Kirshbaum was not alone in making a difference in 2005. Three other forces—a bookselling community, a children's book publisher and a publishing visionary—are industry stars as well.
Kepler's Books (and its Friends)
One of the most upbeat moments in bookselling this year came when the Menlo Park, Calif., community rallied to support Clark Kepler after he was forced to close his family-owned bookstore just months after celebrating its 50th anniversary. A group of 23 business leaders pledged more than $500,000 to get the store out of debt, set up an events program, launch a membership program and rehire the staff. Forty days later, the store reopened with Clark Kepler as the president and chair of the store's new board of directors and recipient of a newly renegotiated lease.
"Business has been brisk since we reopened," Kepler says. "Thousands of people showed their support by buying their holiday gifts early. And hundreds of people signed up to volunteer in the store doing everything from marketing to shelving and grunt work."
The community's support took Kepler by surprise. "I thought people might feel bad about our closing, but I had no inkling about the depth of feeling they had for our store," he says. "It's been inspirational for us to keep going. Before I initially closed, I thought maybe there might be an angel investor out there, but I didn't know how to reach out." He's already investing the money raised through donations and annual membership dues to build a stronger visiting author program and to partner with other venues to host larger events.
"I haven't had time to digest what I've gone through—maybe after the holidays," he says with a laugh. "This has been an amazing and humbling experience. I've been running on adrenaline and the love of thousands of people. This is not my story, this is the story of our community that came forward to change something for the better. I'm just a character in this story."—Kevin Howell
Lisa Holton: Stepping Up In Children's Book
At about this time last year, Lisa Holton, then head of Disney Publishing's Children's Group, was pointing to her penchant for "investing in talent" as one of the reasons her house had such a banner 2004. Talent certainly seems to be on Holton's mind once again, as she settles into her new role at Scholastic. In succeeding Barbara Marcus as head of Scholastic's trade and book fair operations, Holton has already started to make her mark by doing one of the things she does best: luring big-name editors and authors to her team. After veteran Scholastic editor Jean Feiwel stepped down this fall, Holton hired Andrea Davis Pinkney and Catherine Daly to executive roles. And just this month Holton brought to Scholastic the highly regarded children's editor Michael Di Capua, with whom she worked at Hyperion.
Holton, who started in the industry about 20 years ago as assistant to Walter Weintz, director of sales and marketing at St. Martin's, seems comfortable taking the reins from Marcus. In speaking about her vision for the company, she says her goal is to "converge the old and the new." To Holton, that means paying deference to the book as we know it while trying to embrace the future of the book as we, well, don't yet know it. "I'm one of those people who believes that printed books will always be here, but I also believe that we need to embrace technology and be open to figuring out how to use that technology to bring kids to reading and to sell books."—Rachel Deahl
Richard Sarnoff: New Business Models
As president of Random House Corporate Development and Random House Ventures, it's Richard Sarnoff's responsibility to help prepare the country's largest trade house for the future. That task took Sarnoff in some very different directions in 2005. Wearing his RH Ventures hat, he took a minority stake in Vocel in February. The San Diego, Calif., company develops software that sends content to cell phones. Less than two months later, he made an investment in the American Reading Company, a King of Prussia, Pa., company that develops standard-based systems to improve students' reading skills. As Sarnoff sees it, the Vocel investment will help Random keep tabs on how the technology-savvy are getting content, while the ARC investment will aid in creating more readers.
But where Sarnoff really earned his salary this year was on the corporate-development side. It is Sarnoff who spearheads the RH team that tries to divine how new developments in the digital realm will affect Random's business. To try to create some structure to the fledgling digital viewing business, this fall Sarnoff devised a term-of-sale plan that calls for Random to receive four cents per page for material viewed online. The business model was created in response to actions by Amazon, Google and others that make it inevitable that all kinds of book content will make their way online, and to establish a method for Random, and its authors, to be paid for online reading. The Random plan was the first issued by a major U.S. trade publisher regarding payment for online access, and it's seen as an important step in publishers reclaiming some of the initiative in the sale of digital content.
Some general guidelines Sarnoff has developed from playing in the digital arena include making sure publishers create a flexible archive of books and appropriate rights for future business models. Also, publishers should "experiment boldly, but don't derail your core business or degrade the intrinsic value of book content," Sarnoff advises. —J.M.
