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I am a publishing consultant. So it may seem odd to warn against the engaging the services of a someone like me.

In fact, I am not. There are many, many good reasons to bring in a consultant. A consultant can bring an outside perspective and allow a publication to see its operations in a fresh light. Consultants can address long-postponed problems that publications staff do not themselves have time to tackle. And consultants can help a publication confront a challenge--say, a long-term decline in advertising sales or readership--whose reversal may require a course correction too painful to contemplate on one's own.

But there are things consultants cannot do. Namely, tell you what you do not, at some level at least, already know. Force you to make decisions you cannot bring yourself to make. Close down or outsource publications you or your volunteers want to retain. Or, worse of all, force your staff to operate differently, when you have done nothing to prepare or sustain a different way of operating.

My fellow consultant John Cox has a saying that gets at the mistaken reliance on consultants: "A consultant is someone who asks to borrow your watch, then charges you when you ask the time." (He also shares a bit cruder version: "A consultant is someone who can tell you 50 ways to have sex, but doesn't know any women.")

If I had to list three reasons not to hire a consultant, these would be tops:

1. You can't make a decision. If you are expecting that the consultant will arrive with a report in the way Moses came down with the tablets from Mt. Sinai, your expectations are wildly unrealistic. A consultant can only offer you ten suggestions, not ten commandments. It's up to you whether and how to interpret and inplement them. If you can't make a decision, the consultant's report is very unlikely to point to a path so compelling that the decision to follow it is automatic.
   
2. You want to put key association volunteers in their place. If you're constantly butting heads with volunteers who want to edit the magazine, choose the cover photo, use the publication to cozy up to a sponsor, or dictate advertising and c policy, you have a problem deeper than a publications consultant can solve. You likely suffer from a more fundamental problem in volunteer relations and governance, and the proper roles of staff and volunteers need to be more clearly established before you can address problems with a publication. (However, a publications consultant can sometimes provide outside confirmation of the wisdom of a course that staff have suggested but association leaders have dismissed. Staff publications prophets too often go unrecognized in their own land.)
3. You want a consultant to give your publications program a vision and purpose. In healthy organizations, as described in the recent book 7 Measures of Success, products and services are aligned with the organization's mission. A publications consultant cannot reasonably determine how the publications program should support the association's mission and vision; that is a matter for some deep soul searching among staff and volunteers. There is no one answer. A publication might support the organization by generating revenue, by being an authoritative voice in the industry, or by aiding member recruitment and retention. A consultant can help you to discover the possibilities and to achieve them once a direction is decided--but the decision of where to go must begin in the association itself.

None of this is meant to discourge you from hiring a consultant--a step that, as a consultant, I often heartily endorse. But with associations' resources often limited, it is best to go into a consulting arrangement with expectations realistic and outcomes clearly defined.

One prospective client recently told me all he wanted was a "magic bullet" to turn his publications program around. Much as I wish it were so, consultants do not have a supply of magic in their holsters. What they do have is tools, techiques, and insights to support the hard but ultimately rewarding work of creating successful publications.

Labels: consultant publications

Sometime in the next few months, you may get RFPs from agencies asking for your advertising proposals and rates for 2007. If these RFPs follow the form of the past several years, there will be three messages:
• We will not pay more in 2007 than we did in 2006.
• While you hold prices constant, we expect more—free insertions, free merchandising, free coupons, more and more free things.
• We hate you.

If you dare to not hold your rates, you will likely receive a call from a 22-year-old media buyer who will shriek into the phone your need to meet agency demands, or never sell advertising in this town again.

Welcome to media buying 2007, which looks more and more like clearance days in Filene’s Basement. It’s enough to make a publisher wonder whether there is an easier way to generate revenue--like selling a kidney, maybe.

Unfortunately, too many publishers react to arm-twisting on rates by asking what may be the least relevant question of all: “Are other people raising their rates next year, and, if so, by how much?” Setting rates by building in the average rate increase of other publishers would be like deciding on your healthy weight by asking how much other people are gaining each year. If you weighed 300 pounds to begin with, adding the one pound everyone else was would still leave you on track to coronary disaster.

Rather than following the pack, the best approach to setting ad rates is an old and simple one, first written by the advertising consultants who inscribed their counsel on the ancient Temple at Delphi: “Know Thyself.” This breaks down into three strategies: know where you stand in relation to other titles in your particular field, know what special values you possess, and know how to leverage those values to maximum profit.

Knowing Where You Stand
Head to the SRDS Business Publication Advertising Source for data to begin your competitive analysis. Because publications in different industries may have characteristic prices ranges, define a competitive set of publications, including both association and for-profit titles. Calculate the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) by dividing the one-time four-color full-page rate by the paid (or, if a controlled publication, requested) circulation. This will give you a first ballpark estimate of how your rates compare to those of competitors.
It is only a ballpark, however, for several reasons. First, many publishers don’t stick to their published rate card, but use it as the starting place for discounting and dealing. Publications that appear expensive on the sheet may not be expensive on the street. Second, the quality of circulation statements can vary widely. Even in the wake of circulation scandals that turned the spotlight on dicey circulation claims, some sworn statements contain figures that appear questionable. Finally, CPM depends on the focus of the publication. A publication that reaches a targeted audience of influential decision makers can command a higher rate than a publication with a wider audience of non-managerial readers.
Though these factors make it hard to compare the CPM of your publication to those of competitors, they will at least give you a first clue about how media buyers will initially evaluate your rates, and what the range of rates is within your field.

Knowing Your Own Value
By itself, a CPM that is high for your industry doesn’t automatically mean your publication is overpriced, and a low CPM doesn’t necessarily mean you are underpriced. To know whether you are priced fairly, you have to know your publication’s value.
Enter research, from either a syndicated survey or a custom survey conducted by a respected independent research firm. To command higher rates, you will need to show that your readers are highly engaged with the publication and are the people who make or strongly influence purchasing decisions. You should have the data to demonstrate impressive answers to questions such as these:
1. How much time do readers spend with your publication? How many of the last four or six issues have they read, and how thoroughly do they read a typical issue?
2. Do they keep the publication for future reference? How many other people also read their copy?
3. What percentage would select your publication over other publications? Is it considered a “must read” in the industry?
4. What authority do they have to select advertisers’ products? Are they the final decision makers or do they strongly influence purchasing decisions?
5. What positions do readers have within their companies? Are they C level or high-level decision makers?
6. How clean is your circulation? Are you BPA audited, or, if not, can you produce postal or print records to prove circulation claims?
If you can’t demonstrate favorable responses to these questions, then use the results to think hard about retooling your publication for greater reader engagement and allegiance. But if you have strong results—and most association publications do—then it’s time to leverage your findings to the best advantage.

Knowing How To Leverage
Because media buyers often first approach a publication with demands for discounts and deals, publishers are often tempted to react defensively and agree to hold or cut rates. Don’t--at least not before you have identified the unique value that your publications alone can deliver to advertisers. Many association publications deliver access to an engaged readership available nowhere else, and it is foolish to sell that access short. Focus on offering media buyers more value, not lower prices.

Comb your research data for gems that set your publication apart. You might emphasize the allegiance of readers (“90% read an average issue cover to cover”), their purchasing authority (“95% are final decision makers on capital purchases”), or the scope of circulation (“Reaches 88% of C-level executives”). Whatever your strongest selling points are, don’t put them in a media kit and expect buyers to remember them. Put them in every communication vehicle you use—media kits, print promotions, Web sites, e-mail signatures, and more. It may take seven or ten exposures before a media buyer begins to remember what makes you a leader deserving of higher rates.

So steel yourself for the coming pressure on 2007’s rates. Forgo the beach book and spend the summer writing the book on how valuable your publication really is. Then, when the demands come for holding your rates, you will be ready with the proper response: No.

CHARLESTON, SC, NOVEMBER 10—Just as you were just about to finally master the user’s manual for the Web, along comes Web 2.0. And it is already spawning Publishing 2.0. And perhaps Web 3.0.

Leave it to the Internet generation to create versions of the future—and unkindly leave the average publisher one version behind.

Speakers at the Charleston Conference here today outlined a future in which Web pages are continually updated and customized for individual users—often by users themselves. “Web 2.0 is about recognizing that e-content is no longer static, but in perpetual motion,” said Martin Marlow, vice president of sales and marketing at Atypon, a California company that provides software and Web hosting for journals. It is also about “collaboration and communication, enabling individuals to help each other to find, organize, and add value to content.”

A curent buzzword, Web 2.0 is a rather amorphous term that refers to a kind of second coming of the Web--this one replete with collaborative tools like social networking, wikis, and blogs. Examples of sites that embody Web 2.0 include craigslist, which creates online urban communities including classified ads; del.icio.us, which enables users to share their Web bookmarks; and threadless, which lets users share and find t-shirt designs.

Even for publishers of scholarly journals, Web 2.0 is casting a long shadow. For example, Atypon recently announced the addition of collaborative filtering to its electronic publishing platform for scholarly journals. Now, scientists and researchers will be able to do what Amazon.com users have done for a while--see a list of tailored article recommendations under the heading "Users who read this article also read..."

Even seemingly stodgy reference books can be transformed by Web 2.0. For example, consider the mammoth Birds of North America, an 18-volume, 18,000-page reference work published in 2002 by Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology.

Speaking at the Charleston Conference, Barry Bermudez, marketing manager for information science at the laboratory, displayed the online version of the tome, which can now include audio of birdsong and video of flight. Because ornithology is a worldwide science based on field observation, it is perfectly suited to contributions from marsh-stomping birders, and amateur photographers and videographers can submit content.

But a scholarly reference work does have to strike a balance between openness to user contributions and accuracy of content. "There is a fine line that has to be drawn," Bermudez said, noting the number of contributors who claimed to have seen an Ivory Billed Woodpecker. The species, long thought to be extinct, was rediscovered in 2004 in a remote nature reserve in Arkansas. Trained ornithologists do evaluate every amateur contribution to Birds of America, Bermudez said.

Perhaps not content with jazzy bird sites, Web specialists are already looking past Web 2.0 to what is controversially (an article on it was recently deleted from the Wikipedia) known as Web 3.0. In this version, the Web not only lets users share and receive information from other people, but knows what information they need and want almost before they do. A simple visit to a conference web site, for example, might let you download the date and time into your electronic calendar, map the address of the conference site, and communicate with other registrants.

For now, however, most pubishers will have enough on their e-plates just to catch up with Web 2.0 and Publishing 2.0.

In the future of etymology, a common attribution will likely be "early 21st century, from Wired magazine." To Wired's already considerable contributions to the lexicon of business communications language, now add "crowdsourcing."

First used by Wired writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson in June 2006, crowdsourcing refers to work done not by outside contractors, but by the crowd--specifically, a crowd of volunteers and low-paid amateurs who use their spare time to create content, solve problems, or even do corporate research and development.

Already, players such as InnoCentive.com and yet2.com offer their corporate customers access to vast networks of scientists and other problem solvers who may want to tackle a particular R&D problem the way others set themselves to the New York Times crossword puzzle. Forget, "Two heads are better than one." Try, "100,000 heads are better than two."

For example, Procter & Gamble executives concluded they could boost sales of Pringles if trivia questions could be printed on the crisps. Yes, the crips themselves, not the canister. Through InnoCentive, P&G stumbled across an engineering professor in Italy who happened to own a bakery and had come up with an ink-jet method for printing images on cookies with edible dyes. The inkjetted Pringle was born.

Apparently, what's good for potato crips is also now good for daily newspapers. Wired News reports that Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing some of its newsgathering. The "newsroom" will now be the "information center," and the metro, state or sports departments will report to desks with names like "data," "digital" and "community conversation."

Lou Grant, RIP.

Of course, crowdsourcing is not entirely new to publications. Heloise has been gathering and dispensing readers' hints for pesky household problems for years. And Reiman Publications has built a publishing empire with reader-supplied down home recipes for tuna noodle casserole and other heartland favorites.

But Gannett appears to be taking crowdsourcing to a more intense and serious level. Gathering content from the kind of zealous self-appointed watchdogs, whistle-blowers, and newshounds who make up the blogosphere, Gannett can leverage the kind of ferocious dirt-digging that brought down Dan Rather and Mark Foley.

Crowdsourcing may not have quite the applicabiity to standard association monthlies, and yet it has the potential to place a finger on the pulse of industry. A staff of a handful of writers and editors cannot hope to have the eyes on the street that a network of reader-contributors will.

So instead of using your publication Web page as little more than a teaser for the print edition, make it a feeder for the print edition, capturing the insights and investigations of real readers. Call it crowd control.

Thank the Web for democratizing the absurd. Case in point: Slate magazine's latest euphemisms audio contest, in which language columnist Barbara Wallraff asked her podcast listeners for their favorite new ways of saying "kick the bucket."

Such a goofy exercise would have been laborious to bring off in print, with no easy way for demented, insomniac listeners to shoot off late night e-mail. Moreover, the audio version of "Where old people go after Florida" has a wicked spark that would be lacking in print.

So in these days of wicked podcasts, blogs, wikis and other e-whatnots, is print "losing its long fight with entropy?"

To judge from the Washington, DC, subways, maybe so. Based on the number of copies of the once-essential Washington Post that are not left littering seats, one would have to conclude that print is at the very least on life support, perhaps with DNR orders.

In the Post's place is a now a free Post-published throwaway called Express. Here's the breezy way the paper's marketing department describes its new creation for potential advertisers: "The cost-efficient way to ride face-to-face with Washington's diverse, college-educated, white-collar, time-pressed adults--the trendsetters and info-magnets who are short on excess time but not on discretionary income."

In other words, Express is one of the world's great newspapers reduced to a "See Spot Run" level for monied 20-somethings with attention deficit disorder.

The Post is hardly alone in worrying about being "promoted to glory." Nationwide, daily newspaper circulation fell an average of 2.8 percent over a six-month period ending in September, according to just-released figures from the Newspaper Association of America. Sunday circulation fell 3.4 percent nationwide over the same time period.

Time for print to celebrate its "Heaven birthday?"

Actually, no. Painful as it may be for people raised on eight-column layouts to accept downsized newspapers with the intellectual rigor of My Weekly Reader, the existence of Express indicates that even the iPod generation wants ink on its fingers.

At the recent Folio Conference in New York, Betsy Frank, the new Chief Research and Insights Officer at Time, Inc., assured the magazine-bred attendees that print is not dead. "People are not giving up their magazines," she said.

But print is only one of many flavors of media these days, and the smart publisher has to offer much more than vanilla and chocolate. Frank said that today's "selective, impatient, active" readers live by the motto, "I want what I want when I want it."

With so many different ways to get information, publishers cannot assume "If you build it they will come," she said. Instead, "if they come, you had better have it ready."

That is, print may not be "eating the grass by the roots." It is more like someone in assisted living, watching the new and younger residents with a bit of envy and suspicion, but still keeping its seat at the dinner table.