Reflections of a Small Publisher

It must be a thrill to work for Random House, the large New York publisher. Their presses turn out a dizzying 1,700 new titles a year.
Most small publishers strain to bring out 10 or 20. That’s like the difference between a spawn of salmon eggs and a single chicken egg: if safety is in numbers, there is no doubt where security abounds.
But for tender loving care of books and authors, for esprit de corps, and for efficiency, a small organization may be optimal. I'm sure a publishing concern can be too small, with so few titles that the essential overheads consume the little profit that good books generate. But smallness can work well, too.
Know Your Purpose
At our small publishing house, there are unique challenges we've had to face. But let me suggest what has helped us to cope.
For us, growth has been agonizingly slow. If I knew a way to grow fast I would try it. When I first came into management, the top priority was survival. Our little company, idealistic and mission-minded as we were, pursued survival, nothing more.
Of course, survival may not be worth the struggle. Not every enterprise deserves to survive, and not every method of survival is worthwile. We learned that the owner or sponsor of a publishing effort must define its mission as sharply as possible. Then it falls to the staff, large or small, to put that mission into practice.
This leads us to a subject many Christians find uncomfortable: money.
Seek profit
I've often said around the office that I don't love money; I just hate the lack of it.
Unprofitability means we have to brood about unpaid bills, poorly paid employees, cash crises, and missed opportunities. Adequate capital expands our options and elevates our morale. We may not always be good stewards of the money, but at least we are free to think about books more than bills.
In other words, profitability means we can do what we ought to do, and give the world good reading experiences.
As a manager, then, I must regulate spending more than anyone else. I must work more than anyone on our budgets, watching proportions, rations, balances and imbalances.
Publish the right books
When you’re small, you don’t have the luxury of a lot of mistakes. In publishing, this rules out big author advances, large print runs, unprofitable small print runs, high visibility promotion campaigns, long-term projects, and a sizable payroll. And it requires that the handful of new books be selected with care.
Commonly, a small press mushrooms from a single author or even a single successful book (which got published out of luck, wits, or providence.) But after that, all good, small publishers require a year-in, year-out consistency.
Dramatic success one year puts pressure on the firm to come up with another big one next year or else live with a roller coaster sales cycle. I've heard large New York publishers say they lose money on 80 percent of their books and make it up on the other 20 percent. We could never suffer such a lopsided ratio. Selecting good books has to be the chief skill in our sort of publishing. Everything else is downstream from that skill—what we call acquisitions. Everything else flows out of it, and that means thinking ahead.
Think Ahead
Indeed, thinking ahead is the chief role of management in any enterprise. Top management must think ahead years; middle management must think ahead months; and the staff must think in shorter time frames, sometimes only hours.
When I worked on monthly magazines, I learned how quickly the issues would roll around. The cupboard would be bare if we did not commission articles for them.
Now, with the help of staff, I am conscious of how quickly a new publishing year will be upon us. Since new books pull along old books, we must keep the pipeline full. No new books means, usually, that the old books will weaken and wane. And for a small company like ours, that can mean the difference between death and survival.

By Stephen Board
Copyright ©2007 Cook Communications Ministries International