Rebel Yell
at AAP
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (MARCH 2003)
Despite
yet another snarling DC snowfall, and the usual spate
of A/V equipment on the fritz, some 60 Smaller and
Independent Publishers (call them SIPs) turned up
for AAP’s Fifth Annual Meeting on February 26th.
A well-executed series of keynotes and panels kept most
of the audience glued to their seats all day. Hyperion’s
Bob Miller, the post-breakfast keynote, set the
take-no-prisoners tone for many of the panels when he
told the receptive audience that there were “six ways
you can exploit the weaknesses of the larger house,
so that you can eat their lunch.” Running down the alternative
menu of options, he told small houses to deal personally
with both retailers and reviewers on the one hand, and
authors on the other; cultivate their own specialties;
pounce on trends quickly, to beat out the sluggish large
houses; and take note that while the big guys like to
do things the way they’ve done them time and time again
— “Corporate publishing craves predictability” — successes
are often those very books and publishing strategies
that stand out because they’re utterly out-of-the-box.
The bottom line: “Dig deeply into each book’s uniqueness
and make sure you show that uniqueness in the book’s
title, cover, and marketing.”
Other topics during the day included a review of what
is happening with POD and ebooks; panels on branding
and licensing; a discussion of the value of attending
specialty trade shows, given by Stacey Ashton,
Director of Special Sales at AOL/Time Warner
Books; and several panels on global issues — selling
and licensing into it, attending international fairs,
and Spanish-language publishing and distribution in
the US (2003 is AAP’s year of publishing for Latinos).
The luncheon keynote was Newmarket’s Esther
Margolis, who spoke of lessons she’d learned from
her early days at Bantam and from starting her
own company, twenty years ago. She told the assembled
that “the definition of ‘to publish’ isn’t ‘to print’
— it’s ‘to make public,’ and that requires marketing.”
She said she’s not embarrassed to use the term “product”
in talking about a book, “because products need to be
marketed.” Finally, she explained the importance of
a small house developing a style and presenting an image,
and admitted that in the early years she took expensive
space in midtown Manhattan, rather than larger, cheaper
space downtown, because she wanted to project the image
of prosperity. Similarly, she ate at the same expensive
restaurants that she’d frequented when she was a highflying
publicity director at Bantam, and hired a top-tier lawyer,
so that people would know she meant business.
The day culminated in the annual cocktail party, which
traditionally features clutches of roaming Washington
politicos — though the weather seemed to have kept them
away this year, or perhaps Pat Schroeder’s Hill
connections are a bit more tenuous five years after
her departure from Congress.
Whatever letdown that may have caused was wildly redeemed
by the now-famous dinner at which Oprah Winfrey announced
her new “Traveling with the Classics” book club. Even
though there had been rumors of an impending announcement,
the crowd, deliriously excited, leapt to its feet for
three standing ovations. There were diverse comments
in the subsequent parsing of the event, with some in
the media fretting that Oprah could set off a “confusing
competition” among the Library of America and
other classics publishers. (For his part, Modern
Library Publishing Director David Ebershoff
said Oprah’s bounce would be just like a movie tie-in.)
But one of the most succinct remarks came from PW’s
Nora Rawlinson, who said, presumably with
Jonathan Franzen’s misbehavior in mind: “Tolstoy
won’t rise up and say, ‘I don’t want to be on your show.’”
(Rawlinson also delivered a bon mot or two in a speech
about bookselling. This year, she said, flat sales represented
the new bullishness.)
Thursday’s sessions had a hard act to follow, but the
Recording Industry Association of America’s
Hilary Rosen came prepared with a bagful of battlefield
lessons. Among them: think of your customer as the consumer,
not the retailer. Also beware that retailers will rebuff
any attempts to go digital, and “if there’s one thing
the recording industry knows, it’s that we were far
too slow moving online.” Don’t wait for the market to
develop either, she insisted, speaking of digital downloading
of music and books: go out and develop it. Following
those words of encouragement, the day ended a little
earlier than planned, as attendees rushed for trains
and planes ahead of yet another snowfall — presumably
not a metaphor for publishing’s ever slippery slopes.
©2003
Publishing Trends
