Cover Story: Publishers' Outlook 2012: The Industry's Next Bold Move

We've been getting a lot of push from people who say, "We want a 'Manual of Style' app, we want a 'Manual of Style' e-book." It's a complicated e-book because the "Manual of Style" is meant to encompass everything confusing about print and publishing in one book. But the evolution of tablets is helping quite a bit. So I'd say keep your eye on the "Manual of Style"—we're always evolving the model and other digital forms of it will be coming.

Howard: What is the biggest challenge and/or opportunity in the next year?

Kiely: I think the biggest opportunity remains evolving our staff and our thinking into different ways of doing business. More and more I see people on my staff—who, frankly, were pretty resistant to [digital]—suddenly turning around saying, "Hey, this is important because my authors are asking about this."

What if we turned the whole power of this press towards this? I think we can actually change our business quite a bit. And that is also the challenge [laughs], because you know, any time you take a well-established business and try to reform it in some way, it's inherently risky. And it's part of my job to ensure that this press continues for [another] 120 years. BB