News

5/13/2013

Pharmacy on a Bicycle: Innovative Solutions for Global Health and Poverty by Eric Bing and Marc Epstein Available this month!

Offers a creative, entrepreneurial approach to bringing lifesaving health care to those who need it most
Features real-world examples of this approach in action around the world
Coauthored by a prominent health-care expert and a leading business professor and copublished by the prestigious George W. Bush Institute

For media review copies contact Katie Sheehan ksheehan@bkpub.com

4/17/2013

Berrett-Koehler Authors Recipient of Nautilus Awards

Meg Wheatley and Marjorie Kelly both take Silver

Two Berrett-Koehler authors received recognition for their outstanding books by winning silver in the 2013 Nautilus Awards.

Meg Wheatley, author of So Far From Home, has won the 2013 Nautilus Silver Award in Inner Prosperity/Right Livelihood.

Marjorie Kelly, author of Owning Our Future, has won the 2013 Nautilus Silver Award in Business/Leadership.

The Nautilus Awards represents "Better Books for a Better World." Now in its 13th year, this unique book award program continues to gain prestige with authors and publishers around the world as it seeks, honors, awards and promotes print books that inspire and connect our lives as individuals, communities and global citizens.

Dedicated to excellence and the highest literary standards, the Nautilus assists its winners in getting wider recognition, marketing and exhibiting opportunities, media coverage, industry exposure and enhanced prospects for sales.

The Nautilus Awards seeks and promotes well-written and -produced books with messages about caring for, understanding, and improving every aspect of our lives and relationships.

Congratulations to Meg and Marjorie for this great honor!

3/11/2013

Berrett-Koehler Authors Speaking at ASTD Conference 2013

http://www.astdconference.org/

In Dallas, Texas, USA, May 19-22, 2013, ASTD will welcome more than 8,000 people who focus their daily attention on the design and delivery, management and strategy of learning and development to the 2013 International Conference & Exposition.

The following authors will be in attendance - and be sure to stop by the Berrett-Koehler booth to meet our team and learn about upcoming books!

Beverly Kaye

Bill Treasurer

Chip Bell

Dianna Booher

Don Maruska

Jack Phillips

Jeannie Coyle

Jim Kirkpatrick

Karen Hough

Ken Blanchard

Laurie Bassi

Marta Brooks

Patti Phillips

Robert Vaughn

Steven Snyder

Wendy Axelrod

Elaine Biech

Lisa Haneberg

2/28/2013

What Do Bestseller Lists Really Measure?

By Steve Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

A recent Wall Street Journal article has focused attention on one of the ways that scores of authors with dozens of publishers have gamed the system to get their books on national bestseller lists.

The article misses, however, the bigger story. In many cases, bestseller lists don’t really measure how well books are selling, at least if one means real, ongoing demand and sales for books. Instead, for many books, what bestseller lists measure is how much authors and publishers are able to concentrate sales during a one-week window, using all manner of means that manufacture short-lived quantities of sales, often in artificial ways that have no relationship to actual demand for the books.

For example, Book A sells 10,000 copies in one week through one or more of the manufactured means described below, but then in following weeks Book A drops to its real level of demand of a couple hundred copies or less sold per week, until it is remaindered and put out of print within a few years. Yet, in its one week of glory, Book A would have made it very high up on many national bestseller lists and be considered a “National Bestseller.”

In contrast, Book B consistently sells 1,000 copies per week and over 50,000 copies per year for many years. Yet Book B would probably never make it onto any of the national bestseller lists.

These scenarios are not hypothetical. For example, Berrett-Koehler’s book, Leadership and Self-Deception, has sold over 850,000 copies in English since it was published in 2000 (an average of 65,000 copies per year), plus hundreds of thousands more copies in 27 foreign-language editions. Yet Leadership and Self-Deception has never made it onto the New York Times bestseller list or the Publishers Weekly bestseller list or any of the other national lists that are based on one week of sales. (Leadership and Self-Deception did regularly appear on the BusinessWeek bestseller list before that list was discontinued a couple of years ago, but that was because it was based on one month of sales instead of one week of sales.)

The Wall Street Journal article focuses on how a company called ResultSource helps authors split bulk purchases by the authors’ clients into hundreds of smaller sales that are spread out among retail booksellers. The article does not mention various other means that are used every week to get books onto bestseller lists without real demand for the books. Here is a far-from-complete list of other popular ways of manufacturing bestsellers:

Loading up so many stacks of books in front-of-store displays and shelf displays in hundreds or thousands of stores that it is the sheer ubiquity of the books that is driving sales.
Attracting several thousand people to launch-week events for a celebrity author, who get the book more as a ticket to admission or as a memento rather than because the book itself is in demand.
Getting thousands of one’s friends, fans, and other contacts around the country to buy a book in one week in order to support the author.
Offering special incentives (such as other products) to people who buy a book during a designated period.
Selling books (especially digital books) for a limited period (as little as one day) for an artificially low price, such as 99 cents.

I am not saying that the means above are wrong or bad. Instead I am saying that it’s time to recognize that books are not true bestsellers when their large sales in one week have been manufactured rather than being the outcome of ongoing real demand for the book; we need different measures of bestsellers. And I recognize that there are numerous books on bestseller lists for which there is indeed strong ongoing demand, week-after-week, including books that made it onto the lists without the means of manufacturing a bestseller described above or that continue on the bestseller lists for long periods of time. Those books deserve to be called bestsellers.

What I am advocating is developing new ways of measuring and naming bestsellers that give preference to books for which there is real ongoing demand over longer periods of time than just a week or two. One step in doing this would be to discontinue weekly bestseller lists and go to monthly bestseller lists (or, if weekly bestseller lists are continued, to base them on rolling monthly totals of books sold, which are updated each week, instead of on one week totals of books sold). Even better would be to focus bestseller lists on quarterly or annual or lifetime sales. Another step would be to compare the quantity of sales to the quantity of returns, which would help weed out books for which actual interest and demand were much lower than the widespread distribution of copies in stores (and would have the side benefit of lowering returns and helping the environment by reducing the incentive to print and distribute large quantities of books for which there was no proven demand and which largely end up being remaindered and destroyed).

But what is also needed is to simply give less prominence to bestseller lists. I have come to believe that, like fad diets, it is actually counterproductive for most authors to focus their publishing and marketing efforts on getting on bestseller lists. Such efforts often consume authors’ attention and resources, which distracts them from doing the things that would result in much larger book sales over a longer period of time. I counsel authors to instead focus their time, energy, and resources on making their books better, developing marketing strengths that are not gimmicks or quick fixes, and building real demand for their books.

To republish this article, contact Cynthia Shannon cshannon (at) bkpub (dot) com

2/25/2013

Berrett-Koehler Shareholder’s Meeting Annual Event To Take Place in San Francisco in June 2013

The annual Berrett-Koehler Shareholders Meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 18^th, 2013, from noon (beginning with lunch) to 4:30 pm in San Francisco. All BK shareholders are invited to attend. This meeting is famous for being one of the most informative events of the year, not just about BK but also about the book publishing industry in general.

BK’s major strategic planning event will be the following two days, June 19^th and 20^th, in San Francisco. Like previous strategic planning events in 2000 and 2008, this will be a highly participative, whole-systems event that involves all of BK’s stakeholder groups, including shareholders, authors, customers, service providers, and others. In a few weeks, we will extend a limited number of invitations to participate in this event.

2012 was another tremendous year for Berrett-Koehler. Total revenues increased by 9 percent, setting a new BK high point. Profits were also strong, and 2012 was our tenth profitable year in a row. Financial statements will be distributed to shareholders after our independent audit is completed.

Just as was the case in 2011, Berrett-Koehler substantially outperformed the publishing industry as a whole in 2012. According to BookScan (which tracks more than 75% of print book sales in the U.S.), adult nonfiction U.S. print book sales fell by 13% in 2012 (Publishers Weekly, January 4, 2013). Once again, BK defied this industry trend of declining print sales by holding our print sales even with the prior year. Also,BK’s digital revenues increased by 64% in 2012, far above the 36% increase reported in the most recent industry figures for digital book sales (the Association of American Publishers’ report for the first nine months of 2012, as cited in Publishers Weekly, January 25, 2013). Finally, BK’s subsidiary rights income (for translation rights sales, audio rights sales, and other rights) increased by 9% in 2012 and again accounted for more than 10% of our total revenues. The only comparable industry rights data I have seen was a PubWest report (October 26, 2011) showing that the publishers surveyed received only 4.5% of their revenues from subsidiary rights. Berrett-Koehler’s performance in this area continues to be extraordinary – and evidence that BK’s translation rights team is, as I tell everyone, world class and a powerhouse.

Prospects look good for 2013. This is partly because in 2013 we are publishing new books or new editions by over 20 top-notch BK authors, almost all of whom have published previous bestselling books with Berrett-Koehler. These authors include: Marilee Adams, Chip Bell, Peter Block, Juana Bordas, Kim Cameron, Fritjof Capra, Thomas Chermack, Jennifer Kahnweiler, Judith Katz, Richard Leider, Fred Miller, Mark Miller, Henry Mintzberg, Paul Polak, Otto Scharmer, Edgar Schein, Jamie Showkeir, Maren Showkeir, Michael Song, Richard Swanson, and Mal Warwick. We are also publishing in 2013 a similar number of books by authors who are new to Berrett-Koehler, and many of these books have strong sales potential as well.

One of the secrets of BK’s success has been the fact that so many top authors keep returning to Berrett-Koehler again and again to publish their books. In fact, with our 2013 publications, over 100 authors will have published multiple books with Berrett-Koehler. We consider this to be a strong vote of confidence in Berrett-Koehler and an indication of the partnering, author-friendly ways in which we work with authors.

Thank you for your support of Berrett-Koehler.

2/22/2013

For media inquiries, contact Cynthia Shannon, cshannon at bkpub dot com or 415-743-6469

An article in the Wall Street Journal today uncovers how authors buy their way onto the Best-Seller lists using a company called ResultSource. Some BK authors have used this strategy, though BK doesn't encourage it, since we believe authors should focus on long-term goals such as building stronger relationships with potential readers.

The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing

Steven Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

1. The number of books being published every year has exploded.

Bowker reports that over three million books were published in the U.S. in 2010 (May 18, 2011 Bowker Report). The number of new print titles issued by U.S. publishers has grown from 215,777 in 2002 to 316,480 in 2010. And in 2010 more than 2.7 million “non-traditional” titles were also published, including self-published books, reprints of public domain works, and other print-on-demand books. In addition, hundreds of thousands of English-language books are published each year outside the U.S.\

2. Book industry sales are declining, despite the explosion of books published.

Adult nonfiction print unit book sales peaked in 2007 and have declined each year since then, according to BookScan (Publishers Weekly, January 2, 2012). Similarly, bookstore sales peaked in 2007 and have fallen each year since then, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (Publishers Weekly, February 14, 2012).

3. Despite skyrocketing e-book sales, overall book sales are still shrinking.

“Print Declines Outpace Digital Gains” was the Publishers Weekly’ headline of September 19, 2011. For the full year of 2011, a 17.1% decline in print sales outweighed a 117.3% increase in e-book sales, resulting in a 5.8% decline in combined print and e-book sales, according to the Association of American Publishers (Publishers Weekly, March 5, 2012). Similarly, combined print and e-book sales of adult trade books fell by 14 million units in 2010, according to the August 9, 2011 BISG BookStats report. The total book publishing pie is not growing, yet it is being divided among ever more digital and print products.

4. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast.

Combine the explosion of books published with the declining total sales and you get shrinking sales of each new title. According to BookScan – which tracks most bookstore, online, and other retail sales of books (including Amazon.com) – only 263 million books were sold in 2011 in the U.S. in all adult nonfiction categories combined (Publishers Weekly, January 2, 2012). The average U.S. nonfiction book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime. And very few titles are big sellers. Only 62 of 1,000 business books released in 2009 sold more than 5,000 copies, according to an analysis by the Codex Group (New York Times, March 31, 2010).

5. A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.

For every available bookstore shelf space, there are 100 to 1,000 or more titles competing for that shelf space. For example, the number of business titles stocked ranges from less than 100 (smaller bookstores) to approximately 1,500 (superstores). Yet there are 250,000-plus business books in print that are fighting for that limited shelf space.

6. It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books.

Many book categories have become entirely saturated, with a surplus of books on every topic. It is increasingly difficult to make any book stand out. Each book is competing with more than ten million other books available for sale, while other media are claiming more and more of people’s time. Result: investing the same amount today to market a book as was invested a few years ago will yield a far smaller sales return today.

7. Most books today are selling only to the authors’ and publishers’ communities.

Everyone in the potential audiences for a book already knows of hundreds of interesting and useful books to read but has little time to read any. Therefore people are reading only books that their communities make important or even mandatory to read. There is no general audience for most nonfiction books, and chasing after such a mirage is usually far less effective than connecting with one’s communities.

8. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers.

Publishers have managed to stay afloat in this worsening marketplace only by shifting more and more marketing responsibility to authors, to cut costs and prop up sales. In recognition of this reality, most book proposals from experienced authors now have an extensive (usually many pages) section on the authors’ marketing platform and what the authors will do to publicize and market the books. Publishers still fulfill important roles in helping craft books to succeed and making books available in sales channels, but whether the books move in those channels depends primarily on the authors.

9. No other industry has so many new product introductions.

Every new book is a new product, needing to be acquired, developed, reworked, designed, produced, named, manufactured, packaged, priced, introduced, marketed, warehoused, and sold. Yet the average new book generates only $100,000 to $200,000 in sales, which needs to cover all of these expenses, leaving only small amounts available for each area of expense. This more than anything limits how much publishers can invest in any one new book and in its marketing campaign.

10. The book publishing world is in a never-ending state of turmoil.

The thin margins in the industry, high complexities of the business, intense competition, churning of new technologies, and rapid growth of other media lead to constant turmoil in bookselling and publishing (such as the bankruptcy of Borders and many other stores). Translation: expect even more changes and challenges in coming months and years.

STRATEGIES FOR RESPONDING TO “THE 10 AWFUL TRUTHS”

1. The game is now pass-along sales.

2. Events/immersion experiences replace traditional publicity in moving the needle.

3. Leverage the authors’ and publishers’ communities.

4. In a crowded market, brands stand out.

5. Master new digital channels for sales, marketing, and community building.

6. Build books around a big new idea.

7. Front-load the main ideas in books and keep books short.

2/7/2013

Berrett-Koehler Book Chosen as One of Five Most Impactful Stories in 2012 by The Media Consortium

Book Causes National Debate on Shareholder Primacy Doctrine

From Steve Piersanti's speech at The Media Consortium Annual Meeting in Baltimore, February 2013

“Whose Company Is It? A controversial new book has rekindled the debate over shareholder value and the purpose of the public corporation.” That’s the headline of a feature article in the November 15, 2012, issue of Chief Financial Officer Magazine. The article focuses on Berrett-Koehler’s new book, The Shareholder Value Myth, by Lynn Stout, and includes contrasting views of the book by corporate financial leaders. Here's a link: http://tinyurl.com/bxpj62u

This book has indeed launched a national debate about the cornerstone of today’s dominant business doctrine that shareholders’ interests must be placed above the interests of all other stakeholders of the corporation.

As an article on the Money page of US News and World Report states, "Ideas have consequences, we all know, but some have more consequence than others. If ever the business world generated a consequential idea, surely it's the notion of ‘shareholder value.’” The article then includes a hard-hitting interview with Lynn Stout knocking down this foundational business doctrine.

http://bit.ly/TXkLGS

And this debate is reaching all spectrums of society. The Shareholder Value Myth has twice received major coverage in The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/LCOK8N

http://ow.ly/dmlT5

It has similarly been covered multiple times in the Los Angeles Times, such as this article: http://tinyurl.com/a6pbae7

It has received major coverage from many progressive media, such as Alternet and Utne Reader, as well as from numerous radio and television shows.

But what is most surprising is that it is also stirring up debate in conservative bastions, such as being featured multiple times in Forbes; here’s one example:

http://ow.ly/dmlPU

All told, The Shareholder Value Myth has already received over 60 media hits. It is truly a book that has sparked a conversation.

1/2/2013

New Sales Data Shows 42 Berrett-Koehler Bestsellers

Berrett-Koehler shares list of best-selling authors of last year

A review of sales data at the end of the fiscal year for Berrett-Koehler shows that the company published 42 titles that have sold over 100,000 copies to date. New additions to the list include I Moved Your Cheese and The Serving Leader. These sales include all U.S. and foreign editions in all formats.

“What I am especially happy about is that many of these titles keep selling year-after-year, which is an indication of their strong, universal concepts and enduring value,” says Steve Piersanti, President and Publisher. “For example, Leadership and the New Science, which was one of the first three books we published when our company was founded in 1992, is still one of our strong-selling titles."

The full list of titles below:

Title	Copies sold	Foreign language translations
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man	1,200,000+	30
Eat That Frog!	1,100,000+	39
Leadership and Self-Deception	1,100,000+	27
Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em	600,000+	22
Repacking Your Bags	525,000+	17
The Secret	420,000+	28
Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute	400,000+	16
Goals!	400,000+	27
Leadership and the New Science	375,000+	18
A Peacock in the Land of Penguins	365,000+	20
Full Steam Ahead!	280,000+	21
The Anatomy of Peace	250,000+	13
Managing By Values	220,000+	19
The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success	200,000+	24
A Complaint Is a Gift	200,000+	20
The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires	190,000+	22
The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die	190,000+	18
Stewardship	180,000+	5
The Power of Purpose	180,000+	13
How to Get Ideas	175,000+	21
Synchronicity	165,000+	14
Leadership from the Inside Out	160,000+	4
Change Is Everybody’s Business	150,000+	8
When Corporations Rule the World	150,000+	20
Affluenza	150,000+	8
Be a Sales Superstar	150,000+	17
The Referral of a Lifetime	140,000+	9
The Hamster Revolution	135,000+	11
On-the-Level	130,000+	5
Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge	130,000+	12
Go Team!	130,000+	11
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life	130,000+	14
Managers As Mentors	125,000+	10
Know Can Do!	120,000+	14
Turning to One Another	110,000+	9
The Laws of Lifetime Growth	110,000+	13
The Serving Leader	110,000+	7
Shifting Sands	110,000+	4
Love It, Don’t Leave It	100,000+	15
301 Ways to Have Fun at Work	100,000+	9
Flight Plan	100,000+	17
I Moved Your Cheese	100,000+	21

12/17/2012

Berrett-Koehler Offices Closed for the Christmas Holiday

Staff votes for their holiday schedule for 2013

Berrett-Koehler Publishers will close their offices in San Francisco for the Christmas holiday, December 24 - December 26, 2012.

At the end of each year, the staff votes on the 10 days to take off during the coming year. 2013 will have an additional holiday on January 1 2013.

The holiday schedule for 2013 is as follows:

January 1, 2013 - New Year’s Day

January 21, 2013 - Martin Luther King Jr. Day

February 18, 2013 - President’s Day

May 27, 2013 - Memorial Day

July 4, 2013 - Fourth of July

September 2, 2013 - Labor Day

November 28, 2013 - Thanksgiving

November 29, 2013 - Day After Thanksgiving

December 24, 2013 - Christmas Eve

December 25, 2013 - Christmas Day

December 31, 2013 - New Year’s Eve

11/6/2012

Letter from Steve Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

I am pleased to report that Berrett-Koehler Publishers is continuing to enjoy a tremendous year. Total BK revenues increased 16 percent in the first nine months of this year compared to the first nine months of 2011. This gain was broad-based across a wide range of publications and all publishing formats rather than being driven by just a few titles. Print sales increased by 6 percent, subsidiary rights income increased by 8 percent, and digital income increased by a whopping 81 percent.

We are continuing to outperform the book publishing industry as a whole. According to BookScan (which measures about 75 percent of retail print book sales in the U.S.), adult nonfiction print book sales fell by 17 percent in the first nine months of 2012 in the United States (Publishers Weekly, October 8, 2012).

We are also continuing to be a leader in the digital arena. Last year, Publishers Weekly’s annual story (May 23, 2011) about business book publishing declared: “The publisher putting the most concerted focus on digital developments in the business book category is the independent, California-based Berrett-Koehler.” This focus has paid off with digital sales already accounting for 19 percent of our total revenues in 2012. In comparison, the recent Aptara/Publishers Weekly survey found that only 36 percent of publishers had e-book sales of more than 10 percent of revenues (Publishers Weekly, September 19, 2012).

What is causing these good financial results? My sense is simply that Berrett-Koehler is firing on all cylinders. We've had great constancy of mission, strategy, organization, staff, management, and stakeholder communities for many years, and many things are working together in the way we intended them to work. We are publishing good authors and good books, and our titles over the past year have been especially timely and topical in relation to U.S. and world political and economic developments.

20 WAYS BK BOOKS HELP CREATE A WORLD THAT WORKS FOR ALL

While we are pleased by these solid financial results that strengthen our business, what most motivates us is Berrett-Koehler’s mission of “Creating a World That Works for All.” For our recent 20^th Anniversary Celebration, I created a list of “20 Ways BK Books Help Create a World That Works for All,” which can be accessed here.

And I gave an eleven-minute presentation with other information on this topic. The text of this presentation can be accessed here.

GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE WHO MISSED OUR 20^TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

If you missed our celebration or simply want to view it again, you can watch not only my presentation but also the remarks of fifteen of our bestselling authors by clicking on this link.

“EIGHT SMART BUSINESS LESSONS FROM A SAVVY BUSINESS PUBLISHER”

That is the title of an article that recently appeared in the Huffington Post by bestselling BK author BJ Gallagher. We are grateful for BJ’s wonderful comments about Berrett-Koehler.

“SURVEY OF AUTHORS REVEALS WIDESPREAD DISSATISFACTION WITH PUBLISHING INDUSTRY”

That is the headline from a widely circulated news story (May 24, 2012) reporting on a survey commissioned by The Writers’ Workshop, which is the leading editorial consultancy in the UK. The story begins: “A major survey of professional authors has revealed serious levels of dissatisfaction with traditional publishers. One third of authors report that they were not consulted about marketing plans. Asked about marketing campaigns, 38.7% chose the answer, ‘What marketing campaign? I never noticed one.’”

We have developed many Berrett-Koehler practices over the years to avoid the sorts of problems reflected in this survey. Some of these BK practices are described in this list.

“THE BEST NEWSLETTER OF ITS KIND BAR NONE”

The BK Communiqué (which provides fun and informative information on our new books as well as on the publishing and media worlds generally) continues to receive fantastic feedback from readers. Here is the latest such feedback, which is from Richard Hackman, an award-winning professor at Harvard University: “The BK Communiqué is the only newsletter I read . . . the best newsletter of its kind bar none.”

If you are not a regular Communiqué reader, I hope that you will become so. It is free and is published every other Thursday. If for some reason you don’t receive it, please let me know and we will add you to the distribution list.

We appreciate your support for Berrett-Koehler!