Back in
the 18th century, America's book business called
Philadelphia home.
Mathew
Carey invented the American publishing house. Benjamin
Franklin towered as America's printer. Charles
Brockden Brown started the American novel on its way.
And
then, history tells us, New York stole the book
industry away, reducing Washington Square's
"Publishers' Row" to memory lane.
Well,
guess what? There's exactly one national magazine in
the United States titled Book Business, explaining the
mechanics of a rapidly changing $37.7 billion industry
to an elite circulation of 12,100 subscribers.
It's
not located at One Fifth Avenue or some similar chichi
address in Manhattan. It's at 1500 Spring Garden St.
"When
they say, 'Oh, are you in New York?'" confides
editor-in-chief Noelle Skodzinski in her 12th-floor
office, referring to industry sources, "and I
say, 'No, Philadelphia,' they're kind of surprised,
thinking that a magazine about publishing would
ideally be located in New York.
"But
it doesn't cause a problem, and we certainly don't get
any flak from it."
"Lots
of people probably don't realize we aren't in New
York," jokes associate editor Matthew Steinmetz,
28. "Book Business - that brand - just screams
'New York.'
"People
think you're there. 212? 215?? And, as you know, in
this digital age, information transfers so fast,
there's so much less face-to-face, it almost doesn't
matter where you are."
But, of
course, it does, in a city whose engagement with
printing dates back to 1685.
It
especially matters to Book Business' parent, the North
American Publishing Company, which boasts 16 trade
magazines. 2008 is its golden anniversary year.
The
company began in 1958 when Irvin J. Borowski, who
supported his family as a boy printer of 14 during the
Depression, launched it with Printing Impressions,
still the top magazine for commercial printers. (Borowski
also founded the National Liberty Museum. His son Ned
now runs North American.)
This
year is likewise the 10th anniversary of the magazine
launched by group publisher Mark Hertzog in 1998 as
Book Tech.
"Printing
and publishing is our core," says Hertzog, 54, a
20-year company veteran, in his corner office with a
spectacular view. "We're the largest magazine
publisher for the graphic arts industry."
Book
Tech, he explains, originally focused on book
manufacture and production. But in February 2006,
Hertzog and Skodzinski re-branded it as Book Business
(Frequency: 10 times a year), and broadened coverage
to every aspect of the field except those ruled by its
famous trade rival, Publishers Weekly: reviews and
book chit-chat.
"We
realized there was a niche in the market not being
filled," says Hertzog. He saw a lack of
"real information on technology and business
practices, even as digital readers and print-on-demand
(POD) shook up the field.
"There
wasn't a need in the past," Hertzog surmises,
"because book publishing was, and still is, such
a steeped-in-tradition industry. . . . There are still
typesetters in the book industry - they don't exist
anywhere else."
Indeed,
technology providers told him that if they could just
get the ear of publishers, they could "help them
leapfrog several generations of technology."
Hertzog
says about 10,000 of BB's subscribers are book
publishers, and 2,000 suppliers to the industry. Only
23 percent come from manufacturing and production,
Book Tech's old core audience.
Skodzinski,
36, and managing editor Janet Spavlik, 34, agree that
tech pressure on book publishing makes it an ideal
time for the publication's re-branding. Article titles
have included "E-Books: Have They Finally
Arrived?"; "156 Tips for Improving Your Book
Publishing Business"; and "Random House: The
Best Book Publishing Company to Work For."
Skodzinski,
Spavlik and Hertzog all point to print-on-demand as an
instance of established industry habits under siege.
POD,
Spavlik explains, means "the book is printed when
the order is received." In old-fashioned
publishing, the house guesses how many copies of a
book it can sell, prints them, then prays.
Hertzog
describes the system as "inefficient." Most
book buyers have encountered two upshots of it:
"out-of-print" books a publisher can no
longer supply, and "remainders" - extra
copies available cheap when a publisher overestimates
demand.
According
to Hertzog, POD may scuttle the very notion of
"out-of-print." For a publisher with good
POD, no book is ever out-of-print; it's just not
printed yet. Similarly, remainders may disappear along
with bad publisher guesses.
"It
really has turned the model upside down," says
Hertzog of POD. "You can basically publish a book
for zero money, and not print one until you sell it .
. . it can reduce inventory to zero."
Of
course, some associations haven't faded. "There's
definitely a stigma attached," says Spavlik.
"When people hear POD, they do think of a
lesser-quality book."
Skodzinski
stresses that Book Business tells readers what they
"need to know." For instance, as insiders
wait to see whether Amazon's wireless book device,
Kindle, catalyzes a mass flight from paper books, the
industry faces the old Betamax problem: competing
technological standards.
But
Book Business will be reporting, Skodzinski advises,
that the International Digital Publishing Forum has
created an "ePub standard" and is
"pushing the industry to adopt it." She says
"that will really take a lot of pressure off
publishers, because then they just have to make it
available one way."
Given
its national target audience, Book Business doesn't
favor Philadelphia-area publishers. At BookExpo
America, the annual book publishing convention held in
late May, the magazine's staffers pitched the whole
industry as it passed by.
But
book publishers in Philadelphia, such as Quirk,
provide camaraderie. "We went over to their
offices and had lunch," says Skodzinski,
"which is something we don't get to do all the
time with publishers in N.Y."
Did we
mention that the Book Business staff works very hard?
They also put out a second publication, Publishing
Executive, for magazine execs. And the company runs a
yearly three-day March expo and conference in New York
geared to high-level executives in both book and
magazine publishing. It takes place in Manhattan.
The
crew at 1500 Spring Garden are Philadelphia loyalists,
but not crazy.
"Fifty
percent of our attendees come from the greater New
York area" says Hertzog.
That's
OK, guys. New York is part of North America, even if
it's not cool enough to host Book Business.