Business Transformation and Technology Improvement - Podcast Episode with Michael Cairns

 

 

Something a little new for me: I was asked for an interview on Klopotek Radio a few months ago and the episode has just been released.  Here are the release notes which accompanied the broadcast.

I've considered doing a podcast for a few years now and a colleague and I are considering launching something soon.

Release notes:
 

Business Transformation and Technology Improvement – podcast with Michael Cairns Michael Cairns is the CEO and founder of Information Media Partners, a business strategy consulting firm. With a wide career span in publishing and information products, services, and B2B categories, Michael has held executive roles at several publishing companies including Macmillan, Berlitz, and R.R. Bowker. 

He has also held board positions with the Association of American Publishers, the Book Industry Study Group, and the International ISBN Agency where he served as Chairman. 

In this [Klopotek Radio] episode, Michael shares his experience as a consultant helping content-centric business owners to transform their businesses and improve their technology. He talks about his passion for figuring out problems and setting out a roadmap to solve them. Michael also gives his thoughts on how publishing models and media businesses are transforming and evolving during the pandemic and post-pandemic era. ​ 

Besides that, you will also hear Michael talk about, 

• How can content-centric firms better assess their business needs for being fit for digital change? 
• How could companies evaluate their current technology to better understand where they compete? 
• What organizations can do to achieve a smooth digital transformation. 

The release news of the annual publishing technology market survey, published by Information Media Partners, Publishing Technology Market Report – 2021. Himself, a book lover, and a marathon runner, and why he would like to have dinner with Muhammad Ali and have a coffee with Barack Obama.

We hope you’ll enjoy listening to this episode and share it with others you think may be interested.

Report: Open Access Policy may be Unsustainable for Publishers

An eye-opening report by consulting firm FTI, forecasts a massive financial cost to UK university presses and journal publishers if proposed UK Research Institute (UKRI) guidelines on open access are fully implemented. The report also suggests that UK based research contributes more than 60% to the economy than it costs to produce and this impact would be under threat as publisher business model erode. The report estimates that in the period 2022 – 2027 the loss to UK based journal publishers would be £2.0B and that monograph publishing (already on a shoestring) would be unsustainable for many current publishers.

The UKRI policy has not been finalized but it broadly understood to follow the Plan S open access directives: UKRI funded articles should open access immediately on publication, with no an embargo, free to access and under a copyright license which maximizes access.  

UK research itself may be comprised as output would migrate to other markets and other countries where legacy business models would be sustainable, and while other countries and markets might also be on an open access trajectory, the fact the UK would move earlier and faster might perpetuate some of these older models. The report refers to this as a ‘first mover disadvantage’.

The report won’t speculate on what options may be considered by publishers when this UKRI policy is adopted; but, this policy may have devastating effects on publishers, particularly smaller, association or membership-based publishing in niche markets. It is also unclear how much researchers, academics and libraries may benefit since in the totality of academic research this policy might immediately impact only a small amount of published content. Libraries will still continue to license large fee-based content to support their constituencies. What the report points out is the potentially disproportionate negative impact on UK based publishers and that some would ‘go out of business’.

Read the full report here

MediaWeek (Vol 13, No 13): Bloomsbury, The Strand Bookstore, Ebooks & Libraries, Education & Academic Publishing

Roundup of publishing news from the past several months.

Harry Potter publisher says Covid has weaved magic over book sales (Guardian) 

“It is a complete surprise because we had as grim a beginning to the pandemic as everyone else in March when 100% of our customers shut down worldwide,” said Nigel Newton, the chief executive.

“And then we found that early on people showed short attention spans and were watching TV. But then reading reasserted its power and people found they could escape through books, and sales have been booming ever since.”

When New York’s Strand Bookstores asked for help, 25,000 online orders flooded in (WaPo) 

“How can I not love my book community for helping like this?” she said in a phone interview. “I really don’t think that we’re just a bookstore. I think we’re a place of discovery and a community center. When I ask for help and they respond this fast, it’s so heartwarming.”

She said in the interview that she hopes the store will survive through the end of the year, and then she’ll reevaluate its future.

Chinese censors target German publishers (DW)

As China tries to expand its influence abroad, it's going beyond politics and business to target literature and publishing. German publishers are among those that have been targeted by censors,

Publishers Worry as Ebooks Fly off Libraries' Virtual Shelves (Wired)

But the surging popularity of library ebooks also has heightened longstanding tensions between publishers, who fear that digital borrowing eats into their sales, and public librarians, who are trying to serve their communities during a once-in-a-generation crisis. Since 2011, the industry’s big-five publishers—Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan—have limited library lending of ebooks, either by time—two years, for example—or number of checkouts—most often, 26 or 52 times. Readers can browse, download, join waiting lists for, and return digital library books from the comfort of their home, and the books are automatically removed from their devices at the end of the lending period.

Skyhorse Publishing’s House of Horrors (Vanity Fair)

“I was thinking about what makes Skyhorse different from other companies,” says Lyons, during a wide-ranging interview this spring, “and it goes back to being open to publishing books that other people might not publish for a variety of reasons.” Those reasons might include a short turnaround time, or disinterest from other publishers. They also, one could argue, include dubious scientific claims that toggle between the merely controversial and the outright inaccurate. Skyhorse has made millions by differentiating itself from traditional publishers, releasing books on a rapid schedule and courting controversies along the national divide, from cancel culture to freedom of the press to hallmarks of the misinformation age. But accounts from former employees paint a picture of a company with internal demons too: reports of a toxic workplace, everyday misogyny, and the human costs of mismanagement in an industry always anxious about its margins.

Profile of Penguin Random House and CEO Madeline Macintosh: Best sellers sell because they are Best sellers (NYT)

To almost everyone’s surprise, the answer to those unnerving questions, at least for the moment, has been: Yes. After a steep drop at the start of the pandemic, book sales not only recovered but surged. Unit sales of print books are up nearly 6 percent over last year, according to NPD BookScan, and e-book and digital audiobook sales have risen by double digits. Reading, it turns out, is an ideal experience in quarantine.

“People were watching a lot of Netflix, but then they needed a break from Netflix,” Ms. McIntosh said. “A book is the most uniquely, beautifully designed product to have with you in lockdown.”

As the industry’s Goliath — as big as the four other biggest publishers combined, analysts say, with authors from Barack and Michelle Obama to Toni Morrison — Penguin Random House has fared better than some of its rivals. Of the 20 best-selling print books of 2020, eight (by far the largest share) are Penguin Random House titles, according to NPD BookScan. It has had 216 New York Times best sellers this year. Penguin Random House’s U.S. sales grew 5.2 percent in the first half of the year, helping to soften a global sales dip of around 1 percent, according to an earnings report from its parent, the German conglomerate Bertelsmann. Overall sales at several other major publishers — Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt — all fell further, according to filings.

Corporate restructuring continues at Houghton Mifflin: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt cuts 525 jobs as COVID-19 accelerates online learning (Boston Globe)

Beyond workforce reductions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said it will also save on manufacturing costs by shifting the business from print to digital offerings. The company plans to “retire” older systems and print-centric processes. Lynch said the new structure creates a “more focused company with increased recurring digital subscription revenue that produces higher margins and free cash flow.”

Other education publishers, including Pearson, Cengage, and McGraw-Hill, have also been shifting more of their business from printed textbooks to software and digital tools. The process has taken several years but is likely to be sped up by the pandemic’s impact on schools.

Moody's downgrades HMH (Yahoo) 

In the UK a group is asking the government to look in to academic publishing and eBooks:  Open letter calls for ‘investigation of academic publishing industry’ (RI)

The letter states: ‘The Covid-19 pandemic – where students and researchers have not been able to physically visit libraries and access paper books – has brought the many market issues regarding ebooks sharply into focus, as ebooks have become our only purchase option. As lockdown began in March we observed students borrowing as much of the print material that they needed as possible, but as libraries shut academic librarians then did their best to source digital versions. 

‘Due to UK copyright law university libraries cannot simply purchase an ebook in the way an individual can – instead we are required to purchase a version licensed specifically for university use. Public policy to support education and research should support a healthy ebook market, but we in fact see the opposite.’

Large-scale study backs up other research showing relative declines in women's research productivity during COVID-19. Inside Higher Ed

A new study of enormous scale supports what numerous smaller studies have demonstrated throughout the pandemic: female academics are taking extended lockdowns on the chin, in terms of their comparative scholarly productivity.

Online Test Proctoring Claims to Prevent Cheating. But at What Cost? (Slate)

While some aspects of the pandemic-era classroom translate just fine to a digital format, exams have become more complicated. Typically, students take the SAT, the GRE, or any number of midterms or finals in classrooms with proctors standing in the front of the room. But with students at home, some instructors have turned to proctoring software to ensure students aren’t using unauthorized notes, textbooks, or other tools to aid their test taking.

MediaWeek Report (Vol 13, No 10): Business Strategy in Time of Change

Some interesting recent clips related to publishing media and business strategy.

At Information Media Partners, I have been helping clients with sales, revenue and cost containment strategies to mitigate the issues presented by the difficult economy.  We are always happy to take a call (908 938 4889) or email to discuss your particular challenge.

Business Strategy:

From McKinsey: Covid-19 and student learning in the United States.  The Hurt Could Last a Lifetime

Even more troubling is the context: the persistent achievement disparities across income levels and between white students and students of black and Hispanic heritage. School shutdowns could not only cause disproportionate learning losses for these students—compounding existing gaps—but also lead more of them to drop out. This could have long-term effects on these children’s long-term economic well-being and on the US economy as a whole.

Several articles from From Strategy+Business: How managers are building new skills to deal with the pandemic:

And starting in May, across the many interviews I’ve been conducting with senior leaders, I’ve heard more optimism in their voices — a sense that their companies were settling into a new normal, and that for all the health and economic damage the pandemic has caused and all the uncertainty that remains, they were seeing positive developments in the cultures of their companies.
A big reason for this shift is that the practice of certain core leadership skills that everyone knows are important (yet many struggle to implement) is suddenly becoming a daily habit.

And: The ability to cope with ambiguity is at a particular premium.

But when the COVID-19 national emergency was declared on March 13, owners Thomas de Geest and Rossanna Figuera realized they had exactly enough cash on hand to give their workers two weeks’ severance pay. Tearfully, they said goodbye and emptied their bank account. Once they made the painful decision to let their employees go, the couple made arrangements with creditors and landlords. Then they focused on what they could do to help others. They found the answer in their mission: to give people the happiest moment of their day.

And: To lead in a changed world make yourself essential

Everything you do now will be scrutinized: Is it essential or not? Companies holding out for a post–COVID-19 bounce back to things as they were will be sorely disappointed. Instead, consider this just the beginning of shifting behavior from consumers. That reality calls for a new kind of thinking and action from companies: Double down on digital transformation, know what to hold, manage in shorter increments, and plan for operational resilience.

Academic Publishing:

Techdirt notes the growth of preprint servers across all major publisher platform as a bi-product of the Covid-19 challenges.

An excellent new survey of the field, "Preprints in the Spotlight", rightly notes that preprints have attained a new prominence recently thanks to COVID-19. The urgent global need for information about this novel disease has meant that traditional publishing timescales of months or more are simply too slow. Preprints allow important data and analysis to be released worldwide almost as soon as they are available. The result has been a flood of preprints dealing with coronavirus: two leading preprint servers, medRxiv and bioRxiv, have published over 4,500 preprints on COVID-19 at the time of writing. The publishing giant Elsevier was one of the first to notice the growing popularity of preprints. Back in 2016, Elsevier acquired the leading preprint server for the social sciences, SSRN. Today, Elsevier is no longer alone in seeing preprints as a key sector.

Ithaka: University Presses in Time of Covid-19

Over the past few weeks, Ithaka S+R has conducted conversations with a variety of university press directors to get a sense of how they are faring during this uncertain and challenging time. We spoke with a total of 11 directors representing small, medium, and large presses from public and private universities, all in the US. The discussions were wide ranging, touching on everything from how they were coping with the practical issues around pivoting to a remote workforce, to the broader question of the expected impact of the pandemic on their current and future programs. It should be noted that many of these conversations took place before the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing struggle to address systemic racism that has seized all of us personally and reverberated within our organizations. This too is shaping presses in powerful ways, but we confine this report to our exploration of their responses to the COVID challenge. Here is what we learned from these discussions, starting today with the present circumstances. In a second piece, we will examine how press directors are looking ahead to the future.

Culture:

The art of political writing from The New statesman:  

The art of political writing: Bernardine Evaristo, Colson Whitehead, Edna O’Brien and more Orwell Prize-shortlisted writers explain how politics informs their prose.

A Selected List of My Popular Presentations

I have placed many of my public industry presentations and speeches on Slideshare but I thought I would link to some of the more popular posts.  Most of these are available for download but if you have a problem let me know.

	The First 100 Days: A template to build your action plan as boss.	Views: 36,221
	Digital Transformation: A seminar session for management	Views: 44,683
	Education Publishing: Market Overview (2017)	Views: 8,794
	Publishing Market Overview (2008)	Views: 4,769
	K-12 Education Market Survey (2018)	Views: 5,465
	EdTech Market Overview (2017)	Views: 4,209
	SSP: Creating Reusable Content (2013)	Views: 3,617
	ALA: Parallel Universe:  Libraries and Publishers (2011)	Views: 3,444
	Frankfurt Bookfair: Intelligent Supply Chain (2002)	Views: 2,816
	NFAIS: Blockchain Applications for Publishing (2019)	Views: 1,355
More at Slideshare with this link