Charlene Gaynor

NEW YORK, NY, November 9, 2012—The Association of Educational Publishers' CEO, Charlene Gaynor, received the Female Executive of the Year bronze medal at the Stevie Awards for Women in Business competition.  As a winner in the Government or Non-Profit/Up to 2,500 Employees category, Ms. Gaynor was selected for her success in expanding the AEP’s programs and initiatives that support the learning resource community.

“It is an honor to receive this award,” said Ms. Gaynor. “In addition to teachers and schools, learning resources are the third pillar of education. This is a wonderful opportunity to share the AEP’s important work with fellow business leaders.”

At the recent Content in Context Conference, held in Washington, D.C. by the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP), "transition" was the buzzword being bandied about. With an agenda geared toward helping educate attendees on how best to evolve their print-focused businesses into multimedia, multiplatform content providers, this year's conference had an air of change to it.

Who hasn’t tried the excuse, “My dog ate my homework,” on a teacher? Success with that excuse now is nearly impossible, according to experts in educational book publishing. So much of what teachers currently do involves digital materials and tools that, short of a network failure or computer glitch, a student would be hard-pressed to come up with a similar excuse.

In the first half of this decade, sales were skyrocketing for LeapFrog SchoolHouse—a division of LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. and publisher of interactive, research-based assessment and curriculum content for the PreK-8 education market. The Emeryville, Calif.-based company saw a boom in net sales from $8.8 million in 2001 to $55.2 million in 2004. In 2005, however, the company faced some hard (and controversial) times, and its sales began to drop. Last winter, LeapFrog SchoolHouse made a number of changes to get the company back on a growth track, including restructuring the organization, hiring a new president and focusing on its strongest segment within the

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

The hot-button issues in the book industry today surround an increased focus on content and alternative forms of distribution. Publishers are still keeping a watchful eye on the Internet and the fear that it may replace the print-based distribution business in the future. But there appears to be a greater acceptance and realization that “content” is a publisher’s real asset, and that the delivery method means nothing if the content isn’t outstanding. An increased focus on content, book search tools, digital distribution, a declining print readership, increased used-book sales, rising fuel and paper costs, and decreasing bookshelf space in retail superstores are all