After September 11, some publishers wondered aloud if the sales conference, for decades a significant ritual of each book season, might change to accommodate concerns about travel and cost.
Two years later, that is exactly what has happened—and then some. The country's four largest publishers have reined in traditional meetings and instead substituted a variety of remote gatherings, in the hope of saving company money and employee time. What several years ago might have meant flying in hundreds of reps to warm climates for as much as a week of presentations is now more likely to consist of employees in every corner of the country hunched over their computers.
"It's kind of a reevaluation of all our resources," explained Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum, whose virtual sales conference was held last week. Until two years ago, Random held its fall gathering in south Florida, but it is now conducting its meetings via Web conferencing. Applebaum noted that more people can now attend the conference.
At Simon & Schuster, the company held its August adult-division conference exclusively via the Web, with several hundred field reps and publishers connecting to New York. It will use the same method for its December conference, and the company said it expects all divisions to eventually use this approach.
"A big part of this is driven by cost, but we've also felt the process of sales conference was less and less useful in this day of instant communication," said S&S director of sales Larry Norton. "We'd get to sales conference and people would always ask, 'Why re-present? We've already heard this before?' " Instead of presentations, in these Web meetings the company assumes most reps are familiar with the books and skips directly to strategy.
HarperCollins is also getting with the remote game. It held its first Webcasted sales conference last week. While CEO Jane Friedman admitted she was nervous about the loss of personal interaction, she said the conference came off well.
Even at Penguin, which continues to convene sales and marketing employees in Boca Raton, Fla., editors no longer attend the fall event; instead, they prepare video presentations.
Like Penguin, Random and Harper are not ready to abandon the tradition totally. Random will alternate its sales conferences, holding some in real-time and some via Web linkup. And although Friedman said she will do a Webcast again, the publisher will continue to hold sales meetings outside of New York.
Some reps, especially those in the field, said the change could rob them of a chance to see everyone in the company face-to-face. But publishers said the benefits outweigh the concerns.
"Sales conferences are always about trade-offs," said Norton, "like how much time you want to spend on each title." The new meetings, he said, simply require a different kind of exchange. "You lose the informal interactions you get between meetings and in the evening," he said. [But] this is more efficient. It's a better use of time."
