Inside Intrigue at Conde Nast - Moving and Shaking Going On

Anna Wintour - One of the most
Powerful women in publishing

Conde Nast is a very influential publishing and mass media company with a lot of transformation going on. And tonight we are going to take a look at all the Conde Nast inside intrigue.

I believe this kind of analysis gives all aspiring writers, authors and indie publishers insight into the current day evolving industry that will empower them in their future endeavors. 

First, what is a mass media company (Conde Nast has grown into one over recent years)?

Secondly, a little history of Conde Nast: Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a mass media company headquartered in the Condé Nast Building in New York City. The company attracts more than 164 million consumers across its 20 print and digital media brands: Allure, Architectural Digest, Ars Technica, Bon Appétit, Brides, Condé Nast Traveler, Details, Epicurious, Glamour, Golf Digest, Golf World, GQ, Lucky, The New Yorker, Self, Teen Vogue,Vanity Fair, Vogue, W and Wired.

The company launched Condé Nast Entertainment in 2011 to develop film, television and digital video programming. The company also owns Fairchild Fashion Media (FFM) and its portfolio of comprehensive fashion journalism brands: Beauty Inc., Footwear News, M, Style.com and WWD.

The company was founded in 1909 by Condé Montrose Nast and has been owned by the Newhouse family since 1959. Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. is the chairman and CEO of Advance Publications, Charles H. Townsend is its chief executive officer and Robert A. Sauerberg is its president.


And now this from Crain's New York Business by  MATTHEW FLAMM:

Anna Wintour consolidates her power at Condé Nast

An executive transition also gave President Bob Sauerberg new responsibilities.

  A long-expected executive transition took a step forward at Condé Nast on Wednesday with the announcement that President Bob Sauerberg would assume new responsibilities and Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour  will have no rival in her role as creative director.

Editorial Director Tom Wallace will leave the company. Though he is not being replaced, his job was considered redundant after Ms. Wintour was named creative director last year. John Bellando, a 15-year veteran who was both chief financial officer and chief operating officer, is also leaving the company, to be replaced by an executive from Time Inc.

Mr. Sauerberg, appointed president four years ago Wednesday, will "assume a leading role in all revenue generation activities," CEO Chuck Townsend wrote in a memo to staffers. That leading role will include overseeing Condé Nast Media Group, the division that handles the large corporate advertising sales that have traditionally produced 80% of the company's ad revenue.

Brought in following a brutal advertising recession, Mr. Sauerberg was charged with finding new sources of revenue, and already oversees consumer marketing, digital operations, business development, corporate administration and the new television arm Condé Nast Entertainment. He is also the heir apparent to Mr. Townsend, who is 69.

Mr. Townsend acknowledged the power shift in his memo, noting that "Bob and I have worked side by side as CEO and president to ensure we prepare the company to reach new heights." The changes announced Wednesday begin "this seamless transition."

As part of the transition, Mr. Sauerberg added to his corporate team, bringing in David Geithner from Time Inc. to replace the well-liked Mr. Bellando, who was considered "Chuck's right arm," according to a former Condé Nast executive. Mr. Geithner will report to Mr. Sauerberg, as will Lou Cona, president of Conde Nast Media Group.

Ms. Wintour's ascension was no surprise. 

"Anna really has more power than Bob and Chuck combined," said the former executive. "She's the person everyone sees as a visionary and as having a huge amount of influence inside and outside of the building."

Condé Nast—part of the privately held, Newhouse family-owned Advance Publications—still has its own way of doing things, with roles that are not always clearly defined. For instance, some publishers report to Mr. Townsend, while others report to Mr. Sauerberg. With Wednesday's announcement, they will all report to Mr. Sauerberg, according to a person familiar with the matter, although one publisher was unaware of any change.

"At a company like this it doesn't matter," he said. "You have very little oversight either way."

Correction: All Condé Nast publishers will report to President Bob Sauerberg. This fact was misstated in a previous version of this article, published online July 23, 2014.

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Resource article:
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140723/MEDIA_ENTERTAINMENT/140729938/anna-wintour-consolidates-her-power-at-condeacute-nast

Book Marketing: Why Digital Booking is Better than Bricks-and-Mortar Booking

I don't ever want to see physical bookstores disappear...and I don't feel they will completely. But, having said that, we as writers need to understand some basic dynamics to survive.

To understand why digital processing of books is completely dominating the book publishing, marketing and selling world, you have to understand what happened in the demise of giants like Blockbuster and Barnes and Noble and the rise of companies such as Netflix and Amazon.

Randall Stross , writer of the NYTimes Digital Domain column, gives us a good insight to changing business models and, in my opinion, how and why they can affect us as writers:

Why Bricks and Clicks Don’t Always Mix

NOT so long ago, in 2005, Blockbuster seemed invincible. However you preferred to rent movies — in stores or online — the company was ready to accommodate you.

At the time, Netflix could offer only one way of obtaining a movie (the mail) and one way of returning it (the mail). It was clicks, with no bricks.

Of course, we now know that Netflix has done just fine. In January 2005, its shares traded in the $11 range. On Friday, they closed at $140.46, giving the company a market capitalization of $7.35 billion.

As for Blockbuster, which was spun off from Viacom in 2004, it’s now a penny stock, and its woes are as visible as the “Closing” banner in the window of a store in your neighborhood. The company recently warned that it might file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Last week, its chief financial officer resigned. (A spokeswoman for Blockbuster declined a request for an interview with a company representative.)

Blockbuster’s experience shows that executing a bricks-and-clicks strategy entails a high degree of difficulty, managing not just two very different kinds of businesses, with dissimilar domains of expertise, but also a third challenge: integrating two separate systems. An online-only service can remain a best-in-class operation because its executives focus, focus, focus on just the online business.

In the handicapping of likely winners and losers in 2005, Netflix seemed unlikely to survive, let alone thrive. Netflix is “not a sustainable business,” Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, told SmartMoney that year. In his view, successful Internet businesses tended to “have a bricks-and-mortar component.” That is, retail stores.

Read more http://alturl.com/6ygtw

The Ebook and POD (publish on demand) Publishing Strategy

The new and much more economical publishing model being anticipated and envisioned is to publish the manuscript as an eBook first and publish individual downloadable eBooks when a sale is made. The publisher can also produce a limited press run of hard copies if it is anticipated that a certain number might sell out. Sustainable pricing in the eBook field would be key here to make this model come to full fruition.

The following post from the Shatzkin Files addresses this exact point head-on and I have included here for your further consideration:

'Is the eBook and POD combo a viable publishing strategy yet?'

Posted by Mike Shatzkin on September 12, 2009 at 6:57 am

'There’s a new publishing model afoot, which is to lead with the ebook and just print what you need. That might be POD, and it might be press runs, if you can sell out whole press runs. If the ebook becomes a substantial chunk of sales and if ebooks maintain their prices, this looks like it could be a new way to do much lower-risk publishing.

Some very smart publishing people are moving in this direction. It had been the plan of the meteoric Quartet, which has already flamed out. It is part of the plan of Richard Nash, an experienced publisher (Four Walls Eight Windows) and a budding entrepeneur. It is the model for a young and aspiring Irish publisher named Eion Purcell. And last week, tor.com announced that it would be publishing books (this is distinct from its “parent”, St. Martin’s sci-fi imprint Tor) with an ebook first and POD methodology.

Can no pressrun publishing work? That’s a subject for discussion at Digital Book World in January, but, based on an interesting post by Kassia Kroszer, one of the four principals in Quartet, I have real doubts.

Kassia’s post makes it clear that direct sales at “full margin” (meaning no cut to anybody else in the supply chain) were an important part of Quartet’s budget and plan. They figured that by sticking to niches, and the first one was going to be romance, they’d be able to build up a direct audience and avoid sharing revenues with retailers and wholesalers. Kassia points out that savvy ebook readers (who hate DRM, high prices, lack of interoperability, etc.) are willing to support their “local” publisher, knowing that more money gets to the author that way...' Read more at http://www.idealog.com/blog/