In order to reach business leaders not only in the U.S. but across the globe, one of America’s best known business schools, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has launched Wharton Digital Press. To produce and distribute its titles in different digital formats as well as through print on demand, Wharton has signed with Perseus Book Group’s Constellation service.
Wharton Digital Press will serve as one part of Wharton’s effort to create a Web-based center for business books and business coverage, said Stephen Kobrin, publisher and executive director of the press and Wharton’s William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management. WDP will work in collaboration with Knowledge@Wharton, the school’s online business journal that has 1.7 million subscribers in 189 countries and in five languages. Kobrin said WDP will use the online journal both to promote its e-book titles and as a source of ideas and authors. Articles that get lots of clicks are likely candidates to become a book, he noted. The length of the digital books will run the gamut from 10,000 words to over 40,000.
The launch of WDP comes after Wharton’s contract with Pearson for a Wharton print imprint expired last fall. While WDP will offer customers who want a print edition the option through Constellation’s pod service, the emphasis is on digital with Korbin estimating that a large portion of the target audience for WDP have some sort of digital reading device. For titles that may sell in large numbers, Korbin said his inclination now would be to sell print rights since he doesn’t want to get involved in setting up a print infrastructure. WDP will offer no advances, but will split royalties 50-50 after costs are recovered.
Shannon Berning, former director of product development at Kaplan Publishing, has been appointed executive editor. The imprint’s first titles will be released in June and Korbin hopes to do 10 to 12 this year and 25 to 30 annually. In addition to e-books drawn straight from text, WDP will do enhanced e-books (“videos with graphs and charts”) as well as apps.
Korbin envisions a large global market for WDP, pointing to growing English-speaking business markets not only in Europe, but in India and Asia as well. Constellation’s ability to reach readers overseas was one reason it signed with the Perseus unit. Among the digital wholesalers that Constellation works with to distribution e-books worldwide are Kobo, OverDrive, ebrary and Ingram. Through ebrary, for example, Constellation sells into the Czech market through reseller Albertina iCome Praha while Ingram’s ties to Landmark gives Constellation access to the Indian trade market. According to Perseus CEO David Steinberger, Constellation tracks which books have which territorial rights so that Constellation can make sure that the correct markets are getting access to the right e-books. “We think the international digital book market will grow rapidly,” Steinberger said.
