For Rodale president Steve Murphy, the proof of the transformation of the publisher's book group is in the numbers—record sales, higher profits, more submissions and more bestsellers. For the first six months of 2003, book sales were up 22% over the same period one year ago, and the first half of 2003 was capped by a June that had the highest monthly sales in company history.
Murphy credits the success of the book group to a reengineering of the corporate structure that "puts the focus on better books and better authors" and doesn't arbitrarily separate content by format. While Rodale's organizational chart can be dizzying to outsiders in the way it organizes material around subjects that fit into both book and magazine operations, it has the effect of creating "simple synergy. It doesn't take six months to make a decision to work together," Murphy said. In the world of Rodale's "360-degree marketing" strategy, the company assumes that from the time a book is "greenlighted," it has a life in the trade, direct marketing and special markets. Moreover, Rodale uses its direct-marketing apparatus to drive trade sales, while the company's magazines play a crucial role in both promoting titles and in providing articles that can be made into books. At the moment, there is no better example of how the Rodale promotion machine works than The South Beach Diet.
Tami Booth, v-p and editor-in-chief of women's health books, acquired the title from agent Richard Pine, in part based on a presentation about all that Rodale would do for the book. "We thought from the beginning that South Beach would work in more than just the trade, and that's the way we pitched it," Booth said. In addition to the usual author tour, South Beach was featured in Rodale's Prevention magazine and promoted in Men's Health and through the company's various Web sites. The combined operation helped turn a title that had a 50,000- copy first printing into Rodale's first number one trade bestseller, as well as its first trade book to top one million in sales. A direct-marketing campaign, which distributed more than five million pieces, launched earlier this month and generated orders of 100,000 within four days. In addition, sales through e-tailers doubled the week the promotion hit, providing further proof to Murphy that direct marketing lifts trade sales. If the Rodale machine functions on all cylinders, South Beach will sell more than 1.5 million copies this year.
Rodale's marketing clout notwithstanding, South Beach would not be the hit it is if it wasn't a good book. Quality editorial has been one of Murphy's mantras since he first arrived at Rodale in 2000, and today, according to Booth, the company's editors are given the resources to be in most of the competitive auctions they want. "But I only sign books that we can do justice to and that can benefit from our total marketing effort," Booth said. A beneficiary of the total marketing effort has been fitness guru Denise Austin. Rodale has already published two books under a five-book deal; Pilates for Every Body had trade sales of 80,000 copies, while the direct-marketing effort, which rolled out in January and included a video, has generated sales of 50,000 copies. It's too early to tally up sales in the just-released Shrink Your Female Fat Zone, but the first direct-marketing effort has yielded 70,000 orders. Austin also writes a monthly column in Prevention and Rodale publishes newsstand specials with content from Austin's books plus new material several times per year. With such close collaboration between author and publisher, might Rodale be agreeable to some nontraditional publishing deals? "If an author already has a constituency, we are open to creative relationships," Murphy said.
As evidenced by the success of South Beach, no area of Rodale has benefited more from the changes at the company than the trade segment. "It's been a complete renaissance," said Amy Rhodes, who joined Rodale in May 2001 as v-p and publisher of the trade division. While Rodale "has always been good marketers," the company lacked a clear trade vision. "The first year," Rhodes said, "we put a new organization in place," bringing "trade logic to such issues as pricing and timing." In year two, the acquisition process picked up, Rhodes said, "and in 2003, we're reaping the benefits."
Those benefits include not only a bestseller, but higher print runs for a growing number of Rodale titles as well. "The average print run has gone up and we're getting more sales per unit," said Marc Jaffe, senior v-p and managing director for books & licensing. Jaffe estimated that in the winter of 2004, the company will do five or six books that will have printings of more than 75,000 copies and three to five titles that will be bestseller contenders. He noted that Rodale is committed to providing as much marketing support as it can for every book. "We're only doing 100 titles a year; we can't afford many missteps," he said.
Rhodes and Jaffe acknowledge that while Rodale's frontlist has improved considerably, the company still needs a stronger backlist. To date, gardening books have been the strongest backlist sellers, and Rhodes and Jaffe are attempting to build something of an "instant backlist" by taking advantage of Rodale's strong men's magazine brands that include not only Prevention and Men's Health, but also Bicycling, Mountain Bike, Runner's World and Backpacker. Men's Health Workout Bible is a steady seller, and a new edition of Runner's World Complete Guide of Running is due out next spring.
As executive editor of men's health books, one of Jeremy Katz's duties is to help create a sports-oriented backlist. He said the list will be driven by finding niche communities that are underserved, and he suggested men's adventure as one possible area. The list will also be an outgrowth of Rodale's core operations and could feature workout books drawing on expertise from such magazines as Men's Health.
In addition to its growing marketing muscle, Rodale is attracting authors because the family-owned company still has a sense of mission. The mission—"To enable people to improve their lives and the world around them"—"gives books a reason for being," explained Stephanie Tade, executive editor of general books. It's the sense that "Rodale is looking to do something positive" that has drawn such respected authors as Ray Kurzweil (A Short Guide to a Long Life, fall 2004) and Peter Singer (The Ethics of What We Eat, spring 2005) to the company, Tade asserted.
Rodale's sense of purpose and its recent financial successes seem to have enlivened both Rodale oldtimers and newcomers. At a time when many houses are struggling financially and creatively, "there is a feeling of unburned-outness here," Rhodes observed.
