David Parker Consulting

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Licensing

Content Licensing Strategy Part 5: Timing of Content Release, Access Model Selection and Partner Selection

If you have read the first four parts in this series, then you have analyzed and segmented your content catalogue, evaluated all potential distribution partners and their many business models, and you have considered if an exclusive distribution deal with a major partner is an appropriate strategy for your business. From this foundation you are now ready to develop and implement a specific, intentional and measurable channel distribution strategy. 

In the first installment in this series I suggested organizing your catalog into three groups: 1. New release/high potential, 2. Low potential/longtail and 3. Medium to high potential. I noted there is no absolute measure of performance that can be tied to these three designations as each publisher operates in markets of different sizes with different investment levels to bring content to market and different views on what “high potential” means in terms of annual volume of titles sold and revenue generation. With this in mind and having organized your catalogue and planned new releases for the coming year, you are ready to address the key decisions in strategy setting: which partners, which business models and when do titles move across business models and partners. 

Which partners and which business models: new releases/high potential titles

New releases expected to generate strong sales and evergreen titles with a history of exceptional performance belong in access models that reward usage, offer an ongoing revenue stream or demand a perpetual access license sale price that is very high. The format (for example, documentary video versus e-textbook) will, of course, factor into the choices available, but the business model selected must deliver a renewable payment, a usage based payment or a high first sale price point. Some examples may prove useful. A much-anticipated and in demand new documentary would perform very well in a demand-driven access business model with a one year or three-year term of access and in a subscription aggregation package that pays for each time a patron watches the video. An in-demand textbook for course reading and reference will do well when offered for sale as perpetual access but with a restricted range of users, encouraging layered purchasing to meet demand or with unlimited access at a high price point but for a limited term of access, such as six months or a year. The key point is your new releases and high performing evergreen titles are licensed only with partners that reward usage, offer renewable revenue or support delivering at an appropriately high, but value-delivering price point.

Which partners and which business models: low potential/longtail

Once you have done the analysis and you are clear on that portion of your catalogue that has moved into, or always performed as, low potential then your decision is simple. Your goal should be to maximize the spread of these titles across as many possible distribution partners. This can be challenging in terms of messaging and communicating with authors, content creators and partners because a very low per title royalty may be received more poorly than no royalty payment at all. In the end, some distribution is better than nothing, especially for educational content that may be reaching a very limited user group but might be elevating understanding or changing hearts and minds. But content creators imbue their work with value and potential often disproportionate to the real market opportunity and very often we publishers could be more forthcoming at the beginning of these creator/publisher relationships. Digital distribution and multi-channel distribution have revolutionized the introduction of new possible routes to the end-user/patron. It is understood that the aggregate return across all these distribution partnerships will be low for your low potential/longtail content, but there is always the possibility that one of these new, experimental partners will mine a new vein of demand and by being an active participant you will have early insight into emerging distribution opportunities for your medium to high-potential titles.

Which partners and which business models: medium to high potential

I turn last to the medium to high potential part of the catalog as this block of titles represents the mix where the most attention must be paid to moving content across models and across partners. From launch to a noticeable decline in sales (and analysis of historical performance reveals the typical timeline of this change) a moment arrives at which the potential from usage-based royalty, renewable single title sales or a high price at point of sale has plateaued and these models need to be augmented by those used for the low potential/longtail titles, but selectively. By broadening the distribution of medium to high potential titles that have plateaued into selected low potential/longtail models, total revenue can be enhanced. And, a new opportunity emerges at this point for a broad selection of your titles in discipline-specific, multi-format aggregation products. Platforms focused on curation and aggregation in specific disciplines are always looking for attractive catalogues to power their products. A great example of this type of product is Bloomsbury’s Drama Online: https://www.bloomsbury.com/dr/digital-resources/products/drama-online/. If you are a publisher with a significant sized catalog with reasonably well-known and well-used content, licensing non-exclusively into a curated, discipline-based product is an excellent move after your titles have moved from high potential to medium potential.

One final piece to pull it altogether 

In the final installment in this series on content licensing strategy, I will bring everything discussed across the series together in a template you can adapt to and track performance. You will organize your catalog as described above by expected performance, distribution partner, business model and  your success metrics to evaluate performance over time. This will guide your decision as to when to move from one model to another and/or one distribution partner to another.

I invite you to read the complete series. Please subscribe to get a simple notification when new posts publish.

If you want to work together on your licensing strategy, contact me directly.

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Content Licensing Strategy Part 4: Determine If You Can Demand an Exclusive with a Distribution Partner

The alternative to an optimized multi-partner, multi-channel content licensing and distribution strategy is to develop long-term, exclusive partnerships for distribution in all or select channels in which your publishing or distribution business participates. In this six part series on content licensing strategy, I focus almost entirely on the tactics and tools needed to build out a licensing strategy based upon working with many partners. This installment, focused on the context and opportunity for an exclusive distribution deal, is a counterpoint to the tactics I have presented in the first three parts. Exclusives are rare opportunities and frequently not in the best interest of the publisher or the channel partner extending the exclusive offer. With this caveat stated, let’s move to a discussion of the three “must haves” for a publisher to be in a position to seek an exclusive and then consider mistakes to avoid that will dilute the potential of an exclusive once entered.

The Three “Must Haves” to Demand an Exclusive in Higher Education Library Distribution

1. Brand Power:

Your brand must be perceived as a leader by the key reviewers of your content in the university: the subject selector librarian, the faculty that teach with your content and the patrons/students that consume your content. While brand power is a given for high-profile media businesses like Sony Picture Classics, The Harvard Business Review or The Met Opera, brand power does not necessarily mean your company needs to be a household name. Rather, your business and brand must be recognized as authoritative and a leader within your publishing niche, for example nursing training or ballet skills.

2. Publishing Volume and Predictability:

A distribution partner willing to engage in the lengthy discussions and financial considerations that underpin an exclusive distribution partnership will require a predictable and significant volume of new content flowing in annually and across the length of the exclusive. This consideration will be discipline-specific and informed by the range of topics published. For example, a publisher of nursing training videos may consider 25 new and updated titles a year to be significant whereas a major journal and book publisher such as Taylor and Francis will publish hundreds if not thousands of titles in a year.

3. Unequivocal Comprehensiveness:

This point will be contested and debated by both publishers and the partners that seek and offer exclusive deals. In my experience as both a publisher and in running the video and ebook aggregation platforms at Alexander Street and ProQuest, a non-comprehensive exclusive was very difficult to articulate to our library customers. What do I mean by comprehensive? Most simply put a comprehensive exclusive must be easy to communicate and understand from the customer’s perspective. For example, the entire back-list/back-file from 2010 to 2020 available in digital streaming. And another example, all new books published from 2021 to 2025 in available access models in the partner platform. When an exclusive becomes diluted, even in a well-defined manner, it becomes challenging to communicate to the customer and thus becomes suspect. This point provides a useful segue to our next section.

Mistakes to Avoid That Dilute the Potential of an Exclusive:

Do not enter an exclusive partnership with options and outs in mind. Most exclusives will come with a minimum guarantee paid annually, or an exceptional royalty rate or an advance upon signing. This is your assurance that your partner is “all in” on making the relationship successful and you as the publisher should be of similar mind. When both publisher and channel partner are fully committed, the quality of the joint-marketing and sales support and training will be topnotch. A comprehensive and predictable exclusive, simply communicated to the customer, will yield benefits over time that need trust and confidence to unfold. If, as a publisher, you enter into an agreement with carefully worded – or not so carefully worded – caveats in mind to exploit post agreement the negative impact will be significant. Unfortunately, I have seen this scenario play out on multiple occasions with publishers making short-term gains at the expense of a long-term partnership. 

Do not enter an exclusive without significant guarantees from the channel partner. As noted above, this may be an advance, a minimum revenue guarantee or an exceptionally high royalty rate, or some combination of these. You can ask for guaranteed marketing investments and sales training conducted by your publishing team with your new partner’s sales team. If you feel that the initial exclusive offer is too small you can negotiate accelerators across the term of the exclusive. The larger point is as a publisher you must fully commit to the exclusive. In exchange for your full commitment you should secure significant monetary gains and the opportunity to ensure your content and brand are appropriately and correctly communicated to the customer.

Lastly, do not withhold information about substantive unexpected changes in your publishing program and output. Your channel partner works with hundreds if not thousands of publishers and understands well the vagaries of original content creation. By keeping the channels of communication clear, honest and open you give your partner the opportunity to communicate with the customer well in advance of scenarios such as publishing volume decline, rights losses and other such changes to expectations.

Conclusion

Exclusives are rare and special opportunities for both the publisher and the channel partner. The opportunity to build a long-term relationship that can span decades is real. It is my hope that this installment in the licensing strategy series will help publishers assess the exclusive opportunity, negotiation and relationship. In the next installment in this series I will turn to the articulation of a specific licensing strategy: what content and when, which business models and which partners to maximize return and usage in the higher education library channel.

I invite you to read the complete series. Please subscribe to get a simple notification when new posts publish.

If you want to work together on your licensing strategy, contact me directly.

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The Peril of Zero Sum Thinking in Content Distribution Strategy

Throughout my career as a publisher and platform manager licensing and distributing eBooks and streaming video, I have encountered no shortage of publishers and distributors who too easily succumb to the fallacy of zero sum thinking. The  basic belief is publisher-direct sales will suffer if the same content is licensed for distribution. The advent of multi-channel, digital distribution created a context of risk assessment, trade-off thinking and option selection that publishers were more likely to view – in the early days especially – as fraught with risk rather than opportunity rich.

For example, place yourself in the chair of the editorial director at a major college textbook publisher in the early 2000s. The overwhelming majority of sales were flowing through college bookstores in the form of print titles. The only competitor to your product was the product itself resold as a used copy. Then, in 2007, in conjunction with other major industry players, you launch a platform to sell the eBook copy of your textbooks: CourseSmart. Now you and your leadership team are considering the potential impact of eBook sales on print sales (lower per unit price but higher margin than print). The used book resale market is becoming more efficient with new entrants like Chegg, and new platforms for library and consumer distribution are emerging with increasing regularity. Across these platforms new buying models are also emerging: demand-driven access, evidence-based access, subscription-aggregation, etc. By 2010 our hypothetical editorial director had to make a decision between retrenching around core content distribution strategies or experimenting broadly with packaging, pricing and distribution. The overwhelming majority of industry players erred on the side of not experimenting on the assumption new business models would disrupt known business models and have a negative impact on revenue and margin: zero sum thinking.

Experimenting with Packaging, Pricing and Distribution

I launched Business Expert Press in 2008 with a default assumption that experimentation in distribution was essential to our future. At launch we established a library collection that was sold publisher direct. We offered our eBooks on every consumer platform. We included our titles in popular aggregation platforms like Ebrary (now ProQuest Ebook Central), Vital Source and Ebsco eBooks. We included select chapters in distribution alongside Harvard Business Publishing Cases. We licensed select titles to emerging open platforms like Flat World Knowledge. And we offered simultaneous consumer and institutional single title pricing. Of course, as a start-up with no revenue base to protect we could be very adventurous, but many start-up publishing houses have launched with no such bias to content packaging innovation. As our business grew and evolved, we remained committed to what we referred to as our multi-channel distribution strategy. We described four unique channels: consumer, library, professional and course pack/cases and established as many relationships as possible within each of these channels. For example, in the course pack/cases channel we partnered with Xanedu and Harvard Business Publishing at inception and then sought to add more partners over time. And it worked …

The Myth of a Rational Consumer

In early 2011, I visited Syracuse University on an author scouting trip. The Syracuse library had recently purchased our 2010 Ebook collection for perpetual DRM-free access and thus all our titles were broadly available to all faculty and students. During this visit I passed through the college bookstore and found, to my surprise, print Business Expert Press titles for sale as course adopted. I did some subsequent checking on our channel sales and discovered that eBook sales of these same titles had processed through Apple and Amazon into the Syracuse area. In short, Business Expert Press titles, the same titles, had sold into the Syracuse University ecosystem in multiple packaging and pricing formats. This experience had a lasting impact on my content distribution thinking and led to three key observations that inform my view today that is decidedly non-zero sum: 1. The assumption of a rational consumer making informed trade-offs in a context of perfect information is a false premise but holds much currency in the halls of publisher strategy meetings. 2. Faculty, students and librarians are unique consumers with unique objectives that often overlap. 3. Channel partners amplify the publishers’ business and reach into segments and customer categories that the publisher cannot always envision.

The assumption of a rational consumer making informed trade-offs in a context of perfect information is a false premise, but holds much currency in the halls of publisher strategy meetings:

Put simply, and I am as guilty of this as my industry colleagues, when we do not move forward with an innovative access model at a given price point because we believe it will erode our sales in an existing access model, we are playing too conservative. Markets are not this clean and clear and this thinking does not account for a growing market perspective. If, for example, a publisher makes a title available only in the single user model and avoids a multi-user institutional price for access, sales will be lost at institutions and with faculty that favor and prioritize unlimited access. The publisher has latitude in price setting, digital rights management limits and can remove content from distribution if the revenue impact is unexpectedly negative, so why cut off the multi-user access model from experimentation? The examples are many. By avoiding product models and purchasing/business models in favor of protecting known single title sales revenue, an expanding pie of opportunity is closed off as well as an opportunity to learn and evolve the business.

Faculty, students and librarians are unique consumers with unique objectives that often overlap:

In the realm of content used for curriculum development, faculty, students and librarians often pursue access through mutually exclusive models that frequently overlap, as in the example I described of Business Expert Press content at Syracuse. The library may be pursuing a perpetual access collection development policy or a subscription-aggregation development policy and purchase irrespective of faculty and student selection. A faculty member may desire the title embedded in courseware, or a print copy, and thus make the content available through the college bookstore. And a student may prefer to purchase and access the content on her Kindle and buy direct from Amazon.

Channel partners amplify the publishers’ business and reach into segments and customer categories that the publisher cannot always envision:

There are endless opportunities to participate in innovative business models and access models and these efforts will reach users that were previously unimpressed, unaware or biased against existing business and access models. When ebook platforms began disaggregating chapters from books and selling individual chapter access whole avenues of usage and revenue opened; JSTOR began offering ebook chapters in discovery and access around 2015 and saw massively increased usage. Business Expert Press experienced a significant increase in sales when chapters were aligned with specific Harvard Business School cases. As new models emerged in corporate library sales that remunerated the publisher based on pages viewed, minutes viewed, etc. new revenue streams from new customers were added for Business Expert Press content.

Balance Experimentation with Smart Management Practice

Publishers must make wise decisions when considering new markets, new product configurations, new distribution partnerships and new business/access models. And the known revenue stream, margins and customer base are the foundation for considering and making these reasoned moves into experimentation. But zero sum thinking, being predisposed to believe new access/sales model will erode revenue one-to-one, is to engage in unhealthy risk averse management that will, long term, only hurt the business.

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Content Licensing Strategy Part 3: Understand all Available Business Models Represented by Channel Partners

In the two prior installments in this series on content licensing strategy, I offered practical guidance on assessing the library channel revenue potential of your catalog, new releases to longtail, and how to identify and evaluate the available channel partners that your publishing or distribution business can align with to address all licensing opportunity that fits your content niche. In this installment I will focus specifically on the Higher Education library distribution channel and the various packaging and pricing access models you will need to consider and select from as you deploy your catalog in licensing. Remember, you can license all or part of your catalog into a mix of these business models and with a mix of the channel partners you have already identified. In rare cases you may choose to pursue an exclusive licensing agreement; a topic I will address in a coming installment in this series. Let’s now turn to a business model breakdown.

Aggregation versus Single Title:

In the simplest terms think of Netflix versus Amazon Prime new release video rentals. Higher education libraries use both broad, subscription product access (like Netflix) and single title purchasing to acquire content; this applies particularly to e-books and streaming video, but similar options exist for other media formats such as periodicals. Aggregation can go beyond massive, multi-disciplinary databases as library vendors often build discipline-based or topic-based databases composed of mixed media formats (e.g. video and e-books) and your content can be aggregated into such a product. The most common opportunity, however, is large, single media format aggregations, such as Academic Complete from ProQuest, an ever-growing e-book subscription product currently approaching two million titles.

Subscription versus Perpetual Access License:

In single title purchasing, many library vendors offer options between term access (effectively a subscription) and permanent ownership, referred to as perpetual access license or life-of-file. Term access can be for as little as a day or as long as three years, depending on the vendor and its platform business models. The length of access must be considered against the number of users/viewers. For example, with e-book access models, it is common to see options between one user and unlimited users. In assessing these single title access models for your content catalog it is important to note that the various vendors will often use different naming conventions to describe their access models, so you will need to focus on four key questions to consider the vendor’s access model:

  1. What is the term of access?
  2. How many users/viewers will have access during the term?
  3. What is the price point and multiplier of the price point for each access model?
  4. What copying, downloading, and printing (if applicable) rights will the user have?

Evidence Based versus Demand Driven Acquisition:

Evidence Based Acquisition (EBA) aggregates content from many publishers and distributors into a large package that the library accesses for a fixed, pre-paid sum for a fixed period, typically one year. The total pool of content is significantly more than the sum committed by the library would purchase, very often as much as ten times as large, i.e. $500,000 of content access for a committed spend of $50,000. At the end of the term, the library uses the “evidence” of usage to select the titles they wish to own perpetually, up to the sum committed and generally with a discount or access model incentive; for example, unlimited user access for the price of single user access.  The key points for you the publisher to understand about EBA is that it is an aggregation of your content with other content, it is delivered on perpetual access license if your content is selected at period end by the library, and there is rarely a revenue guarantee.

Demand Driven Access (DDA) or Patron Driven Access (PDA) functions in a similar fashion to EBA in that content is aggregated from many publishers and distributors into a large package selected by the library and with a fixed sum committed at the outset; however, DDA is a user-demand drive model that triggers a sale of your title based on parameters set by the vendor. These parameters are typically the number of pages viewed or number of minutes of video viewed. The sum committed at set-up by the library is generally set as a deposit that can be refunded when the DDA access is turned off, whereas, with EBA, the sum is committed and fully allocated to publisher content at the end of the access period. EBA and DDA differ on two key points: first DDA programs often include content not available for perpetual ownership and, importantly, all titles triggered are purchased while your content may be used in EBA but still not selected by the librarian at term end.

And in Conclusion …

I know this is a lot to digest!  Keep in mind that each channel partner you meet with will, of course, extol the benefits of their access models over that of their competitors. Your opportunity and your challenge is to enter these discussions with an understanding of each of the models and a consideration of how your content catalog will perform in these various access models. It is my hope that you will be sufficiently well-informed about your catalog’s potential and the different business models so that you can make your choice based not on partner opinion but rather your rational assessment of opportunity. In the next several installments in this series I will describe the opportunity for exclusive distribution with a privileged channel partner and then I will tackle how you bring all I have delivered across this series together into defining your content distribution strategy: which titles and when, into which models when and with which partners and how to measure success.

I invite you to read the complete series. Please subscribe to get a simple notification when new posts publish.

If you want to work together on your licensing strategy, contact me directly.

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Content Licensing Strategy Part 2: Establish a Complete Picture of all Available Channel Partners

I fundamentally believe in the opportunity for an ever-expanding pie of licensing distribution revenue, and that concern over competing channel revenue cannibalization is almost always overstated. If you are a publisher of valuable content with the goal of increasing revenue and usage, you have to be willing to experiment and measure and adjust. If you reject a channel opportunity based solely on a belief it will disproportionately disrupt current revenues without having tested this premise, you have given up on the opportunity too quickly.

I state this perspective at the outset as my experience as a publisher taught me my concerns about cannibalization were largely unfounded, and my experience leading content licensing at Alexander Street and ProQuest similarly taught me publishers assume a too-rational view on consumers, channel conflict and the potential for cannibalization. By establishing a complete view of all possible channel partners and then, based on the catalog assessment described in part one of this series on content licensing strategy: https://parkerthepublisher.com/content-licensing-strategy/, deploying content across partners in restricted tests, you the publisher will achieve maximum total revenue and usage.

Define Your Publishing and Distribution Business Channels

The first step in generating a complete view of all possible channel partners is to state the channels that define your publishing and distribution business. While this series on content licensing strategy is focused on distribution to the Higher Education library, the savvy publisher will begin with an understanding of where the the focus channel fits in the overall view on revenue-generating channels. I founded Business Expert Press in 2008 with the understanding we would participate in four primary channels (disregard consortia) as shown below: Print, Ebook Retail, CoursePack and Library Aggregation.

David Parker's interpretation of the Multi-Channel Model

 

Within each of these primary channels our goal was to partner with as many credible distributors as possible on the understanding that no channel partner can corner the market and, also, so that we had deep awareness of prevailing royalty rates, possible advances and annual minimum guarantees, best marketing practices and best practices for content ingestion and metadata management. This distribution strategy perfectly complemented our publisher-direct product focus, and led to an ever-growing revenue pie and deep understanding of the key players and partners in each channel.

Before turning to tactics for developing a complete picture of all available channel partners, I want to underscore that this multi-channel distribution approach frequently yielded Business Expert Press sales of print, ebook retail, library aggregator sales and publisher-direct sales to the same university. When this was unnecessarily duplicative, we always refunded the customer, but often this resulted from a particular professor desiring a single title in a format not held by the library or other such variables of demand that are difficult to predict.

Channel Partner Discovery Tracks

I recommend three specific tracks of discovery to develop a view on all possible channel partners for higher education library distribution: 1. Nearest Competitors, 2. Largest Conference and 3. Representative Customers.

1. Nearest Competitors:

We all know who our nearest competitors are. Even if your publishing business is niche focused, there are peer companies that you watch (and if you don’t, start now!). These competitors will most often list their distribution partners on their websites and in their marketing collateral. I have found that industry colleagues from these competitor companies are very open to discussing distribution partners and the performance of each.

2. Largest Conference:

The higher education library channel’s major conference player is the American Library Association (ALA): http://www.ala.org/ . ALA hosts two annual conferences that dwarf all other library conferences. Publishers, distributors and aggregators with designs on the library market will invariably attend the ALA to meet prospective customers and come to know competitors and potential new partners. The exhibitor list is always available on the ALA conference website and can easily be sorted by key word or searched top to bottom for relevant distribution partners for your publishing business.

3. Representative Customers:

Higher education libraries feature all available databases on their library website, often in an “A to Z” list of databases. Here is an example from my alma mater the University of Arizona: https://libguides.library.arizona.edu/az.php. These lists can be sorted by media type, subjects and vendors. Select 10 universities you believe represent opportunities for your content and you will be able to quickly hone in on the significant channel distributors to represent your products in distribution.

By deploying all or a combination of these three tactics for channel partner discovery, you will arrive at a comprehensive list of the vendors you will select amongst to represent your publishing output across key distribution channels. When you combine a thorough understanding of your catalog and its potential for revenue generation with a solid picture of your possible channel distribution partners, you are ready for the next step, which is developing an understanding of all the available business models for selling your content via the channel partners under consideration, and this will be the focus of part three in this series on licensing strategy coming soon.

I invite you to subscribe here to get a simple notification when new posts publish.

If you want to work together on your licensing strategy, contact me directly.

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Six Steps to Developing a Higher Education Library Content Licensing Strategy

In this series on content licensing strategy, I will walk you through the six steps necessary to be confident you have fully leveraged partner distribution through the Higher Education library channel. The principles and recommendations will apply to assessing and participating in other channels, such as the consumer channel, the corporate library channel or the public library channel.

Maximizing the revenue return from your paid content, or usage of your open content in licensed distribution channels, begins with a deep understanding of your complete catalog’s historical performance and the potential of future publishing output. In this first installment I will focus on the critical steps necessary to assess your catalog’s potential in licensing. To foreshadow future installments, here are the six steps I will cover to develop a complete licensing strategy:

Six Steps to a Winning Licensing Strategy

  1. Assess your catalog – published and forthcoming – to identify degrees of opportunity
  2. Establish a complete picture of all available channel partners
  3. Understand all available business models represented by channel partners
  4. Determine if your catalog and brand can demand an exclusive with a distribution partner
  5. Define your strategy: what content and when, which business models and which partners
  6. Build a template to track and measure performance across partners and business models

Step 1: Assess your catalog – published and forthcoming – to identify degrees of opportunity

At first pass this step may sound obvious or easy, but I have repeatedly seen publishers and licensing distribution leaders, especially those with vast catalogs, move too quickly to bucket all or much of their catalog into a single business model with no windowing (timing of release of titles across various models) for distribution. And categories, such as front-list or back-list, while historically useful internal organizational tools, often miss the mark in bucketing relative opportunity.

To achieve optimal revenue/usage from your full catalog I suggest establishing three categories: 1. new releases with high potential, 2. low potential/longtail and 3. medium to high potential.

Benchmarking Low Potential/Longtail and Medium-to-High Potential Content

The benchmarks for low potential/longtail and medium-to-high potential will vary by publisher but will always be relative to one another. For example, a small publisher/distributor of anthropological ethnographic film might view 20 sales per year of a single film as medium to high potential (given the relative size of the audience in the academic discipline), while a publisher of a book on servant leadership would consider 500 copies a year as a threshold for medium to high potential given the opportunity in business schools and leadership programs across the university. The critical point is to engage in extended analysis of your full available catalog to define low versus medium/high potential from the perspective of the market size and the long-term performance of the catalog. I strongly advocate for this approach over front-list/back-list thinking as strong performers very often maintain strength of sales and usage for many years. This perspective informs the thinking behind the long tail concept, which functions independent of publication date:The "long tail" concept in publishing, which functions independent of publication date.
There is still a place for front-list/back-list planning (inventory management for example), but not in evaluating the long-term revenue and usage potential of content where multiple digital access/business models are available with widely varying royalty rates.

Identifying New, High-Potential Releases

Upon completion of the low to medium/high potential analysis, the performance of various content categories and silos within the catalog will reveal the likely potential for future releases. For example, you might find titles published on a particular topic have a very strong first six months of sales followed by a rapid tail off, whereas titles published on another topic have a slow but steady sales profile over many years following launch. Identifying new releases with high potential is, of course, not easy, but it’s one of the critical skills publishing and distribution leaders must cultivate and, frankly, be measured by as these are the releases that drive so much relative success for publishers small and large.

The motion picture industry has a long-established practice of windowing content from theatrical release, through Blu-Ray and streaming title sales, through release on their own platforms for subscription access and on through the available alternative business models with channel partners, each typically generating less topline revenue and successively lower margin. Publishers of content relevant to Higher Education libraries must aim to identify those new releases each year that can fit into an industry-appropriate windowing model; more on this point when we get to entry number five in this series: Define your strategy: what content and when, which business models and which partners

Review your Catalog’s Revenue Generation: All Channels, All Partners, All Business Models

Completing this first step will require a comprehensive review of your catalog’s revenue generation across all channels, channel partners and across all currently deployed business models in each channel. Each publisher/distributor will need to establish the period of analysis, but I generally recommend the past 10 years. Based on the discipline/field/topic of publication and the size of the expected market, you will define what constitutes a low versus a medium/high performing benchmark for the existing catalog. This analysis will, in turn, support the identification of those new releases with high potential, which will be critical to underwriting the success of the broader publishing and distribution enterprise. With this analysis and framework-for-the-future in place, we can move to step two: Establish a complete picture of all available channel partners, coming soon in a follow-on blog post. I invite you to subscribe here to get a simple notification when new posts publish.

 

If you want to work together on your licensing strategy, contact me directly.

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