Textbook from Heaven
Here is another mini case study--I call it Textbook from Heaven. Like the previous case study, Anatomy of a Monster, it probably speaks more to textbook editors and publishers while at the same time giving textbook authors a glimpse into the shadowy, confused world they may enter when they sign a publishing contract. This post contains the facts of the case; in my next post I offer my analysis.Case Study: Textbook from Heaven
The three-person author team seemed ideal—two experts, one hard side and one soft side, and a hands-on practitioner. Their idea for an introductory textbook, merging theory with practice, was innovative and exciting then, and the house, known at the time for its small list of first-rate products, commissioned it. They sent a staff development editor to work with the team at their site on an urban campus in the Southwest. The situation was perfect. Development went very well and the group forged a strong and efficient author team. They worked together on four communicating computers, and manuscript flowed. The few reviews that were done, based on author contacts, glowed.
Reviewers described the book as novel, brilliant, revolutionary, and much needed, challenging instructors to change the way they teach the course. Concerned that the book might be too different, the DE requested information about the course and competing titles from Marketing. The marketing manager had left the company, however, and the position had not been refilled. If a market survey had been done for the course or content area, nobody could find it. The company had three directly competing titles for the course, including one, the Cotton, which sold in excess of 50,000 copies annually. The inexperienced sponsoring editor, however, did not question market placement in relation to internal competition.
A lot of money went into the project. The authors planned to provide original high quality supplements to accompany their textbook, encouraging the company to invest even more. Their package actually applied (rather than simply talked about) all the very latest research-based information on the most effective practices in the field. The work also reflected a particular theoretical orientation of which the authors were quite proud. They felt that their treatment would scoop an emerging critical consensus and sweep the field. The company heaped praise on the authors and invested in a four-color design and a web site, at a time when text-dedicated web sites were new and not yet regarded as obligatory components of textbook packages.
The manuscript went into production complete and ahead of schedule, and production flowed smoothly. However, a marketing plan still did not exist except in the broadest outlines. When prepub sales figures came in below projections, this was attributed solely to the absence of a marketing manager’s ministrations. Sales figures did not improve, however, and efforts to jumpstart the book during the winter national sales meeting bombed. The sponsoring editor, who had recently been promoted and was duly distracted, excoriated the sales force for failing to sell what she claimed had to be one of the best books the company had ever published. The situation was summed up later, as one junior sales rep, unaware that he was chatting with that book’s development editor, said, “I feel so sorry for those authors. Their book is just not getting sold. It’s so different that it makes it hard to present. And we’re doing so well with the Cotton. We all lead with the Cotton and then go to the other book we’re used to selling—the Freeman. A lot of profs use that one too. That new book just doesn’t come up.”
Labels: commercial success and failure in textbook publishing, textbook publishing
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