“These are challenging times for all media businesses,” writes Tad Smith, until last week US CEO of Reed Business Information. It looks like the challenge was too big for Reed to handle: parent company Reed Elsevier, hoping to raise funds to cut down a 5 billion pound deficit, is dumping a bunch of magazines. One of them is Publishers Weekly, the venerated journal of America’s publishing industry. Also on the block are Library Journal and School Library Journal. Smith tendered his resignation.

Reed Elsevier doesn’t publicly break out income for individual publications but those of a cynical turn of mind might suggest that the sale of PW and its library journals would relieve its owners of all but 4,999,999 pounds of debt obligation. Though it’s a big deal to publishing insiders, the hard truth is that it’s scarcely a spark on the media industry’s radar. In 2008, the magazine’s circulation was 25,000 according to Wikipedia, of which about 6000 subscribers were publishers; 5500 public libraries and public library systems; 3800 booksellers; 1600 authors and writers; 1500 college and university libraries; 950 print, film and broad media; 750 literary and rights agents; and assorted civilians. Issues of the magazine circulated widely within these institutions and organizations, increasing eyeballs manifold but adding not a dime of revenue for the beleaguered publication.

The unenviable job of presiding over the disposal of PW and its sisteres falls on acting US CEO John Poulin.

Last winter PW suffered collateral damage as the full brunt of the economic recession hit the publishing industry, leading to wholesale staff firings, closings of divisions, curtailing of frontlist titles, a glut of retailer returns and across-the-board belt-tightening right down to the shocking precedent of making agents split the bill on lunch dates with editors. We had expected PW to chronicle the chaos but not be a victim of it. However, the firing of the magazine’s respected and beloved editor in chief Sara Nelson had a feeling of the apocalypse to it. “Me?” I lamented, “I’m in mourning. Sara Nelson was one of us.”

“Nelson’s hiring four years ago brought a lively voice to the stodgy old news magazine. Her weekly editorials – I haven’t kept count but I doubt if she missed more than a handful of issues – were intelligent, thought-provoking, and often fearlessly controversial. She overhauled every section and injected color and sparkle to deadly dull listings and boring announcements. She was a passionate advocate for all the right causes, but she did not disdain gossip and buzz. She wore her love for books and book people on her sleeve.”

Though the magazine has soldiered on since then under the leadership of Brian Kenney and has fortified its online presence via PublishersWeekly.com, the drying up of publisher advertising revenue had made the paper magazine so emaciated you can all but slide it under your door. And, as is the case with most other print media, ad revenue for the dotcom edition has not generated enough money to balance the red ink generated by the paper format. The New York Times‘s Motoko Rich summed it up:

“Like the industry it covers, Publishers Weekly has suffered from a downturn in the retail economy as publishers have stopped advertising their upcoming books in the magazine. In past years, publishers used the magazine as a way to inform booksellers of the buzz on upcoming titles, but now most publishers communicate directly with bookstores and executives at the biggest book chains.”

Publishers Weekly has been a compass and a lifeline for book people for 137 years, and we sincerely hope that a savvy team of investors and book industry folks will find a way to turn the business around and restore this indispensable resource.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly .

They say that your name is your destiny. So, if you’re going to be named Leaver, you owe it to the gods to leave something, and Marcus Leaver, President of Sterling Publishing, is leaving something: the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Der Frankfurter Buchmesse is the international publishing community’s biggest annual trade show and a major station on the industry’s Via Voluptuosa. Thus, for a significant publisher to pull out – Sterling is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble – is momentous. “I’m not going to Frankfurt,” Leaver declared flatly. He’ll send a “very reduced team” – call it a skeleton crew? – to the Octoberfest, but as far as he’s concerned, “The trade show is over.”

Leaver’s ukase, uttered at the recent and appropriately named Making Information Pay conference, heralded a reallocation of the company’s capital. As reported by Believers Press and by Jim Milliott of Publishers Weekly, Sterling has “taken about $1 million out of our trade show, exhibition and sales conference budget” and “increased our title-by-title marketing spend 33% in a year.”

Sterling wasn’t the only publisher to announce withdrawal from trade shows. Dominique Raccah, the innovative CEO of Chicago-based Sourcebooks, announced at the same conference that she was cutting her trade show budget by a quarter of a million dollars, pushing her company in the direction of “a complete xml workflow.”

Another precinct heard from was Simon & Schuster. The firm’s CEO, Caroline Reidy, discussing S&S’s latest earnings performance, stated that “we have definitely looked at our participation in trade shows” and are “cutting back dramatically our booth and participation at Frankfurt.” She also hinted that the London Book Fair might be a target of cost-cutting: “participation there is being scrutinized as well,” she said.

Another capital-intensive practice on the chopping block for a number of publishers is paper catalogues, and though we’re all trying to enter the digital age unflinchingly, the disappearance of catalogues will be more wrenching than many other uprootings. Catalogues have long been the most familiar tool for introducing the bookstore trade to publishers’ front- and backlists. They are not merely informational and often beautiful but they are a publisher’s face to the world, its very identity. Even the spelling of “catalogue”, despite Microsoft spellcheck’s insistence on dropping the “ue”, bespeaks a stubborn and beloved tradition. Be that as it may, Sterling’s Leaver has lost his emotional attachment for paper catalogues, saying ” “it just wasn’t efficient so we’ve stopped doing that and it feels good.” Like a number of other publishers, notably Hachette, Sterling will ditch paper catalogues for digital ones.

The digital book catalogue is a relatively untested medium and the vote to embrace it is by no means unanimous among trade publishers. A recent initiative on the subject spearheaded by Hachette’s David Young was met with many polite nods but few are falling all over themselves to switch out of paper, however costly catalogues may be to produce and mail.

As long as Leaver is leaving things, he’s casting an eye on author tours. Virtual tours and “webinars” are now the way to send authors out without having to leave the comforts of home (or spend a lot of money on travel bookings). “We’re reaching a large market this way,” he said. Raccah echoed his sentiment. “Raccah is also hugely energized by emerging digital landscape,” reports Publishers Lunch.

“‘In the big picture, we’re creating new approaches to content,’ she said. They are creating 23 iPhone apps, three of which have already been released and should be in the black before the end of the year. She spoke about ‘unbundling our services’ and becoming ‘custom’ everything’ noting that ‘the customer will tell you how they want to buy something.’ She underscored that there is a ‘tremendous opportunity for partnerships everywhere–the world just got a whole lot bigger.’”

In the cascading collapse of cherished traditions created by digital disintermediation, tangible goods like books and catalogues aren’t the only victims; time and space are being reconfigured as well. For those who have not yet shifted their heads and hearts to the virtual dimension, this is a time of intense discomfort and even fear. The oft-cited analogy to the social disruption caused by the introduction of automobiles to a horse-and-buggy world is apt, but it’s no comfort to know that after a painful period of adjustment the world finally got used to it.

Richard Curtis

In a season of shocking news, the firing of Sara Nelson, Publishers Weekly’s editor in chief, blindsided the book trade community and brought the industry’s recession home in a deeply personal way. Me? I’m in mourning. Sara Nelson was one of us.

Nelson’s hiring four years ago brought a lively voice to the stodgy old news magazine. Her weekly editorials – I haven’t kept count but I doubt if she missed more than a handful of issues – were intelligent, thought-provoking, and often fearlessly controversial. She overhauled every section and injected color and sparkle to deadly dull listings and boring announcements. She was a passionate advocate for all the right causes, but she did not disdain gossip and buzz. She wore her love for books and book people on her sleeve.

Reed Business Information, the magazine’s owner, gave no valid reason for letting her go, but the Times‘s Motoko Rich offered this:

Like the industry it covers, Publishers Weekly has suffered from a downturn in the retail economy as publishers have stopped advertising their upcoming books in the magazine. In past years, publishers used the magazine as a way to inform booksellers of the buzz on upcoming titles, but now most publishers communicate directly with bookstores and executives at the biggest book chains

Brian Kenney, editor in chief of School Library Journal, will now take over the job. He has a huge pair of shoes to fill.

RC