Reidy Urges Publishers and Retailers to See Challenges as "Opportunities"
by Cindy Crosby, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 11/12/2008
In her second and more upbeat address, Simon and Schuster's President and CEO Carolyn Reidy called for CBA publishers and retailers to "expand their universe." Referencing the current downturn, Reidy cautioned the approximately 200 publishing professionals and a handful of retailers in attendance that "Ever since I have been in the publishing business it has been considered an industry in trouble…you could reliably mark your calendar that every few years the mainstream media would run a big thumb-sucking article signaling the end of our days. " Reidy said publishers have met challenges in the past by adapting to new realities, changing business practices and putting forth their best publishing efforts.
While declining readership is certainly an issue, Reidy told PW that "now we have the chance to actually find the reader where they are spending their time—in front of a screen—and cement a relationship with them through e-mail newsletters, viral marketing, mobile delivery and other tools." Publishing survives, she noted, because readers have a fundamental need for information, inspiration, and entertainment, "and they get that in a book, directly from an author, in an unfiltered way that they cannot get from any other medium."
Reidy mentioned several challenges, including powerful retailers who have ambitions to be publishers. Reidy also wondered out loud that with self-publishing so easy, "is it only a matter of time before one of (the major authors) actually strikes out on his or her own?" However she affirmed that "editorial expertise, the desire to reach readers with great writings, skill and imagination, and the ability to figure out how to get writers' words in front of readers," will always be in demand.
Saying she sees these challenges as opportunities, rather than threats, Reidy urged publishers to do the hard work of making entire catalogues available as eBooks for electronic reading devices, to create possibilities for print-on-demand when a title becomes slow selling, to design new work flow and supply chain practice systems, and to delineate new policies to address complicated issues such as international territories, pricing, the security of our copyrights and royalty rates for those formats.
Reidy noted that the Christian publishing and bookselling segment has "its own set of thorny problems," and of such specialty book retailers as CBA, mystery bookstores, and ethnic bookstores, "I'm not sure that it is possible any longer to be so highly specialized and survive." The Christian demographic has expanded, she said, "it is more diverse than it formerly was, and they want one-stop shopping where they can find books that meet their informational, financial, lifestyle and entertainment needs as well as their Christian product needs…by limiting our choices in publishing and retailing to only those books that have a direct Christian message we are effectively driving them to buy from the competition."
She pointed to William P. Young's wildly successful, The Shack—"the bigger question for me is why we were so reluctant to take a chance in the first place, to step out of our comfort zone, accept the challenge of publishing something not readily categorized, and challenge our readers to come along with us." Reidy called for publishers, retailers, and agents and authors to "make the tent under which we operate a larger tent, to expand the universe of what's possible in the world of Christian publishing and retailing," while not exceeding generally accepted Christian orthodoxy or offending a store's customer base.
"The publishing industry and the Christian publishing segment are both at a moment where doing what we have always done will not yield us the results we need to continue moving forward in today's world," Reidy said, later adding, "Expanding the universe of that which is possible for us could very well be the key to survival, let alone future growth."
