Episode 25: BISG – Future Proofing Your Workflow

This episode features a recording of a panel discussion I led with Mary McAveney, Chief Marketing Officer at Open Road Integrated Media, at the BISG 2022 Annual Meeting. The discussion, titled “Future Proofing Your Workflow,” aimed to cover some open questions about the process of becoming more prepared for the future of publishing, whatever that might look like: Where do we start? How do we know what the future might look like? And will this ever end?

My main takeaway from the conversation, and what I hope you also are able to glean from it as you listen, is that being adaptable and being able to engage with change, whenever and however it happens, is more important than seeking out change specifically. 

I do highly recommend that you listen to the rest of the sessions from the BISG, especially the keynote by Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette Book Group. BISG has graciously uploaded all of the recordings of the sessions to a playlist on their YouTube page here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2tH-dwEMHs&list=PL_yl6l18-hIsm6tdy-xivx_JTgGIT5H2x

You might also be interested in listening to my previous interview of Mary McAveney in episode 14 of the BookSmarts Podcast, where we discussed book discovery:https://booksmartspodcast.com/2021/09/29/episode-14-mary-mcaveney-on-book-discovery/

Transcript

Joshua Tallent 

Welcome back to the BookSmarts podcast! Before we get going with the episode today, I do want to take a moment and apologize for the long delay between episodes. It was not my intention, it just kind of happened. I went to the London Book Fair and actually got some really good audio that I thought was going to work for the podcast. And then I found out afterwards that all the background noise was just way too much. I couldn’t find a way to get it cut out. So unfortunately, that episode didn’t happen. And then I got sick, had some other things going on. And then other meetings and travel and things just kind of got in the way. So anyway, I apologize for the delay. I do have other episodes lining up for the future. So hopefully, we’ll get back on our kind of standard schedule here pretty quickly. And maybe through the summer, we can have some great conversations about some of the topics that we find interesting about publishing and technology and things like that.  This week on the episode, I’m going to bring to you a recording of a session that I led with Mary McAveney at the BISG annual meeting, back in April. And this was a really great conversation about the future of publishing and kind of future proofing your workflows, talking about change and how change is important and obviously there’s a lot of change happening in publishing. I think the key thing that I want you to take away from this, hopefully it comes out pretty well in the conversation, is that change isn’t something that we necessarily need to focus on or push for, but being adaptable and being able to engage with change, when it happens, I think is a really important thing for all of us in the industry. You know, it’s not a not an easy thing to change. Sometimes we have, you know, especially if you have a large organization and you’re moving in one direction, sometimes it’s hard to—hard to make a lot of change. But at the same time, becoming adaptable, being able to, you know, fill out the flexibility of your organization of your team, of the work that you do, I think makes it easier to adapt to the things that happen—that inevitably will happen—in the industry. So anyway, this hopefully is a great little conversation for you. Many thanks to BISG for allowing me to use it. And for those of you who didn’t get to go to the BISG annual meeting, I’ll have a link in the show notes where you can go watch all of the different sessions at the meeting. They’re all up on YouTube on the BISG YouTube channel. So it’s a great conversation that we had, Mary and I, and I appreciate Mary as well agreeing to sit down with me at the meeting and have this conversation. I think she brings a lot to the table, as you probably heard in the previous interview that I did with her a couple months back. If you’ve missed that, I’ll also have a link in the show notes for that as well. Or you can check it out in the BookSmarts podcast [website] or in your podcast app. So anyway, that’s it. Thanks for for listening this week and I will start us off with the introduction from Alan here at the BISG meeting.

Alan Johnson 

I’m Alan Johnson, Director of Information Management at Baker and Taylor and I’m also a member of the board of the Book Industry Study Group finishing my first term. I’m pleased to introduce our third panel who are talking about future proofing your work. Joining us to share their thoughts on these important topics are Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Education at Firebrand Technologies, and host of the BookSmarts podcast. Joshua is also vice chair of the board. And I think I need to see your book cast—your podcast. He’s joined by Mary McAveney, Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Open Road Integrated Media. Joshua and Mary, welcome, and please take it away.

Joshua Tallent 

Thank you, Alan. Hi, guys! We get the pleasure of being right before lunch. So, we’re going to try not to stand in your way if we possibly can. But Mary and I, like Alan said, we’re trying to—we want to talk just a little bit about the future of where things are going. Workflows, obviously a big part of this—there’s a lot of great conversations so far today. And I think Michael Pietsch really did a great job of explaining where we are, in many ways, but the challenges that we—that we’re facing as an industry. So, before we get kind of too deep into this, I want to—we want to talk about three different questions. And the first question is, Where do we start? The second question is, How do we know what the future might look like? Good luck… And the third is, Will it ever end? So, we’re going to started off with the easy one. How do we get started? So, Mary, what do you think about that? What do you what do you think is our first step in many ways on this?

Mary McAveney 

Yeah, I think, you know, touching on a lot of what has been said here earlier is, you know, understanding the workflow is a big piece of where you start. And I can say that at Open Road, we really did take a dramatically new approach to our workflows. And what we—what we actually did was what we would call, sort of “democratizing the technology” so that everybody in the organization was empowered to make change, to come up with new business ideas, to be involved in the development, to be the entrepreneurs behind the company, that it didn’t come from the top down. And I think that was something that was really important for us.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And we’re starting, we’ve talked about people in the last session, especially but we also talked about process and we’ve talked about all these different aspects of the publishing industry. I think we have to start looking at all of those, you know, there’s, there’s a value and learning more about what those things mean for us in our industry and in the specific company we work in. The committee groups, I think, are a really important part of that. And I can’t stress enough that I think there’s so much value in the publishing industry getting behind those committees, engaging those committees—there was a really well done conversation earlier, pushing that as well. I think it’s learning: the first step is usually to learn something, and step back and take a look at things differently.

Mary McAveney 

Right. And what the committee chairs were saying about the sharing of information across the organization, and not siloing, you know, metadata, for example, with one group, but actually making that accessible to everyone. We’ve taken a very tech- and data-centric approach to that, which we can talk about, but that has, that has had huge impact on our business.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, I think it’s had a huge impact on everybody, the—you know, the focus—and, and remote work has made that different, as well, we’re approaching things differently now than we were two years ago, in so many different ways. But if we can, if we can take the time to learn and take the time to, to engage with the rest of the industry and other publishers and what they’re doing… So that’s where we might start. Right, so moving forward from the where we might start, though,

Mary McAveney 

The future. How do we know what the future looks like?

Joshua Tallent 

And we don’t, we don’t know what it looks like, there’s so many things that are that are unknowns. And again, I think Michael did a great job of that. So where do we think we should be looking, though, you know, the future is obviously going to be more digital. We’ve been hearing that for years. I don’t know. When I got started in this—I was in digital publishing in 2002, before there was such a thing as most people thought of as an ebook—you know, the future is more digital. What does that mean? What do you think we—we’re going to see?

Mary McAveney 

So I think we’re going to see—I think, you know, there’s no crystal ball. But, you know, I think we’re going to see changing—changes in formats. I think as the future becomes more digital more online, I think it actually gives publishers an opportunity to really understand their consumer better, in many ways. You’re not abdicating the relationship with the consumer to a third party, you have access, you have direct contact, you have that one-to-one relationship. And once publishers establish that, once they can understand what their consumers are looking for, I think you’re going to see a lot of different formats. I think it’s not just ebooks that are, you know, the new horizon, to your point, not new anymore. But I think there are going to be many changes when you start understanding how consumers are absorbing content right now and how younger people are absorbing content, and maybe how, you know, people who aren’t traditionally part of our—considered part of our audience are, are ingesting their content now.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And we’ve seen those, those changes happen in really kind of odd ways, you know, ebooks were around, and then the Kindle came out, and all of a sudden, everybody kind of thought, oh, that’s an interesting format for me to read my book in. And then, you know, audiobooks have been around for a long time. But when content started to become more available in audiobook formats, then people started listening to it more, because there’s more of the stuff that I want to listen to. I don’t know that we can predict what the next version, the next format, the next engagement approach is going to be. But we can predict as publishers that we need to be ready for it. Right? We can always be looking for new, innovative ways to engage. And I think Rachel made this point earlier that publishing in many ways is a is a technology industry. There’s still many things we can do as “technology” companies and as publishers. And the same thing I would say about content. I think this is probably the biggest thing. And I you hear it all the time, of course, it’s nothing new. But publishers are really great at finding the right kinds of people to say the things that need to be said or to tell the stories that need to be told. And that content focus—you know, Michael made the point earlier that we’ve, we’ve seen a ton of movies and TV shows that have come as a result of books first, and that means something, that’s the starting point for the story or the information, and publishers have the value to bring to the table in that way.

Mary McAveney 

Definitely. That’s—it’s a really interesting point. And I don’t see them having to give up one to embrace another. I mean, I loved Rachel’s comment that we need to think of ourselves as a technology industry. But we are—first and foremost, we think of ourselves as a content industry. And you’re absolutely right. But that technology is going to make that content, you know, so much more important, so much more broadly reaching.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And every publisher has a different approach, right? Yeah, if you’re an education publisher, your approach is different than the trade publisher is different than whatever else. But we’re seeing I think, broadly, the value of how publishers tell stories, adapting to the needs of different individuals. My youngest child, 14 years old, she loves reading manga, and you know, and comic books, and graphic novels. And that’s a format that has taken off in recent years, because people want to read it. So how can publishers that are in these different parts of the—sectors in the industry really engage the new idea, engage the new format, in a way that’s going to be beneficial long term?

Mary McAveney 

Yeah. Well, I think a big part of that is also something that came up in the committee meetings as well, which is, you know, getting the data on your readers understanding what they’re reading, understanding where the trends are. Those are—that’s invaluable to discovering what people are actually reading. I think manga flew under the radar for quite a long time before, many, many, you know, prominent trade houses got behind it.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. So, we’re figuring out where things are going. What about sustainability? That’s obviously another big topic that we’ve talked about today. You know, there’s a future in that as well. And how do you think we can approach that?

Mary McAveney 

Yeah, there definitely is. I don’t have the answers to that. I think, you know, that’s something clearly people are grappling with. I think the whole supply chain question is risking—is a risk to real sustainability, because right now all you want to do is get your hands on the raw materials to make the books and, you know, it’s sort of like, you know, the hierarchy of needs, right? Sustainability is not going to be at the core as long as there’s this shortage, but you know, hopefully, you know, actually more digital, bigger digital focus will improve the reach without having to rely so much on the physical. I mean, yeah, I think…

Joshua Tallent 

In essence, we become innovation labs, right? Publishing becomes a place where we can start to look at innovation. We’ve seen that obviously, with print on demand, we’ve seen it with digital print runs. There’s so many things that are happening. But that’s where again, the future of publishing will benefit from more innovation, more discussion, more engagement, and just more testing, more trial and error, because it’s going to take time, for things to really flesh out for us to really see—but we can’t, unless we’re innovating in the different areas that affect us, and kind of thinking about thinking about the future, right? Then it’s going to take time to get to that point where that thing actually sticks, when we find that thing that’s going to make the difference.

Mary McAveney 

So Right. And, you know, we were talking when we were chatting about this panel, we were talking about not being afraid to fail, and how the big companies like Google have, you know, the 70/20/10, where 70% of your time is spent really focusing on the golden goose, your primary business, and 20% of it is, you know, the new ideas that have made it through to test, and then the 10% is just trying to come up with the next pie-in-the-sky idea that, you know, hasn’t been tested yet, but you’re actually devoting resources to finding that new idea, to innovating.

Joshua Tallent 

It’s a find-and-fail, right? It’s a—it’s a try-and-fail approach. It happens across the board. You know, we saw Amazon do this with bookstores, you know, it’s a “Let’s try something new. Let’s see what’s going to happen.” You know, I think Michael’s point earlier about publishing having a history of failure, you know, a history of trying new things and seeing what’s going to work that’s our—that’s in our blood, right? That’s not—that’s not something new, but we have to try, and then we’ll fail or we’ll try and then we’ll succeed and there’s going to be—there’s going to be that, that process all the way through. So, will it ever end do you think will ever—

Mary McAveney 

I hope not! It’s a—change is great. And, uh, you know, if you, you know, the takeaway I had from Michael’s chat this morning was really, you know, so much change in the industry, in the history of the industry. And of course, it’s going to continue to change and of course we’re ready for it. That’s, that’s who publishing people are.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And that’s where we should be. It’s good for us. I think Allison’s point earlier as well: “What matters is what we do next,” right. There’s always going to be another step, there’s always going to be another thing, the change is always going to be there—and change isn’t a problem, you know, we don’t change for the sake of change, we change because we know we need to, and because we, we have value in the end of that change. And so there’s a there’s a process that, that we should be working toward, to engage the change in a profitable way, and not be afraid of it, not be not be unwilling to go that realm.

Mary McAveney 

Right, there’s opportunity change, and then there’s the change that comes from crises. And they’re not—they don’t look so different on the other end of them. But your point is well made.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. Cool. So, we have a few minutes before we close, are there any questions, any thoughts about change about the future, about where we’re going? And kind of how—how have you approached this in your publishing house? And you’re welcome to prognosticate about the future, too, this is a great opportunity to do that.

Unknown Attendee

So, I know one tool publishers have not been utilizing yet, but probably will very shortly, is the direct-to-consumer relationship that kind of flourished during the pandemic and direct online sales. But how are you thinking about balancing the increasing need and hope from consumers that their privacy will be respected with collecting data and improving the user experience?

Mary McAveney 

So that’s a really great point. Really good question. And couple of things: The way we think about it is one, I don’t feel like we need ecommerce to have a one-to-one relationship with our customer. And that’s a really important thing for for us to all recognize. That’s a heavy lift, ecommerce, particularly when it comes to digital. But knowing your customer and understanding what they are interested in purely from their behavior is another, which of course does lead into your question about privacy. And I think if you’re, you’re using your own first party data, the information you’re collecting from the consumer, and you’re using it for the benefit of that consumer, and you’re not selling it, and you’re not using it to, to invade their privacy, I think that that is really what the laws and the regulations are trying to get at; they’re trying to protect that sale of consumer data to a third party who is not using it in the same way that they believe. When you go to a website, and you’re clicking on something, and that website offers you a coupon for purchase or something similar that you like, that’s a service. And I think we have to distinguish between what’s a service to the consumer, and the way you’re using your first party data to what it—what is, you know, just a play for monetizing that consumer.

Joshua Tallent 

And being very transparent as well with the consumers or the people who aren’t consuming, they’re just visiting: what it is you’re doing with the data that they’re providing and what that data is, that’s obviously very important. And Ken made the point earlier that the supply chain committee is looking at issues of security. And that’s something that I’ve been pushing on the board as well, I think it’s important for us as an industry to know that, you know, security, data security, information security is really important. And we have a lot of it. We have not just the information we’re creating and developing with our authors. But we also have a lot of data about people that buy things from us and engage with us in different ways. And that’s all—it’s a very important thing for us to consider. Yeah. Any other questions or prognostications?

Unknown Attendee

Hi. So, the question touches back on some of the conversations we’ve been having all day, lots about technology, lots about how we are changing internally as an industry, what we see in the future, and obviously, diversity, inclusion, accessibility. So, what I would love to hear your thoughts on are: all of the things that we’re talking about, obviously need to happen in our good, but they’re very internal to us as an industry. And I agree without the accessibility of ebooks—yeah, let’s start there—but what if you don’t have a device? What if in this direct relationship with your reader, they don’t have access to that that kind of technology. So, we’re selling more books. But are we creating more readers? So my question is, as an industry, what is our responsibility to go out and make sure that that technology is in their hands, that that they have access to the books, whether ebook or print, to create more readers? What’s our role there, because that is our future.

Joshua Tallent 

I think it’s interesting that the industry is not just publishers, the industry is technology companies, it’s libraries. It’s nonprofits that engage in in so many of these areas, I think libraries are a key point of that, right, it’s important for us to engage with how libraries can help people in those situations to have access to content. It’s a very broad thing. And that’s where I think being inclusive as an—as an industry is going to be where we hit those, those needs and find the sources and the recommendations we can make for those needs. Any thoughts?

Mary McAveney 

Yeah, I mean, tactically, you know, we’re, we’re, we bring in readers through our websites, for example, which are, you know, genre specific content verticals around, you know, set up to bring in readers, and those we are, you know, making accessible now. There are accessibility rules that apply to everyone in every industry, not just publishing. I think making ebooks accessible is definitely a big step in the right direction. I think, the hardware, the devices, interestingly enough, publishers haven’t really gotten involved in that, you know, they’ve actually let you know, Apple or Kobo or Kindle, you know, make those devices. And I think, from my perspective, that’s a smart decision. Other people may disagree, but that’s, I think, a big part of it.

Unknown Attendee

I have one more—I have a question, and a thought. It points to the last question a bit. What are we doing, as an industry, to gain new readers, which we which we are through—and don’t groan when I say this—through BookTok and Instagram, but really BookTok? I have a 14-year-old daughter, her and all her friends find out about books from TikTok. That’s not something this industry can ignore. What is—What are your thoughts about reaching Gen Z, because as they get older, they’re not reading—you know, they’re not reading book reviews to find out about books. They’re not looking at websites that, you know, are book focused, they’re looking at very short video clips of people, you know, their peers on Tik Tok, talking about books in a very fast way. And we’ve seen returns on that because—or other publishers have—because the engagement rate is really high, and the conversion rate is really high. So much so that Barnes and Noble has a table dedicated to books that are popular on TikTok. So, what do you see coming forth in the industry to address Gen Z?

Mary McAveney 

So, you’re 100% correct. You know, obviously, BookTok is huge. Right now, we’re seeing it with our own books. The responsibility of the publisher, the marketing—we are marketing services company primarily. So, the responsibility of the marketer is to be able to tap into that. And beyond that, you know, to find where people are going to find out about books. For a long time, we thought, you know, the New York Times, The New Yorker, those kinds of reviews on your product detail page at retail are what is going to sell you on buying the book. We then found out it’s actually not—it’s more consumer reviews are much more important to readers than seeing that the New Yorker liked it. And so there was a shift there. And I think to your point, there is going to be a shift in the publishing industry and how they market and who they’re reaching and how they’re reaching them. The interesting thing that I find about that is beyond just the quickness—you mentioned how fast it is that they’re running through these videos—I think the content is going to get chunked. It’s already being chunked, right? So that those kids who are used to getting their information super fast, super graphically, you know, there is going to be an adjustment there. And I know that they’re—I think Wattpad is here today, and they’ve been brilliant about tapping into that. And so, and more will come.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, and I think the rumors of the death of the reader are overwrought in some ways. Millennials read a lot more than we thought they would. Right? And they’re listening to a lot of audiobooks and a lot of podcasts. And that’s good, you know. Things change, right? So adaptability is very important, moving with the change and trying to, where we can, predict it, you know, if there is such a thing as predicting it. But being able to adapt to it, I think is even more important than predicting it. Because when we’re ready to adapt—when you have accessible ebooks, you’re able to adapt more quickly to changing needs among people who want to want to read and need accessible content. When you adapt your marketing programs to engage with things more quickly, than when BookTok comes up, you can start engaging with it. So, I think there’s a—there’s value again in that adaptability, that’s where change doesn’t scare us as much. Adaptability allows us to be ready for it and move with it where we need to.

Brian O’Leary 

One other question. I mean, one of the things we talked about when we were doing some of the prep for this is there’s a difference between being open to change and changing all the time. And just want to see if I could draw out your thoughts on that for a second.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, again, I think it’s more about adaptability, and not really looking for change, but being able to change when, when it’s necessary. And there’s good times to take a step back and relax and look at where things have been, and, you know, have some reflective ability as a company, as an individual, as a department, or whatever it is that you—whatever it is that you’re doing. There’s a lot of value in that.

Brian O’Leary 

Now, I just wanted to throw up something for Ashley’s question about how do you provide for access when technology is changing? It’s always on my mind that the relationship between publishers speaking generally and libraries over things like digital content is tense, and not always productive. And I don’t know what our role is in trying to solve that. But I think we do have a place in that conversation. It’s not something that we’re currently dealing with at committee level, or even at board level, but it might be something we tackle. One of the things that’s not always visible is that our membership spans the entire supply chain, and per our bylaws we have to have a representative from at least one and in many cases up to five representatives from the publishing, retailing, distribution, industry partner, and library communities, so manufacturing is also in there somewhere.

Joshua Tallent 

That’s it for this episode of the BookSmarts podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please leave a review or rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast. And also please share this podcast with your colleagues. If you have topic suggestions or feedback about the show, you can email me at joshua@firebrandtech.com. And be sure to let us know what you think about the show and if you have ideas that we could talk about in the future. Thanks for joining me and getting smarter about your books.