Wiley's Brands
Buffer the Slump
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (NOVEMBER 2003)
John
Wiley & Sons publishes the #1 seller in travel
guides (Frommer’s), one of the leading franchises
in consumer technology (Dummies), and what it
calls the bestselling cookbook brand in the world (yep,
Betty Crocker). Bolstered by the acquisition
of Hungry Minds two years ago — which dropped
all three of those blockbuster brands into Wiley’s pot,
in addition to CliffsNotes, Webster’s
New World dictionaries, and the Weight Watchers
line, among others — the company once known as a bastion
of scientific and technical tomes has made its professional
and trade division “by far, the fastest growing part
of our business,” executives say, surpassing the company’s
STM and higher ed divisions to generate half of Wiley’s
total US revenues last year — which helped push global
revenues for the company up 16% to $854 million. Driving
that growth has been the company’s strategy to boost
“branded-program alliances and partnership relationships”
(see article) that
are ever more critical to grabbing market share in the
face of what Wiley executives are calling a “protracted
slump in key markets” — including soft consumer spending
on cookbooks and travel guides, tight library budgets,
and a dip in textbook spending, not to mention the ever-deflating
technology sphere.
“Where
other things go up and down, Dummies have remained consistently
strong,” says VP, Trade Sales Dean Karrel. “To
put it quite simply, these books sell.” That’s brand
value in a nutshell, and while Wiley executives take
pains to point out that they have been in the trade
business for decades, there’s no arguing that the bulging
portfolio of trade-oriented brands acquired in the past
several years has catapulted them into new territory.
Citing Book Scan figures, Wiley says it is the
number one US publisher in both the travel and technology
segments, number two in cooking and business, and third
in consumer reference and education. “In the nonfiction
area, we are one of the top seven suppliers of books
to all of the major retail booksellers,” Karrel says.
“We’re at a level certainly not of Random, S&S,
and Harper, but an inch below being one of the
major trade players.”
Branding
for Dummies
Partial
credit goes to a “culture of collaboration” that builds
brands across divisional, geographic, and corporate
boundaries. (In the olden days, one might have just
called it “synergy.”) Katherine Schowalter, SVP,
Professional and Consumer Publishing, says that at the
division level, for instance, Wiley can tap its editorial
teams in the business and education areas to work with
Dummies editors on new titles such as Rookie Teaching
for Dummies, which has gone on to sell “very well.”
This may seem a modest synergistic move, but applied
across Wiley’s many subject areas, it’s an example of
“leveraging infrastructure” to extend the franchise
in a way that was not available to Hungry Minds. Meanwhile,
on a global scale, Wiley-owned subsidiaries around the
world are developing their own indigenous Dummies titles.
Wiley’s UK subsidiary is publishing a volume on British
history that will be rolled out on this side of the
Atlantic as well; Rugby for Dummies, developed
in Australia, will be tweaked for the UK and North America.
Meanwhile, other European partners are whipping up Dummies
volumes, including EFI in France and VMI in
Germany. The worldwide effort is coordinated “with an
oversight team to adhere to brand standards.”
With its electronic know-how gained from the STM world
—Wiley’s InterScience portal had over 3 million article
downloads in July — the company has also been extending
brands online. Dummies.com hit one million page views
for the first time in May, and in the last year Wiley
formed a strategic alliance with MindLeaders to
extend Dummies into an online product for the corporate
market. For its part, Frommers.com has been given a
profitability boost with features such as travel booking
from the site. Says Schowalter: “It’s actually a money-maker
for us.” (The Internet is helping elsewhere; with chain
sales sluggish, growth is coming mainly from online
accounts such as Amazon, Wiley President and
CEO William J. Pesce told analysts in September.)
Wiley also signed a licensing agreement with Gemini
Industries USA to take Dummies into computer, home
electronics, telephone, and gaming consumer technology
products.
Dummies sales are now up to more than 120 million copies,
and to keep interest piqued back on the brick-and-mortar
side, a “Dummies month” each spring offers enticements
to consumers (last year’s was a free computer mouse;
next year’s is a $5 rebate) and more liberal terms to
retailers. Tending to the small end of the spectrum,
11 full-time Wiley sales reps call on indie booksellers
in the US, backed up by three commission rep groups.
And while the company manages different sales forces
for different retail channels, reps sell all three divisions
into accounts, so that appropriate trade titles are
pitched to the higher ed market, for example, and vice
versa. (About 10% of professional/trade products are
sold through higher ed channels.)
A different sort of cross-divisional collaboration —
bundling — has helped beef up the CliffsNotes brand.
CliffsQuickReview Calculus from the professional/trade
division has been bundled with a higher ed calculus
title (the Cliffs guide was adapted to correlate with
the larger text), a move the company is hailing as a
“new product model” that has gained it market share
and is being considered for other subject areas. Speaking
of Cliffs, following the line’s ejection from Barnes
& Noble stores in lieu of the retailer’s own
SparkNotes series, Karrel says: “We have been more aggressive
in distribution to independent bookstores and other
larger retail stores. The good news is, we’ve almost
seen an increase in sales of our CliffsNotes in the
past 12 months. We’ve also devoted a lot more marketing
and sales resources to the line.” Indeed, as SparkNotes
Associate Publisher Robert Riger comments: “With
our web users growing at an exponential rate, and our
retail sales through Barnes & Noble up dramatically
over last year, we are encouraged by CliffsNotes continued
success. It’s a testament to the incredible demand for
study notes.”
Can there be anything left to publish after Online
Dating for Dummies? Karrel notes that standbys such
as Betty Crocker do well when consumers’ wallets get
thin. Hence the company is releasing facsimiles of relics
such as the 1963 edition of Betty Crocker’s Cooky
Book (aided by consumer feedback from partner General
Mills, which has “invested heavily” in the brand).
But the other side of the globe, it seems, is where
the action is. Titles developed in Asia — including
Privatising China by J.P. Morgan COO Carl
Walter — reflect the company’s faith in the growing
market there, as well as its penchant for hooking up
with blue-chip brand names. As Wiley says in its annual
report: “Our future in China is promising.”
©2003
Publishing Trends
