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Oh, I'll start by,
did I go too quickly there? Sorry. The recording just started. Okay.
But thank you, everyone. I'll start by introducing myself first and then I'll pass it over to Mike, and then Noah.
So my name is Kyle Fisher. I'm the Director of Sales and Success for Wiley Publishing.
I've been with Wiley for almost 23 years right now, and I started in sales and I've worked my way up through the organization.
To being a Western regional sales manager. Then to being Director of Sales for Canada, and then also a Director of Sales for all of Canada.
And then I had half the U.S. for a bit, and then now I'm Director of Sales and Success, so I run our customer success team as well for Canada.
And I'll be your moderator for today, so pass it over to Mike.
Hi, everyone! I'm Mike MacDougald and I currently work at Oxford University Press as Marketing Manager for Insights and Analytics.
I split my time between our Oxford Academic and Higher Education divisions.
So I work in a couple of different divisions there, and I started my career in publishing with Wiley actually working with Kyle initially, which was fantastic. Started out as a sales rep moved into a sales management role and then eventually into marketing management prior to going back
to school for a certificate in Data Science at University of Waterloo. So that's kind of what kick started by transition into the data world. Ended up working for United Way as, on the technical side as database admin.
And I'm now pursuing a second certificate in Artificial Intelligence at U
of T. So I've been incredibly lucky to apply what I've learned in my new role and pretty excited to work at Oxford.
Alright, nice to meet you guys and everyone on the call.
So my name is Noah Genner. I'm the the CEO of BookNet Canada, and I come at this, maybe from a little bit of a different background, and different roles than Kyle and Mike. I've never been a publisher.
I've never worked for a publisher so, but I have worked in the book industry for more than 35 years
in different aspects. So I got my start in book,
the book industry, working an independent bookstore. I was the tech guy at the independent book store when tech was just new.
So we start with the micro fees moved on to the fax, and then on the computers.
And so I've been involved in an industry all the way through that transition. I'm a programmer and a data scientist by, not by trade, but by job description,
I guess. And so BookNet Canada collects and distributes data about the publishing industry in Canada.
So we collect point-of-sale data from retailers. We collect metadata
from publishers, and we collect survey data on readers and buy, book buying behavior across Canada.
And we set standards for the Canadian book industry. So we have all that information, and we're more of a data purveyor.
And a data consumer ourselves. International publishers,
but many publishers, in fact, just about every Canadian publisher, uses one of our data services or one of our subscription services in some form or another, which I think we're gonna talk a little bit about.
Yeah, I think that's briefly me and BookNet.
Awesome. Thank you, Noah. Thanks, Mike. That's fantastic.
And 2 different careers that you guys have had. So it's a great to have you on the session.
So my first question will go to, to Mike. Mike, how did you first obtain your first job in publishing?
And then what, what made you decide to seek a career and go into the data aspect of publishing?
Oh, you're on mute, Mike. I knew we were gonna say that once.
Sorry, my dog wanted to talk to everybody again. Yeah.
My initial start in publishing was in sales,
as I mentioned as a sales rep. The interview came as kind of a surprise because I didn't actually realize at the time of publishing as a career and the number of doors that that could open for me.
So, as I mentioned, I kind of progressed through Wiley, and I've got a different job at Oxford now, and there's lots of different ways to have a career in publishing.
You don't have to just be an editor like everybody wants to be. You can be in data.
You can be in marketing, editorial, all of that. And working for Kyle,
he was always very into data. We were always data driven from the start, and there was a couple of projects that really kick started by interest in data.
I'd say, probably the biggest one was when we were looking at moving sales territories for a better effectiveness in the field.
Gonna say that once.
I'm sure you remember that off-site shop, Kyle. And I had built a tool in Excel that gave us an insight into what those changes would look like on the fly so, as we were discussing changes we might make to territories,
we could actually look at the older sales data, put that together and see what those territories would look like under the new structure, so that give us some insight into backing up what we already had gut instinct on.
And I think we made some really great decisions from there. And that was really the point where I was like, yeah, this data thing is legit.
You have to use this in every aspect of your job, and that had me going on the data side from there.
And as I mentioned, I went back for data science between jobs to recertify in that area.
I got in machine learning, and I'm pretty lucky to get to use that back in publishing, because I love this area.
Awesome. Thanks, Mike. And Noah, listening to you talk about your role
on, with BookNet. I'm just curious on my own, too.
What made you decide to get involved in, in BookNet
and seeing a need for that data?
Yeah, well, a good question. I've always loved books. So you know, I loved reading.
Probably like a lot of people are going to this industry, I hope, and so my first job in the bookstore was a dream come true.
I never thought of publishing, didn't know anything about publishing, but still loved books and, and the bookstores was
my way into that. And because we were going through this transition from kind of old technologies to new technologies that were databased at that point, I really got,
I loved that, I loved computers, too, so it, it allowed me to do
books and computers, and bring those 2 things together, was kind of, oh, the two, I was a nerd.
I was a geek. I loved those 2 things. So bringing them together was awesome and when I left the bookstore and went out into the world, work world and did other things, I was always surrounded by data and computers.
I was a programmer and also working in consumer analytics companies.
So I was surrounded by data, and then BookNet formed
about 20 years ago, and it seemed to be a perfect fit for me.
The mix of the data and computers and the books allowed me to scratch both my nerdy itches.
And to get paid to do that was kind of a dream come true.
So I fell into that, and we started BookNet. It was a need from the industry. The industry wanted more data.
They wanted more visibility into what was going on across the industry with regards to book sales, for instance.
And so that data had to be captured, processed, and then insights had to be removed from that.
And so that was the role BookNet took on, was to capture data from around the industry, bring it together so the publishers and retailers and libraries
could make more informed decisions about their purchasing. And I just love that, I love solving problems and I love data, and I love books and being able to manage all of that together. It's like I said, it was a dream come true.
And as I progress through my career I'm just taking on a little bit more all the time, as most people do, and similar to Mike, have gone out and got extra certificates along the way.
So, a PM PM. A Project Management certificate, a Digital Strategy certificate.
All that kind of extra learning was really important. I loved it and it, you know, further my job.
And so, BookNet was, was able to grow through the data,
through the data we captured, and as we kind of develop more databases and more insights, we'd be asked for more from the industry, and so we would deliver more and more and more.
And so now we have, you know, massive data sets. 20 years of sales from thousands of retailers across the country.
[Inaudible]. We can drive a lot of insights from that historical data. That's Mike, we kind of mentioned in, too. So.
Oh, that's great. And in my role, as Mike said, like when when we were working together, we looked at a lot of data and how to analyze our sales and look at how we're gonna adjust territories and that but it's even gone a step
further since Mike and I have worked together, because now, in the industry that we're in, in the higher education, it's, there's a lot of online tools being used now.
So we're looking at data on how people are using the tools, trying to use that to see, what do we create in the future to help students learn better and and help faculty out those students in the classroom so we look at our activations like, how many are we being in sales we wanna see
the revenue. Right? So we analyze, okay, what activations do we have for people that have started with the product and using the product.
And what are our sales? Those match so there's a lot of of data, analytics and everyday work for everybody on it.
And it's becoming, since we're working with universities, we see the trends.
Of what they're looking for in jobs right now. And data analytics is the top of the thing. Everything.
When you're talking to accounting you're talking to business
They're all looking to have data, analytics, courses set up.
And so that the students are are familiar with data analytics when they graduate, bacause.
It's such a high need right now, but, Mike, you had mentioned something neat about when you went back to school, and you were doing your machine learning.
So how are you using a data technique like machine learning and publishing in your role right now?
Well, we're just getting started now. We do have some services that are working with our academic division and working with third-parties to do that.
But we're starting to use some things internally that are pretty exciting.
So on the marketing side, customer classifications obviously really hard.
So we're looking at that data from survey results from different databases that we have, and combining that together.
And then trying to classify customers into groups that we can then market to and track results with analytics and make decisions on how we wanna feature market to them.
So a lot of the machine learning goes into data that we already have.
As Noah mentioned, we have data sources from 20 years back.
in some cases. So especially with journal usage and things like that we do have a lot of data to work with.
And a lot of usages now track through Google analytics.
So, we're tracking a lot of the usage, combining that with sales data like you mentioned, Kyle.
And then data from other databases to bring everything together and not have to guess at what's effective.
But the machine learning is actually classifying customers fairly accurately into groups that make sense to us when we look at them qualitatively as well.
So it's pretty cool.
Awesome. And this question, I'll go to both of you.
But I'll start with Noah first. So since you have been in the publishing landscape, what do you feel has been the biggest change in regards to diversity and equitable representation across publishing positions?
I think that, you know, it's been a challenge for especially the last years. You know,
I think, during the pandemic we've seen remote work, really, you know, move up a lot. That's changed the industry a lot.
I think that's allowed for more, hopefully, it allows more inclusivity and diversity.
Not really requiring people to necessarily be in downtown Toronto, for instance. That definitely opens up all new [inaudible], and that's obviously gonna be a result of the pandemics of the last 3, 3 or 4 years.
I think there's been, you know from, not to turn that to a data thing,
but this is a data session, the ability for us to know the customers of the, more details about the customers that are consuming and supporting the content that we have allows us to find groups of, my, groups of customers
as we were discussing, that were maybe underserved by the industry in the past, and allows us to find not only that the communities to serve those, the communities who want new content, but also the communities to serve those people so those, there's a lot of diverse communities that were definitely
underrepresented. Data helps the visibility of some of those communities. Not in every case
but in a lot of cases. Brings them to the fore and then helps us match up authors with communities in ways we never could before.
I don't think we're not as easily as we had now, not with all the data we have in our, in our fingertips.
So that is really changed over the last few years, and I think that just the appetite for that, for that kind of diverse content that's created a trickle down or trickle up effect through the industry and that we need more people, more diverse viewpoints everywhere in our
businesses to help serve those communities, right. And so I think that's changed really a lot in the last couple of years. Was a lot of attention from a lot of companies, a lot of people in that area, you know, it's an ongoing challenge for sure,
but I think that we're definitely heading in the right direction.
Awesome, and same question to you, Mike.
So I think, yeah, a lot of what Noah said, and we also were able to track usage data in a pretty granular way,
in some cases. So we can check and see what accessibility features, for example, in a resource are being used
and take a look at how we build products in the future to really cater to underrepresented groups.
Maybe for things like closed captioning and videos, different features like that are being used.
So on the tech side, it's very useful for that.
And Oxford, is. It's a truly global company.
So we have some really great internal programs as well
that address the needs of diversity and we have a mentorship program that has about 60 global mentors.
We have 2 formal programs within that: Mission Gender Equity and Mission Include. Mission Gender Equity
also works with the Women Ahead program. They do a lot of workshops and seminars. And Mission Include has a program called Elevate, which is for anyone who wants to get into management or progress
in their career, and that focuses on external educational leadership from very reputable sources.
So internally, in terms of career development, Oxford's got some really strong programs in that area.
And there's lots of opportunities to learn and grow with Oxford
if you take part.
Awesome. That's great. And very similar, Wiley, like we've been,
that's been a huge mission for Wiley, is to be more diverse in what we're doing. It,
and Mike, even when you were there, I think they had a big program for women leaders and upping the amount of women that were in leadership roles for Wiley.
So it's definitely been something that's not new.
It's been something that we've been working for, for years.
But the biggest change, too, that I'm seeing in the data,
and there's a session later on about, this week, about digital. And they'll touch on probably a little bit of this as well.
But there's different programs now that are designed by publishers that are adaptive.
So basically, they, a student will get an assignment, there'll be adaptive assignment, and they'll answer questions, and the system will adapt to what the student needs based on the answering of the questions that they, that they've done, and what are they, what are they getting right, what are they getting
wrong. And then it can basically, with all that data, and it will go back in the back end, and it will decide what those students need, say for prerequisite, to actually answer that question.
So there's a lot of data that goes into creating these new online systems that we never had before
when I first started. When I first started out, it was the big, the big digital thing was a CD in the textbook.
And now it's changed to all these online systems and, and being able to adapt to each individual student and understanding what they're struggling with and helping them with what they're struggling with, that is just pretty amazing.
But a lot of data, data science goes into generating that, creating that.
So there's a lot more jobs in data science now than ever before.
For publishing anyway. So and, and for both of you, did you find any barriers when you are coming into publishing, and to the role. What was the biggest barrier and hurdle that you had starting in your career?
Maybe, Mike, you go first.
Sure, Kyle, you always worked with me to try and remove those, so I do appreciate that.
But I think the biggest thing getting started was not understanding that there, there was actually career paths in publishing.
And just like I mentioned in the intro, the possibilities of different areas. I wish someone had told me about it earlier, because once I got into it and discovered those, there's so many people in publishing they can help you along the way and help you to develop the skills you need to progress
your career and the direction you want to go. So I think the biggest barrier for me was just not even realizing how big the publishing world is, how excited everyone is about new digital products in the digital world and combining that with kind of the tradition of making a quality product and, you know, putting some good
stuff out into the world. So that's probably, I guess, my best answer.
No, it's a good answer! Noah?
Yeah. Yes. You know. Obviously, I didn't go through the publishing pipeline.
So it's a little bit different for me, but I think everyone has barriers in their career.
I think for me it was, hey, I didn't know the publishing world, so I had to learn.
I had to learn it kind of from the outside, and that can sometimes be difficult and I think, Mike's point about having a good mentor is hugely, hugely
important, or a group of mentors who can give you some background knowledge, but definitely help the pipeline for sure and help, help you move along.
Particularly in my career, I think that I was involved in data, data, data, science before there was data or data science as like a field.
And so I had to, a lot of it was self-learning.
And I think, you know, you go through your life, you have to self-learn, and so you can't be afraid of just playing, in our case, just playing with the data. Getting into Excel or into a database or into a PI tool and just playing around.
That, that can help break down a lot of barriers,
I think. And sometimes you can do that in your own companies, if they have a professional development, or have mentors who, will help you in that way.
But you can also just do it in your own life, and, and I think, not being afraid of the numbers in the data, no matter what, and in publishing, no matter what line you're going to go into, whether it be, as we were talking earlier before we came online, editorial or sales and marketing or production, or supply
chain, you're gonna be working with data. That's the story. That is, even editorial.
So, you can't be afraid of it, and I think playing with it is a huge way to break down the barriers and you know, I think that that's it.
And just finding people, like-minded people. Whether it be through school or through your job or through online meetings, or whatever. Do reach out to mentors, or some people. That's hugely important for breaking down barriers too.
And so, it does, the challenges. And I definitely have those challenges.
I imagine lots of other people do, too. So.
Yeah, I think one benefit now is LinkedIn.
Right. There's a lot of stuff like, I know our company offers, for home employees,
LinkedIn Learning. Some of the micro credentials that you can get from LinkedIn Learning, even on data. Like Power, there's Power BI,
of course. And Power BI is like what a lot of companies use and Tableau now, so getting, using those tools and going on LinkedIn, and learning some of the things that way to get like a micro credential for yourself to put on your LinkedIn profile would be huge and would be something that could help remove the
barrier that we didn't have when we were coming up.
There was no LinkedIn when I first started at Wiley, and going in the publishing career.
One thing that I will say, too, and Noah, you touched on
this, was the, now with how remote things are, we have people working across country like me, for instance.
I'm, like you said Noah. You're not in Toronto. I'm not in Toronto.
I'm the director of Sales and Success for Wiley and I live in Winnipeg, and I've been lucky to be able to do that through my career.
Mike's in London, Ontario. So we're all, the ability now to work remote and do things remote is, is huge. And the data aspect of that,
you can be analyzing data from anywhere as long as you have the computer setup.
So it's definitely something that is new. And it wasn't always like that. As you know, Mike.
Yeah, I think that flexibility, too. I mean the ability to work from home is always fantastic.
But as Kyle mentioned, we're pretty global now, and I have 2 managers, one of my managers is in New York and the other one's in the Canada office but she reports to someone in Germany.
So just that ability to connect with more people across the world increases that diversity, but also increases skill.
So like, Noah mentioned that constantly learning focus, I think, is kind of unique to data that you've always got to be on the go.
There's always a new tool coming along. There's always something that someone wants to adopt to do things better.
So connecting with people around the world is really important.
I'm connecting with something right now from Mexico, who does more of the artificial intelligence stuff that I want to get into, and he's already done that in in our office in Mexico.
So it's great to work with someone like that who's already got that experience.
Yeah. It's truly a global business now, I'm on meetings all the time.
People from all over the globe. Different areas. UK, Brazil, Australia, like it's everywhere.
And it's just finding the right time to have the meeting together.
In fact, everybody in their time zone is the hardest
part. But I'm just curious too, since we've been talking about being remote, where's everybody from?
If you want, put in the chat as attendees, like, I'm sure we got a lot of representation from across Canada, and I'm curious if there's people from even outside Canada that may have jumped on.
If you're comfortable putting it in the chat.
Ontario, Ontario, Quebec.
Awesome. Alberta. Vancouver. That's great.
Lots of people from all over. So see this, this is awesome.
This is really good, but I will get into the Q&A
now. We have a couple of questions that have come up from people and I'm gonna, I'll read them out and go over them with everybody.
So well, first person is, they worked in publishing as an editor and commissioning editor in India for over 5 years.
Now they're in Canada, and finding it difficult to transition into publishing in Canada. Any tips for newcomers in Canada?
So just getting started in publishing. I'll go with you for that one, Mike.
On the spot. Okay, I will say I'm not a recruiter, but staying connected.
I mean, everyone in publishing is pretty connected. It's very small community, very supportive and welcoming, and I think that the jobs that are available are out there.
There are times depending on transition to digital, that those jobs aren't always coming up as frequently.
But especially in data, because it's integrated into every single role
now, if you have qualifications in data, I know that Oxford is probably going to be looking for 3 or 4 positions coming up soon, so just don't give up,
stop, or stop connecting. Just keep connected with people and keep asking for those opportunities and putting yourself out there because they are out there.
Yeah, and just to add, it's a great answer, Mike, and I think to add to that, it's like, like we mentioned on LinkedIn. Start
making connections on LinkedIn, finding people that can mentor you.
It's a tight-knit group.
If you can connect with some people. Usually they know other people in the publishing area to help out and and definitely don't,
we promote a lot of people from within and develop a lot of people from within.
So just getting your foot in the door, and a lot of people, to what Mike said earlier,
wanna go into editorial, and then they start with us and realize, wow!
This is the brain, the role that I really love.
Like, I like customer success and helping customers use their product.
Yeah.
So it's definitely don't limit yourself. Go ahead, Noah.
Oh, I was just gonna say too, I think, that for those people who are entering the industry, there are some resources out there. You mentioned LinkedIn, Twitter, obviously social media is huge.
There are the publishers associations. So there's the CPC,
which we're on with today. But there's also the ACP, which is the Canadian Publishers Association.
And there's regional associations, too, and it's worth looking into those, a lot of them have resources for new publishers or people entering and then they're also higher ed programs
at Ryerson and SFU and Centennial and Humber, for publishing programs, and they all have a data component to them now, too,
so it's an important place to connect with people there.
So I would highly advise that, and I know for Oxford or Wiley,
many companies have intern programs. We have an internship program. It hasn't been running during the pandemic, but it will start back up again. And if you're interested in data, we'd love to have you come and be interested in data, because that's what that job is, so, but a lot of publishers
have those, have internship programs, too. So it's really worth talking into that as well.
Awesome. Thank you both. Next question is, many people I know access books through public library system.
Do you think the libraries have an interest in offering material that meets the interests of the under-serviced groups you mentioned?
Noah, you wanna take that one first?
Sure. Since we have lots of library data, and that libraries are part of BookNet's mandate.
So, I think the answer is yes, they're definitely always interested in analyzing our collections.
And looking for what their patrons want, right?
So they're a patron-driven organizations. And so if people come to request certain things, they're gonna wanna go out and get them.
But they also have a, a cultural, social fulfillment need to make sure that they represent all of their communities.
And so I know for a fact that they're always looking for diverse content and trying to fill out their collections as much as possible.
And I, I'm pretty sure they're going to continue to do that.
I know they use the data that we, that we derived to help drive that.
But I know they run their own using their own data as well. So.
Mike, anything to add to that one?
Yeah, on our side, I'm actually working currently on a project with the UK libraries.
There's more strict regulations there where you have to provide very specific data on student usage and they're really driven by what people need.
So it is kind of driven from the ground up.
What we need to provide them. They subscribe to subscription of groups of resources, and then we have actually, provide them data on the usage of that, but not only that, but what's being turned away.
So, if the student is searching for a specific resource on a topic, we're providing that information to them.
On how many students search for that in the system, maybe not been able to access that resource?
And we're seeing some patterns of usage that will drive future purchases by libraries on collections.
Awesome. And yeah, I know from our end, like it definitely, it's a huge thing on campus libraries, on campuses, to have more, more information on underprivileged areas or underrepresented areas.
And it's definitely something. We, as our organization, are actually putting in,
to our products that we develop, for instance, like we know what Indigenous stuff is,
A big, key topic now. So, in our books, even in an accounting book, we have specific Indigenous aspects of it, and bring out, to focus on companies, of Indigenous companies, and different things in our psychology books.
So it's definitely something that everybody is talking about. And how do you?
How do you work that into your products which will eventually be in the library?
To the students, as well.
So, Mike, this one specific to you, because you had mentioned one of your things.
Yeah.
So they're wondering if you could repeat the mentorship programs at Oxford University Press and maybe expand a bit on how long the program is and what a mentorship would look like.
So I don't know exactly what it would look like, because I'm actually pretty new at Oxford, but I do know they are 9 months formal programs.
So we do take applications, I'm pretty sure that nearly everyone who wants to be a mentee is accepted, that makes a lot of sense.
And then it's kind of an informal connection process.
So well, it's, it's not informal.
The connection process is formal, in that you have to apply.
But there's not a set mentor that's set up with everyone.
So you connect with different people, figure out who works best with you, who can fit your needs in terms of what your development goals are.
And that's how people are connected within a program.
So the 2 main streams I mentioned, there's Mission Gender Equity and Mission Include. Mission Gender
Equity has the Women Ahead program and Mission Include has Elevate, and there are a lot of outside workshops and that kind of thing for everyone within the program.
That's all I know at this point. But if you wanted to just connect with me via email or whatever I don't know if we're providing that contact information, Kyle, I'm happy to send an outline of the program.
Yeah, maybe we can connect with Katrina on that, and then see how we can share that out.
Next question is, what advice would you give to a new startup publisher in Canada, when looking at sales and distribution metrics?
What kind of trends, lines do you regularly look at?
Maybe Noah, that one for you.
Sure. I'm not completely sure if they mean by the sales and distribution measures they should be looking at supply to distributor, or just generally, but maybe I'll tackle both a little bit.
I think that obviously so, I think sales and
a distributor is a big deal, and that's a huge business decision for a new publisher.
And so I think there's a lot that goes into that from everything, from warehousing to delivery times to fulfillment times to, you know, data capabilities.
Do they have metadata capabilities? Do they collect POS data from their clients?
All of that is information that you're gonna wanna make sure that your distributor has.
So I think there's really a lot to unpack there.
That's probably more than we can do in this webinar.
It's fairly specific from a, from a more kind of higher level.
Obviously using data to check things like on hand numbers across the, across the physical points, across all the retailers or across the schools or across the libraries.
That's usually important. Looking at stock turn in retail.
It helps to make sure that they have the stock to sell.
All of that stuff is hugely important. It's all data driven.
And I think there are tools out there that will help with that, too, especially for new publishers.
Some of them are actually be supplied by your distributors.
So that's something to look into too, what platform is your distributor, potential distributor using?
How easy are they to use? Can you look at them before you pay a distributor?
All that information is probably really, really important. Hello, shoutout to BookNet. BookNet has a lot of resources specifically for that kind of topic on our website I highly recommend you check it out or blog.
Or we have a Youtube channel that has a lot of stuff about distribution sales, distribution, metrics, more for the trade industry.
And the educational industry but we have both, so people should check that out as well.
Awesome. And last question that we have is, and we can all probably take a stab at at this one, because it's a generic question.
But it's, what is the data? I.e., what information are we gleaning and using?
And then, second part, is, what is the most interesting insight you've learned over your career, based on the data?
Mike, you can take that one first.
I can take that one first. It's really tough to find one interesting insight.
I know there's been a lot of them.
I'll start with the data. So we have a number of different sources in terms of what we're tracking.
Now, a lot of it's usage-based data.
So there's Google Analytics is a major source.
We have about 10 million lines of usage data on our Oxford Learning-like products,
for example. All kinds of different events that we've set up in Google analytics to track different things.
One of the other major sources is from the libraries itself in the UK.
As I mentioned the other product that I'm working on.
And all kinds of past data, from surveys, reviews on products, different things like that, all from different sources.
So that's also one of the challenges of data in publishing, is there is so much information available from different sources that a lot of my work in the background has been combining those different sources that are in different systems maybe have different tags on them things like that to clean the data.
Using products like Alteryx, Designer, to bring that together, and then putting that into Tableau.
So what we focus on really is making things self-serve. So the insights that I find interesting might not be what other people find interesting.
But, for example, we've got cross functional dashboards that work for sales, marketing and editorial based on the usage data, and they give them different views based on what they might wanna look at in terms of product development.
What resources are creating. Sales can look at what institutions they're covering, what they use and how that compares to other customers. And marketing can look at what the most used resources are,
things like that, to promote. So I would say, and I know that's kind of a cop out answer,
but the insights really depend on what you're looking for.
And the data is there. And it's a matter of just talking to people and finding out what they want.
And then putting together a package that delivers that information.
Noah. How about yourself?
Yeah, I guess I've touched a little bit on the data that we're talking about from BookNet's standpoint is kind of, some of it,
actually Mike just mentioned, but we're, we collect the POS data for physical book sales from across Canada.
So we have close to 3,500 retail locations
send us their actual book sales every week. So you know what's actually selling in every store or most stores across Canada.
We navigate that information, we make it available to the publishers and the retailers so they can make more informed decisions about stock imports. More reprinting books.
Lots of supply chain decisions, lots of marketing and editorial decisions are driven from that data.
We also collect another important piece of data. Capital-D Data is metadata.
So that's the data about the books or about the content in the case of a learning platform, or whatever, it's the metadata that describes what the thing is and that's hugely important, it always has been.
But it's really important in an online digital world where you may not have a physical thing to actually hold on to and look at.
The only way you'll know about it before you purchase it, or sign up for it, is the metadata about that product, and so that's data we collect as well and make available back to the industry in lots of different ways.
We actually analyze it, too. There's all the data we collect on our own usage of our own products and services, too, which both Kyle and Michael have touched a little bit on.
So those are kind of, and then we have tons of survey data, too.
We survey 12,000 Canadian book buyers every year on their buying habits.
And we have that data for the last 10 years. We survey a 1,000 book readers every year on their reading habits, we have that data. And as Mike already touched on, there's a challenge in bringing all this data sources together to drive insight, right, to tell a story, so that's what we spend a lot
of time doing, as Mike already, as Mike already mentioned. And to take the second part of that question, about what, what interesting insight, I don't know.
I think that I'm learning something new and interesting every week
that I didn't know about before. That sounds a little bit like a cop-out answer too, but that's the truth.
And so to tell you once I just, I most recently [inaudible] the data there's a huge pop in books about mushrooms. There's so many books about mushrooms selling right now
that I wouldn't have known if I was not looking at the data.
And so we did some analysis, and all of a sudden we see this huge pop in mushroom books and then one of the things we do is go on Google Trends, or one of the Google tools, and start to see what's going on in the world about mushrooms.
Like why is it a huge pop? And it's a lot of it's homesteading.
A lot of interesting, so we bring all these different things tie them together, and then we can see all of a sudden why all these books are selling so much. Or another interesting one.
One more and then I'll stop. Is during the pandemic we saw book sales fall, obviously because retail outlets closed,
were closed, so some of the sales moved online, but not to the same
degree as they were pre-pandemic. And so during the pandemic it was a challenge.
It's a huge challenge for publishers, because retailers weren't open.
And so a lot of awareness and discovery of books that's created by people walking into bookstores, you know, those book stores weren't open.
People couldn't find the books, and some of the data we analyze is just the amount of book being published in the Canadian marketplace.
It was a huge fall after the pandemic, so stores were shut. So publishers all of a sudden said, Well, we should publish less, because stores aren't open, we can't get out books in there. We can't have first-time events with authors and things like that.
It makes total sense. But then we had a problem because it was a lull in the market when books weren't being published, and they were all pushing to the market, and at the same time which created a problem with too many books being available.
So we analyze the data of all of that information to try, try to find correlations between behavior of consumers and publishers, and what was driving what?
And so.
That was really insightful too, and that was interesting data project to do so.
Awesome. We've got a couple more. One would be a quick answer.
Sure!
And it's for you, Noah. Does it cost money to access sales data through BookNet? Is there some that's free?
But it does. Yeah.
Yeah, it does. So it's a subscription-based service. And so there's a subscription fee to take part, to get access to that data. We do release a lot of trend data and information, as was mentioned
in a comment already. Free to our blog and in our reports, and those are available off our website.
But the actual service itself is a subscription service.
And then other one is, do we have a new recommendations to connect with people as a university student?
I think we'll probably answer that cause. We can put our LinkedIn profiles on the chat afterwards for people that just put it in the, the chat function. And people can connect with us, and that's how they can connect with us.
And then one last one is, based on the data that we see,
what are some of the major problems/issues in the Canadian publishing landscape? For example, there's one dominant bookseller in Canada, and I would say and the U.S.
But any different challenges specific to Canada compared to U.S.
or UK.
I think it's probably not a comparison. I would think it's a common problem.
We have so many digital resources that all of the publishing companies are making giant investments in.
And, as Kyle mentioned earlier, the technology component is really strong, it's got adaptive capabilities for homework and we're not seeing them adopted as widely as they should be.
So, I think, based on the data we're seeing, we're looking at patterns of usage
and what resources are actually being used? What's being assigned? That kind of thing and trying to tailor those products even further.
But I think that's one of the major issues that we have not just in Canada,
but in the U.S., in the UK, is adoption of these resources, which you know a lot of talented people have put all of their efforts behind, develop great products, and sometimes we're not seeing the usage.
So I think just driving that forward is one of our main goals
in putting this data together and figuring out who's using what, what is genuinely, genuinely useful in the field.
Awesome, and that was the last question. So thank you, everybody.
I think we have a break until the next session is starting. I'm going to put in my LinkedIn profile for anybody that wanted to connect with me in the chat now.
And have a great night, and thank you for joining.
Appreciate it.
Hey, thanks, Mike, thanks. Everyone.
Thanks guys.
Thanks so much.
Hello! Everyone! I don't know if everyone's there.
It's hard when we can't see anyone.
I just wanted to say good evening and welcome to CPC's Doors
Open Program. My name is Shari Hosaki, and I am Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of HarperCollins Canada, and Harlequin Enterprises, and I'm delighted to be your moderator today.
So I'd like to welcome you to the Contracts and Permissions session of CPC
Doors Open. We're very excited to give you a peek into the contracts and permissions worlds, as it's not likely an area that you would be familiar with.
But if attention to detail, intellectual curiosity, and a passion for books is, is, is in your characteristics, then this could be the place for you.
So first I'd like to start with the land acknowledgement.
The Canadian Publishers' Council operates within the city of Toronto on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis
people. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. We acknowledge that our speakers and attendees, come
from a wide range of territories and lands across Turtle Island. To learn more about the traditional Indigenous lands you are on,
Please visit Who's Land or Native Hyphen Land.
So the objective of the Doors Open Publishing sessions has been primarily to increase transparency,
accessibility, and diversity within Canadian publishing, especially for people who have traditionally been underrepresented in Canadian publishing industry, including, but not limited to those who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color; and members of the LGBTQIA2S+
communities, and persons with disabilities. To learn more, you can go to our website at
pubcouncil.ca/doorsopenpublishing.
So, first of all, we, I'd like to talk a little tiny bit about contracts admin and permissions, because I'm not sure everyone would know what they are.
Contracts administration at HarperCollins and Harlequin resides in the legal department, and involves drafting, negotiating, and otherwise administrating, administering author contracts in the publishing house.
Permissions is kind of as it sounds, seeking permission of third parties to use their material in our products for trade publishing.
It can include things like pictures, song lyrics, and quotes, and for educational it means more towards academic works, pictures, and studies.
And we can talk about both of these things more with our panelists, in a few minutes.
So a little bit on webinar etiquette.
Thank you for being here tonight as a reminder this webinar will be recorded, and as such only the speakers will have their camera and microphone functions enabled.
Please use the Q&A function in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen to share any questions for the Q&A portion of the webinar.
If there are any issues that you wish to bring to our attention, please contact the host using the chat function which will be monitored by our host
extraordinaire, Katrina. If you require a closed captioning, you can enable that function in the lower right hand section of the Zoom window which reads, Live Transcription. A transcript of this webinar will be available, also be available, in the days following the conclusion of the
session. So I'd like to introduce you to our very esteemed panel today.
First we have Sandy Cooke. Sandy studied journalism and worked as a reporter and editor for 2 local newspapers in Durham region.
After moving to York region, she was hired by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where she started as an admin assistant and moved up to the position of Registrar.
After 20 years at McMichael, she moved to Pearson
Education as a Permissions Coordinator, and in 2010 she joined Oxford University Press,
a publisher of academic books, journals, and reference materials as Permissions Manager working on Canadian titles with one team member. Her team of 9
now today works on Canadian, U.S., and UK textbooks and academic titles.
Welcome, Sandy. Next we have Cadence King. Cadence is the Senior Manager of Contracts Administration at Harlequin Enterprises, where she, and along with the team of 6 Contract Administrators, draft and negotiate contracts to acquire literary works from authors.
Utilizing her media arts degree, she started her career in broadcast television working in various roles in programming, rights management and distribution where she gained the skills and knowledge to make the transition to working in publishing.
She's a fan of all types of fiction, nonfiction, true crime, and mostly, most recently loved Trent Dalton's All Our Shimmering Skies.
We'll talk about that later, Cadence.
Okay. So I think we should jump in and let our panelists talk instead of me.
So because the 2 areas are slightly different. I think what I'd like to do is do this linearly and speak with contracts administration first
and then we'll move to permissions. So, Cadence, how would you describe what you do?
And why is it important in publishing?
Yeah, thank you, Shari. So I'm the Senior Manager of Contracts
Administration, managing a team of contract administrators, and as a department we draft and negotiate all of the licenses with authors to acquire their books or intellectual property, and we really deal with the whole life cycle of the contract so we deal with everything from
royalties questions, and we do contracts for rights out like sub-licensing translations.
We deal with permission requests, and ultimately the reversion of rights back to the author.
So we're one of the few departments outside of editorial that frequently gets to work with authors and agents. So it's kind of a cool rule, despite being quite a bit of responsibility.
Yeah, I think you could say that it's really like the lifeblood of a publishing house, because it's those contracts are just so important.
Oh, absolutely!
And Cadence, what kind of background do you need to work in contracts administration?
Do you need to be a lawyer?
No, I am not a lawyer. So in terms of work experience, the team that we have now actually comes from very varied backgrounds.
We have 2 people, myself being one of them, who worked with rights in the TV industry. We have another administrator who worked with music royalties.
We have one from legal administration, and one with the traditional publishing background.
But in terms of the underlying skills and knowledge or education, and really any form of legal education such as the paralegal program, or having worked in administration in something like a law firm, would give you transferable skills like understanding how to read and interpret contracts. Things like a business background would help
with negotiation, and really anything that requires excellent written communication skills will help you in this role.
But everything is teachable. I have a degree in radio and television arts and learned how to read, negotiate, interpret contracts throughout my career.
So everything is teachable.
That's great. And both as senior manager, but also as a contracts administrator, administrator, can you give us an idea of what a typical day might look like?
Yeah, so a contracts administrator spends most of their time really working to get their contracts signed by our authors.
So on any given day that could be drafting the terms of the agreement into our contract
templates. It could be negotiating those contracts or answering questions about the contracts with authors and agents.
It could be discussing upcoming deals with their editorial business partners, and then various tasks about seeing through the administration of the signed contract, including keeping our rights database up to date.
We also deal with so many varied requests that each one of the administrators specializes in another area as well.
Things like permission agreements, sub-license agreements, royalty or payment questions, licensing cover.
I mean, I could go on. And then, as for myself, I manage the workload of the department, and I advise on important contract negotiations.
I escalate legal issues with the lawyers or general counsel.
And I support the lawyers and general counsel in resolving those issues. I also work very closely with editorial and our author engagement team on things that may impact our authors.
And like most jobs, there's a fair bit of project work as well.
For the last 2 years I've been working on implementing a royalty system.
So that's been exciting and very challenging.
It's great. It sounds very busy and quite varied. So if you like doing something different every day, it's probably a good place to be.
Can you give us a snapshot? I know we gave your bio, but can you give us a snapshot of your professional and educational journey?
Yeah. So I, as I mentioned, did not come from a publishing background.
This is my first role in publishing. I went to school and got a Bachelor of Arts in radio and television and started my career working for a television broadcaster.
Scheduling TV shows. After a few years of that I applied for another role in my department, where I would be reading the licenses for those shows and then communicating the rights information which then led me to my next role where I was working in a broadcaster's legal department as a traditional
contracts administrator, drafting and negotiating the contracts with one of the lawyers
there. After that I took a role working for a TV distributor in a bit of a hybrid role where I was working very closely with our rights.
But I was really bridging the gap between sales and legal, so all of these varied experiences really led me to where I am today.
In the role that I'm in at Harlequin, having so much experience with rights and with contracts, helped me transition.
Yeah, a lot of people don't really put together that like media broadcast
and journalism, and that type of thing, all kind of lend themselves to book publishing as well.
Oh, absolutely, I mean, the medium is different, but the underlying rights and contracts, all of that, is the same.
Because really what you're effectively doing is buying our licensing rights at the end of the day.
Hmm!
So it makes a lot of sense, that's great. And how long have you been with Harlequin, now?
3 and a half years, but so much of it has been the pandemic. It's flown by.
Right, you know, like the pandemic is really affected all of us, and so many ways. And when you made the leap from media and television into publishing, how was that for you?
How was that transition?
Yeah, I was very nervous, coming into publishing, never having worked in it, having worked in broadcast TV my whole career.
That was what I knew, and I, I was quite nervous, but I was also confident that the underlying skills that I had with rights and contracts would translate pretty easily. The hard part would be learning how things operate, who does what in a completely new industry. And then there's all the small things like having
to learn all the lingo and people kept using the word galley for probably 2 weeks.
I had no idea what anyone was talking about, until finally I googled it.
Now I know what a galley is, but for a long time I didn't. And you know there's always more to learn.
I'm still learning. I've been at the company again for 3 and a half years, but it's really wonderful getting to learn all of this, and having the underlying skills really helps make that transition
not too bad.
And for the benefit of our, of the people watching, what is it, galley?
It's like the, now I'm gonna mess up the definition.
But it's like the book before the book becomes a real book.
It's like the test book. Almost. There's probably a more eloquent definition than that.
Thank you. And what do you like most about publishing as an industry?
Yeah, so I like the same thing about publishing that I liked about TV, which is that it's all about storytelling.
I get to, in my role be, I like to call it a small part of what brings a story to readers and ultimately to life.
But you know, if you don't have a contract, you don't have a book, so maybe it's a bigger part than I'm letting on.
That's great. And what's the best part of your job? What gets you out of bed in the morning?
Yeah, so I mean, I work with a wonderful, wonderful team of contract administrators.
They are the most collaborative introverts that I have ever met.
And working with you and the the other lawyers in the department is also great.
The second best thing I like about my job is definitely is definitely the problem solving and the critical thinking that I get to do. I don't have any sort of a math background, you know I passed high school math, but I get royalty questions from authors and agents.
And I have to look at their statements. Figure out whether the math is correct and help explain it to them, or figure out what the error is, and go back to our royalty administrators to get it resolved, and going through that process of solving the puzzle and resolving it feels
like such an accomplishment to me. I really like, I really enjoy getting to learn and to solve puzzles like that in my job.
That's great. And do you interact with other aspects or functions within the business?
And which ones do you interact with most frequently?
Every single day, every single day we are working with other departments.
So I work closely with editorial on strategic negotiations, on business initiatives.
We work with the backlist and marketing teams, answering questions about contracts and working on new opportunities.
We work, as I said, with the royalties and finance departments to talk about royalty statements, and payments for our authors.
We work with IT on projects and issues with our in-house databases.
We work with managing editorial on any systems, block or rights issues.
And I mean there's probably more departments that I'm forgetting.
But we are very lucky in that we get such a varied experience within the company.
We really do get to work with almost every department.
So you really get the bird's eye view of the publishing house.
Yeah, it's great.
That's great, and I know that there are lots of exciting authors and different titles.
So what has been your most exciting contract to work on so far?
Oh, yeah, we've done so many. So we've contracted books with the Dalai Lama and Al Sharpton, which are obviously really cool.
There's somebody else who we're working on now that I'm not allowed to mention yet, but stay tuned cause it's a cool one. And then we also get to work on some cooler, smaller initiatives like we give permissions for music
videos to use Harlequin novels as props in them.
So we've worked with artists like Carly Rae Jepsen and The Tragically Hip.
So you know, it's, it's a pretty cool role.
That's great. And are there any barriers that you personally experienced when you entered the publishing industry? And how did you best navigate those barriers?
Yeah, so I think that a big barrier to entry for anyone coming into the publishing industry from outside of it is just that, it's hard to get your foot in the door
in the first place, and then it's hard to learn how a new industry functions
once you're in it.
I was very lucky, as I've mentioned, to have a solid base in contracts and rights to help me with the transition, and everyone at Harlequin was very warm and welcoming to my extremely basic questions.
And Google helps with all of the googling of terminology.
But what I really value about going through that experience is that I'm now more informed to help other industry
newcomers bridge their gaps, because I've been in their exact shoes. So when I'm talking to a newer employee about, say, you know, reverting rights to an author, I know that I have to explain what that means, and how the process works from start to finish because they
wouldn't have experienced it before. So it may seem intimidating that you kind of don't know how these things function, but it really is all learnable.
There's lots of little quirks about publishing that you don't really see in other industries.
So it does take a little while to to learn them all. That's for sure.
Yes, rights or reversions don't exist in the broadcasting world.
Right.
Well, thank you, Cadence, so I think that paints an amazing picture of what you do every day, and how important it really is to the whole life cycle of a book and publishing industry. I'd like to move now to permissions.
Hello! Thank you.
And to Sandy. Welcome, Sandy! Sandy,
first of all, again, we kind of started this way with Cadence as well. But I think it's helpful to get a picture of just describing what you do, and perhaps how education is a little bit different than traditional trade publishing.
Well, what we do is we cover, we license and clear permissions for everything that appears in a textbook, and whether it's a photo, a figure, a table, a literary excerpt, a read, a full reading from a book or a journal, and my team ensures that everything is cleared before
we go to publication. It's a legal liability
if we publish without permission, because you can be called out on it, and it can have huge consequences.
So it's our responsibility to make sure that everything is cleared and cleared properly, and the intellectual property is respected.
I would imagine in a textbook that you would. It would be very, very heavy in permissions.
Very heavy. Some of our, we get excel spreadsheets when we start a book to clear permissions, and sometimes an art book is one that's very heavy.
We can have 300 lines, and we have to clear those 300 objects. Or it will be a law book.
We just got one the other day, and it's got a 150 lines on it.
Then we have to clear everything that's on there. Science books are very heavy.
We own Sona, which is a heavy, heavy science publisher, and we do their books, and they can be 700,
800 permissions that we have to clear for one title.
And how long would you have to do something like that?
Huh! Well, right now, they're saying, they're trying to give us 3 months, which, if we could get everything at once, and the sources are properly sourced, and we can go out and seek those permissions.
Wow! That's impressive.
We can do a book in 3 months, but you can't guarantee when rights holders will get back to you, or how long they'll take or how much negotiation they'll be involved to license their material.
So what kind of background do you need to work in permissions? Then?
Well, you don't really need any background that you can say exists because there is no training for permissions.
If I was 40 years younger I would go back and start a permissions training school because there is nobody. You learn on the job.
It's never too late, Sandy.
I, yeah, well, I had, as. I was a journalist, so I knew about copyright and licensing things and licensing out.
And then at the McMichael, I was responsible for all the works of art,
the shipping and licensing. I had to get permission to use various artworks, because we did catalogs, so I'd have to license all that.
So that's how I learned how to do permissions.
And then, when I got into Pearson, that was all
textbooks, and it's just a little bit different animal.
But you still have to license the material to use it in any other way.
That's great. What's?
Any intellectual property that isn't yours. So my team has come from every kind of background.
We've got everything that, you know. We had a Phd.
student for a while. We've had people who have degrees in English who wanted to get into publishing in some way, and they just end up,
it's an entry level position, and you end up in permissions, and you have to have a feel for it.
I call it the permission geek and we don't consider that an insult.
We really enjoy seeking the permissions and the, the track that you go on.
And it's a real accomplishment when you can clear permissions.
Would imagine you'd have to have a real attention to detail.
Attention to detail and a lot of detective leanings.
Hmm, that sounds interesting.
Because it takes you on a trail. You might say, an editorial person will say they want to use this article, and you'll go and see, well, they don't really own the rights.
It's a third party material. So you have to track down who owns it.
Or if it's an artist, for example, and the artist is dead.
Well, then, you have to try and find the estate or the gallery, or the rights holder.
It could be an agent. The same with writing as you,
as you both know, a lot of authors have agents, so you have to reach out to them and do the negotiation.
And what's the best part of it?
Getting that elusive permission cleared. There's always that one, I swear every book has one permission that is just.
You can't find the rights holder, and you just work and work and work at it, and then it comes in. And that's a drawback to Covid, with working at home, is that we used to be able to say, look I got it!
I got it! But my husband really doesn't care that much, so you know, when you yell out, I got it! Or, I've cleared this! But when you're in an office with others, and they all get what you're doing.
That's what Teams chat is for.
Exactly. Yeah. And we do use that a lot. And we have a lot of Teams meetings.
You need a bell to ring, or something.
And can you describe your professional and educational background?
And how long have you been with OUP?
I was in journalism and moved up to York Region when my husband got a job up here and that's how I got to the McMichael.
It was an Admin position, and I took to it very quickly and started to learn about the artwork and shipping, loans agreements, gift agreements, all the, there's a lot of legalities in an art gallery,
of course, and I got promoted to registrar.
So my responsibilities, there was every work of art has a file and an individual number, and I was responsible for maintaining all of that.
We had bolts when we would lend out works.
We had to make sure those were all accounted for. And we would have contracts for that, and I'd arrange the shipping.
I didn't do the crating, but I would do crate lists that go into the crates so that people know what they're getting.
And when we received an exhibition in, I'd have a crate list, and it was my job to make sure everything was there.
I did insurance to make sure that everything was covered, because we did,
the last show I worked on was an Emily Carr, Frida.
Carlo, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibition.
So as you can imagine, the insurance on that was astronomical.
So it was very important. We had to have security guards when we picked up the shipment.
The shipment came in just after 9/11, and we had to go to the border to meet the truck with all the paperwork, and there were guns everywhere.
We got of, out of our vehicles, because it had just happened, right?
So that was a rather exciting event. And yeah, yeah, I didn't wanna do that again.
Probably too exciting itself.
And then when I left the McMichael, a job came up at Pearson as a permissions coordinator, and I had no experience in publishing other than working on a newspaper and working on catalogs for an art gallery so I didn't know all the intricacies that
went into putting a textbook together, but I learned on the job, and I had good mentors there and help, and I just learned to take to that.
And how was that transition for you from journalism? And at the art gallery?
It was pretty seamless, I think, because it was all ensuring intellectual property is protected, and as a reporter and an editor I had to make sure that we publish things that we're able to be published, and if we wrote articles the newspaper owned, the
copyright. So it's just learning degrees of that, and working in art gallery gave me so much information on artist copyright which can have layers and layers.
Okay, so what was the best find or the most exciting project that you've had so far?
There, I'm like, hey! There's so many little things that we've done.
But one of my more exciting ones was getting permission from Tom Hanks to use the photo of him when he portrayed Mr.
Rogers in the movie. I contacted his agent, who called him Hanks, and said he was sure Hanks would be okay with it, but I had to go through his lawyer, who called him Tom, so I got a little insight there. And we got free permission because it was a textbook, and they were
happy to give us permission to use it. Sir Laurence Olivier,
I got permission from his estate, which I know a lot of audience here won't know who that was, but he was a famous actor many years ago.
I knew who he was.
Yeah, and we do license a lot of artists.
Georgia O'Keeffe, for example, or who, of course, has passed on.
But a lot of contemporary artists, a lot of First Nations artists.
We, OUP publishes a lot of First Nations textbooks.
Hmm!
So we like to feature First Nation art on the covers.
So there's a lot of research that goes into that.
The editorial will tell me what they want, or who they want, and then I have to reach out to the artist or their estates or their agents.
We do a lot of contemporary First Nations artists so, which is great.
That's great. Are there any barriers that you personally experienced when you entered the publishing industry?
And how did you navigate those?
I guess the only barrier would have been much like Cadence,
not knowing all the intricacies that went into a book. I knew what galleys were, because I had overseen publication of art catalogs, but I didn't know all the intricacies
of production and editorial, and how they all worked together. And royalties,
that was something I hadn't really dealt with before.
And I just have to make sure, for some of our books, royalties are shared, or permission fees are shared by the author and OUP.
So we have to make sure that gets charged to their royalties.
So there's a different route we have to take when we're processing invoices.
Hmm!
So things like that. But everybody was very helpful, and you do learn by doing.
And as Cadence says, there, you can't not learn, there's everything you can learn is, if you're willing to do the work and put it in, you can figure out how to do things.
That's fantastic. Well, certainly sounds very interesting, would have loved to have talked to Tom Hanks.
I didn't get to talk to Tom, but.
Too bad. You should just say you did.
Yeah.
Okay, so I have a couple of questions for both of you.
Given that as our objective, one of our key objectives here is diversity, equity, inclusion, I'd like to ask each of you about your experience in this regard.
So Cadence, I'll start with you. How has the publishing landscape changed since you first entered it?
In regards to diversity and equitable representation
across all publishing positions, and what have you observed?
Yeah. So when I started at Harlequin, I mean, it was a relatively short time ago.
So Harlequin was already well into their plans to expand at the employee landscape. Harlequin, one of the initiatives that I really appreciate, offers remote paid internships to those interested in working in the industry, but who may not live in one of the
publishing hubs like Toronto, New York, and London, which are obviously high barriers for entry for many if you don't live in one of those cities already. So I think it's a really good way for newer employees to gain valuable work experience without having to potentially move
across the country for a role, and I think it can really make a big difference for those candidates.
Hmm! That's a, that's a good one.
And Sandy, same question to you, how is the publishing landscape changed in this regard with diversity and inclusion?
OUP has a pretty robust DEI initiative going on.
We do a lot of training in it, and we have a lot of seminars, and they have,
we've tried to expand, who we who we hire.
It's hard to, as you know, it's hard to say.
You can't just say, non-white people can apply, or something like that.
But we do try to expand it, and I think we've been very successful in opening doors to some that maybe had been closed before.
And do you find that some more recent thing, recent trend?
Yeah. Probably in the last few years.
And again to both of you. But maybe starting with Cadence, have you or your company participated in initiatives that help remove barriers to the publishing industry?
Yes, for sure. So first I'll mention one that is about changing the landscape of published authors.
So one of the initiatives that I have had the opportunity to work on from a contract side, at Harlequin is the Romance Includes You mentorship program, and this is where Harlequin editors mentor an unpublished author from a diverse background.
And we provide them with a grant to write their first published book. And so, you know, I worked on the contract for the first mentorship, and I think we're now into our second year of it.
But what I was really excited about was the author who participated in the first mentorship actually has gone on to get a proper traditional contract with us for another 2 books which really shows that the program is working like an author who wouldn't have had an opportunity to publish a book now is becoming an
established author, and we are helping to build that audience.
And I'm really proud of being a small part of that.
That's cool.
Really, yeah, yeah, it's really great. And in terms of changing the employee landscape, in addition to the internship that I mentioned before, I do hope that initiatives like this, like doing these sessions are helping to make publishing more accessible.
And less intimidating for newcomers, so that we do get a more varied background in publishing houses.
I do feel like that's changing as well like. Personally, I see you know more of the people coming in the door, and there's a greater diversity, and it's just adding to the richness of that, at the, the company for sure.
Sandy, do you have? What do you think of that?
I agree with you. Our land, our employee landscape, has been enriched greatly over the last few years, and it continues to be, and we do have a big focus on First Nations
publishing, which is wonderful. We, our books often will include, you know.
We try to include everybody in the books, and you have seen a big change,
I think, if you license stock agency photos. It used to be very stereotypical photos that you would have.
And now, when we do books, it's always the emphasis on showing the diversity and inclusion and the stock agencies, most of them now have seminars that they like to present to us on their diversity, and to show how much they have expanded to so that you can publish a book that
reflects everybody, and I think that's been a really successful endeavor by the stock agencies, and probably as a result of the needs of publishers.
Yeah, that's wonderful. Great news. Well, at this time I'd like to open it up for questions.
You can do that through the Q&A bar at the bottom, not through the chat, and let me just see what I can pull up here.
Okay. So Hi, thank you for the session, I have worked in publishing as an editor and commissioning editor in India for over 5 years.
Is it possible to transition to contracts and permissions in Canada
given that I am switching countries and departments as a newcomer in Canada?
I'm gonna give that one to you, Cadence.
Yeah. So I mean, if you've been working in publishing definitely, you will have transferable skills to come to the North American market. As an editor, you would have slightly different skills than in contracts or permissions.
But again everything is teachable. So if you've been negotiating the acquisition of books, it's not a far leap to then negotiate the contracts behind them.
And so the underlying skills that I was talking about before would really come into play
here. So negotiation skills, excellent written communication skills, things like that would make the transition a lot easier.
Great. I have another one that would probably be for you. What kind of technology and tools do you use to manage
contracts and royalties? And is there a program that you use often?
Yeah, so at Harley, when we have a proprietary software system.
So it's a software system that was built in-house. So if I named it, you wouldn't know it.
But we use that to essentially get the information from editorial about what they've acquired, and it does some kind of basic contract management for us.
But most of what we do is actually outside of our database system.
Many companies will have kind of like an automated software system that would like pump out a contract.
We don't use those. Many of ours are highly negotiated, so it doesn't quite lend itself to a program like that.
But some publishers may use those, and every publisher will probably use a different software system. The royalty administrators do use that system called Klopp Attack.
I think it's like a German royalty administration system.
But again, every publisher probably uses a different one.
Thank you. This question I'm not sure we have the answer to, but we can certainly think about this one. In the UK,
The Society of Authors offers a short course on publishing contracts.
Is there something similar in Canada? And if not, would this be something you would be interested in offering? It's very hard to find recent information about creating and managing contracts in publishing. Certainly would be a great idea, and you know, I think we should actually put that to our, our friends at the CPC, to see if
that's something that we could do, maybe in our next initiative, because it's certainly sounds like a good idea.
Any tips and or resources for learning the lingo?
You have to be in it to learn it. That's.
Yeah.
It's just. There's so many terms that they use and OUP
Yeah.
is the master of acronyms. I don't know if your house is, but we have an acronym for absolutely everything which I find amusing, because we have dictionaries with words in them.
Full words, but we use acronyms for everything.
Yeah.
I think you find that in most companies right, that every company has their own kind of lingo and acronyms, and it takes a little while to to learn them all.
I was very lucky when I started. We had essentially like a resource guide to go through, so that gave me a lot of understanding about kind of, you know how, a book starts to how a book ends like how it gets actually made into a real book on the shelves so that
helped a lot, and then I googled things along the way.
I love Google. Here's a good one for you, Sandy.
Any advice for editors dealing with permissions and rights for self-published authors.
Yeah, it's a my, it can be a mine field.
We sometimes have authors doing their own permissions, and it doesn't always turn out well.
There's still, in 2023, people still think if it's on the Internet, it's free,
anyone can use it. So that's the first rule is that you have to learn.
And basically it's, it's basic copyright. If something is fixed, whether it's written or recorded,
somebody owns that. And that's what people, the authors need to realize is that somebody owns everything, and you have to get permission to use it.
It actually.
It's, that's about the only advice I can give.
Yeah, it actually lends well to this next question, which is, what about
during these times of social media, wherein everyone seems to use everyone's content when generating art or entertainment pieces, even just for common trends?
Trends, it says. For example, Kate Bush songs.
Well, if you look at the fine print on all your social media, you will see that you're not allowed to do that.
But people do it, and unless somebody complains, it can stay up there.
They're almost all the social media sites have a place where you can report piracy, or infringement of your rights.
But that is more considered a personal use. If we wanted to publish a book, and we wanted to use Andy Warhol paintings all throughout it.
Well, we could find Andy Warhol paintings probably, we could go to galleries and take pictures and publish them, but that's without permission, and then you would be in trouble.
So the Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, things like that,
it's often, I think they look the other way because it's considered a personal use.
And granted, it's going out to maybe millions of people.
But it's gonna be hard to put the horse back in the barn after this
has been allowed for so long.
Here's one for both of you. Are your teams working remotely still
or have you, or you, have you moved back to hybrid work?
So we are hybrid. We are in the office.
Well, I'm in the office once a week. Just based, dependent on my role. The contract
administrators are in once a month because their roles are more heads-down work and less collaborative.
But we meet all the time over teams. We use that and do video calls.
So, even though we aren't all in the office all the time, we definitely are still collaborating, and we are still connecting with each other.
It's basically the same for us. We're hybrid.
I only go into the office about once a month because I moved recently, and I'm at least an hour and a half drive away from the office now.
So it's, that's 3 hours out of my day
if I go into the office, so we tend not to so much, but some of my team goes in 1 or 2 days a week.
Some are there 3 or 4 days a week. We have one remote worker who lives out near Cambridge, so he doesn't come in very often, either so, and we're the same as Cadence.
We have regular team meetings. We meet once a week every week, and then if there's any issue, we just can call each other on teams, and we're always visible to each other and always accessible.
Yeah. So the next question is that there are so many quotations, etc., in textbooks.
Perhaps this helps explain why textbooks can be expensive.
Well, I can't speak to the price of textbooks.
That's way above me. But yeah, yeah, permissions can be expensive.
An art book is probably the most expensive thing to publish.
Second to readers. We don't publish readers very much anymore, because they can be so expensive.
An English reader we did a few years ago was astronomical, with permission fees.
And a question here about how important are referrals when applying to publishing jobs in Canada? I'm not sure if that means publishing referrals or just any referrals, like general referrals.
So I would say that when I'm looking at hiring staff members I'm not looking specifically at people who have publishing experience.
I'm looking at people who have transferable skills that would lend themselves to being successful in this role.
So having prior work references, who can advocate for you, and who will speak to your, your skills is very important.
But those don't need to be people who are already in the publishing industry.
Yeah, I agree completely. Because there is no experience. If you've had another permissions job, then certainly I'm gonna be more interested in you.
But if you've got like, as Cadence says, transferable skills, that's what's important.
And if you have good communication skills, and you're willing to learn.
Are there ever internships that focus on permissions or contracts?
I'm currently taking a contracts and copyright course to Sheridan College's creative writing and publishing program.
And I've actually been really enjoying the idea of working in one of these areas.
We don't do any internships anymore. We haven't done them for years.
I'm not sure why, but we don't have any available.
I'm not sure if we have any specifically on permissions or contracts, but I do know that we have at least one internship role that supports our sub-rights team, and they do sales of our rights to other companies.
And so you would kind of be touching on rights and contracts with that.
But yeah, I don't know of any that are specific to those areas.
Not that there couldn't be in the future. But this is a question for Cadence.
What are common sticky points that come up in contracts and good ways to negotiate this, eg.
world rights and duration of contract?
Yeah, so editorial in, at Harlequin I should say, editorial really deals with kind of the big starting points, like, what rights we're getting, like world rights versus just North American rights.
And the duration of contract is usually gonna be copyright.
It's very rare that it would be a limited term.
So those are actually not really negotiables for us.
Those are really set at that point. When the contracts are coming to us, we're talking more about the wording in the contracts and the conditions around
all of the rights that we've acquired. So there are discussions in the industry about,
you know, what audio book rights mean as compared to a dramatic audio version?
And so we're talking to authors and agents about really like the intricacies of those rights.
So it is a very granular by the time it gets to us, and editorial in our company would be dealing with things like, Are we getting world rights?
Or are we getting North American?
You mentioned that major publishing hubs are Toronto, New York, and London. Are there positions in contracts and acquisitions, or I guess maybe permissions, in other Canadian cities, or with smaller publishing houses?
Oh, I'm sure there are. I feel like Vancouver probably has some smaller publishing houses, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are other places in Canada.
I'm just not as familiar with each of them.
Some of the university presses across Canada have permissions people as well.
That makes perfect sense. Sandy, here's a good one for you.
Is there a permission you could never get? Is there one that got away?
Not nothing that comes to mind. No, not really.
That's great!
Because we usually are very successful in it. There, there is one.
What was it the other day? Somebody wanted to use something, and well. TED Talks is one thing, they won't license.
They used to, but they won't license anymore.
And there was, I can't remember what the other one was the other day, but we were having a team meeting, and somebody said, I'm trying to get this. And one of my team and I both said, You'll never get it.
Hmm!
They won't license, and it's just so, we know not to even pursue that.
So I'm just looking. We have a couple more questions on that.
We are over time, so I don't wanna go over too much.
What would you say is the most important quality or skill necessary to succeed in publishing for new graduates?
Oh, gosh! That's the hardest question.
We saved the hardest for the last.
I don't know. I would. I would like to say written, communicate, or communication skills in general.
So much of what we do is communicating with authors and agents, and talking to talking to other people in the company.
And so, yeah, I guess I just want to say communication.
Hmm!
Yeah, the same. And willing to learn, and don't be afraid to ask questions.
Most people love to talk about their jobs. I certainly do, and you know, if you ask me a question, I'm happy to, that's how one of my team members joined the team.
She was the office administrator, and we did an open house one day at OUP, where everybody could go and visit other departments, and she was fascinated with it, and she ended up applying when a job came up, and she's one of our best workers now.
It's great. I'm sorry there's a few straggling questions here, but we are out of time.
I'd just like to thank you both for sharing your journey with us and for helping people to understand what you do.
I sincerely hope that this session has assisted.
those who might be considering a career in publishing contracts or permissions, and tip the scale in favor of this,
these interesting career choices. Just as a reminder that this session has been recorded and will be available for viewing on the CPC.
website along with all other sessions. I would also like to remind you that in the Frequently-Asked-Questions section of our site, we have provided links to job boards and to the career pages of Canadian publishers where job advertisements will be posted. The link to that resource is also
posted in the chat. Thank you to everyone for taking the time out of your evening to join us tonight, and we hope that you benefited from our session. Tomorrow session's
includes digital and sales. You can register on the website.
Thank you.
So thank you again, everyone. Thank you, Cadence. Thank you, Sandy, and everyone enjoy the rest of your evening.
Take care!