Process Improvements: Learn from the Repeats and the Gaps

Many of us find ourselves doing something that doesn't make sense, just because that's the way it's been done. Either it's the way you were taught to do it--either at home or on the job--or it's the way you taught others to do, but for whatever reason, it's no longer working.

What's the quickest way to fix this? Study these two areas for ideas on how to improve this process:

1. Where do you find yourself repeating either your steps or other's steps? Redundancy is a dreaded word in more than one way and is also just a waste of time. If you're repeating your own steps, take the time to sit down and figure out how you can avoid this. If you're repeating someone else's steps or they're repeating yours, sit down with them. (If you're doing this because you're a micro-manager, read my next post.)
2. Where are steps being skipped and/or communication seems to go awry? Again, sit down with all those involved and figure out who is responsible for doing what and until what, or communicating what and to whom, so that these gaps do not continue.

Process need not be difficult and the simpler and more straightforward you keep it, the better. Read Faster Cheaper Better: The 9 Levers for Transforming How Work Gets Done by Michael Hammer and Lisa Hershman for more ideas.

Have you had to improve a process? How did you go about  it?

Another Interpretation of Enhanced E-Books

I've been reading about and listening to a lot of web casts on enhanced e-books, thanks to Digital Book World's E2BU (their Enhanced E-book University) and a somewhat whimsical idea came to me.

I know that some people love the feel and smell of books and would hate to lose that. I also know that some luxury publishers, like my last employer, actually use really expensive materials for their covers and even sometimes add scents to those covers to enhance the experience of the book...So if enhanced e-books are meant to capture all our senses--audio for auditory and video for visual--is there room for olfactory? The tactile is already being addressed with fancy e-book covers (I like the easel variety) but is there a way to build in scents, perhaps even several to choose from into those e-book covers?

Just an idea....Thoughts?

What Type of Production Editor Are You?

Since I was fortunate enough to attend MediaBistro's Career Circus yesterday, I came away with a lot of food for thought on careers and what one should look for in a job. One of the top debates of the day was doing what you're passionate about versus what you're good at, and I'm a firm believer of a mix of the two: it's easier to do well if you do something you're good at, but try to do it at a company or industry that you can get passionate about.

This reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend on the four types of PEs (production editors) I've come across--and managed--in my career:

1. the Lifer: This PE loves nothing more than being a PE and making books. She is not interested in advancement or anything that will take her away from working on the books she loves. 
2. the Nine-to-Fiver: This PE is often good at the work they do, but it's only a day job for them and allows them to do what they're passionate about after hours, whether it's music, writing, theater, etc.
3. the Ambitious: This PE does her job well but sees it as the first of many stepping stones to her ultimate goal, whether it's running the department or higher.
4. the Ill-Suited: This PE is not good at what they do and is just not suited for the work of a PE. 

Although I speak of PEs in particular, the above categories are probably true for many jobs out there and it's very important for an individual to know which category they fall into and for their manager to know this as well. If you happen to manage a Lifer, promotion is not the way to motivate her; nor is it the way to motivate anyone but the Ambitious. If you manage a Nine-to-Fiver, respecting the work-life-balance and rewarding her with extra time off may be the key. For the Ill-Suited, if the person does not respond to all your efforts at training or development, it's in both your best interests to figure out what job they would be suited for.

One of my all-time favorite books on management is First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. It inspired me and introduced me to the "Strengths Revolution." The premise is that although skills and knowledge can be taught, talent and strengths are innate; to succeed at work and gain satisfaction from it, your job must play to these inherent strengths. It is a manager's job to help their staff do so, and to do so for themselves. If you manage staff and want to do it well,  I highly recommend reading this book.

So do you know your strengths and what motivates you? What type of PE are you?

Blog Revamped

It has been almost two years since I last blogged, and publishing has not stopped "transforming," nor will it anytime soon.

Since there are so many blogs to read on what's happening in the industry (I know since I'm trying to at least skim much of it daily), I decided that reposting what others have said adds no value.

Instead, I will post about what I know: the publishing process, in particular production editorial/managing editorial; process management; and just overall management, including staff management and leadership. I probably won't post more than once or twice a week but will try to make them meaningful. Look for my first real post over the next few days.

It's good to be back.

blog on hiatus

Due to personal and professional demands on my time, I have decided to put this blog on hiatus for the time being. I hope to be able to pick it up again in the future, but until then...keep reading, keep working, and keep your mind open to the ever transforming world of publishing.

Does Digital Cannibalize Print? Not Yet.

(Andrew Savikas, August 7, 2009)

One of the big risk factors publishers think about when it comes to digital books is that they will cannibalize print sales. Factor in the lower prices we're seeing for ebooks, and it's a quite reasonable concern.

Looking at data on sales from our website, at first glance that would appear to be exactly what's happening:

Over the past 18 months, we've gone from print outselling digital by more than 2:1 to just the opposite.

But that's not the full story. If there really was cannibalization happening, you'd expect to see our print sales underperforming the overall computer book market, but that's not what's happening. Here's a comparison of how our sales (as measured by Bookscan) stack up against the broader computer book market. The data here is normalized (the first period in the graph is set to 100, and subsequent results are calculate relative to that period):

Roger Magoulas, who heads up our Research Team (which is doing some way cool stuff with App Store data) put it this way in a recent backchannel email covering this as part of a larger analysis:

By looking at the data and these charts we infer that while O'Reilly physical book sales are down compared to last year, this seems more the result of the drop in demand for computer books since the financial meltdown than the impact of ebook sales. Since O'Reilly is a relatively prolific publisher of econtent we would expect that ebooks would affect O'Reilly's physical book sales more than other publishers and we don't see that evidence in these results. Even if ebooks are taking a bite out of O'Reilly physical book sales, we see no negative effect on O'Reilly's slightly increasing share in the physical book market nor on how O'Reilly's sales correlate with the overall market for physical computer books.

So, for now, if what we infer is correct, you can put away your exorcism crosses, ebooks seem more a legitimate expanded market opportunity than a projectile vomiting Linda Blair wannabe.

University Presses Stepping Up e-Book Efforts

(By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 7/17/2009)

In separate announcements, a coalition of four university presses have received a planning grant to study the feasibility of a collaborative scholarly e-book program, and the University of Chicago Press announced a multi-faceted program to make 700 e-books available immediately.

A coalition of presses from New York University, Rutgers, Temple and the University of Pennsylvania, plan to use a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to hire a technical consultant for a six-month study looking at the feasibility of a collaborative scholarly e-book publishing program. The new program will focus on studying the particular needs of university presses and their library partners. (A spokesperson for Temple Univ. press noted that TUP plans to immediately release 50 new e-books that are not a part of this announcement or coalition study.)

The coalition of presses plans to study how to bring together a wide variety of university presses of different sizes—a minimum of ten presses at launch—in an e-book publishing program that would launch with at least 10,000 e-book titles and add five to 10 new UPs each year over 5 years. According to the details of the grant, the new program would focus on the library market and then on supplying e-books to students as well as looking at variety of payment/delivery models—from purchase/subscription to rental models, bundling and POD.

Steve Maikowski, director of the NYU Press, is co-principal investigator on the grant along with Marlie Wasserman, director of Rutgers University Press. “This is a very ambitious planning grant and we are thankful to the Mellon Foundation for supporting the research,” Maikowski said.

For its part, the University of Chicago Press is well under way with its e-book program, announcing plans to partner with BiblioVault, a Chicago digital book repository, to immediately make 700 academic titles available in e-book form. The e-titles are available through the University of Chicago Press website and can be downloaded to a variety of laptops, desktops and mobile devices and read using Digital Editions, a free software reader available from Adobe.

Patti O’Shea, executive director of information systems at the Univ. of Chicago Press, said the press also plans to release more backlist e-book titles as well as begin simultaneous print and digital releases of its books. O’Shea said the press is offering a variety of purchase/rental options including “perpetual ownership at list price, 180-day ownership at about 50% off or 30-day owernship for $5.” O’Shea said the rental options were aimed at students and noted that using Digital Editions allows the e-books, “to be used on up to six unique devices registered to a single users. Readers can seamlessly transfer their e-books between different computers and e-book devices.”

Dean Bobaum, e-commerce and marketing manager at the press, said the press will continue to distribute e-books through vendors like Amazon and suppliers such as NetLibrary. However, Garrett Kiely, director of the Univ. of Chicago Press, said that seeing “big players like Sony and Google in the e-book game, “has lit a fire under academic presses,” to get into the e-book business.