Harvard's
Enthusiasts
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (DECEMBER 2003)
While
many university presses have embarked on a soul-searching
jag as they try to reconcile their lofty mandates with
low-life financial reality, the folks at Harvard
Business School Press appear anything but confused.
“We are not a university press,” says David Goehring,
newly appointed VP and Director of HBS Press. “You could
say we’re a specialty trade publisher. We are mission-driven
to improve the practice of management worldwide, and
that distinguishes us as a business from our competitors.”
The press is itself part of HBS Publishing, a not-for-profit
subsidiary of Harvard University. Rather than being
funded by the parent institution, the publishing unit
kicks in an annual contribution to Harvard Business
School, to fund research that in turn supports development
of the school’s trademark case studies — a “virtuous
cycle,” as they call it.
The press publishes about 45 titles per year — only
one in five authors are affiliated with Harvard Business
School, and all titles are vetted via a rigorous peer-review
process — but books are only one piece of the cross-platform
puzzle. “Part of our core strategy is to publish across
as many platforms as possible,” explains Goehring, a
trade veteran who joined the press in October after
15 years with Perseus Publishing and the former
Addison Wesley Longman. “We look to build franchise
content.” The duo of Robert Kaplan and David
Norton, for example, have published several titles
with the press, including The Balanced Scorecard
and the forthcoming Strategy Maps, along with
numerous HBS Case Studies, which are marketed to the
academic and corporate worlds. Then there are conferences
and workshops, on which Harvard partners with the authors,
plus Harvard’s own branded audio conferences. Don’t
forget a newsletter, the Balanced Scorecard Report;
an interactive program is on tap. “Even though we’re
much smaller than other book publishers,” adds David
Wan, CEO of HBS Publishing, “very few publishing
companies bring all of these formats together and aimed
at one particular area of specialty. We’re in many ways
the enthusiast publication for management ideas.”
Next up is an extention of the group’s “portfolio publishing
strategy,” whereby content is repurposed from one format
to another, as in the “hugely successful” Harvard
Business Review paperback line (46 titles strong),
which compiles articles from the magazine, grouped around
various themes. A similar paperback line, Harvard
Business Essentials, is launching now, with two
more series to come in the spring. Moreover, strategic
partnerships with business players such as The Conference
Board and the Society for Human Resource Management
will lead to other book series, with still more partnerships
on tap.
Editorial offices are based in Boston, augmented by
a small New York editorial and advertising sales office.
The press is distributed to the trade domestically by
CDS, with international distribution in most
territories by McGraw-Hill. The press has also
launched a partnership with Random House Kodansha
in Japan, which will publish about 15 HBSP titles
in translation per year and is aimed to generate “more
of a critical mass of our books using the HBS Press
brand,” says Wan, himself having joined Harvard in 2002
after serving as President of Penguin Group and
heading up Simon & Schuster’s K-12 program.
Part of the formula includes aggressive retail tactics.
“We were one of the first companies to have a branded
store at Amazon, because our brand does
have weight with the consumer,” says Goehring. The HBSP
website generates more than 10% of total revenues, replete
with opt-in email newsletters based on a topic or product
line. The company is now working with a number of retail
customers to extend the brand at point-of-sale, the
first fruits of which are a boutique dedicated to HBS
Press at the Rockefeller Center Barnes & Noble.
The company hopes to extend the program to other B&N
outlets and different accounts as well.
©2003
Publishing Trends
