The first annual People of Publishing (PoP) conference, hosted by the Association of American Literary Agents at the New York Academy of Medicine on September 17, brought together professionals from all corners of the book business, including CEOs from three of the Big Five houses, for a day of knowledge-sharing and networking.
Alongside presentations on the role of “content creators,” page-to-screen adaptation, and the freedom to read, one panel sought to bridge the gap between agents and publishing’s financial decision-makers—the often invisible forces behind every book deal.
At “Markets, Missions & Margins: How Financial Leaders Are Steering the Next Chapter,” attendees heard from Brian Carlesimo, SVP of finance at Dow Jones; Christina Sullivan, CFO at Pushkin Industries; and Katie Ziga, SVP and director of strategy and finance at Penguin Publishing Group about how—and how much—financial strategy contributes to acquisitions decisions. The conversation was moderated by Tara Parker-Pope, chief content officer at Thrive Global.
A linchpin of the conversation was dispelling the assumption that a “natural tension” exists between the financial and editorial sides of the book business, in the words of Parker-Pope, who opened with a question about these perceived party lines.
“We have the same goal: we want to publish good books and lots of books,” Ziga said, adding that it was rare—or, at least, undesirable—to veto their editorial counterparts. “Of course, we're finance people, so we're going to come at it with data, and we're going to try and use that data and their [editors’] passion and enthusiasm for the project to try and make it work.… We do try as best as we can to support the creative side in terms of the buys.”
Ziga also noted that, at Penguin, editors are generally mindful of the financial prospects of a project. “They want the company to do well,” she said. “They want their projects to be perceived as doing well, and they understand that doing well is also a bottom line calculation.”
In terms of the numbers, Penguin uses the author’s track record and the performance of comp titles as a “starting point,” Ziga said.
Sullivan, whose background is in asset management, likened her job to that of building a diversified portfolio, where each podcast or audiobook Pushkin takes on is treated as its own miniature business.
This includes an assessment of risk, but also a consideration of how long it will take to see a return on investment, in the case of episodic or series-based projects. “If you can’t show me an ROI [return on investment] that's going to burn out in some reasonable time frame, then I’d really need to see a lot of qualitative reasons as to why we're doing this, or the cost the investment needs to be quite low,” Sullivan said.
Ziga said ROI evaluations can also come up on the print book side, when considering the resources needed to drum up an audience for a title. “It's not the same landscape that it was in the past, where you would just put an author on the Today Show and that sold your book. Even up front, we're going to be looking at that question of audience and [asking], ‘How are you going to reach them?’ ” she said.
When thinking about ROI, Sullivan said that she has her eye out for stories that are adaptable between formats. “We've been sort of developing this strategy of looking for stories that we can see first as a narrative series within a podcast … and then as a second step, turn it into an audiobook,” she explained. “We’ve been actively building a pipeline for these types of ideas.”
Because data can only look at the past, the panelists said that they rely on their editorial counterparts, at the end of the day, to foster innovation.
Ziga said that Penguin will take a risk on a book based on an editor’s enthusiasm—and a track record of staying in the black. Other factors they’ll consider are the size of an authors’ platform or, for nonfiction books, their perceived expertise, both of which can generate new interest among readers.
“You can’t be too wedded to the data, because it is a creative business, and you have to understand that each book is a new and unique opportunity,” Ziga said. Ultimately, she said, she has to trust editors “to be watching those trends and have their ear to the market”
