New Business Models in Textbook Publishing
Digitization, the online delivery of instructional materials, the used book business, the rise of self-publishing, and the open access movement collectively are fundamentally changing the world of higher education textbook publishing. Many are asking, how can the college textbook business remain profitable for both authors and publishers? Authors stand to lose out on advances and royalties, not to mention losing intellectual property. And to survive, publishers must find ways to provide low-cost instructional materials while competing with free online sources and the used textbook market.
Depending on their mission and commitment to a traditional publishing model, publishers' responses have included divesting themselves of their higher education divisions, becoming online rather than print publishers, licensing textbooks to institutions as part of course management software, and slicing and dicing their backlists to provide free or low-cost course content. Solutions also have included a "pay-per-view" approach, selling textbooks by the chapter, and a consortium approach, in which a group of publishers shares a website for retail sales where customers can buy textbooks or mix and match textbook content from a variety of publishing houses.
Publishers' dollars that once went into textbook development and design are now going into web site development, content delivery software, and online marketing. Job boards in the publishing industry now call for workers filling new job categories like the following (from Publishers Lunch, publishersmarketplace.com): online editor, digital workflow associate, digital manager, digital analyst, electronic media editor, online marketing manager, digital publisher, digital community builder, web producer, and digital business developer. Many big houses now offer advances only for projects with the greatest projections of sales revenue, and royalty schedules are kept at the lowest until a book breaches high sales benchmarks. Publishers also increasingly require that authors pay back advances that don't earn out, and books that merely break even are not revised (i.e., get the axe).
What can authors do to continue to derive income from textbooks they have written? They can try to keep their textbook alive in online revisions and adapt or provide content for companion web sites or other digital supplements. They can try to negotiate electronic rights separately from print (and good luck to them). If they get back the right to their existing textbook, they can parse and repurpose text to sell as instructional content. They can self-publish the work as an e-textbook and sell it online. And they can use their existing work as the basis for constructing a new interactive online course that institutions or students pay for. These latter solutions essentially put authors in competition with publishers. How's that for a paradigm shift!
Finally, authors can give away their textbooks or supplements or other content for free online and make money on collateral goods. Some online textbook sites, for example, offer royalties for downloads or print copies ordered or for homework site subscriptions. Some repositories offer to pay for the exclusive or nonexclusive use of content. Some authors offer some content for free on their web sites and deliver other content by paid subscription, or offer fee-based teleseminars, webcasts, or consultations. Thus, though it seems counterintuitive, the irresistible open access movement toward free textbooks is actually suggesting new ways to make money.
In my next posts I will explore those new ways and how authors can repurpose existing text and construct original digital textbooks.
Labels: business models, digitization, e-textbooks, Mary Ellen Lepionka, online textbooks, open access textbooks, textbook publishing
The Academic Ego, Part 3: Authors' Expectations
This is the 3rd installment of a previously unpublished article I wrote for academic editors to help them gain a perspective on the authors they work with. Authors often come with (largely unjustified) positive or negative expectations of publishers, which can become a huge problem for editors. (Copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka: All Rights Reserved.)
Real-world disdain among some academics (especially the princes of ivory towers) sometimes includes misconceptions about the publishing industry, including editorial values and practices, and about commerce in general. Animadversions about publishing as an evil empire abound in academe and appear to center on two themes: 1) disgust over what is perceived as a capitalist conspiracy for profit through economic exploitation, and 2) outrage over perceived threats of censorship or abridgement of academic freedom by media conglomerates. In the first, the author may assume one of two views, equally naive: that publishers exist to disseminate new knowledge and care about the development of academic disciplines, or that publishers exist solely for profit and do not care about anything else, not even what they produce (as in, “They could be making widgets”).
Some academic egos easily accommodate dissonant expectations, holding naive and cynical views simultaneously.
In any case, editors must manage to tread a middle ground in this minefield of expectations. The best houses support their authors’ careers and the academic disciplines their lists serve, while nevertheless remaining profitable—ruthlessly, if necessary, in light of capitalism’s prime directive.
Authors' expectations about income from publishing range from naively high hopes to outright cynicism (as in, “If I wanted to make money I wouldn’t be doing this”). Acquisitions editors often take shocking advantage of authors who think it is both a necessity and a privilege to be published and who do not expect material gain. On the opposite front is the textbook author who expects to retire on $200,000 USD annually for his or her introductory undergraduate textbook, or the scholar or scientist who expects to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of his or her popularization in cross-over markets. (And, admit it, every high-end trade book editor probably dreams of signing a Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, Daniel Boorstin, Camille Paglia, Jared Diamond, etc.)
Then, in a class by themselves, are the “anarchists,” authors who claim that scholarship is a moral enterprise that should not be expected or required to follow the dictates of (filthy) capitalism. Just as ideas cannot be copyrighted, all knowledge, they say, including that in books, should be free. As with religious fundamentalism, alternative views and practical realities have no defense. Some members of this class may very well be the people who in their youth felt entirely justified in purloining books, magazines, records, tapes, or CDs from corner stores and malls.
Anarchists, or perhaps iconoclasts is a more contemporary term, tend to be righteous, and many are drawn swiftly to wikis and open access publishing. Editors beware! Iconoclasts who stray into commercial publishing can become authors from hell. Some continually agitate for far more investment than the book can possibly afford based on projected sales. Worse, some come secretly or incognito and tend to produce unsalable POV books or masterpieces of disinformation, the whole time thumbing their noses at editors too stupid or ill-educated to recognize what is going down.
In addition, authors may naively or cynically focus on "capitalist exploitation" in publishers’ contracts and publishing decisions. Complaints about contracts often target meager (or lacking) advances or grants, low royalty rates with infrequent payouts, befuddling royalty reports, and unfavorable terms, such as taking all rights and then failing to return them in a timely fashion. Grievances about publishing decisions tend to focus on “acceptable manuscript” clauses, unrealistic drafting schedules, and cancellation policies. Failure to revise or reprint effectively kills a book—a bitter pill for authors, regardless of the strength of their academic ego. But there is no middle ground here. Publishers everywhere struggle to unload losers while attempting to maintain minimum industry standards for ethical practice.
Academic authors typically do not understand why their books may be losers and have no concept of the costs and risks involved in publishing. They often evince amazement, if not outright disbelief, to learn how small the margins actually are. Wise editors patiently educate their academic authors on these real-world matters. For example, authors are not aware of all the direct and indirect costs of publishing over which the publisher may have no control. They also may not grasp the complexity of issues that on the surface seem obvious. For example, authors may not appreciate the role of instructors, college stores, and students themselves in the pricing of textbooks. Complaints about prices, commonly referred to as price gouging, are in sympathy with students, who dispense inordinate sums for their burdensome course materials, especially textbook packages bundled with mandatory supplements (now a thing of the past since "debundling" has become mandatory instead). In any case, students and instructors then contribute to higher prices and loss of royalties by selling back their books.
Labels: A, academic authors and editors, Academic ego, author-editor relations, author-publisher relations, textbook publishing
Choosing a Textbook for Your Course--Part 5
This is the fifth part of a series of posts on how to choose a textbook for a course, from an article I wrote last spring: EVALUATING COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS FOR COURSE ADOPTION. This post includes a discussion of myths about textbooks publishing, especially the issue of revisions. © Mary Ellen Lepionka, March 30, 2006. All rights reserved.
Myths and Urban Legends about Textbooks
Contrary to popular misconception, textbooks are not all clones, although by necessity they must be similar to reflect course syllabi. Publishers go to great lengths and expense to ensure that their products are unique while remaining mainstream and competitive. “Mainstream” means following the conventional scope and sequence of the course as it is typically taught on the nation’s campuses, based on market research. “Competitive” means that it has all the bells and whistles that make other companies’ textbooks successful (i.e., profitable). And “unique” means that it has its own valueadded twist or enough novel material to pique customer interest and capture market share. Editors fill whole binders with comparison grids to chart how their book is mainstream, competitive, and unique in relation to other books for the same course from other publishers in their league.
The downside of this is that major publishers do not take risks of any magnitude with textbook content and organization. If you have a radically different approach to your subject or want to teach it in a new way that is not currently accepted practice, you likely will not find a textbook that suits your needs. In fact this is a prime reason for not using a textbook. Assuming that your institution, department, and students explicitly know about and want what you are offering, you will need to find or develop your own course materials or persuade a publisher to consider your own proposal for a new textbook. To do this you would need to present some proof that there really is a new or emerging market or clear demand for this kind of textbook. I have seen this done successfully—for
example, with the world’s first introductory textbooks in field of applied anthropology. However, I have also seen such efforts fail—for example, when the world simply is not ready for your take on the “emerging critical consensus” or “new synthesis” that you have in mind.
Another urban legend is that revisions are merely cosmetic. Actually, the investment needed to bring out a revision is only slightly less than for a first edition, which can be as much as a quarter of a million dollars for an introductory textbook in a core subject. Much more is involved, therefore, than slapping on new covers. The authors’ contracts must be renegotiated, new authors may be brought into the team and others retired, editors apply new market research and competition analyses to develop a revision plan, and usually the book is at least
partly redesigned. The degree of similarity in appearance between a revision and its previous edition depends almost exclusively on market considerations. Do people love this book and remain loyal to it? Then make it look much the same. Are people dissatisfied with it or iffy? Or is there simultaneously a major new challenge from a competitor? Then make it look different.
Industry standards dictate that a revised edition of a textbook should be approximately onethird changed from the previous edition or substantively different in some other way. This extends to replacing a third or more of the
photos and figures. The real reasons for revising are to correct, update, improve, or adapt a work. At one point, psychology textbooks that did not discuss DSMIV were judged obsolete, for example, and had to be revised. Teacher education texts had to be revised after enactment of the NCLB. Most publishers made rapid and costly revisions in selected titles after 9/11. I have worked on textbooks that were revised within two years because customers objected to certain content or certain content was found to be outdated or wrong, but also because the authors were suing each other over royalty splits. While some of these changes did not add up to a third of the book, they necessitated a revision.
While it is easy to think (and not unheard of) that publishers put out new editions as often as they can get away with in order to reap more profits, this usually is not the case. For one thing, textbooks, especially first editions, normally need at least two years of sales just to pay for themselves, much less pay the authors their royalties and the publisher its margin. For another, the market readily punishes publishers (justly or not) who put an older edition out of print by bringing out a new higherpriced edition after only a year. While this may look like corporate greed, however, it’s usually just a desperate effort to save a book with insufficient sales that otherwise would be taken off the market entirely. Such a book might even be revised heavily enough (half changed) to be brought out as a new first edition. Older textbooks often are recycled in this way, through mix and match
cannibalizations. I call them “frankensteins,” and like the original, they’re not inherently bad, (though I have seen some that are badly done).
Unless it is in a series designed as annual editions, therefore, a book that is revised after one year is in trouble. Maybe it had something in it (or not in it) that was killing sales. Maybe it was late coming out and missed its sales for the first semester of its copyright year (in which case a revision can justify permitting it to continue to exist at all). In any event, the publisher is risking double shortfalls by bringing out a revision before the previous edition has paid for the cost of publishing it. In light of these facts we may wish to reexamine our prejudices and assumptions regarding textbook revisions.
There no doubt are other myths and urban legends about textbook publishing (I would love to hear about them from readers). Now, however, we come to the arcane matters of how a textbook is built and how its scope and sequence are realized and how these factors might affect your decision making process for textbook adoption.
Labels: choosing a textbook, course adoptions, evaluating textbooks, textbook publishing, textbook revisions
Textbook from Heaven--Part 2
Textbook from Heaven: Exegesis
1. "The three-man author team seemed ideal—two experts, one hard side and one soft side, and a hand-on practitioner. Their idea for an introductory textbook, merging theory with practice, was innovative and exciting, and the house, known at that 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."
What a great start! What could possibly go wrong?
2. "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 seemed quite different, the development editor requested information about the course and competition from Marketing. The marketing manager had left the company, however, and the position had not been filled. 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 the internal competition."
Oh, oh. The development editor is right to be concerned. Publishers’ dustbins are full of books—even excellent books by excellent authors with excellent publishers—that were too different for their markets or too far ahead of their time. In addition, research consistently confirms that instructors do not adopt textbooks that force them to change fundamentally the way they teach their course. The sponsoring editor should have questioned this goal when it was first expressed. Heaven forefend, too, that instructors should have to discard desiccated and discolored lecture notes that crumble to the touch (I know, because after 40 years I still have mine--correction: I just threw mine out!).
This is not to say that publishers cannot risk innovation. Without a with-it marketing manager, however, and a long lead time for a marketing campaign, innovation of any magnitude is foolhardy. First editions are challenging enough! This project is starting dangerously without marketing input of any kind. Where is the cumulative intelligence on which successful lists are built? Publishing houses make a great mistake in decentralizing to the extent that everything connected with a worker disappears or is made irrelevant when the worker moves on.
And what about that internal competition? The sponsoring editor should have checked or asked the DE to perform a competition analysis that included the inhouse titles. Where does the sponsoring editor think this new title will fit in her list? What makes her think that the sales force will want to take market share from their own market leader? Where is this editor’s manager? (And why was this editor promoted?)
3. "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 teaching and learning. 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 obligatory components of textbook packages."
More indication that this product’s excellence may not be able to overcome its singularity! Beware of book plans that boast impeccable intellectual descent, emerging critical consensus, and eponymous paradigm shifts. These often are euphemisms for point-of-view books or those with radical or reactionary approaches. Also beware of house-generated positive spin, which begets positive mind block, leading to what I call “the snow job effect.” Nothing is more embarrassing (or costly) than having everyone from the CEO down in love with an albatross in the guise of a technicolor angel. This is the “textbook from heaven” syndrome.
4. "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.'”
Thus, the concept that books fail because they are not sold is not an urban legend circulating at corporate coffee kiosks or golf tees. In fairness, though, this book failed foremost because it was divorced from its market from the very beginning. At no point was it informed by market intelligence. And at no point was the market prepared for its introduction as a product. The sales force—the people in the trenches who really can turn things around—also was not prepared to field this product. In this case, the sales managers took the fall, and the book was never revised.
The idealistic authors, too, were not prepared for this outcome. Stunned, they accepted a Canadian edition and the slice-and-dice reuse of their content as online learning objects. They ended their collaboration, and none of them ever again attempted to write another textbook. I hope you understand that this is not right either. In addition to sparing stockholders bad news, I believe that publishers have a responsibility to spare authors this kind of experience.
Labels: commercial success and failure in textbook publishing, textbook publishing
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
