This is the first and only published volume that asks executives at the major U.S. publishers how they manage their businesses in an age when their business model is challenged by a format that doesn’t exist in the physical space, usually sells for much less than print, and has an audience that shifts and reforms with every new industry survey and with the release of each new chunk of irresistible shiny hardware.
From Callaway to Wiley, publishers new and old are well-represented. There’s also one large self-publishing group, Smashwords (represented by CEO Mark Coker) and one etailer, Kobo, represented by EVP Michael Tamblyn.
The interviewer, DBW editorial director Jeremy Greenfield, gives each executive the opportunity to provide background on their career and the scope of their company. He then explores with each the topics that matter: staffing, pricing, digital formats, marketing, distribution, discoverability and the future of the industry.
I want to zero in on staffing. I see it as the No. 1 problem for publishers today. They need to hire managers who are technically astute, not traditionally a job requirement in the publishing industry. And they need to hire true technologists. Publishing is still a glamorous business, but when it comes to dollars and cents payscales don’t even hint at what Silicon Valley offers. At the same time the major publishing firms are located in New York City, arguably the most expensive city for living in the United States.
Publishers are trying to fill tech positions at a time when tech staff is scarce. The unemployment rate for technology professionals dropped in the third quarter to 3.3%, as compared to 4.2% in the same quarter a year ago according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (and against 8.1% unemployment for the country as a whole).
The publishers interviewed in the book show a deep appreciation of the challenges of finding the right people to manage a business in transition.
Hyperion CEO Ellen Archer is upfront about the problem. “That’s a struggle for all of us,” she admits. “Who do we need and how many do we need?”
“Right now we have people doing two jobs,” she says. “They’re doing the print job because that drives most of our revenue but they’re also putting out the ebooks and they have to digitize our back-list. Everyone is working very hard.”
Maja Thomas, senior vice president of Hachette Digital makes the wise observation that staffing is “a moving target. If I hired someone a year ago and said in the job description that they have to have working knowledge of EPUB, that would have made sense. But this year, that person needs EPUB, EPUB3, KF8 and app-development skills. Every year people need new skills. So you need people who are focused on their own education and keeping up on trends in the industry.”
One way around the hiring challenge, perhaps the best way, is training staff in-house. Dominique Raccah, at Sourcebooks outside Chicago is emphatic: “We invest in our people,” she says.
At Simon & Schuster, executive vice president and Chief Digital Officer Ellie Hirschhorn deploys her core group in other parts of the company.
“A big part of our group’s mandate is to educate the imprints on new digital opportunities, new digital skills, new means of marketing,” she says.
At Thomas Nelson (now part of HarperCollins) CEO Mark Schoenwald is managing rapid digital growth. Two years ago, about 2% of Thomas Nelson’s publishing revenue was digital. This year, that number has jumped to 12%. By 2015, the company expects 40% of its publishing revenue to be digital.
Schoenwald looks to his in-house staff. “Two years ago we launched something called ‘digi-ready,’ which means to develop our content in a format-neutral manner so we could simultaneously develop the digital format with the print,” he explains.
“We train our teams to really embed the digital DNA across the organization. Everybody here understands what ‘digi-ready’ means and what it means to their individual role. We have lunch-and-learns where we bring people in and talk about topics related to the digital process.”
At Wiley, Peter Balis, director of digital content sales in the professional and trade division, looks to train existing staff while shepherding in new talent. He uses the editor’s task as an example. “An editor today has to have a digital understanding, a digital knowledge or some affinity for it, if they’re going to survive in the next wave of publishing,” he notes. “Part of it is how do we raise the level of our employees to the point that they can contribute to our success both digitally and in print as our sales migrate that way.”
Second, he says, “there is a whole technology infrastructure we have to bring in so we can innovate technology-wise and product-wise.” Wiley maintains an active developer group. “We have to go after some of those folks who are producing products for Google and Facebook and others and it’s hard—not just because we’re competing against them for employees.
“It’s hard because we’re not by definition a technology company,” Balis says. “We’re a content and solutions provider and will add services as we go into e-learning and other areas, but we have to focus on technology since that’s where our next change is happening.”
Ultimately, publishing needs to retain the confidence in its vital role as educator and as arbiter of culture.
“What would you say to a prospective employee considering joining the book publishing industry?” Jeremy Greenfield asked Maja Thomas at Hachette.
“I can’t imagine any more fun place to be. What you’ve got is a respected field in incredible flux,” she replied. “I can’t imagine a more exciting time to be in book publishing.”
Thad McIlroy is a publishing analyst based in Vancouver and San Francisco. He is co-author of the just-published The Metadata Handbook.