Articles Tagged with publishing

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HAG16Over the past couple of decades education publishing has been characterized by waves of consolidation into a handful of giant conglomerates. This is a typical pattern in an industry as products commoditize.

If products are effectively interchangeable (commodities) competitors gain competitive advantage through industrial scale cost management (economies of scale). Bigger warehouses, off-shoring production, distribution networks built on fleets of professional salespeople, and access to capital drove smaller players into the arms of Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin (Harcourt), and Scholastic.

We can see that they became huge – but what were the market forces that drove them to do this?

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meteor_impact_2003.gifAn understatement – education publishing is changing.

Heck, publishing writ large (trade books, music, movies, news, etc.) is shifting in dramatic and unpredictable ways. Textbooks are one of the last little corners of the intellectual property world to enter this new era.

Today’s post is a teaser for a longer piece I’m going to publish in the next few days. Mark Sumner’s “The Evolution of Everything” got me thinking about our industry in biological terms as we enter this era of rapid change.

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noosetie50% of the men did not wear neck ties at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Traditional publishers are struggling with appropriate responses to digital transformation and aping the casual style of Silicon Valley seems to be popular. Interesting fact – if you wear a suit without a tie you still look like a Book Rep.

This sartorial mis-match of rhetoric and reality summed up a lot of what I observed. Publishers are saying all the right things, but they haven’t quite figured out how to do them.

Educational Publishing Leaders

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IMG_0069.jpgIn discussing the potential for ads in e-books – the latest hail mary pass of traditional media – Paul Carr at TechCrunch dropped this gem:

It’s a compelling argument, but like so many compelling arguments made about the future of books, it’s also hampered by consisting almost entirely of bullshit.

He then goes on to rend the idea to tiny shreds. Its an enjoyable read because he brings common sense and an attitude to area rife with guessing and angst.

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This is creative thinking at work. How do you arrest someone for cleaning a tunnel – even if it looks like graffiti? I imagine the call to Police HQ was pretty amusing and resulted in a lot of head scratching.

It often takes explicit subversion of our preconceptions to reveal our unspoken assumptions about every day life.

Two questions for EBB readers:

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NFImageImportCommon Core Standards (CCS) will have a profound impact on the instructional materials market. The big players like Pearson and McGraw-Hill are on-board as endorsing partners, but smaller supplemental publishers have as much (if not more) to gain if the initiative is successful.

Common standards will reduce structural barriers to entry, reduce costs (and hopefully prices), and make it easier for new players to enter the textbook market. They also make it easier for open source publishing and have the potential to stall the market during implementation.

In this post I am not going to wade into the politics of whether Common Core Standards are good or evil. My goal is to look at this from the potential economic impact on the companies that serve the education market.

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My take away from the first day of the Association of Education Publisher’s Content in Context Conference (#ciccon): educators have always needed Education Publishers, but they have never particularly wanted them.

What are you doing at your company to remain necessary in the digital age?

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IMG_4955.jpgOK – admit it, trade shows are fun. Sometimes traveling to a distant city, circulating with your peers, and dining out on the company can be a kick. You are learning too – about competitors and about your customers. The deadlines around a trade show can produce drama and tension, and some people thrive on that.

By comparison web marketing can be a daily slog and there isn’t much direct contact with the customer. Web marketing requires persistence and patience. Success is metered in small steps and delivered incremental improvements over time.

In this article I explore who should prioritize shows and who should focus on web marketing and I share some ideas about how to compare the two.

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NFImageImportAt PCI we are putting the finishing touches on our 2010 budget. The Stimulus funds are creating a particular challenge as we look out over the next 12-24 months. On the one hand there should be plenty of new money in the market next year. On the other, despite ARRA an additional 9 states are sliding into California like crises as the housing slump begins to affect tax receipts.

There are two core questions companies need to answer as they think about priorities for the coming year.

  • Timing – when will the funds flow?
  • Volume – how much of the stimulus will be available for instructional materials?

1. When will stimulus dollars flow for instructional materials?

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IMG_7349.jpgVast is too small a word to describe the Frankfurt Book Fair. Spread over several buildings – each the size of a normal convention center – one can find everything related to publishing in the world. It’s literally literature.

We attended this year because education publishing, a business with deep local ties based on culture and economics, is globalizing along with everything else.

In my consulting practice prior to PCI half my clients were international companies, not traditional US based publishers. This was my first clue.

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