As the economy goes, so generally speaking—goes the business of business books. Thus, the radical corporate belt-tightening the economy is experiencing today is having its customary affect on business publishers (and publishers in general). But the speed of change and the sudden bottoming-out of the tech boom has made the situation more problematic than ever before. As Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy puts it, "In the old days, we had an economic cycle that was a nice, rolling, gradual curve. Now it seems we don't have rolling waves; we have real edges. The real issue is, can you turn on a dime as the needle starts flipping back and forth?"
Publishers' duck-and-pivot routines have proved a little too slow for the suddenness of the current downturn. When the tech sector took its dive, many were left holding unwanted inventories of dot-com, e-trading, e-business and online books. The change also caught many flat-footed when it came to titles in production. The prophets had predicted the bear, but his arrival was nevertheless a surprise. In the words of Amacom marketing director Steve Arkin, "The blue sky has completely vanished. It was an abrupt end and publishers were caught short. A lot of books had to be retrofitted to conform to the new reality."
According to a June 5 USA Today article—whose headline cried, "Books on Tech Boom Roll Off Presses with Hasty Updates"—"the books aren't nearly the hot sellers they were a year ago, and publishers and authors are trying to minimize the damage" by adding updates, changing titles and changing the narrative.
According to Dearborn publisher Cynthia Zigmund, "All business books have taken a hit, but investment books in particular. If they have 'dot-com' or 'online' in the title, forget it." Zigmund notes that half of Dearborn's backlist is in the financial area, and she is relieved that the house moved into business management a few years ago—and is diversifying yet again with the addition of marketing titles next year. As far as new titles go, the publisher has high hopes for October's Red Zone Management: Changing the Rules for Pivotal Times by Dutch Holland. In football, the "red zone" is the last 20 yards before the goal line—a make-it or break-it time for a team, says the publisher, and "the need for such a strategy is evident in the daily business headlines."
"The dot-com run-up and run-down," says Jeffrey Brown, general manager of Wiley's business, psychology, professional and trade division, "has left everyone feeling a bit breathless, like sprinting up a steep slope and back down again." But the good news, he adds, is that "fundamentals matter, both for markets and for businesses. Making profits, solid planning and good managerial practice count more than ever."
Roger Scholl, Doubleday/Currency publisher, observes, "Sales are down across the board, but business books are on the leading edge of the decline. Occasional books break through, like our Art of Innovation and Creative Destruction, and our list has been growing even in a down market." Scholl, like Brown, offers some good news: he predicts that sales will pick up in late fall.
Back to the Basics
A universal refrain from business management publishers is that leaders need to get back to basics—the venture capitalists have left the building and the party is over. Says Jeffrey Krames, publisher and editor-in-chief of McGraw-Hill's trade division, "Business publishers are not immune to cyclical downturns. In times of market downturns there is a move back to fundamentals and the key drivers of profitability. The dot-com game was all about top-line growth; the emphasis today is on the bottom line. Managers want long-term business models that can work. Publishing programs reflect this zeitgeist."
McGraw is doing its part to shore up the economy with a September release, M Business: The Race to Mobility. The publisher says that authors Ravi Kalakota and Marcia Robinson provide the definitive roadmap for solid, strategic business decisions in a world transformed by mobility.
Perseus, says marketing director Elizabeth Carduff, is meeting the "resurgence of interest in how to do things better" with a November title that's a wry twist on Bill Gates's Business @ the Speed of Thought. In Business at the Speed of Stupid: Building Smart Companies After the Technology Shakeout, authors Dan Burke and Alan Morrison argue that many technology ventures have bottomed out (or are about to) because of "a technocentric disregard for strategy and general management principles. Brilliant engineers don't always make brilliant business leaders. For the bottom line, innovation is far less important than customers and quality."
Wiley's contribution in this area is Big Brands, Big Trouble: Lessons Learned the Hard Way by Jack Trout (Oct.), which analyzes blunders that led to the dissolution of such recognized super-brands as Levi-Strauss, Xerox and Crest. Another Wiley title, this one coming in November under the Jossey-Bass imprint, is by USC president Steve Sample—The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership, says J-B editor Cedric Crocker, is about "how you lead an organization of knowledge workers, which some say is like herding cats, to the top."
Also on the leadership front, HarperBusiness is bringing out a September title that deals with a noted player in that arena: The Essential Drucker: Selections from the Management Works of Peter F. Drucker. Other HB primers on business ABCs include NBA legend and Indiana Pacers coach Isaiah Thomas's The Fundamentals: 8 Plays for Winning the Game of Business and Life (Nov.) and Richard S. Tedlow's Giants of Enterprise: 7 Business Innovators and the Empires They Built (Dec.).
Kiplinger Books managing director David Harrison hits the same get-serious note as his colleagues when he says, "The era of irresponsibility is over. A 'responsible' approach to business is the Kiplinger signature." As the latest example of this commitment Harrison cites Fast-Track Business Growth: Smart Strategies to Grow Without Getting Derailed (Nov.) by Andrew J. Sherman, who believes that companies fail largely because the creators ignore fundamentals.
Prentice Hall Press, says advertising and publicity director Yvette Romero, offers a fresh look at time-honored business wisdom in Pilot Your Life by Pilot Pen CEO Ron Shaw. Shaw, who began his professional life as a comedian in Las Vegas, has teamed up with USC Film School professor Richard Krevolin to show that, in the publisher's words, "business acumen is based on many things, not least of all old-fashioned, conventional values that are more common sense than MBA blueprints."
Of Personalities and Prognostication
It seems that no matter how the economy is faring at any point in time, personality-driven tomes enjoy strong sales. Out last month from Simon & Schuster is Sumner Redstone's autobiography, A Passion to Win, the hard-hitting story of the man who overcame numerous professionals and personal obstacles (among the latter, a narrow escape from a Boston hotel fire in 1979) to rule over the Viacom empire. Fred Hills, S&S senior v-p and the book's editor, reports that as of mid-June Redstone's work was appearing on both the Wall St. Journal and Boston Globe bestseller lists.
Andrew Grove, chairman of Intel, has written a memoir of his childhood and early years that reads like an inspirational classic, says publisher WarnerBusiness. In Swimming Across, Grove covers his first years in Hungary under fascism and communism and his ultimate flight to America. The November release will have its first serial in Fortune.
A personality of a very different stripe, trend-spotter and media maven Faith Popcorn, can be consulted via a December title from Hyperion (which last month published the trade paper edition of her EVEolution: Understanding Women—Eight Essential Truths That Work in Your Business and Your Life). The Dictionary of the Future: The Words, Terms and Trends That Define the Way We'll Live, Work and Talk, written with Adam Hanft, should certainly be of interest to marketers—however the economy moves.
Not surprisingly, several of the season's titles look to the future—how to deal with whatever might be lurking around the economic corner. In September, Hungry Minds is launching its Generational Marketing series with Know the Past, Know the Future by Geoffrey E. Meredith and Charles D. Schewe with Jarnice Karlovich, which explains how to understand the attitudes and desires of the population's seven distinct age groups.
About "age groups": where would any publishing category be without some input from those major trend influencers, the baby boomers? In The Next Economy: Will You Know Where Your Customers Are? (McGraw-Hill, Jan.), Elliot Ettenberg claims that when the boomers retire, the biggest spenders in history will dramatically cut back, forcing companies to fight it out for their shares of dwindling markets. "Be prepared," says Krames.
A November WarnerBusiness title deals specifically with the future of the e-world (which evidently isn't going away, as much as some might wish it would): E-Engineering the Corporation: Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age presents ways to integrate technology into a sensible, coherent management strategy for 21st century success. Author James Champy is the second half of the duo (with Michael Hammer) that penned Re-Engineering the Corporation, an early '90s title that was just published by HarperBusiness in a revised edition.
Practically Speaking
Moving "back from the future," a great number of fall and winter titles deal with the here and now, on a purely practical level—rather than executive suite reading, they're for the managers who are at ground zero and who make things happen.
Krames points to three new titles in McGraw-Hill's Briefcase Books series intended for this market segment: Customer Relationship Management by Kristin Anderson and Carolyn Kerr, Presentations Skills for Managers by Jennifer and Mike Rotondo and Project Management by Gary Heerkens (all due in September).
Amacom believes that all novitiate managers need a first tool box; coming for them in September is the New Manager's Starter Kit: Essential Tools for Doing the Job Right by Robert Crittendon. Also in September, Hungry Minds continues to prove that there are a lot of Dummies out there, with its Advertising for Dummies by Gary R. Dahl and Office Politics for Dummies by Marilyn Moats Kennedy and Linda Mitchell. Senior editor Mark Butler notes that the Hungry Minds roster contains another new series, in additional to its Generational Marketing series mentioned above. Teaming up with the Kaufman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, the publisher has launched a series aimed at America's 25 million small businesses and 1,400 college and university entrepreneurship programs. The first volume, Learning at the Speed of Growth: Over 500 Entrepreneurs Reveal the Secrets of Successful Leadership and Sustained Growth by Katheryn Catlin and Jana Matthews pubbed this spring; the second, also by Catlin and Matthews, is due in September—Building the Awesome Organization deals with the essential components that drive business growth.
Adams Media continues to add to its Streetwise and Everything books, hands-on, practical titles for managers, with Streetwise Business Management: How to Organize, Market and Finance Your Way to Business Success by John Riddle (Oct.) and the Everything Managing People Book (Jan.). Says publisher Bob Adams, "These books are for people who work at corporations, rather than run corporations." According to Adams, the company's sales have markedly increased in the last three years, a growth he attributes to the addition of titles to brands that are proven performers and the real need for this kind of information in the marketplace.
More series news comes from Prentice Hall Press, which is extending the How to Say It series, the first of which, Rosalie Maggio's How to Say It, has sold 1.5 million copies, says the publisher. Due in the fall are How to Say It in Your Job Search by Robbie Miller Kaplan and How to Say It Online by Kim Baker and Sunny Baker. Sounding a positive note, Romero reports, "Our business and investing lists have done very well for us, and we're looking to expand them."
Good Help Is Still Hard to Find (and Keep)
Carol Franco, director of Harvard Business School Press, targets a critical business concern when she tells PW, "Finding and retaining the best talent might seem like a dead issue these days, but in fact it's still the no. 1 priority in just about every organization today. At a time when companies are being forced to operate with lean staff, keeping the right people is of critical importance." In HBSP's The War for Talent (Oct.), Franco says that authors Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones and Beth Axelrod "argue that talent will remain a crucial problem for the next 20 years. And, they assert, the companies most likely to be successful will turn talent management into a strategic competitive advantage." She adds that, in September's Loyalty Rules! How Today's Leaders Build Lasting Relationships, author Fred Reichheld attributes the loyalty crisis to faulty leadership, and puts forth six principles for today's corporations to apply to correct the situation.
Amacom's Hiring the Best and the Brightest: A Roadmap to MBA Recruiting (Nov.) is by Sherrie Gong Taguchi, the assistant dean and director of MBA Career Management and Management Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Believing that it's difficult to keep "the best and the brightest" in an atmosphere of backbiting and infighting, the publisher is also bringing out in the fall The End of Office Politics as Usual: A Complete Strategy for Creating a More Productive and Profitable Organization by Lawrence B. M. Serven.
McGraw-Hill demonstrates its belief in the importance of a top-notch work force in Designing World Class E-Learning: How IBM, GE, Harvard Business School and Columbia University Are Succeeding at E-Learning by Roger C. Shank (Nov.) and The Human Capital Edge: 25 People Management Practices Your Company Must Implement (or Avoid) to Maximize Shareholder Value by Bruce Pfau and Ira Kay (Jan.), the latter based on research from the global human resources firm Watson Wyatt.
"The human side of management is more important than ever," says Crown Business publicity director Will Weisser, citing last April's The Change Monster: The Human Forces That Fuel or Foil Corporate Transformation and Change by Jeanie Daniel Duck as evidence of the publisher's conviction in this regard. In a similar vein, Wiley offers X-traordinary Results: Uncovering Your Employees' Potential for Remarkable Performance by Ross R. Beck, an October release that describes a four-step process—plans, relationships, agreements and maintenance—that gets people to go the extra mile; and The Talent Edge: A Behavioral Approach to Hiring, Developing and Keeping Top Performers by David Cohen, which suggests a behavioral interviewing system that improves the chances of picking the right candidate.
At Berrett-Koehler, publisher Steve Piersanti reports that a 1999 title, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, has only gained momentum since it was first published (sales now exceed 150,000)—"proving that how to retain star employees is a topic that's never going to go away." Two fall B-K titles seem to be right on the money in this all-important arena: Hire and Keep the Best People: 21 Practical and Proven Techniques You Can Use Immediately by Brian Tracy, and Don't Kill the Bosses! Escaping the Hierarchy Trap by Samuel A. Culbert and John B. Ullmen, which shows how to implement an alternative model of hierarchy involving two-sided accountability.
Hyperion is betting on the track record of author Bob Nelson for an October title, Please Don't Just Do What I Tell You! Do What Needs to Be Done: Every Employee's Guide to Making Work More Rewarding. Nelson's 1994 title, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, currently has just over a million copies in print after 31 printings, and his 1001 Ways to Energize Employees (1997) has 335,000 copies in print.
How to make your company irresistible to the best available talent is the aim of a September Prentice Hall release, Embracing Excellence: Become an Employer of Choice to Attract and Keep the Best Talent by Franklin C. Ashby and Arthur R. Pell. Says associate publisher Ellen Coleman, "It's about how to attract 'A' players and keep them. When companies contract, it's very easy to lose the best people along with the others that really need to be let go."
Stress, Speed and Innovation: How to Cope
Jean Kerr of Book Network International succinctly sums up today's business climate: "The workplace is nuts." People are stressed out, she says, "in spite of, or because of, all the technology at our disposal. The impact of all the Palm Pilots and wireless everything means we can work all the time, anytime, and it's making us crazy." Two titles Kerr represents from British publishers that address the problem are Navigating the Frenzied World of Work by Alastair Rylatt, from Business and Professional Publishing (dist. by IPG); and Working Smarter by Graham Roberts Phelps, from Hawksmere.
A February 2002 Warner title faces the issues squarely: How to Succeed in Business Without Working So Damn Hard: Rethinking the Rules, Reinventing the Game. Author Robert Kreigel, of NPR's Marketplace, also wrote 1991's If It Ain't Broke, Break It! (also Warner), which is now in its ninth printing. Another February title whose title pulls no punches is Amacom's Buried Alive? Workplace Solutions for Managing Information, Paper, Time and Stress by Patricia J. Hutchings. Can't make it until February? Try this October Amacom title—Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals by Brian Tracy. The book provides, says the publisher, timeless truths discovered by effective people throughout the ages and shows how to develop clarity about who you are, what you want and how to move toward those goals.
A top-selling Doubleday/Currency title is Speed Is Life: Street Smart Lessons from the Front Lines of Business by Bob Davis (May 2001), innovative founder and vice-chairman of Lycos, the world's first global Internet media company. Given the many "speed-y" titles crowding the business bestseller lists, readers can expect a myriad of similar books in coming seasons. Out from Perseus in September is Whoosh: Business in the Fast Lane: Unleashing the Power of a Creation Company by Thomas McGehee Jr. The author reveals techniques, according to the publisher, that he developed in Ernst & Young's Accelerated Solutions Environment to help companies achieve radical innovation.
"As the pace of change continues to increase," observes Kerr of Book Network International, "innovation remains an essential ingredient in success in the corporate world." Two of Kerr's British publishers have frontlist titles on the subject, Making Innovation Happen: A Simple and Effective Guide to Implementing Successful Workplace Innovation by Michael Morgan from Business and Professional Publishing, and The Alchemy of Innovation: Perspective from the Leading Edge by Alan Barker from Industrial Society.
The Business of Innovation: Managing the Corporate Imagination for Maximum Results by Roger Bean and Russell Radford is an Amacom September title that explains how to build innovative, creativity-rich organizations through skillful management.
Texere addresses innovation and change from a high perch to get the big picture. "Our audience is the high-level, thinking reader," says publisher and CEO Myles Thompson. "We are looking for leading thinking that is interdisciplinary. We're not pursuing the how-to market. We want to create unique books that bring business books out of the ghetto." Two Texere titles that address innovation, change and making things happen are Hoover's Vision: Think Different for Business Success by Gary Hoover (Oct.) and The Agent: Personalities, Politics and Publishing by uber-agent Arthur Klebanoff (Jan. 2002) of Rosetta Books and Scott Meredith Agency. A title that should receive major review attention, says Thompson, is The Reverend's Logic: Mankind, Machines and the Future of Our Decisions by Nicholas Dunbar. Dealing with Bayesian theory, this March 2002 release explains how decision-making is increasingly being replicated and influenced by computers. A close-to-home example: 250 years ago, Rev. Bayes came up with the concepts that allow Amazon to tell you whether or not you will like a new book.
Wiley expects some controversy on a fall title that attempts to define both human potential and limits to change and performance in terms of biologically determined forces. Driven, by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria, posits that the fundamental forces that drive employee and consumer behavior are innate and beyond our control. Other Wiley titles that zero in on skillful managing in today's increasingly fast-paced environment of change are Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan (July) and Leading for Innovation: and Organizing for Results from the Drucker Foundation and edited by Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith (Nov.), the second volume of the Jossey-Bass/Drucker Foundation Wisdom to Action series.
Also dealing with the importance of encouraging creativity to ensure an innovation-friendly climate on the job is Berrett-Koehler's Ideaship: How to Get Ideas Flowing in Your Workplace. In this November title, author Jack Foster presents his views on what he believes are a leader's most important tasks—to make employees believe that they are creative and to make it fun to come to work. A B-K September release confronts the often fearsome prospect of change in the workplace—Macroshift: Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World by Ervin Laszlo with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke (Sept.). Drawing on Foster's systems-theory expertise, Macroshift shows how the application of new technologies is a double-edged sword and what must be done to get control of the future.
Hyperion, the folks who brought you Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen (a frequent bestseller-list resident since its March 2000 publication), is coming out with two titles for the change/innovation crowd. September's Dare to Succeed: How to Survive and Thrive in the Game of Life is by Mark Burnett (Sept.), who probably needs no introduction to millions of TV viewers (he's the executive producer of the wildly popular Survivor series). According to the book's editor, Mary Ellen O'Neill, "Our society is focused on adventure and risk, and it's a great narrative read" (first printing: 150,000). October brings Seth Godin's Unleashing the Idea Virus, which explores the impact and advantages of viral marketing and the IdeaVirus concept. Hyperion reports that more than 250,000 copies of Godin's e-book, Unleashing the IdeaVirus, have spread throughout the Web for free, an experiment that actually put the ideas in the book to work.
Using a Mark Burnett—like metaphor is a March 2002 Simon & Schuster title, Survival Is Not Enough: Zooming, Evolution and the Future of Your Company by the ubiquitous Godin. According to Fred Hills, "Wrenching change causes great anxiety, chaos and loss of employees. Godin explains that change should be undertaken evolutionarily in incremental steps. This is a practical guide for companies on effecting change successfully." Similarly, Chapters: Creating a Life of Exhilaration and Accomplishment in the Face of Change by Candice Carpenter (McGraw-Hill, Oct.), co-founder and chairman of iVillage, addresses the issues and turmoil involved in change on a personal level.
Managing with Heart and Soul
Integrating one's personal values with one's business life has become a growth area for business publishers. Kerr of Book Network International observes, "Management books are emphasizing personal and relationship skills, emotional intelligence and even spiritual development over traditional workplace skills. We think this reflects the post—dot-com interest in rediscovering our lives as a whole after the past frantic years." Two titles Kerr represents are cases in point: Thinking Heart, Feeling Mind: 10 Business Lessons from the Compassionate Workplace by Angela Ishmael from Industrial Society, distributed by LPC Group, 12 Step Wisdom at Work: Transforming Your Life and Your Organization by the Hazelden Foundation from Kogan Page (also dist. by LPC )
The "fundamental need for spiritual integration" is discussed in a November Crown release, The Most Effective Organization in the U.S.: Leadership Secrets of the Salvation Army by Robert A. Watson and Ben Brown. "Boundaries between the 'business world' and other worlds in which humans strive are as artificial as the distinctions between our separate private selves," says the book's introduction. "We cannot be one person at work, another with friends and family, and yet another in our relationship with God."
Last December, Warner published Making a Life, Making a Living: Reclaiming Your Purpose and Passion in Business and in Life by Mark Albion, former Harvard Business School professor and founder of Net Impact, an international not-for-profit network of MBAs. Albion has received recognition from the likes of Mother Teresa and Ronald Reagan, and the book carries endorsements from John Naisbitt, Norman Lear, Marian Wright Edelman and others. Wiley's offering in the field is Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life by Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan, with a foreword by Ken Blanchard. (Note: This title and several others dealing with the intersection of business and spirituality were discussed in "Work, Too, Is a Spiritual Practice," Religion, July 2.)
Mañana
Stepping back and looking at the long term, Franco at HBSP asserts, "The recent dot-com fallout is going to have a lasting effect on business management practices. Clearly, the management field is at a pivotal point. We're already seeing a big back-to-basics push, particularly in the area of profitable growth: managers are looking for ways to grow their businesses profitably and soundly." An essential part of the solution, she believes, will center on "new approaches to leadership, and the business world is going to be looking to more non-traditional methods to meet leadership challenges."
Regardless of the battering sustained by many over-the-top new economy titles, publishers show no signs of reducing title output in coming seasons. Of course, it may be that current listings don't yet fully reflect the situation. Or it may be that coming opportunities to serve the voracious business book market simply obscure the recent past. After all, the boom was a great ride for nearly everyone while it lasted. And, too, success in business publishing, as well as in business itself, requires vast amounts of optimism, which is sometimes even more critical than cash.
