University of Nebraska Press

Doc Martyn's Soul: The “What If?” of Marketing Multiple University Presses

University presses are silos joined in many ways by bridges of varying strength. We’re connected through what we do, who we publish, the genres in which we publish, our missions, and our sense of the importance of scholarly publishing. But we’re also disparate, competing, in a sense, against each other, hoping to sell our books to the same people that are interested in another university press’ titles. We market to the same groups, often using similar techniques. This competition forces us into a silo whereby we have to withhold information or data because there is a belief that we will lose our edge if we share such commodities. But what if university presses took a different approach?

What if, instead of keeping marketing information and data separate we actually opened our silo doors and let those crucial marketing leads and contacts leak out? Maybe we could use these leads and contacts, send them outside of the silo to see what they might find and return to us; a set of marketing carrier pigeons, if you will. Can we, in essence, market multiple university presses at once through a combined system of shared marketing efforts? The simple answer is yes. There are few reasons that cannot be skewered with logic and reason and considered argument. The simple reality is that there seems little inclination at this point to do so.

At the recent AAUP meeting in New Orleans collaboration ran the show. It was all everyone talked about. But as a few panelists noted there is little actual, real collaboration. Danny Bellet, publicity manager at Penn State University Press (PSUP), pointed to efforts they have undertaken on their own to use books from other university presses as their “also of interest” titles. PSUP believes it makes sense to highlight these competing titles because of the power of cross pollination but also because if a customer does like one of those books from the other press there is a better chance they’ll like the one from Penn State as well. Simple. And yet this is a relatively isolated incidence. MIT, Nebraska, Florida, and Purdue came together recently to create the “Up In Space” campaign and this has demonstrated some value but it is static and so rather limited in what it can do.

Doc Martyn's Soul: BEA and University Presses

It already seems a long time ago, but the annual book industry melee that is BookExpo America recently came and went. BEA drew its usual crowd of industry insiders, booksellers, librarians, media, and many others, plus about eight thousand members of the paying public. Publishers took booth space in varying degrees of pomposity, striving to outdo each other’s displays so that those few key people at the show (the buyers and the media) took notice of everyone’s latest attempts to reach the top of the best seller charts. In the build up to the show, during its course, and now, a week or so later, I’ve been pondering how BEA and university presses interact–or perhaps, should interact. Having completed my eighth BEA, I should be a part of the jaded, cynical crowd that complains about the hassle of reaching the Javits Center each day (and leaving at the end of the day, which is quite truly a much worse task), the expense of being in New York for a week, the lack of book buyers placing orders any more, the downtrodden, woebegone publishing industry, and so on. But I don’t feel that way. Instead, I am invigorated each year by the sight of people worming their way through overcrowded walkways between publishers of all sizes and ilk. It is a fascinating mix of people and books, and I love it.

UNP has exhibited at BEA for many years, one of the few university presses that might claim diehard status in this regard. Gone are the oft-discussed glory years when university presses hogged whole sections in the Javits Center, when “University Press Row” was actually a row and not just a block. There were seventeen university presses exhibiting this year. UNP and the University Press of New England were the only two UPs who took a double booth, but fifteen others ranged in size from the University of Hawaii Press to Yale and Harvard. All UPs in attendance were waving their university press flags high and proud. But why? What purpose does exhibiting at BEA serve? The popular publishing cynicism that I noted earlier is not simply, truth be told, not only cynical, it is, surely, based on the quite real statistical measures that publishers can apply to exhibiting: book buyers don’t attend in the numbers they used to and they certainly don’t place on-the-floor orders in the quantity they used to. Of course, part of the lack of orders and buyers can be attributed to the decline in independent bookstores, but even those few stores don’t send their staff to BEA in the numbers they used to. So why do we still bother?

Doc Martyn's Soul: Publishing for the Good of Humanities

The humanities have come under fire recently, the discipline finding itself in a “war” zone according to Dr. Stephen Behrendt in his recent lecture, “What Good Are the Humanities, Anyway,” the first in the Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Behrent’s use of the oft-overused war metaphor wasn’t simple laziness or rhetoric, it was instead, a smart, thoughtful way to direct the attention on the humanities away from the negative of battle and towards the positive of imagination, creativity, and enlightenment. Behrendt’s timely lecture set about indicating that there is hope for the humanities yet.

From the perspective of publishing the humanities the battle over what the future holds appears familiar; university presses are consumed with defining our own future at the moment, always hoping to find the “thing” that keeps us relevant. At its heart, the discourses of scholars and publishers boil down to the same thing: trying to determine the value in what we do. Behrendt wondered about the “good” of the humanities, his thesis revolving around the ethics of society, the morals, the questioning and creative thinking that go into modern life. Without the humanities, he argued, our society would be all the poorer, less apt to engage with our limitless imaginations, less likely to make “soldiers reluctant killers.” University presses can and do play a significant role in this thesis. The good in scholarly publishing comes, at least partly, from helping to spread knowledge, to ignite imagination, and to disrupt the accepted (all critical to the good of humanities) through the widespread sharing of ideas and the initiation of critical thinking through the books we publish. These books are, perhaps despite their rather sedentary nature, foot soldiers in the battle to determine value, forging ahead to emphasize the good and the value of the humanities in all their guises.

Scholars in the humanities are exploring new methods to disseminate their work, but the traditional book—whether print or digital—has much value, not as a simple commodity but as a tool with which to hone provocative questions out of academic building blocks for people of all walks of life. Many scholarly books from university presses are designed with broad appeal in mind. These publications perform the role of liberating creative thinking by opening avenues to understanding complex but fascinating subjects, something Behrendt argued is key to the humanities. Such avenues, he noted, can lead to greater societal harmony, a goal the humanities should set because it is unlikely that other disciplines will address it. Such a lofty goal may seem beyond the mere purview of a scholarly book, but the words held within and the added value provided by a university press take the lowly printed tome and give it power to help do the very things Behrendt urged all humanists (and that includes scholarly publishers) to strive for.

Behrendt weaved his lecture from war to the greater good of humanity—an impressive achievement—but what he seemed to indicate was that the good of the humanities is there for all to see, we just need to do a better job of letting people open up the windows and look in. Academia is often an insular, self-serving entity, so providing windows into its murky depths might actually help the greater public (and its media) understand the good of the humanities. University presses are, in some ways, those windows; we provide a mechanism for scholars, the general public, and the media to look into the academe, into the humanities, and see the good that is being done. For if the good of the humanities is to make people think for the betterment of society then the good of the university press is to provide an effective mechanism for disseminating that same thinking.

-Martyn

Doc Martyn's Soul: Buzz Words

Buzz words abound in all businesses; certainly they have a prominent place in publishing. Some buzz words—content, metadata, discovery, analytics, for example—are perennial, always seeming to hover around the peripheries of publishing, creating a shadow, partly because of the weight they carry and partly because no one seems to know what to do with them.

For years, ebooks has been a buzz word. You could choose an adjective at random and it would fit the relationship that publishers have had with the word ebooks: scary, exciting, innovative, repressive, paranoid, overwhelming, cash cow! Other words come and go more frequently. MOOCs (technically not a word, I realize) popped up on the horizon a couple of years ago and publishers frenetically attempted to work out what MOOCs even meant. Now, that word seems far less prevalent; maybe it isn’t creating a shadow but is lurking in one?

Buzz words drew my attention recently when I attended the Library Publishing Forum in Kansas City. University libraries tasked with some form of publishing gathered to discuss their world; a few university presses attended in various capacities. Buzz words flitted in and out of the conference, from the presenters, naturally, but also from the audience in the many side conversations held throughout the two days on Twitter. Perhaps the most oft-used word in Kansas City was “collaboration.” Everyone, it seemed, wished to collaborate with someone else. Collaboration between libraries and their patrons, between libraries and professors or departments, between libraries and other libraries, between libraries and university presses all took their turn in the limelight. I was overwhelmed by the amount of collaboration. The conference was practically a hedonistic orgy of collaborative intent.

I’m a big fan of collaboration. I think that working with others is one of the keys to success. Trying to do everything on your own—whether as an individual or as a business—can only lead down dark paths of ignorance as one tries to learn everything but can succeed in simply never knowing quite enough. So, I’m all for collaborative efforts. At the University of Nebraska Press, we have an excellent set of relationships between our various departments to ensure (or at least strive for) the best possible paths to success are chosen. Within the marketing team we collaborate on projects and ideas every day. Naturally, we collaborate, as does every other university press, with our authors, searching for the most harmonious way to promote their books in conjunction with their own efforts and expertise.

So, a buzz word such as, collaborate, seems easy to comprehend and utilize. There are far fewer shadowy corners in which it can lurk and far fewer opportunities for it to create its own shadow. Everyone seems to want to collaborate so it would be natural for this buzz word to be embraced. As I sat in the conference hall listening to some intriguing and provocative presenters, I was struck, through the Twitter conversations I followed, those I participated in, and through the face-to-face discussions I had, with the idea that maybe the buzz word of the conference was actually manifesting itself as one of those weighty, shadowy buzz words with which no one is truly sure how to interact. Everyone professed a desire to collaborate, which in itself is an excellent thing, but after that profession there appeared to be some confusion about what it actually meant. Who should do the collaborating? How should the collaborating be conducted? Should someone instigate it or manage it or lead it? Is one party’s version of collaboration different to another’s? So many questions about what, in theory, appears a simple concept: let’s all get together and do something really good.

Leaving the conference, these thoughts percolated in my head. I think the takeaway (another good, old, buzz word) is that university libraries and university presses have much in which they can collaborate, in which they can produce even more impressive work through the cumulative expertise that they can bring to a project. I imagine that this nascent conference and organization is going to play a substantial role in the futures of both libraries and presses and that the organization may well be a facilitator in any collaboration that does develop. I also wondered, though, who is going to take the lead here? Who is going to move the buzz word of this conference from the shadows to center stage? I don’t profess to have an answer . . . in many ways that may be the case for all who attended. In fact, I’d argue that the best thing to come out of the gathering was that we all started a new discussion. We gathered together and, although concrete actions did not necessarily come forth, we collaborated. We collaborated simply in the act of thinking and being made to think. And that collaboration may be the best kind of all because it the basis for all that we do well. 

-Martyn  

Doc Martyn's Soul: Teaming Up on Social Media

Aligning Acquisitions and Marketing to Create a Seamless University Press Presence

A social media presence is, by now, a standard component of most university presses. Almost every press spends time and money on social media efforts, attempting to create a presence that befits the overall mission of the press and conveys it to the wider world. But which part of the press should drive social media? To my knowledge, most presses push social media through their marketing departments. Thus, social media becomes a function of marketing, quickly taking on that department’s characteristics and sensibilities. Running social media through marketing makes the most sense. It would be difficult, after all, to argue that social media is not a marketing tool. But what other roles does or should social media play in a university press world? And who else should be involved in the creation of social media content?

To my mind, the symbiosis between marketing and acquisitions seems most relevant to the overall social media presence of a university press. Acquiring editors have been using the precursors to social media for a long time in order to stay in touch with their authors, be a part of the communities interested in their lists, and even to sign books. These traditional forms of communication include letters, email, phone calls, websites, conference attendance, and so on. Each of these was or is a form—to one degree or another—of social media. As such, contemporary social media constitutes another opportunity to engage with those same authors, communities, and books.

Many acquiring editors are actively engaged in social media. In fact, I think it probable that more acquisitions editors have their own Twitter accounts than do marketers. I applaud acquiring editors for being ahead of the adoption curve, for actively pursuing their own platforms from which to position themselves within their fields. I urge marketers across the UP world to do the same thing. Just because we do not sign books does not mean each of us does not have a thriving community of which to be a part or a thought-provoking message to share with our peers, authors, and beyond.

Doc Martyn's Soul: Working for a University Press

Those of us who work for a university press are already well aware that we should count our blessings. Sure, there are frustrations and difficulties to deal with, but for the most part, I think they are common to any job anywhere. However, I find much to make me think that I am extremely fortunate to be in the publishing world and tied to an institution of higher learning.

I was reminded of this great fortune recently when I attended the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues lecture at the Lied Center in Lincoln. The speaker was David Wessel, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and an author himself. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to his well-delivered presentation on the financial politics of Washington, D.C. In some ways, though, the topic and speaker were secondary in importance to the sense of opportunity I experienced while sitting among a few hundred people in what is a wonderful auditorium. For me, being a part of a university and being a part of a college town is one of the primary benefits of working for a university press.

The link between a UP and its parent institution is sometimes fraught with tension; other times it is replete with syncopation and trust. We are lucky at the University of Nebraska Press to have an excellent relationship with the university in general, and I think it is imperative that as an employee of both institutions I take full advantage of the possibilities afforded me. Lectures on campus are one aspect; proximity to academic instruction and thought and discourse are another. In recent weeks I have met with faculty members both on and off campus to discuss forthcoming books. Often, the conversation turns to larger academic or subject matters, and I cannot help but appreciate speaking with people who are at the top of their field. Because we publish a good deal of history (my own specialty), I am, occasionally, able to participate in such discussions, but equally often I find myself stretched academically and I value the faculty members’ insights, which further my own thought.

These wonderful benefits of being at a university press are always close to the forefront of my mind. University presses publish books within a university setting, affording us unique opportunities, partly because there are not many university presses. This rarity should remind those of us who work in the field to appreciate what we have and to take advantage of the curricular and the noncurricular activities in the academe and its related environment.

Attending lectures on campus may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I urge anyone within university publishing to discover the sometimes unseen or unrealized benefits and relish the “university” part of working for a university press. 

-Martyn

Doc Martyn's Soul: The Author-Marketing Relationship

I recently had the great fortune to spend a couple of days in the company of Alan Day and Lynn Wiese, co-authors of the forthcoming UNP book The Horse Lover: A Cowboy’s Quest to Save the Wild Mustangs. We met outside of Valentine, Nebraska, a small community in the north-central part of the state, mainly because it is the closest population center to Alan’s old ranch,  Mustang Meadows, which sits just across the South Dakota border from Valentine. Alan hasn’t ranched Mustang Meadows since 2003, when he closed the door on a rehabilitation program for wild mustangs. The 35,000-acre ranch at one time held fifteen hundred mustangs gathered from across the United States; Alan had a contract with the federal government to manage and care for these beauties.

I’m hopeful you will read Alan and Lynn’s book this spring rather than accept my abbreviated version of the story now. But at this time, meeting with these two wonderful people made me think about the role of relationships in the success of a book and the part marketing can play. Alan and Lynn didn’t need to invite me on what was, in some ways, a very personal trip for them—a time for Alan to reminisce and talk about his experiences with the mustangs and capture them on a series of short video vignettes, and Lynn to see and experience the place that she and Alan had written about and thus “knew” so well but had never actually visited. But they did, and I am grateful. Not only did the trip allow me also to put flesh on the bones of this wonderful story, it gave me the chance to develop a relationship with these talented authors that will, I believe, pay dividends as we begin to market The Horse Lover.

University press marketing departments certainly do not need to know each of their authors personally. Whether or not we have a connection because we have had the chance to look an author in the eye and shake a hand will not affect our desire to make the book the best it can be and to sell as many copies as we possibly can. But developing a body of knowledge about an author--what he or she likes, how they think, what energizes or annoys--can provide to a marketing team the necessary context for a book and the person behind it. Deeper knowledge of any project and its author can only allow for better marketing. But how does a marketing department at a university press, which likely consists of no more than a handful of people (except at the largest presses), build in the amount of time needed to reach out to each of its authors in a more personal manner? Indeed, should that relationship development even be necessary? Or does the Author Information Form suffice? Can we glean enough about a person by simply reading the words in the book at hand and the notes on the form to understand the author and thus provide the marketing needed and deserved? My answer is, yes, to the latter question—at least in general. But I also think that establishing relationships with authors whenever possible can only be a positive. If we are unable to meet each author in person, we can at least use email and telephones to create a semblance of that relationship, and, even then, we have others in house who know the author well enough to give us a sense of who they are.

In this instance, the opportunity to spend some quality time with Alan and Lynn and thus begin a more personal relationship arose. I think we have set ourselves up for success. We have built the foundations of a professional and personal relationship that will guide us through the good times, and we have the understanding and respect for each other that will make the tougher marketing conversations and decisions yet to come far easier. Marketing a book successfully is a complicated and multilayered endeavor; creating a strong author-marketing relationship is a good way to make that effort all the better. 

-Martyn

Doc Martyn's Soul: Why now?

Last week I took a step into modernity and issued my first personal tweet.

I’ve used the descriptor because there is an important clarification to be made between my relatively early-adopter use of Twitter and my newly acquired status on the social media platform.

I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon in early 2008 through my previous job. All tweets crafted were the opinions of that company rather than mine alone. In other words, I acted purely as the mouthpiece on Twitter of that company, penning tweets that promoted the good work being done. I had never, until this week, acted on Twitter as my own agent. So, why now? Since moving to the University of Nebraska Press I have been toying with the idea that I should really have my own voice, albeit one intimately tied to what I do as marketing manager for the Press, on this fascinating platform. Now, I’ve finally taken the plunge.

The delay between first tweeting for work and finally tweeting as an individual is an oddity in some ways. I don’t have a good reason other than I simply didn’t do it. And yet, I believe that Twitter is a powerful tool for learning about any subject in which you have an interest or a stake. Twitter, perhaps more than other social media, allows for more immediate sharing, browsing of ideas and thoughts from others in your industry, and creation of conversations that may or may not continue in other environments. It seems to me that businesses and organizations can use Twitter in a very natural way. The network serves as the old town crier did, letting the world (or those interested, at least) know what the organization is thinking and doing. Such groups have become much more savvy about how they do this on Twitter, moving away from selling to informing and conversing, and I think we have all benefited as a result.  

Doc Martyn's Soul: Does end of the world start with a book?

Polluted waterways, a damaged (beyond repair?) ecosystem, the unnecessary death of humans and animals alike. These notions are, unfortunately, relatively commonplace in the modern media and our modern way of life. They are part of what we know and believe and understand about what we are doing to our planet. Yet, these same notions came from the mind of a man writing in 1971. It is not unusual for science fiction writers (often harbingers of doom) to be prescient or before their time. There are many fine examples—Arthur C. Clarke being an obvious one—but I have just finished reading an eerily forward-thinking book from an author with whom I was unfamiliar, much to my own chagrin. I’m glad I discovered his work. It is, as I’m sure most science fiction fans know, an excellent and engaging work. However, there is a small part of me that wishes I had never discovered this particular book.

That book is Philip Wylie’s, The End of the Dream. He wrote this tableau of doom shortly before his death in 1971. At the time his words likely were read with dread and fear for the long-distant future but accompanied by a disbelief that the proposed scenario could never actually happen. And yet, as I read the book recently, Wylie’s ideas and scenarios seemed hauntingly real; there are examples of some of the things he described happening in real life. The End of the Dream projects an Armageddon-like future where much of mankind has been wiped out by its own ineptitude and greed. But the ways in which that Armageddon approached—so brilliantly depicted by Wylie—are things with which the modern reader, forty years after he penned the words, can to fully comprehend.

By nature, I’m not a negative type, so I believe that mankind will not fall to the demise that Wylie described, but there is a slightly depressing aspect to reading something written forty years ago that depicts quite accurately some of the problems that we face today. A small part of me that wishes I hadn’t read this wonderful book only because I value the environment around me and hope that we can preserve it rather than destroy it. Wylie wrote about a man in the future who is writing a book that documents the events that led to the mass extinction central to The End of the Dream. The dates that character used are long in the past but simply changing the dates and slightly toning down the extent of the ecological excesses make it seem very much like the present world we inhabit.

All good books should make the reader think—that’s a given—and I hope that if you read The End of the Dream it will make you do a few things: stop, look around, and consider the landscape of our present environment; be thankful that what Wylie predicted is still “science fiction”; and take some small steps of your own to preserve our planet so that Wylie’s future doesn’t actually come to pass. 

-Martyn

Doc Martyn’s Soul: A Month in New York – Or so it Seemed

One of the things about the publishing industry that I most enjoy is traveling to conferences and meetings and spending time engaging in conversation with fellow publishing professionals, learning from their experiences, sharing information that is mutually beneficial, and observing what others are doing so that I might embrace new opportunities.

In the past month or so, I have been fortunate enough to spend a couple of weeks in New York City; a week for sales conferences and meetings, and a week for BookExpo America (BEA). The two trips differed in many respects and yet shared the traits listed above that I so appreciate. Discussing our 2013 Fall/Winter list with our sales reps and buyers allows one to delve into the forthcoming titles and engage with people who share an interest in discussing what a book is about and for which target audiences a particular book is best suited. I do not view these meetings as sales events (even though that is quite blatantly what they are) but more as opportunities to meet people who ultimately have the direct contact with readers from which we, as publishers, are somewhat withdrawn. My goal is, obviously, to convince a buyer or sales rep to support what we are doing by buying and selling our books. At the same time, my goal is also to energize these same people about our books in ways beyond simply the bottom line of sales. I want them to like our books, to know our books, to feel connected to what we publish in a more meaningful way. Getting buyers and sales reps to that stage is where the real challenge lies.

Less than two weeks later, I was back in the big city. Attending and displaying at BEA is a joy in and of itself. We have all trotted out the time-worn line, the weary look that says we’re hard-bitten, long-time attendees of this great trade show. But when I stop and really think about it or take a step back while I am there, the BEA doesn’t deserve that treatment; it is, quite simply, a lot of fun. Putting so many book people—whether publishers, readers, booksellers, librarians, or service-providers—in the same room and filling it with books creates an invigorating and rejuvenating environment. I walk into the show room on that first morning and once the crowds start filing in, I realize once again just how fortunate we are to provide people with the enjoyment that we all derive from reading books. As the show progresses and you meet people new and familiar, you find yourself discussing so many different topics, all of which are, at the heart of them, designed to push forward and find new and better ways of doing what we do. BEA is a trade show, but it is so much more, too. Submissions are taken, deals struck, sales made, serendipitous interactions occur, and by the end of it all, my notebook is full of reminders, promises, and ideas of which I hope to take advantage.

So, while at the time the travel seemed long, the time away from home unending, looking back, those two short weeks have done far more than they even promised. That time has once again recharged my batteries, given me a million ideas to ponder, introduced me to new people who I look forward to creating long-lasting relationships with, and sent me back to Nebraska ready to take on the challenges of marketing our incredible list of titles to the larger world.

-Martyn