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.”
