August 2007 Issue
A Lesson in E-Literacy
The education market has made major technological strides—but in some ways, it’s still a bit behind the learning curve. You hear it all the time—the joke that kids these days come out of the womb with a laptop. More than making for a painful birth, it signifies that the Internet is the future of business, in both sales and marketing. Still, most educational publishing orders are made through paper channels, and direct mail continues to be the major method to attract sales. Then again, teachers are making these purchases much more frequently than the more tech-entrenched students. “You’d think the Internet would be the main
BOOK INDUSTRY SALARY GUIDE
ou may be sitting at your desk wondering if the stressful job that is giving you gray hair and ulcers is worth it. Or, you may be perfectly content in your current position, but just a little bit curious as to whether your salary is competitive. You also may be wondering whether you are paying your staff enough to keep them from exploring other opportunities. Now, using Book Business’ first “Book Industry Salary Guide,” you can see how your salary and your staff’s salaries compare to others in similar positions at other book publishing companies. The guide is based on data compiled from
BRING YOUR BOOKS TO LIFE ON THE WEB
he idea is pretty straightforward: Release a book, create a Web site to go along with it, and, voila, you’ve got yourself a surefire marketing tool. Just putting something on the Web is no guarantee of success, however, which may be why, for many publishers, this simple formula ends up having a lot of variations. Book-companion Web sites—portals providing access to authors, blogs, online forums, games, contests and other multimedia offerings—play a significant role in the world of online book promotion. Standing at the intersection of traditional, publisher-designed marketing strategies, author-driven promotion and self-perpetuating “viral” marketing, thoughtfully planned book-companion Web sites offer
Distribution Goes Digital
“We are leading the pack by building a digital warehouse, which is the digital equivalent of our print warehouse,” commented Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers, in the May issue of Book Business. This is the ultimate sign-off on the industry’s embrace of the future, and its take-back of content control from trailblazers such as Google, Amazon and Yahoo. For some years now, various technology vendors have enabled publishers to deliver electronically formatted versions of their titles for special purposes. These have included applications such as conversions to XML formats (e.g., Publishing Dimensions), proprietary e-book reader formats (Mobipocket), sight-impaired applications (National
Hooked on Rapid Growth
Hooked on Phonics was created in 1987 as an instructional program to assist school-age children who were struggling with reading skills. Sold primarily through infomercials, the name grew increasingly recognizable as more and more television viewers stumbled upon the advertisements and their memorable “Hooked on Phonics worked for me!” tagline. Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, the company introduced a handful of additional products, including “Hooked on Math,” but still remained true to its original direct-to-consumer sales model. In 2005, Hooked on Phonics, now known as HOP LLC, was acquired by Baltimore-based Educate Inc. (which also owns Sylvan Learning Center) and was
Lantern Books Exec ‘Cynically Optimistic’ About the Future
Martin Rowe labels his view of the book business “cynically optimistic.” The director of publishing for Lantern Books, a relatively small, independent publisher of spiritual, social, environmental and animal advocacy titles, Rowe draws upon a diverse career that has led to his well-rounded view of the business of book publishing. And this view, he says, is changing as rapidly as the industry itself. Prior to co-founding New York-based Lantern Books with the company’s CEO and president, Gene Gollogly, Rowe held positions in distribution, research and promotions, as an author, and in a handful of other roles that even included a job in a bookstore.
Major Studies Offer Information for You, Not Just Your Business
Book Business’ mission is to provide practical information to help you do your job better and improve your company’s bottom line. But, we also aim to provide information to help you advance your career. We do this through certain features and departments, and now, we are doing this by conducting two major studies. The first study is the “2007 Book Publishing Industry Salary Guide,” and the results are published in this issue. A couple of industry organizations provide salary information, but much of it is segment-specific, e.g., for the university press segment only. Other information is quite costly to obtain. We wanted to provide
Webcasts: A Hot Marketing Tool
The June release of British writer Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach” was accompanied by screenings of a 28-minute film profiling the author at dozens of bookstores in the United States. According to producer Powell’s Books, the film aimed to go beyond the traditional author reading to inspire “spirited discussion about great new books and their impact on readers’ lives.” This was, perhaps, an innovative and effective tool for promoting McEwan. But if proponents of the emerging tool of webcasting are proven right, the logistical challenges accompanying such an operation (and those inherent in luring a finite set of audience members to bookstores to watch
