As Donald Carty, former CEO of American Airlines recently discovered, bad management is more than just being at the helm when your company is slipping into bankruptcy. Bad management is also giving bonuses and golden parachutes to company executives as you're negotiating salary cuts from your employees. While most media pundits felt Carty probably would have survived a bankruptcy, his ethical malfeasance cost him his job—and even an invitation to be the commencement speaker at Saint Louis University.
Ethics, or the lack thereof, is a hot topic in business management—a topic that seems to be turning from a small niche into a category all its own. According to Joseph Badaracco Jr., John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at the Harvard Business School and author of Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing (Harvard Business School Press), "For many companies, ethics are a new reality. In the past, they assumed ethics would pretty much take care of itself. But even for companies that had been paying attention to ethics, there are new concerns—compliance with both old and new regulations and the possibility that something or someone in their organizations is going 'tick, tick, tick' and could blow up on them." The difficulty, says Badaracco, is that ethics are "long-term, subtle, hard-to-quantify and easy to overlook under short-term financial pressures. The tyranny of the tangible and immediate is hard to overcome."
Ethical Is As Ethical Does
While ethics may indeed be difficult to quantify, publishers are doing their best to provide not just roadmaps for managers trying to find their way through the moral quicksands of doing business in a new global economy, but titles that look at the lessons learned from recent corporate scandals.
Even before the debacle at Enron, Gibbs Smith general manager Christopher Robbins knew there was a significant risk attached to signing a book entitled The Integrity Advantage: How Taking the High Road Creates a Competitive Advantage in Business (by Adrian Gostick and Dana Telford; May). "When Dana called Don Graham of the Washington Post to ask if he could be interviewed about integrity, Graham replied, "Absolutely not! There are probably people in this company that are stealing from me or our customers, and I don't know about it." What he and other business leaders finally agreed to, says Robbins, were "candid interviews on the concept of integrity, a look at what defines integrity in the business world and who, as defined by their business peers, exemplify it."
Jossey-Bass publisher Cedric Crocker sees ethics as "an issue that won't go away." Saving the Corporate Soul—and (Who Knows?) Maybe Your Own: The Eight Principles for Creating and Preserving Integrity and Profitability Without Selling Out by David Batstone shows no signs of waning interest from the media: Batstone recently taped an interview for 60 Minutes and in February was featured on the cover of USA Today's Sunday magazine.
Believing that the moral lapses of Enron, Arthur Andersen and Martha Stewart have been thoroughly covered by others, Nicholas Brealey's marketing director Terri Welch sees the market "ready to move on, to look for the long-term lessons and what will be required to refocus corporations (and especially boards of directors) on their ethical responsibility to shareholders." Such lessons can be found, she notes, in last month's Thin on Top: Why Corporate Governance Matters and How to Measure and Improve Board Performance by Bob Garratt.
Another take on corporate governance will be available in August from Aspatore Press, where managing editor Carolyn Murphy promises that The Governance Game: Restoring Boardroom Excellence & Credibility in Corporate America by Marilyn Seymann and Michael Rosebaum, is "lively and engaging, a Liar's Poker for corporate governance." Another Aspatore release is by ethics attorney Steven R. Barth, who has written codes of conduct for numerous Fortune 500 companies—Corporate Ethics: The Business Code of Conduct for Ethical Employees (Sept.), says Murphy, "is a key tool for companies wanting to establish, implement and govern their own code of conduct."
According to Lisa Berkowitz, marketing and communications director at HarperBusiness, "Corporate governance, business and management transparency and business ethics—an oxymoron of late!—are gaining focus in a whole new way, without necessarily forfeiting an eye on the bottom line." They're not mutually exclusive, she says, are "but difficult to balance, particularly during leaner times." A trio of 2004 titles that reflect these concerns, says Berkowitz, are Fools Rush In by Nina Monk; Leadership Judgment Call by Warren Bennis and Noel Tichy; and The Transparent Leader by Herb Baum.
And the Ethical Beat Goes On
Bestselling author John C. Maxwell takes a slightly different approach in an October Warner Business title, There's No Such Thing as Business Ethics: Discover the One Rule for Making the Right Decision. When asked about business ethics, the former pastor replies, "There's no such thing. There's only ethics." Thus it's not surprising that, in his latest book, he asserts that there is but one ethical standard for all behavior—the Golden Rule.
At Berrett-Koehler, publisher Steve Piersanti promises that Ted Nace's Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Sept.) "offers the most readable and compelling account I've seen of how corporations have not only amassed unprecedented power that has resulted in widespread ethical abuses but also how this power grab is expanding on many fronts to take rights away from people." Coming in December from B-K is Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good by Stephen Young, executive director of the Caux Round Table, a group of senior business leaders from several countries whose "Principles for Business" are a code of corporate ethics used worldwide.
And if you thought the design team that puts together your book jackets and advertising may not face the same ethical challenges as a Fortune 500 manager, think again. In Citizen Designer (Allworth Press, May), New York Times Book Review art director Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne look at the ethical concerns facing the creative community—does the product in the ad you just created, for example, really show you how to cure baldness or become a millionaire in six short weeks?
"There is definitely interest in looking beyond the headlines to understand why and how these financial and ethical disasters occurred, and what can be done to prevent such abuses in the future," says Amacom editorial director Adrienne Hickey. In next month's Absolute Honesty, authors Larry Johnson and Bob Phillips cut to the chase as they discuss, according to their book's subtitle, Building a Corporate Culture That Values Straight Talk and Rewards Integrity. And Marianne Jennings takes a hare-raising approach in her fable A Business Tale: A Story of Ethics, Choices, Success [and a Very Large Rabbit]—the aforementioned animal will remind readers of this April 2004 release that ethical behavior is the best choice for managers who want to succeed.
"I think it's a lot more interesting to learn about business ethics as a side benefit of reading narratives about companies that have gotten in big trouble," notes Portfolio publisher Adrian Zackheim. And certainly no company has gotten in bigger trouble than Enron. Portfolio's Smartest Guys in the Room: The Rise and Fall of Enron by Fortune writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind has been embargoed until its September 15 pub date. "The analogy we're using," says Zackheim, "is Watergate. There were dozens of books about Watergate, but All the President's Men stood out from the pack in every respect."
Investors who want to know what happened to their 401Ks need look no further than a just-published Random House title, The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America. "What's unique about this book," explains RH editorial director Jonathan Karp, "is the author's unifying idea. Alex Berenson, a financial investigative reporter for the New York Times, shows how our national fixation with corporate earnings— 'the number'—got us into this mess, addresses the underlying ethical issues exposed by the collapse of Enron, etc., and why a more skeptical approach to 'the number' is better for the long-term health of the economy."
But not everyone believes morality in business can be acquired from a book. "Ethics have always been a tough sell," says Crown Business publisher Steve Ross. "Not because of lack of interest, but because ethics are not something for which people generally turn to a book for guidance. People take cues on what's acceptable in business from top management and then make decisions on what's right from their own core values."
Managing Redux
"Last year," says Zackheim, " 'execution' was the management buzz word—you can succeed if you just follow through on what you set out to accomplish. This year, you have to do better than that." Michael Treacy's Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It—No Matter What (May) shows how to manage a company through good times and bad (without cheating). "Since the bubble burst," says Crown's Ross, "there has been a change in what's of interest to management book buyers. Substance is primary. [Readers want] results-oriented nuts-and-bolts books that show managers how to protect their jobs and help their companies grow." He cites an October title, Dennis Carey and Marie-Caroline von Weichs's How to Run a Company: Lessons from Top Leaders of the CEO Academy, which synthesizes insights from Carey's "Academy" (cost of admission: $10,000), where experienced CEOs share their acumen.
"Leadership and management books have always been the backbone of any business publishing program," says Lisa Berkowitz at HarperBusiness. (And she should know: the publisher's Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't has sold more than 900,000 copies since its October 2001 publication.) She adds that tough economic and political times "make strategy, execution, innovation and performance more important than ever, which is why we're so excited about What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success [by William Joyce, Nitin Nohria and Bruce Roberson, that], which was published May 1. What makes the book great is that it drives home the point that executing six management practices simultaneously and doing them well is fine, but it only takes one badly executed practice to sink your company. The book forces you to focus as much on what you do less well, as well as what you do really well."
"During the boom of the '90s, there was a demand for information on how to retain your best people, manage growth and achieve work-life balance," says Carol Franco, director of Harvard Business School Press. "Now, the focus has shifted to more immediate survival topics: how to stay competitive through turbulent change, how to prepare employees for a layoff." Responding to these needs, in January HBSP launched the Harvard Business Essentials series—"management lessons in concise formats for managers who don't have time to take a seminar." Coming in August are Business Communication and Project Management. Thomas Nelson publisher Jonathan Merkh also sees a trend toward smaller-sized motivational books that teach management principles. In 2002, Nelson launched business powerhouse John Maxwell's REAL Leadership series. The just-published Attitude 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know will be joined in December by Equipping 101 and Relationships 101.
"Both customers and bookstore book buyers seem to have pulled back to the tried, true and familiar," says B-K's Piersanti. And few management authors are more tried and true than Ken Blanchard, whose Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Company and Your Life, co-authored by Jesse Stoner, is due this month. Debuting later this year are the first two titles in the publisher's management-focused Ken Blanchard Series (featuring titles selected by Blanchard): The Referral of a Lifetime by Tim Templeton (June) and The Serving Leader by Ken Jennings and John Stahl-Wert (Oct.).
At Davies-Black, marketing and sales director Laura Simonds reports, "We're much more cautious about topics and author expertise/credibility." Merom Klein and Rod Napier's The Courage to Act: 5 Factors of Courage to Transform Business (June), she says, is the right book for these times: "When jobs change at the stroke of a pen and compromising is often easier than taking the high road, courage is the key to building organizations that will dominate the 21st century."
Jeffrey Krames, publisher of McGraw-Hill's trade business books division, notes "a genuine shift in readers' interest as a result of the shifting geopolitical landscape. We made adjustments in our publishing program to respond to the changing demand patterns in the marketplace." One example, Leadership Lessons of the Navy SEALS: Battle-Tested Strategies for Creating Successful Organizations and Inspiring Results by Lt. Commander Jon Cannon and Jeff Cannon, "fuses the military and business worlds," says Krames, "and has great takeways for building flexible organizations."
Because most of Portfolio's titles were signed up after what Zackheim calls "the new era, virtually all of our books are informed by it. People don't want books that excuse failure or tolerate defeat, but books that help them succeed." Books like Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske's Trading Up: The Transforming Power of New Luxury (Oct.)—"if you want to develop mass luxury brands like Williams-Sonoma or Victoria's Secret," says Zackheim, "you have to change your whole management outlook."
Of course, there are some things that never change. As publisher Nicholas Brealey puts it, "We've had big strategies, big gurus and the new economy, but people topics are perennial." The hottest such topic in the management arena for Brealey is coaching, the focus of next month's Coaching C.L.U.E.S.: Real Stories, Powerful Solutions, Practical Tools by Marian J. Thier. Amacom's Hickey reports an upswing in strong communication skills as a critical management competency. Generating Buy-In (Sept.) by former CNN White House correspondent Mark Walton explains how mastering the language of leadership will get listeners to "buy into" your message.
Leaders of the Pack
In the words of Crocker at Jossey-Bass, "We've shifted from a culture where business was sexy and CEOs were emulated by every working stiff to one where business isn't trusted and CEOs are perceived as greedy crooks." So the hunt is on by publishers for CEOs with spotless reputations and a message to convey. At Jossey-Bass, it's former Medtronic CEO Bill George, whose Authentic Leadership (July), says Crocker, "is the first book where a CEO really speaks out in an impassioned way about why some companies are where they are today."
Crown's Ross sees two distinct kinds of leadership books—"stories of egregious hubris and excess," such as Karen Southwick's Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison (Dec.) and "books that respond to hunger for substance." On the substantive side for Crown is Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits by Michael Useem, Jerry Useem and Paul Asel (Nov.), insights from writers who are both experienced mountaineers and managers.
"While once there was the 'visionary' leader, the 'inspirational' leader and the leader who could lead with 'soul,' " says Welch at Nicholas Brealey, "we believe the time has come for the new lessons of leadership—ethics." And who better than Warren Buffet (America's second richest man), who, speaking last month on CNN, urged major shareholders to "go after bad CEOs." The publisher's The Real Warren Buffett: Managing Capital, Leading People by James O'Loughlin is now in stores.
Former Eli Lilly CEO Randall Tobias's belief that ethics in business do matter, and that it's possible, even desirable, to succeed without selling out, convinced Indiana University Press to publish its first business title in nearly 25 years. Put the Moose on the Table: Leadership Lessons from a CEO's Journey Through Business and Life (May), says marketing director Marilyn Breiter, "is a message particularly important for future business leaders, the people now in MBA programs, and anyone just starting to climb the corporate ladder."
Kurt Senske has consulted for clients as diverse as presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and President George W. Bush. His Executive Values, says Augsburg Books acquisitions editor Michael Wilt, "offers ideas and tools for applying Christian principles to business and organizational leadership, and encourages leaders to put the Golden Rule at the core of their management style."
Wiley business and management division publisher Larry Alexander cites Kevin Cashman and Jack Forem's Awakening the Leader Within: A Story of Transformation as "a new vision of the leader as fallible and resilient—it opens the possibility that leaders can be created through personal growth." When Opposites Dance: Balancing the Manager and the Leader Within by Roy G. Williams and Terrence E. Deal (Davies-Black, Sept.) shows, says Simonds "how the manager-leader of today can balance the coolness of analysis and the warmth of heart." Published earlier this year by the Free Press, The Trusted Leader: Bringing Out the Best in Your People and Your Company by Robert Galford and Anne Siebold Drapeau is described by editorial director Dominick Anfuso as "a roadmap for building trust inside an organization, the key to every company's long-term survival and success."
Today's managers, notes Dearborn acquisitions editor Jon Malysiak, want to be assured of a loyal staff, and they know that a high salary, strong benefits package and a 401K are not necessarily the keys to low employee turnover. The Engaging Leader: Winning with Today's Free Agent Workforce by Ed Gubman shows managers how to retain top employees. Catherine Fishel's Inside the Business of Graphic Design: 60 Leaders Share Their Secrets of Success shows, says Allworth Press publisher Tad Crawford, "how to create an environment that not only makes money, but feeds the creative spirit of those who work there."
"A common notion," says Dr. Beverly Potter, author of Behavior Mod for Managers: How to Get Peak Performance Everyday (Aug.) and publisher at Berkeley's Ronin Publishing, "is that employees need expensive incentives such as bonuses and vacations, or frequent flier miles. But these do little to sustain motivation and may reinforce wrong or problem behavior. Praise in front of others, invitations to work on special projects, or even just being able to choose your own office furniture is the most powerful reinforcement—and it's free."
"Leadership is not just the reward system it once was, or the Maslow hierarchy, or even team management," says Entrepreneur Press editorial director Jere Calmes. "Now it involves breaking down the walls, mixing executives and employees, an empowering of the worker. This new style of leadership is symbolized by a secure and comfortable environs—a meat and potato rather than a foie gras meal." Entrepreneur has responded to this shift with The Business Playbook: Sports Strategies for Business Leaders (Sept.) by Brandon Steiner, real-life lessons from sports celebs like Tiger Woods and Mia Hamm. Amacom's Hickey sees a growing trend in finding leadership lessons in historical, nonbusiness examples; for example, in The Wright Way (Oct.), Mark Eppler extracts seven problem-solving principles followed by the Wright brothers to achieve man's first flight. Along similar lines is Alan Axelrod's Nothing to Fear: Lessons in Leadership from FDR, due this month from Portfolio.
"The command-and-control style of leadership gave way to a more hands-off approach during the dot-com era," says Franco at HBSP. "Now, in an economic downturn, senior executives are again taking more control. There's more being asked of leaders now than ever before, and they don't want to lose the abilities to innovate and to keep their sights on the future, but at the same time, they need to be rethinking, restructuring and initiating layoffs." Don Sull's May book, Revival of the Fittest: How Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them shows that the ability to move a company in a new direction is essential to good leadership. Dartmouth professor Sydney Finkelstein carried out the largest research program ever devoted to business breakdowns and management mistakes—his resulting work, Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes is coming next month from Portfolio.
Memo to Employees: Change Is Good
In these unsettled times, one of the most important skills a manager can possess is how to manage employees in a time of change. "Having recently lived through a managerial reorganization here [the end of the Perseus business line and reorganization of its staff]," relates Marnie Cochran, senior editor at DaCapo Press, "we know firsthand the value of William Bridge's Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change [May]. Managers who used this book have had an easier time communicating the need for and wisdom in change and, in so doing, the transitions have been easier." First published by Perseus in 1991, Managing Transitions has sold more than 400,000 copies. The updated second edition includes more practical strategies and stories of corporations that have undergone successful transitions.
Anyone who's aspired to climb the corporate ladder knows that the boss-employee relationship is crucial. For the last 14 years, Rosanne Badowski has been personal assistant to GE CEO Jack Welch. Managing Up: How to Forge an Effective Relationship with Those Above You (Mar.), says Currency Books editorial director Roger Scholl, "has a wealth of anecdotes that reveal how Welch gets things done and how Rosanne helps him. Her insights apply to virtually anyone in business." Quill Driver Books, best known for business books for the publishing community, is doing its first general management title—Donna Genett's If You Want It Done Right, You Don't Have to Do It Yourself: The Power of Effective Delegation (Sept.). Intrigued by the concept, which combines a management allegory with step-by-step practicality, publisher Stephen Mettee gave the proposal to his son, who owns a small business. He got it back with a note—"Buy it!"
Chess master Bruce Pandolfini (portrayed by Ben Kingsley in the 1993 movie Searching for Bobby Fischer) argues that Every Move Must Have a Purpose: Strategies from Chess for Business and Life (Hyperion, Nov.). "Chess and business," says executive editor Peternelle van Arsdale, "are an elegant and natural pairing. Both require strategy, and the ability to react and think ahead." A September McGraw-Hill release, Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand on the Business Battlefield by John Hancock CEO David F. D'Alessandro combines, says Krames, "unwritten rules for climbing the corporate ladder with lessons in reputation-building."
Anfuso at the Free Press bills Don Tapscott and David Ticoll's The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Openness Will Revolutionize Business (Oct.) as "In Search of Excellence meets Good to Great." And Kirk Cheyfitz's Thinking Inside the Box: The 12 Timeless Rules for Managing a Successful Business shows how thinking outside before you've gotten your bearings inside can cause companies to collapse.
How can large corporations encourage their senior managers to become more entrepreneurial? Vijay Sathe's Corporate Entrepreneurship: Top Managers and New Business Creation (June), says Cambridge U.P. publishing director Chris Harrison, "is a good example of top-class scholarship applied to the very real problem of how large corporations can foster innovative entrepreneurial activity."
Out this month from HBSP is What's the Big Idea?: Creating and Capitalizing on the Best Management Thinking by Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak, which argues that most effective organizations customize management practices to suit their unique needs, rather than concerning themselves with "what's hot." In September, the house will publish The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, in which authors Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor help managers tailor their strategies to the changing circumstances of a dynamic world.
"We signed Dave Ulrich's Why the Bottom Line Isn't!: How to Build Value Through People and Organization (May)," says Wiley's Alexander, "because it's exciting in the way it integrates ideas and practical in its cognizance of the bottom line. It will be hard to publish anything as compelling for several years. This veritable annihilation of such an interesting category—albeit temporarily—is unfortunate, but we're proud to be the ones to do it."
"One of the dramatic lessons to be learned from the events of the last couple of years is how we are all connected inextricably to others in the world," says Brealey's Welch. "All of these changes demand new management skills for anyone who hopes to succeed in the new global marketplace." Such skills are at the ready in the revised third edition of John Mole's Mind Your Manners: Managing Business Cultures in the New Global Europe and Phillipe Rosinski's Coaching Across Cultures: New Tools for Leveraging National, Corporate, and Professional Differences. Publisher Brealey, a Brit, does note one gap in this category—how does the rest of the world deal with Americans? (He promises a book in the works.)
A new business reality, reports Simonds at Davies-Black, is that employees often quit their managers, not their company. "Managing human resources," she says, "is the critical business competency that world-class companies look for in their managers." This October, Davies-Black is co-publishing (with the Society for Human Resource Management) Manager of Choice: 5 Competencies for Cultivating Top Talent by Nancy S. Ahlrichs. Crown chimes in with Leslie Perlow's When You Say Yes but Mean No: How Silencing Conflict Wrecks Relationships and Companies... and What They Can Do About It. And the Free Press offers The Value Profit Chain: Treat Employees Like Customers and Customers Like Employees by James L. Heskett et al.
Finally, an April Jossey-Bass title makes it all sound so simple: Treat People Right!: How Organizations and Individuals Can Propel Each Other Into a Virtuous Spiral of Success by Edward Lawler.
Recipes for Future Success
For Simonds at Davies Black, the future holds a focus on quality, not quantity, of titles: "Titles written by higher-quality authors with a platform. Our marketing/sales plan is more copies sold per title and closer attention to print runs, which may be somewhat smaller than in recent years. We're also paying very close attention to our customers' needs, and that affects our acquisition and marketing/sales plans."
At Portfolio, reports Zackheim, "we're trying to be very selective about what we publish, looking for important new ideas that will grab people where they live. We're not going to throw money at celebrity CEOs or famous gurus just because they have name recognition." And who knows? "The next Good to Great or Execution," he cautions, "may come from an author no one has ever heard of."
Selectivity is important, too, for Rick Wolff, Warner Business executive editor—"You have to continue to choose these titles very carefully. The art and science of management continues to change with the social times. Business leaders do want timely, prescriptive advice and they're looking for it in a succinct and sometimes entertaining fashion." He reports that Warner Business next year will publish the third title in a multi-book contract with the Gallup Organization, Animals Inc. by Ken Tucker. "It combines," says Wolff, "two attractive elements: it has a very strong management theme and it's done in a very topical, humorous fashion."
Berkowitz at HarperBusiness concurs with Wolff, predicting "a bright future for management and leadership books---particularly well researched, statistically solid studies. I think that you'll see books by more academic professors coupled with CEOs and consultants, to give heft and weight to the subject."
Dearborn's Malysiak expects big things from the company's new acquisitions team. "I think all of us are looking forward to acquiring a few books that may be a little 'outside of the box.' " Like Simonds, 'platform' is a key word for him, too. "When I'm evaluating proposals or talking to prospective authors and/or agents," he says, "the first thing I focus on is the author's platform. An author can have the greatest, most innovative book in the world, but if no one knows who they are and they aren't out pounding the pavement with the publisher's PR team to get their message across, the unfortunate reality is their book will get lost in the shuffle and end up in a returns pile."
Thomas Nelson, reports Merkh, will soon be launching a Nelson Business imprint that will include such bestselling backlist authors as John Maxwell and Todd Duncan and newly signed authors like Laurie Beth Jones (Jesus CEO and The Path). "We've established ourselves with retailers as a publisher of outstanding business and leadership books, so taking it to the next level only makes sense," Merkh explains.
At Wiley, however, says Alexander, "We've significantly reduced the number of management titles we publish. The audience for these books has really decreased. Management books today need an author or a company with a big platform to have a chance of success. Even if you spend tons of marketing dollars, if buyers don't recognize the author, I don't know if you have much chance of success."
But recognition is not the prime component, says Ross at Crown Business. Celebrity driven books, he says, "have a flash-in-the-pan success, but will subside quickly unless there is real meaningful content." He notes that neither of the most successful management titles of 2002, Crown's Execution and Harper Business's Good to Great, was celebrity driven. "They were a success because managers saw that 'this is how I want my managers to behave,' and they came in and bought hundreds of copies at a time for their staff." And while McGraw-Hill's Krames acknowledges the importance of "media-savvy authors with sterling credentials and a unique selling proposition, our philosophy is still that bestsellers are made, not just bought."
B-K's Piersanti relates that "many times we've turned down authors who promise up to $100,000 for a marketing campaign. In the end, it comes down to what the author has to say, not who much money that can contribute to marketing their book."
"Would we welcome authors willing to spend $100K on marketing? You bet!" says Entrepreneur Press marketing director Leanne Harvey. "But I hope future success in this category isn't solely dependent upon thick wallets. We're willing to take a chance on the author with passion and the drive to capitalize on marketing opportunities at the grassroots level." Phyllis Davis, author of E2: Using the Power of Ethics and Etiquette in American Business, is using networking, email blasts, and trips into every bookstore she can visit on her tour stops—introducing herself, bringing donuts to the sales staff, signing books. "So far," reports Harvey, "it's translated into store displays that weren't there before. I'll let you know in 90 days if a donut can be worth $100K."
