The
Franchise Fix
Lucrative,
Licensed Book Lines Are Looking Better All the Time
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (NOVEMBER 2003)
As
book publishers search in an ever-widening gyre for
“consumer equity,” “points of differentiation,” and
authors pre-packaged with their own “platforms,” it
may be no shock that the concept of franchise publishing
— partnering to publish licensed, branded, or co-branded
titles, or even signing up mega-authors who are multimedia
franchises in their own right — is being revisited with
a vengeance. Branded books, not so long ago dismissed
by some in the book business as downmarket fodder for
the mass merch accounts, are getting increasingly talked
about as strategic, long-term, profitable enterprises
that can capitalize on some of the hottest trends of
the day (South Beach Diet, anyone?) and forge
close relationships with consumers while cracking open
new nontraditional retail channels — big-box outlets,
Disney stores, Petco shops, even Hustler
emporia — that may be more profitable. And as publishers
aggressively seek out licensed or branded content, they’re
being ardently courted by licensors in turn. “Consumer
brands are realizing how important it is to have a cornerstone
for their brand in print,” says Susan Maruyama
of Round Mountain Media, which works with brands
to strategically develop publishing programs. “In today’s
multimedia society, a lot of what we see comes and goes
pretty quickly. Without a book in print, there’s no
place for that customer or loyal audience to go to revisit
that brand experience.”
At the same time, however, brand-building publishers
“are just coming to the party,” says Chris Lederer,
co-founder of Helios Consulting Group, which
has worked on growth strategies for publishing companies
and other firms. “Trade publishers in particular haven’t
spent a lot of time thinking about brand combinations
as a way to build their business,” he says. “It’s an
incredibly fertile area that publishers need to think
about in a strategic way, and not just as a one-off
revenue play.”
Not
Your Mother’s Meredith
At
some of the major players in the branded book biz, fresh
strategic turf is squarely in the sights. “We’re looking
to expand our licensing effort into any arena that makes
sense,” says Todd Davis, Executive Director for
New Business Development at Meredith Books. “As
long as a property has equity with the consumer, then
you can have a strong publishing program. You need that
hook with the consumer, because that’s what the retailer
is looking for.” Meredith, which has long worked with
partners such as Ortho, Scotts, and Home
Depot, is now pushing its hardworking house-and-home
brands in a splashier direction by partnering with The
Learning Channel’s Trading Spaces show to
publish Trading Spaces: Behind the Scenes (over
750,000 copies shipped), plus two decorating titles
(both with more than 300,000 copies in print). Then
there’s Paige By Paige, a year in the life of
Trading Spaces diva Paige Davis which
has shipped at least 250,000 copies and hit #3 on the
NYT bestseller list for paperbacks. All development
work on the titles is done in-house, in close cooperation
with the licensor. The line has been sold in nontraditional
outlets such as Bed, Bath & Beyond and Linens
’n Things, while also giving the publisher reach
into markets it had never tapped before, such as college
book stores. In a similar vein, Meredith is publishing
new titles with home-and-garden channel HGTV,
and just rolled out the Food Network Kitchens Cookbook.
“The Food Network has been on the air for 10
years and reaches 78 million households,” Davis says.
“We did focus groups and research to make sure we understood
their brand before we even started the book.” On the
other hand, Monster Garage (over 300,000 units
shipped), based on the Discovery Channel show,
is breaking out of the service journalism mold and “giving
us an opportunity to go after automotive channels that
we’ve never gotten to before.”
“It’s
not your mother’s Better Homes and Gardens,”
adds Linda Cunningham, Meredith Books Editor-in-Chief,
who points out that Meredith’s history as a magazine
publisher has given the house an edge when pitching
ideas for licensed projects. “The whole company is oriented
toward clients or advertisers,” she says. That gives
Meredith the chops to work with demanding licensors,
and also a natural grasp of how to extend brands such
as Trading Spaces (originally a one-book deal)
into a full-on publishing business. “What we acquired
with Monster Garage and Trading Spaces was
the logo. There was no proposal, no visual idea of what
these would look like,” she says. “We created these
from scratch.” The labor-intensive process pays off
not only as an ongoing line for Meredith, but for its
licensor as well. “I certainly feel we’ve helped bring
credibility to Trading Spaces as a viable license,”
says Cunningham, noting that other deals for the show
have followed. “The book does anchor the brand.”
Other publishers in the licensing world say they’ve
seen a paradigm shift as well. “Licensing has become
the siren call,” says Sarah Malarkey, Executive
Editor at Chronicle Books, who has been stewarding
the category for six years. “When I started, I had to
hunt down properties. Now I get proposals every week.”
The proportion of licensed titles has remained steady
at about 5% of Chronicle’s list, sustained by ongoing
programs with companies such as DC Comics and
Pixar, the latter spawning coffee-table titles
such as The Art of Finding Nemo. Nonetheless,
those five or seven titles per year “will often be our
lead titles. It’s a select group, but it has a lot of
muscle for its size.” It’s a truism in the licensing
world that a brand must fit well with a publisher’s
list, and Chronicle’s disciplined approach is a good
example. “I think about less where it comes from — it
could be a TV show, it could be an old toy,” Malarkey
says. “I’m not concerned about the medium. But I am
concerned about the intuitive fit with our list.” That
fit may be getting a stretch with this season’s Playboy:
50 Years, The Photographs, a $50 tome taking the
publisher into decidedly new retail territory. “Usually
there’s one account that cracks open with any kind of
license,” says Malarkey. “We’ve never sold a book to
a Hustler Store before.” Next year will see a follow-up
of Playboy cartoons.
When
Branding Backfires
But
branding can ambush a title in the wrong circumstances.
“For cookbooks, corporate brands aren’t necessarily
an advantage,” says Bill LeBlond, Chronicle’s
Editorial Director, Cookbooks, who has published two
titles with the Weber line of grills and other
branded books with Saveur. “The bookstores in
general don’t want to be seen as promoting products.
Yet some brands transcend that, and Weber is certainly
one of them.” Chronicle is also working with TV chefs
Martin Yan and Michael Chiarello, whose
platforms “can make all the difference in the world.”
Still, says LeBlond: “Platforms and brands will not
save you if you’re publishing a bad book. Brands can
give you exposure, but that’s all they can do.” Other
publishers have had to grapple even more delicately
with how to finesse a franchise-in-the-making so that
it retains its integrity, as in the case of The South
Beach Diet, whose author, Dr. Arthur Agatston,
has publicly shied away from becoming the next Atkins,
despite having 5 million books in print, with two more
titles on the way and a website with a reported 100,000
subscribers. (Publisher Rodale said it would
be premature to comment on South Beach branding strategies.)
And some caution that while branded titles may unlock
the door to distribution nirvana, big-time licensing
can be a financial disaster. “Licensing is very important
for the sell-in in the mass merchant world,” says one
licensing executive, noting that a hot Nickelodeon
product, for example, is a must-have for any major retailer.
The downside is that those hot licenses (especially
in the children’s arena) can cost a bundle, eating into
profit margins as retail price points hit the well-defined
mass merch ceiling. “At the end of the day a license
gives you clout to bring the rest of the books from
your list to the customer, and to create an image for
your publishing program,” this executive says. “But
it all comes at a price. And that’s a price most publishers
cannot afford anymore.” Perhaps as a result of some
notorious licensing mishaps, it should be noted, licensors
are no longer in a position to dictate their terms.
Spending heavily for licenses can be a fool’s game in
other respects. “You only have your licensed good or
your branded asset until someone else buys it,” says
Jeff Stone, founder of Chic Simple and
partner in new branding firm mdash. Stone has
done consulting work for Unilever, Wells Fargo,
and Ford, the latter project involving a 14-month-long
analysis of Ford’s trademark “blue oval” in terms of
brand value. “If the company isn’t sure what the brand
means, then it is very hard for consumers to get a clear
message.” Stone argues for much deeper thinking about
the value of publishers’ own houses as brands, rather
than those of their authors or partners. Wiley’s
work building the Dummies brand (see
article) is a good case of a clear value chain,
he says. “From a consumer’s point of view, the Wiley
name speaks to technical expertise. If you happen to
notice ‘John Wiley’ on the title page, you think, I
can trust this.” And that trust is ever important in
an age of mosquito-like product lifespans and dizzying
choices confronting customers in Barnes & Noble
(where, to make matters worse, they’re getting pitched
B&N’s own branded products). “Every time a publisher
can help a consumer with their branding program, everybody
wins: the consumer wins, the publisher wins, and the
author wins.”
©2003
Publishing Trends
