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ACADEMIC AUTHORING AT MIDYEAR
June 10, 2002
| SUMMARYJust when it seemed textbook publishing had stabilized into a few giant global players, scrappy but well-heeled upstarts have launched challenges. Authors who had bemoaned the diminished diversity and competition of the 1990s may get what they wished for. Time will tell whether we're truly on the brink of a reconfigured textbook industry. In the meantime, authors have a growing number of competent publishers to send prospectuses. |
By John Vivian
It's old news that the publishing industry has consolidated into a handful of global colossals. The new news is that we may look back on 2002 as the year that these lumbering giants of the industry began to feel the nipping of dogs at their ankles -- even an Atomic Dog.
In the United States, any way, a diverse array of upstart publishing houses is emerging as fast-growing contenders for a share of the education book market. The upstarts are focused. Some are so aggressive they might be called feisty. At Atomic Dog Publishing, which offered low-cost print and web college products, financial executive Lee Krubner has been explicit: "The college textbook industry needs a Southwest Airlines or a Dell. The prices in this industry are too high for the value offered." Atomic Dog sells books in the $30s, against some $100 offerings from the conglomerates that came to dominate textbook publishing through the mergers and consolidations of the 1990s.
Will the upstarts make it? Some have attracted substantial startup capital. Leapfrog Enterprises, whose progenitor was junk-bond king Michael Milken, is offering stock to the public to raise $150 million to, among other endeavors, expand its K-5 product line. The company's school revenue in 2001, $8.5 million, was nothing compared to giants like Pearson or McGraw Hill, but Leapfrog's overall income was double from the year before. Atomic Dog, in the college market, announced yet another round of venture capital as it bought up other upstarts. Besides capital, many upstarts are run by talented people who earlier learned the ropes of the business at the big houses. Atomic Dog's executives, for example, all talk about back when they were with Irwin, Prentice Hall, South-Western, Waverly, West, and Wm.C. Brown.
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Vivian has written about the book industry since 1989. He is the founder of the Society of Academic Authors.
His textbooks include The Media of Mass Communication, which entered in sixth edition in 2002. He teaches at Winona State University in Minnesota.
This report was extracted from a presentation prepared for the June 22, 2002, meeting of the Text and Academic Authors Association in San Diego, California. |
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The Society of Academic Authors invites members to comment on authoring issues:
editor@sa2.info. |
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To build their lists, some upstarts offer top royalty rates. For veteran authors who have seen royalties drop from a standard 15 percent to 12 percent and then 10 percent, well, the good old days are back. A Colorado independent publisher, Morton, has 15 percent as its baseline. Atomic Dog has offered considerably more for seasoned authors with promising proposals. Said Tom Doran, editorial director at Atomic Dog: "One important component of our approach is a throwback: We truly value authors." Prolific author Frank Silverman, who has a forthcoming speech and hearing disorders textbook with Atomic Dog in both print and online format, calls his experience with the company "extremely positive." He's signed on for three additional titles.
Even authors who feel they have been treated right by a major publishing house realize that corporate vicissitudes can pull the rug out from under their relationship. The latest qualms involve Houghton Mifflin authors who have been tracking the stock-market dive of the new parent company, Vivendi of France. Vivendi stock has lost almost have its value in recent months, off-the-book liabilities have been revealed, and the company's debt rating has dropped one level above junk bonds. If Vivendi chooses to jettison Houghton to raise cash, Houghton authors have cause to worry. If the acquiring company already has a textbook list, consolidation of redundant titles is inevitable. We've seen such instability and dislocations with every major consolidation that has led to the current giants: Pearson, Thomson, and McGraw-Hill.
What about self-publishing? Many authors have succeeded in printing their own books with personal-computer technology over the past 20 years but few have put together anything approximating a publishing empire. Despite a lot of rose-tinted crystal-balling, self-publishing has not reshaped the textbook industry. To be sure, a few companies have grown from self-publishing roots. But even the most successful publishers in this model, not even late John Saxon in Oklahoma nor Ron Larson in Pennsylvania, who began as authors with an idea, ever talked about out-Thomsoning Thomson. Such, though, is the mindset in the new breed upstarts like Atomic Dog -- and they're run by business people with marketing savvy and backgrounds possessed by few authors, specialized as they are in their academic disciplines.
Saxon, Larson and a few others aside, the dream of growing a self-publishing enterprise beyond a handful of titles has run up against the same obstacle time and again -- marketing. Yes, the technology for authors to print their own works is available, more so than ever, but what happens to the book when it's off the press. Finding and creating a customer base is daunting and, for most authors, an unsurmountable obstacle. Textbook self-publishing isn't the wave of the future, at least not in forcing the overhaul of the industry that had been predicted.
None of this is to say authors can be assured of stability with startups. Many in this new wave of publishers companies are building themselves with acquisitions, gobbling each other up. But among the young companies are aggressive author-acquisition programs with higher royalties than authors typically find with the surviving old-line names in textbooks.
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