slurping the wake-up juice

Though there are sharp upsides to the technological revolution, anyone associated with book publishing would be foolish not to take careful stock of the downsides as well. I was reminded of this just today when reading about the recent open access vote at Harvard. Harvard faculty unanimously voted to allow their publications to be available to everyone, including “web harvesters, Google Scholar, and the like,” thereby rising the tide of the open access movement everywhere. The open access movement largely occupies the field of academic or medical trade journals, and e-zines such as Janus Head have always catered to niche markets. So why should trade book publishing pay attention? Pay attention to this manifesto by upcoming scholar Danah Boyd (pulled from the quite interesting blog apophenia:

I'd be sad to see some of the academic publishers go, but if they can't evolve to figure out new market options, I have no interest in supporting their silencing practices. I think that scholars have a responsibility to make their work available as a public good. I believe that scholars should be valued for publishing influential material that can be consumed by anyone who might find it relevant to their interests. I believe that the product of our labor should be a public good. I do not believe that scholars should be encouraged to follow stupid rules for the sake of maintaining norms. Given that we do the bulk of the labor behind journals, I think that we can do it without academic publishers.

Translated, Boyd is saying academic publishers can no longer support the professional needs of their authors or their readers due to changes in the marketplace, nor did their business model allow authors to fulfill their personal missions. Authors and audiences, therefore, found another way. The paradigm shifted, and, by not shifting with it, academic publishers made themselves irrelevant. (Thanks to Ben Vershbow @ if:book for the quotation.) As a reader commented recently on the Times Online:

The publishers just don't get it. The penny hasn't dropped. Technology has overtaken them. An author writes his book on a computer: why shouldn't he post it online himself? Why should I have to pay £10 or £15 or whatever it is to support a bunch of people who have added little or no value to that text? Publishers are just so 20th-century. I suggest they start composing something themselves for a change - CVs. They're going to need them, and soon.

Trade book publishers would do well to listen to Boyd and others, and, if the recent full-house of six hundred at last week’s O’Reilly Tools of Change conference is any measure, they are. There is a paradigm change afoot (some might call it a “creative gale of destruction”), and no one wants to go the way of the academic presses or, to turn to a story more familiar to everyone, to ape the now-shirtless music moguls of the nineties. See, in case you missed it, the big guns, be they political powers or economic ones, tend to dissolve during paradim changes, to be replaced by innovative upstarts. To put it bluntly: do you want to work for Lulu.com (or Google)?

Technology-and-information watcher Stephen Aram spoke about two major factors during his keynote last week at TOC:

The Millenials

Millenials, also called GenY or Generation-Y, are members of the generation born between 1976 and 2000. One need only Google this group to see that the nature of this generation is the subject of much scrutiny. Nevertheless, everyone agrees that they are tech saavy.

• 97 percent own a computer.


• 94 percent own a cell phone.


• 76 percent use Instant Messaging.


• 15 percent of IM users are logged on 24/7.


• 34 percent use websites as their primary source of news.


• 28 percent own a blog and 44 percent read blogs.


• 49 percent download music using peer-to-peer file sharing.


• 75 percent of college students have a Facebook account.


• 60 percent own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod.


• 60 percent of books sold in the US in 2006 were bought by people under 45.

But there are also emotional and psychological differences, summarized in the following graphic:


And I would be amiss not referencing sociologist Michael Wesch's video A vision of students today as necessary viewing. The whole point here being that the customer shapes the market.

The iFlood

We are drowning in information, and the amount of information is only going to grow exponentially. According to Aram, by 2020 an iPod style device will be able to hold all the content ever created by any media. A new blog is created every 1.5 seconds. The blogosphere itself holds 81 gigabytes of data. The daily flow of e-mail information is somewhere around 3.35 petabytes. As of June, 2003 AOL was reporting 2 billion instant messages a day using its popular IM client. And according to the site Internet World Stats, there were around 510 million global users of the Internet.





Even developing countries are plugging in. In 2002, Internet availability in developed countries was 10 times higher than in developing countries; in 2006, it was 6 times higher. Developed countries also continue to lead Internet subscriptions worldwide, and the gap in terms of Internet broadband penetration has widened since 2002.

There has been an explosion in the use of mobile phones as well—especially important as we consider the growing use of mobile phones to do about every conceivable electronic task, including e-book consumption. Mobile phone subscribers have almost tripled in developing countries over the last five years, and now make up some 58 percent of mobile subscribers worldwide.

What Should Publishers Do?

• Decide that the consumer and his needs are more important than every reigning business model, no matter how entrenched.


• Do what it takes to convert to digital production in order to be able to provide content the way the consumer wants it, and in order to be prepared for the future.


• Insource every task that distracts from strategic planning and internal innovation. Make someone else do the repetitive stuff so we can leverage the talent we work so hard to procure and train.


• Build marketing and publicity skills as far back into the production process as possible.


• Use marketing and publicity staff as a fund of best practices for the education of everyone else.


• Exploit new business models made possible by POD technology.


• Restructure accounting and legal policies to support piecemeail and long-tail sales

On the point above about building marketing and publicity into the bones of production, note the following from UofC Press blogger Laura Cerruti:

[At] most of university press “digital publishing” has ended up in marketing. There was good reason for this early on, but the time has come that it needs to begin to infiltrate other departments. Among university presses, our production departments will need to acquire new skills, and we need to move many of the tasks that somehow fell on the shoulders of our marketing staff into our production departments.

As for the other point about transitioning to digital. That is a mouthful, and I hope to make an entire post out of it. Nevertheless, Kenneth Brooks, vice president at Cengage, did a somewhat soporific talk on this at TOC two weeks ago. Two of his slides deserve study, and I'll sign off with them.




__________
See also
What Have You Done For Me Lately?
Liveblogging Tools of Change, 2/12/08

Viral conversation (TOC vid #2)

TOC2008; marketing; business models

O'Reilly TOC video blog part 1

Here's a bit of video I shot from the hotel in the a.m. of the first day of the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference. It is a very humbling thing to see yourself on video. Please cut me a bit of slack: it was one in the morning, and I'd already been through hours of public transportation via airplane and taxi service. Also, I've never done this before, so this is a first. "Roll film!"



Finally, if you just want to avoid suffering through my dazed ramblings, you can check out this video that was shown as part of the keynote the following morning on the first day of the conference: A Conversation with Kathy Sierra and Tim O'Reilly: Creating Passionate Readers. And don't believe me about the romance industry? Here is what Allen Noren has to say on the O'Reilly site.

TOC2008; conference; digital media; print on demand; POD

Augustine says the answer is Jesus

Aurelius Augustinus--Saint Augustine--was well aware of the Donatists. By the time he became a bishop in the North African town of Hippo Regius (AD 396), Donatist churches full of clergy and congregants outnumbered the churches loyal to Rome. They also taught openly that Augustine's ministry was invalid, his church empty of power, and his people misled. Such accusations could not go unanswered, and for a man of Augustine's intellectual gifts, they certainly could not be ignored. His thinking marks a great development in the doctrine of the church in western theology, and, it is my hope that it will help me begin to formulate an answer to the Taliban.

So then, allow me to briefly recap the origin and position of the Donatist churches in North Africa. In order to survive the last few great persecutions visited upon the church by Roman power, many Christians--including bishops and deacons--had all but denied the faith, going so far as to hand Scriptures over to be burned. When it was all over, those who had not given in--and many were martyred--refused to accept their remorseful and repentant bretheren (whom they called traditores) back into the church. It did not matter whether the traditore had been a priest or layperson. The Donatists drew a firm line. Their pastors and their churches had not compromised. They were real churches. Everyone else was reprobate. If you wanted back in, the way was the same as for every other pagan: repentance and rebaptism officiated by a Donatist minister in an uncompromised Dontatist church. Other and previous baptisms and ordinations were null and void.

Holiness unto salvation was the issue. The Donatists, taking to extreme some ideas first suggested by the great North African theologians Cyprian and Tertullian, said that the ministry of salvation offered through the church was dependent upon the moral validity of its ministers. The authority of bishop, priest, and deacon directly depended on personal holiness and conduct. Traditore priests were impure. They could not confer the Holy Spirit because "they cannot give what they do not possess." They could not administer the sacraments, nor could they consecreate any future bishops. And, further, no church could accept or reinstate a traditore into ministry or it would share in his impurity. Put personally: if your priest wasn't holy, then the word he preached and the sacrament that he administered may as well be hamburgers and fries for all its affect on your status and progress in the faith. Your pastor had to be holy; the line between church and world must be clear. The Donatists stressed the separateness of church and the world. They alone were the one and true Catholic Church, the Bride of Christ “without spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind” (Eph. 5:27). And as such, they were bound to separate themselves from any communion with other so-called “Christian” bodies which administered invalid sacraments by apostate priests.

Now, the catholic churches emphasized the necessity of unity. That is why Augustine did not return anathemas, but acknowledged the general orthodoxy of the Donatists, as well as the validity of their sacraments. He regarded them as brothers and sisters in Christ, even though they lacked catholicity as a “quasi-church” (quasi ecclesia) not in fellowship with the rest of the people of God. He even considered their baptisms acceptable in catholic churches. He did this because he understood baptism to be something done by God through the Spirit that could not be undone or repeated. Baptism, he says, conveys a new identity before God once and for all, and impresses on the recipient a fixed and permanent dominical character (character indelebilis) as a reborn slave of Christ. There is a difference, then, between the power of baptism and the churchly setting in which it is performed. The setting may change, but the gift and power of the Spirit is God's to deliver, based specifically on his self-giving and redeeming love.

There is also the charge of sinfulness. Augustine took an interesting line here. He argued that if the sacraments depend on the sinlessness of the pastor or congregation then who can stand? Anyone who says he has no sin is a liar, says the apostle. Sin persists even in the redeemed--at least until the Last Day. The Donatists had pointed the finger of judgment, but, turns out, they had forgotten the traditore in themselves. Until the Last Day the church is always a mixed bag of saints and sinners (corpus mixtum), and it is God's appointed Judge, not a Dontatist bishop, who can alone be trusted to do the separating. The church is holy this side of eternity by virtue of its sacraments, said Augustine. One day, of course, its will be holy by virtue of its members, but until then its holiness resides neither in its clergy nor its laity, but solely and objectively in the real presence. Its holiness is Jesus, and its unity is Jesus, for, as Augustine said,

[The church] has the symbol (sign) of the Trinity, the chair of Peter, the faith of the believers, the salutary precepts of Christ, and above all, the sacraments, whose holiness is derived from the sacraments themselves, and not measured by the loftiness of persons.

Augustine's response is interesting in a nerdy theological history of doctrines sort of way, but does it help me answer the Taliban of Christian book publishing? Well, maybe.

We begin in fourth-century North Africa

During the first few centuries after the life of Jesus, Christians faced sporadic persecution throughout the Roman empire. Emperors Nero, Decius, and Valerian declared Christians to be enemies of the state, and, whether through prohibitive legislation or open violence, they sought to systematically identify and destroy them. The most severe persecution occurred during the reign of Diocletian.

This was the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian in Dystrus [March] when the feast of the Saviour's passion was near at hand, and royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches [should] be razed to the ground, the scriptures destroyed by fire, those who held positions of honor degraded, and the household servants, if they persisted in the Christian profession, be deprived of their liberty.

And such was the first decree against us. But issuing [other] decrees not long after, the Emperor commanded that all the rulers of the churches in every place should be first put in prison and afterwards compelled by every device to offer sacrifice. (Eusebius)

The motive of Diocletian’s Great Persecution of AD 303-305 was the “total extirpation of Christianity: it was a struggle to the death between the old and new orders” (Grant, 208). And in North Africa—the bread basket of the Roman empire—that struggle pressed internal tensions between the churches to the breaking point.

Harassed, threatened, and in constant fear of death or torture, lay Christians and their pastors responded in different ways. Some sought martyrdom or endured imprisonment. Others, however, compromised, and many went so far as to comply with Roman authorities and hand over copies of the Scriptures to be burnt.

When the persecution passed, the unity between those who suffered and those who compromised stretched, twisted, and finally snapped into schism. The former believed themselves to be true Christians, and they called the ones who delivered the Scriptures over to Rome traditores (from traditio, “handing over”). They refused the rule of then-bishop Caecilian of Carthage, the senior bishop of North Africa—saying that he was a traditores and, thus, no true bishop—and appointed their own bishop, Majorinus, who was succeeded by Donatus.

By AD 325, when the Christian emperor Constantine became the sole ruler of the Roman empire, there were two churches in Africa: the separatist church, called “Donatist,” and the catholic church, which adopted a more conciliatory policy toward Christians who had compromised or even denied the faith in order to save their lives. The Donatist church was popular (especially among laypeople), well-organized, rigorous in its ethical demands, and self-satisfactorily schismatic. “What defined Donatists was their denial of the validity of baptism conferred outside what they considered to be the true church, and their consequent insistence on rebaptism for those who were to enter their community from outside [especially those who had apostatized their faith under persecution]; and their rejection of episcopal consecration by traditores.” (Markus, 285) The Donatists claimed to be the only true church, and, with what seemed to be the moral high ground on their side, who could disagree with them?

One theologian in particular comes to mind.

----------

Grant, Michael. The Roman Emperors. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1985.

Markus, Robert A. “Donatus, Donatism” s.v. Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.

chaos and definition

I keep chewing on that post about theology, where every paragraph is some kind of everlasting gobstopper made up of Taliban-accusations and publishing realities. I get up from my cube; I commute back and forth; I flip through the TV channels before going to bed; and all the while I’m chewing on this thing. And the more I chew, the more questions, like flavors, show up: Is the Taliban correct? Is there a creedal standard to which our books should conform, lest we fall under the apostolic anathema? Do we fear God? On what basis do we declare a book fit to publish? What responsibility—and I mean ultimate responsibility—do we assume (or should we assume) for our publishing decisions? (see Rev. 20:12; 18.11-19) To which doctrinal categories should one turn to answer these questions?

And what exactly is Thomas Nelson Inc.? On one hand, it is a privately owned corporation, while on another it is a collection of people. It uses energy, water, air. It is a mission in the world and to the world, as well as an organ of God’s blessing: providing daily bread and the goodness of labor for over six hundred people. It is also an expression of his judgment (see Gen. 3:19). Indeed, the ethical dimensions of Thomas Nelson, the rooms and corridors of motive and purpose, are far more permanent and complex than the matter of brick-and-mortar. Its express organizational structure can hide the most Machiavellian intents, as well as nuture the sweetest expressions of love and selflessness. And what about the relationships and responsibilities which attend it legally, politically, socially, and professionally? Are there responsibilities which it incurs that come to it because it is a religious organization? Let me ask this question another way: Which is of greater weight, our relationship to Zondervan as a competitor for market share or our relationship to Zondervan as an organ for furthering God’s mission in the world? I actually think Zondervan, Tyndale, and the rest, along with Thomas Nelson Inc., are more the latter than the former—a covenant which would stupefy (with nods to JKR) Adam Smith and his descendants but is all too real for those of us who wait for His appearing (see Mark 1:16-20).

At any rate, not one of these questions—and there are probably more—can be solved without some definition. Science tells us that the instrument is governed by its object. And this is the bit I’ve been gnawing on: What question, if answered, will give some definition to this problem? I searched and searched, and I think I have found an answer.

We begin in North Africa.

getting engaged makes sense

Some time in 1993, my wife and I got engaged. It is not a particularly romantic story. We were planning on hiking up to this beautiful overlook, and, there, I was going to pop the question. The scene in my head was quite romantic: an intense "I love you" sort of moment, with all the vistic beauty of creation called to witness. But it rained . . . hard . . . buckets . . . rivers. Think of one of the great lakes--clouds are like floating lakes, right?--pouring down from the sky. That's what it was like. Anyway, youthful impatience got the better of me, and I wound up asking my wife to marry me kneeling before what became our living room couch. It was the antithesis of romance, but, hey, it got the job done. That's one definition of engagement.

Another definition of engagement is what begins a nanosecond thereafter (you men take note): high-stress, high-stakes planning. Her "Yes" certainly changes the future forever for two families, but it also irresistibly evokes the day-and-night machinations of an entire Orwellian industry: the Wedding Machine. I can't help but think of Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times:

In some human past, engagement was meant to be a time of serious consideration: Am I ready to make this sort of commitment? etc. But the way things are now, couples are too busy for meditation, what with picking out flatware, lining up caterers, and negotiating the finer points of an Excel spreadsheet with Mom and Dad. That's another definition of engagement.

As you may know, for several hundred years it was not uncommon for men to challenge each other to duels. Ah, the stupidity and carnage of the honor-based system, don't you miss it? Watch movies or TV long enough and you see this sort of thing: "Name your weapon of choice." Every American should remember that the coauthor of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel. And in 1864 Mark Twain narrowly escaped a duel with a rival newspaper editor. I suppose in the old days, W and Nelson would have had to settle some scores with a duel, which would make that long hallway on the fifth floor even more useful than it is now (not to mention it is close to the elevator and the stairs.) And, you know, I think I could take Bryan N. But anyway, when you've been challenged to a duel, you are engaged. That's the technical term "engaged." So here's meaning number three.

Of course, none of these previous meetings have anything to do with the sort of "engagement" I want to talk about. The Gallup Management Journal published an article this morning by Bryan Ott: "Investors Take Note: Engagement Boost Earnings." Ott wants to talk about employee engagement. Remember, we're not talking about employees getting married, or planning weddings, or shooting pistols at ten paces. No, by employee engagement he means "involvement in and enthusiasm for their work." And, according to the study that prompted his article, that kind of engagement is good news for any company.

Indeed, according to Ott, a forty-year intensive Gallup study of companies across different industries determined that

organizations with more than four engaged employees for every one actively disengaged employee saw 2.6 times more growth in earnings per share than did organizations with a ratio of slightly less than one engaged worker for every one actively disengaged employee.

Employee engagement means a lot. Ott goes on to site more statistics: 12 percent higher customer advocacy; 18 percent higher productivity; and 12 percent higher profitability. Beyond any doubt, he says, "employee engagement correlates to crucial business outcomes." And that leads me to the Editors Guild.

The possibilities in this atomic idea for employee engagement just stagger my mind. The explicit goal of the Editors Guild is to become so successful at producing the world-class employees that our core values describe that every graduate and every book editor on the planet puts Thomas Nelson at the top of their wish list. And why? Because we are going to hone their editorial skills to a level commensurate with any other house in the industry, New York or otherwise. Thomas Nelson expects and produces world-class editors.

Even better than that, though, thanks to the affect of the core values taken as a whole, people will come here because they know they'll become larger human beings as well. Let's read in schools. Let’s get involved in some causes. Let’s do for ourselves what our books are trying to do for others. Lets remember that what we think words like "work," "job," "career," "employment," and all those other bland words slapped on what human beings do with a great big slice of their lives, is largely determined by what we want them to mean, ethics and principles coram deo being a given.

The force of an atomic bomb comes from energy that already exists in every atom of which our universe is made. No need to go looking for it, it is already there. And there is no reason why the kind of corporate environments one reads about—those amazing, creative, leading-the-industry places—shouldn't characterize us as well. The Editors Guild is part of discovering that environment. We're trying to break open the atomic shell and let all that potential energy go radically and unalterably kinesthetic. We want to change our company, our community, and the shape of our industry. That's being engaged. We are really excited about it, and we hope you will get excited about it too.

So what do you think? . . . Do you want to get engaged?

Bring Your Theology to Work Day

I would like to declare today the official beginning of "bring your theology to work" day. Most of the time I am far too busy trying to answer my e-mail or shuffle the papers from my desk. I don't have time for theology. Theology is so demanding, always trying to get into your business, always second-guessing things and gnawing at little problems as if they are connected or something. And theology takes time, usually a lot of it. It isn't efficient. It adds complexity. And, worst of all (and try not to say this too loud because theology has feelings) theology isn't that popular.

There are people, for example, who think that if you care in any real way about theological questions then the entire Christian publishing gig is up. To this point of view, my SPU (STAPU, STRAPU, SPUBN, etc.), affectionately named SGCT (maybe imprints don't make sense, but they had better names) is a greed-driven exercise in middlebrow compromise. They say,

"How can you release books into the marketplace so scattershot in their emphases, so varied in their traditions, and often so silly in their exegesis? And how can money play such a deciding role as it so often does. It is irresponsible, and maybe even immoral. Your attitude is nothing but devil-may-care caveat emptor where people's souls are concerned. And so until some kind of civil and orthodox magisterium is baptized for the purpose, you should cease publishing religious titles save Bibles and reference books."

The rejoinder, "We serve the larger Christian community by publishing many voices from different points of view," goes nowhere; treated as a coward's cop-out.

As Taliban as it sounds, there are people who feel this way. It is a theological argument they are making, and, on the surface, it is quite devastating. After all, Paul was fairly insistent when he wrote, "Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!" (Gal. 1.8 NKJV). Jesus was also clear that "if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck." (Mark 9.42 NKJV).

Further reinforcing their argument, it is no secret that our books vary in theological quality and depth. Someone made the comment to my boss recently that if you didn't have your theology down before you started working here, you could really get confused. Yet who is going to give them this "depth?" We aren't a denominationally affiliated press like an Abington, a LifeWay, or a Morehouse(?). But should we be?

And whose denomination wins? Every morning the elevators at Lakeview lift and carry quite the denominational kaleidoscope. I know for a fact that a certain publisher of a certain world-renowned evangelical stalwart is Episcopalian. I certainly am. My coworkers come from many denominations: free church, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, non-denom, and even charismatics. They are just as committed to the core values as I am. Yet, if the Taliban is right, if it is a choice between divine judgment and an organizational shakedown, then someone has to go. But who?

For this and for other reasons, it is time to stop putting theology off every morning. As inconvenient as it could be, it is time to say, "Sure, theology, you can come to work with me, just don't bother anyone. You can blog stuff if you want, though."