many beneficial network effects of the HBP/HBR blogs use case stem from the centralized hosting of all HBP/HBR products and content. For similar benefits, scholarly presses with third-party hosting services may have additional planning to do to allow for similar, dynamic access.

Though this move would have many primary and ancillary benefits as well, one immediate effect would be to expand the platforms the publisher offers authors in a given discipline. Perhaps more importantly, such a new dis-intermediated platform would not have the delays associated with peer review and other traditional publishing platforms, thus, shortening the timeline from authorship to publication for the author, and undoing the unflattering correlation, for the publisher, with exclusively slow times to market and under-networked media.

Black Swan effects – inspecting the plumage
For these moves to be part of or give rise to a Black Swan they would have to lead to events that might ultimately change the game; so, what would some related fallout be: How could they be used?

1. To engage: Kathryn Fitzpatrick says in Planned Obsolescence (NYU Press, 2011): "We too often keep our work as scholars hidden away from the cultural mainstream, pointing toward a pervasive anti-intellectualism that disqualifies the public from engaging with our ideas." She urges that scholars seek open forums for their work to engage readers—who are increasingly called upon to fund the research. Such open forums and platforms as blogs would engage not only other scholars and but through sharing and open submission the public as well.

2. To delight: Marketing strategist, and frequent TED talk speaker, Seth Godin points out two things regularly in his work: ideas that spread win, and the best way to get people to spread your ideas is to be remarkable and delight them. Adding such expanded services and dis-intermediated platforms for scholars to work in would be remarkable.

3. To drive sales: Authors the of Spreadable Media (NYU Press, 2013) note that when publishers utilize spreadable forms they, in effect, turn each blogger, retweeter, sharer, reposter, and mashup person of Pinterest into sales reps; blog posts and conference events could be “spreadable” sales channels.

4. To close the loop: O’Reilly endorses “only investing in solutions that close the loop;” i.e., those that more completely address an organizing need or set of needs for your customers. With words like “trending” thriving in contemporary culture, traditional outputs of formal scholarly publication are increasingly over-and-done-with before they see their pub dates; publishers of traditional forms are not wrongly seen as presenting research that “happened,” in preparation for its entering the archival record. That worthy function notwithstanding, each of the above approaches expands the publisher’s role from covering what “happened” (after individual research is complete) to presenting what’s “happening” (in discussion at conferences and in open forums). If hosting the academic discussion, encouraging debate and the spreading and improving of ideas with and to the public, is the organizing need – rather than simply publishing research – than approaches like these could begin to close the loop.

Publishers working on the frontlines of research, in nearer to real time with scholars, and accessing a networked culture on its own terms to engage the public in dis-intermediated forums would constitute a broadening of the traditional role of the publisher in scholarly communications (for the better; W → S) and could therefore be seen as at least elemental of a game changer for scholarly publishers—giving rise to new strengths and new competitive frontiers.

In other words, though other moves and complementary business model components (the right exercise and nutrients) will be needed for maturity to be reached, our Ugly Black Ducklings could grow into a Black Swan for scholarly presses.

Conclusion
The above, is not intended to be an exhaustive explication of the latent potential in any of the conference sessions or business models referenced. It is not intended to prove beyond doubt or alteration that these extrapolations will be part of a looming Black Swan event or that academics are “allergic” to peer review, necessarily – any more than to suggest that scholarly presses are allergic to operating out from under it. Nor is it meant to prove what these speakers were imagining as likely and advisable next moves for scholarly publishers: e.g., it would be hard to say that disciplinary blogs, hosted by scholarly presses, was exactly what McCracken had in mind, back in the summer of 2011. That said; while I’m thinking of it, for any who are interested in McCracken’s work, his new book, Culturematic, came out in May of last year (HBP, 2012). He can be read on his blog (cultureby.com) and on the HBP/HBR Blog network; last seen at the time of this writing posting to the HBP/HBR blog on: “Is Timex Suffering the Early Stages of Disruption?”

Getting back to our Ugly Black Ducklings: their extrapolation into an alternate future for scholarly publishing – that hath such favorable creatures in it – is intended to illustrate and underscore the doubly-unrecognizable nature of what might lead to an unprecedented game changer; i.e., the fact that ideas presented at conferences or in case studies from other industries and markets may not seem fit in with the other ducklings of a publisher’s past strengths and traditional practices, does not disqualify them from the consideration and formation of viable future models. Rather, it qualifies them as potentially being part of game-changing, new revenue sources and platforms, which in turn could lead to more and better models and ultimately to a Black Swan for the home team. Therefore, such odd notions and left-field advice may be worthy of further reflection.

Sources:
Dougherty, Peter J. (2013). “The Global University Press." Chronicle of Higher Education; (Accessed on July 5, 2013).

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. (2011) Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. New York, NY. NYU Press

Godin, Seth. (2009).Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, NY. Portfolio Hardcover; Penguin USA.

Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. (2013) Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (Postmillennial Pop) New York, NY. NYU Press

Harvard Business Publications. Harvard Business Review Magazine, Case Studies, Articles, Books, Pamphlets – Harvard Business Review; (Accessed on July, 5, 2013).

Harvard Business Publications. “GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS/HBR Blog Network.” (Accessed on July, 5, 2013).

O’Reilly Media, Inc. O’Reilly Media – Technology books, Tech conferences, IT Courses, News. http://oreilly.com/; (Accessed on July 5, 2013).

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. (2010) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: with a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility.” New York, NY. Random House Trade Paperbacks

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. (2012) Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. New York, NY. Random House Inc.