Open for Business: Parker the Publisher

In my experience, publishers and distributors of digital learning content benefit from guidance in three critical areas: licensing strategy, new business access model creation, and new content publishing strategy. My desire to support content creators, large and small, across all media types from video, music, books, podcasts and more to grow their library distribution businesses fueled my decision to launch my new enterprise: www.parkerthepublisher.com.

This is an exciting time for creators of content to fuel higher education learning. Instructors are broadening their search for multi-media content. Online and hybrid learning  is the new norm. And the library is becoming ever more central in the university’s push to provide institutionally available content for faculty, librarians and instructional designers building curriculum. My background uniquely positions me for this new era:

From Publisher to Platform Manager

Launching my own publishing company in 2008 provided a springboard to exploring and mastering multi-channel digital distribution. Put another way, had we at Business Expert Press (businessexpertpress.com) only focused on classroom adoption (print and digital), we would have quickly gone bankrupt. We rapidly  understood we needed partnerships for entry into the library market, the course pack market, the corporate market, the consumer market; the sum total of these digital distribution partnerships was a robust and growing business with many streams of revenue.

I then moved into platform management with Alexander Street and ProQuest, driving forward our video and ebook businesses. In this role as product leader for a major aggregation platform  business, I observed that many of our publishing and specialty distribution partners were not fully leveraging the opportunity our platform and other competitors and adjacent platforms presented for business growth. And, often, this partner platform distribution opportunity was being implemented alongside a not fully-realized publisher direct distribution strategy. 

Optimizing the mix of publisher-direct and multi-channel partner distribution is the core value I can bring to your learning content business.

Now an Advocate for Publishers and Distributors

Over the past decade I have developed a specific and proven approach to building a licensing strategy, to developing new publisher-direct access models and to identifying and implementing new niche publishing strategies. A primary focus of my new service will be to freely share these approaches in the steps I have used in building my businesses. On a regular cadence I will publish step-by-step installments describing how to build a licensing strategy, a new business model strategy, and a niche publishing strategy. These articles will be published and permanently available here: https://parkerthepublisher.com/blog/

Give me a shout!

I am so excited to begin this new chapter in my life and welcome any and all outreach to discuss how I can support your business. I look forward to connecting with you! Give me a shout here: https://parkerthepublisher.com/contact/

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Published by: David Parker on January 26, 2021
Read more about: Access Models, Licensing, Publishing