ParticipantsJennifer Cox, executive director of marketing and production, Westminster John Knox PressJeff Crosby, associate publisher/director of sales and marketing, InterVarsity PressBrad Hebel, director of sales and marketing, Columbia University PressBrian Hughes, marketing manager, Oxford University PressCarol Hupping, COO and publishing director, Jewish Publication SocietyNicole Smith Murphy, associate director, Baylor University Press

PW: What do you see as the greatest sales challenge your company is facing for academic books right now?

Crosby, IVP: The used book market. Amazon.com’s marketplace, among other things, has made it very easy for people to essentially “trade” used books. As one who recently completed a graduate degree, I watched with amazement as fellow students bought previous editions of books our professors assigned and simply “made do” with the gaps in various chapters. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to launch new editions of key texts, let alone find an audience for brand-new texts.

Murphy, Baylor: Must I really choose just one [sales challenge]? With academic library budgets shrinking, the used textbook market swelling, awareness of the ease of piracy through Blackboard spreading and the number of booksellers carrying scholarly books (and employing knowledgeable staff able to communicate about them) having dwindled alarmingly, all of us academic publishers have quite the challenge in front of us and are having to think rather creatively and in new ways.

Hughes, Oxford: Calibrating the gradual but certain transition from print to electronic, especially on the academic research side. We’ve successfully navigated this transition already in our journals and our reference publishing, so we have ample experience in managing this process. While many libraries are choosing to have both print and online versions of OUP products, some are moving to an online-only purchasing model.

PW: What have you done to promote your academic books using social media, and how has this paid off so far?

Hebel, Columbia: We have a blog on our Web site and Twitter and Facebook pages. We’ve discovered that the best social media promotion comes from the active authors who get out there and create enthusiasm for their book by guest blogging, tweeting and posting Facebook messages about their events and activities.

Murphy, Baylor: Though Baylor UP is on Shelfari, Good Reads and Twitter, most of our efforts are concentrated on Facebook, where we have a press page that contains our most recent catalogues and a few pages designed for individual books. The paid advertising options offered through Facebook with opportunities for really nuanced targeting have proven to be worthwhile, particularly given the minimal costs. One of the most fruitful recent campaigns was for beloved Kenyon College political science professor Harry Clor’s On Moderation: Defending an Ancient Virtue in a Modern World, which had two different ads selected for two different groups: the first to Kenyon College alumni, the second to those who listed “philosophy” in their interests and belonged to relevant societies. Running those for just one week, we had 516 clicks through to the book’s Amazon page and the average cost-per-click was approximately 30 cents. While we can’t tell how many Amazon actually sold, during that week and the couple after, we definitely saw a substantial spike overall that indicate they were successful—particularly given that the book had been out for over a year by that time.

Cox, WJK: We are sending review notices and [author] speaking schedules out regularly through Facebook and Twitter. While this technique has been successful in other parts of our publishing program, the number of academics using these services lags. In addition to those efforts, we developed our own monthly Web-based radio program, WJK Radio, which allows listeners to post comments.

PW: What have your experiences been so far with the Kindle? Which books have you put on the Kindle, and how did they sell?

Hughes, Oxford: To date, we’ve had a very positive experience with the Kindle, which is emblematic of a new technology that is being received as user-friendly and with which we therefore want to experiment. At a recent academic meeting, for example, I was approached by a professor who expressed her pleasure that we’re including some of our popular research monographs in the Kindle program. We’re still learning which kinds of books sell well on Kindle and why (e.g., based on subject, author, genre, review attention, etc.), so this is an ongoing education for us.

Hebel, Columbia: We are just getting started with the Kindle and the Sony Reader, but are enthusiastic about the possibilities.

Cox, WJK: We have close to 100 titles available on Kindle currently. The majority of those books are aimed at a general reader. We review the available titles quarterly and make adjustments. The number should only grow. I would love to see the Kindle or Sony Reader make a bigger impact in the classroom. After all, everyone remembers how painful it is to schlep all those heavy textbooks back and forth to class.

Hupping, JPS: Thirty JPS titles, including our bestselling book, the JPS Tanakh [the Jewish Bible], are available from Kindle. Income for the first three months has been modest, but growing each month. We will continue to license more titles to Kindle and to Sony Reader, as well as other e-book vendors. I expect our e-book program overall to expand in the next year.

Crosby, IVP: Our revenue from Kindle editions continues to jump month after month as we both see more books posted on Amazon as being available and sell more units of those that have been there for some time. We expect sales to and through Amazon’s Kindle to increase substantially in fiscal 2009—2010. We’re seeing demand for reference books such as Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, for academic texts like Jim Sire’s The Universe Next Door and classic general interest titles like Too Busy Not to Pray. It’s really across the spectrum. Perhaps most surprisingly, we’re seeing significant demand for titles in our Formatio line of spiritual formation books.

PW: Does your company have a digital way for professors to assign certain articles or essays for a course packet without buying the whole book where the essays are found?

Hughes, Oxford: In 2005, OUP launched Oxford Scholarship Online, which is an online collection of scholarly monographs. At launch, we had four subject modules: Religion, Philosophy, Political Science and Economics/Finance. Today, we’ve expanded this to close to 20 modules across the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Books in Oxford Scholarship Online have digital object identifiers [DOIs] that allow the book or chapter to be assigned in a course. This has opened up our scholarly publishing to a whole new audience. Many of the research monographs are priced for institutional purchase and are outside the possibility for course adoption, but with Oxford Scholarship Online, instructors have an expansive library to draw from when making up the semester’s reading.

Murphy, Baylor: Baylor UP has recently signed a contract with Anselm Academic [formerly Professor’s Choice], which will make individual chapters from many of our titles available for customized offsetprinted course packets.

Cox, WJK: This will be one of the major features of WJKAcademic.com. It is currently in development and will be beta-tested in classrooms next spring and released in fall 2010.

Hupping, JPS: JPS content is available for both print and electronic course packets, via our Web site and from the Copyright Clearance Center.